Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
US Spies See No Evidence of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program
US intelligence agencies believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reports in today's edition.
The Times said there was no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran had been enriching nuclear fuel and developing infrastructure to become a nuclear power.
But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead -- a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003, the paper noted.
* * *
From the New York Times report Saturday:
Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies. [...]
Yet some intelligence officials and outside analysts believe there is another possible explanation for Iran’s enrichment activity, besides a headlong race to build a bomb as quickly as possible. They say that Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call “strategic ambiguity.” Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions. Some point to the examples of Pakistan and India, both of which had clandestine nuclear weapons programs for decades before they actually decided to build bombs and test their weapons in 1998.
“I think the Iranians want the capability, but not a stockpile,” said Kenneth C. Brill, a former United States ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency who also served as director of the intelligence community’s National Counterproliferation Center from 2005 until 2009. Added a former intelligence official: “The Indians were a screwdriver turn away from having a bomb for many years. The Iranians are not that close.”
Amid the ugly aftermath of the botched Iraq intelligence assessments, American spy agencies in 2006 put new analytical procedures in place to avoid repeating the failures. Analysts now have access to raw information about the sources behind intelligence reports, to help better determine the credibility of the sources and prevent another episode like the one in which the C.I.A. based much of its conclusions about Iraq’s purported biological weapons on an Iraqi exile who turned out to be lying.
Analysts are also required to include in their reports more information about the chain of logic that has led them to their conclusions, and differing judgments are featured prominently in classified reports, rather than buried in footnotes.
When an unclassified summary of the 2007 intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program was made public, stating that it had abandoned work on a bomb, it stunned the Bush administration and the world. It represented a sharp reversal from the intelligence community’s 2005 estimate, and drew criticism of the C.I.A. from European and Israeli officials, as well as conservative pundits. They argued that it was part of a larger effort by the C.I.A. to prevent American military action against Iran.
# # #
107 Comments so far
Show Allnot the right answer!
Thus, the sign should be held higher.
just because we can doesn’t mean we should
So, how was the question framed and what was the poll you are referring too?
Are the people of this country so stupified by a corrupt media that they'd fall for it once again? People are generally disgusted by the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq (where we have officially withdrawn, a matter of terminology). Mostly they're disgusted because they've caught sight of the military budget, but still, they'd support it all again in Iran?
I fear the answer is yes. The populace will support yet another mideast invasion out of either outright ignorance or outright prejudice, both of which run rampant in this dumbed-down nation. Media and educational control in this country will be a matter of fascination for historians and culture critics in the future--if we survive as more than a world controlled and debased by spinners of outright lies. You have to wonder why this country supports the CIA while ignoring their information, as we've done over and over. For one thing, killing an agency kills jobs, careers, which always creates difficulty. The public doesn't have to know that the CIA itself thinks this nuclear threat is all bullshit. Hell, let's just declare all CIA conclusions to be state secrets, keep the agency afloat as a job creator, and get on with bringing down Iran, which is pretty obviously to the US's strategic advantage. Just look at a frigging map.
Even empires don’t want to die in the blink of an eye.
I think you've gone to the heart of the matter: these ancient civilizations (Iran, Russia, China) don't want to tangle militarily with the predator USA, as a means of taming the beast; they would rather do it by not supporting the dollar, conducting trade for oil in their own currencies. The USA, with the dollar being the reserve currency since post-WWII, has had it too good for too long. And did they use this wonderful advantage to spread pax-Americana? NO. Far from it. They've used it with unmitigated evil and the worst of intentions to dominate the world, interfering wherever there were resources ripe for the taking, covertly overthrowing democratically elected leaders and installing loyal and obedient right-wing dictators friendly to our rapacious corporations, blind to how (Arab Spring et al) the rest of the world was feeling about it. Well, the world is increasingly fed up with this beast. I think Iraq and Libya (we're ok with the Husseins, the Ghadaffi's, the Assads, the Pinocet's, the Suharto's, the Marcos's...as long as they are obedient dictators...but as soon as they aren't: they're gone) has woken up a real desire among nations to get at this Amerikan Empire problem and try to weaken, if not end, its hegemonic ambitions.
Thanks, socialist thinks are not often perceived from that angle,(little) people all over the world often pay the price for the arm wrestling of the big powers, But as Egypt & Afghanistan are demonstrating times they are changing,
Often one create the other, local & EMPIRE tyrannies are connected. This need to spread like a spider & lay little ones all over the world with TENTACLES & MILITARY BASIS & CREATE STRUCTURE THAT PARALYZE the local potential destroy it & replace it with sterile standards, MENSENTO'S ROBOT SEEDS & MACDONALD BURGERS, is not conductive to diversity, natural evolution & life.
It is simply a system of control design to last a specific time allowing the host little choice. The PATTERNING of ALL life form & PRIVATIZATION will leave no space for the99.
PS: For the 1% In many ways PRIVATIZATION is the control of the physical & material world, PATTERNING (LOCKING) the control of the its spirit its life force. its creativity, ITS TOMORROW.
NO ASSAULT ON IRAN ACCOUNTABILITY FOR IRAQ BOOTS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN.
The only way we have stability & property & justice for all is for these small nations is to be Independent & not be a property of the EAST or the WEST, for that is where we are heading.
No terror no torture just truth.
More smoke and mirrors, and a still gullible public, including many here on Common Dreams.
No country, no one in their right mind, would build a nuclear power plant for the production of "clean energy."
Prestige and the big stick of weapons capability are the only operative reasons for building a full size nuclear power plant. James Hansen and George Monbiot are wrong to have concluded otherwise - victims themselves of naievity.
If individuals of such obviously good will and intention as James Hansen and George Monbiot can be persuaded that nuclear is a "go", the obvious conclusion is that we are all in big trouble, and not just from nuclear fallout, but from a more frightening and systemic disease - inability to see the forest for the trees.
Good judgement was thought by one of my favorite mountaineers (Bill Tilman), to be "perhaps" the most valuable tool of the mountaineer, and this applies to many other, perhaps all aspects of life.
Fantasy and good intentions are insufficient in themselves. One has to be right more times than not.
Manysummits
=========Crwosnest & socialist:
"Sweden and weapons of mass destruction"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
"Netherlands and weapons of mass destruction"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
============Apologies expected
========="Apologies expected"...twat.
Atomsk
Your class shines thru
=======That would be your problem then.
Hungary you say. Ah yes, the Magyars, noted for their passivity while riding over the steppes of Asia, recurved bows on their backs just for show, like the modern nuclear power plants.
When you think nothing of yourself, you are the problem, philosophy notwithstanding.
I repeat, for your benefit, no country has nuclear power for commercial power. No more poisonous, noncommercial source of power, electric or otherwise, exists on planet Earth. You can take that as Gospel.
Therefore, the reason is Prestige & the Capability of Nuclear Weapons. This applies to the United States, Canada, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, India, Japan etc...
Now what part of that do you not understand.
Mike =Are you all right? Recurved bows? What the fuck are you talking about?
"I repeat, for your benefit, no country has nuclear power for commercial power. No more poisonous, noncommercial source of power, electric or otherwise, exists on planet Earth."
"Therefore, the reason is Prestige & the Capability of Nuclear Weapons. This applies to the United States, Canada, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, India, Japan etc..."
I explained this in another post, but the fact that somethig isn't commercially viable (I think that's what you're saying, no idea what else "no country has nuclear power for commercial power" could mean) doesn't mean anything. There are loads of things that aren't commercially viable and are obviously good - like public education, fundamental research, solar power etc. There are also loads of things that are commercially viable and still not good. In this quite fucked up economic system (or in any imaginable human-designed system) commercial viability doesn't equal, in any way, "real" viability.
And again: energy independence and a (mistaken) notion of "clean" energy CAN and DOES influence decisions wrt nuclear power. Even France for example, while it has lots of nuclear weapons, wouldn't need so many nuclear power plants just for those. Independence is very much a factor there.
Interesting rhetorical tack however, if intentional. Appealing to the sensibilities of your average CD reader, who is for good reason against nuclear power, and introducing a false argument, that such sound rationality on opposing nuclear power generation, is therefore proof that Iran is only interested in nuclear weapons development in tandem with nuclear power.
I didn't buy.
rgardener98
I try - and thank you for the compliment.
I visited Canada's Chalk River nuclear facility back in '94, when I was treated to a visit to the "ZEEP" graphite reactor, where the second nuclear chain reaction on Earth was initiated. Twenty miles away there is a thirty six foot birchbark freight canoe, one like my voyageur ancestors might have paddled during the days of the fur trade. Twenty miles, a few generations - from a strong back to splitting the atom - rather too much progress in too short a time for any meaningful social adaptation to occur - hence Mutually Assured Destruction - the best we "civilized" can manage.
I have an original copy of Carl Sagan et al's "The Cold and the Dark", and I remember practicing nuclear fallout drills as a grade schooler in Montreal.
I researched nuclear in university, thinking as a geologist who loved the outdoors I might contribute by looking for uranium in Canada's North. That research has never left me - nuclear is a wasteland for all and sundry.
John Gofman's "Irrevy" is another prized book; Busby's work I have read, and I have both the report of the Soviet's chief scientist Yaklobov, and the information from Helen Caldicott, the German publication last year on the long term health effects of radiation, etc etc etc.
The mindless comments which often appear here on Common Dreams leave one with a less than reverent view of human capacity in a complex world, but then one realizes not everyone has been fortunate enough to be born with a brain or the opportunity to use it.
There is much discussion these days of trying to contact a scientifically illiterate public through other means than graphs, facts, and plain old and vanishingly scarce common sense.
I am not buying into this. You tell a pilot the condition of his craft.
Collectively we are completely in the dark. It is my intention to dispel this darkness when opportunity permits.
Best of luck to all of us - we're going to need it.
Manysummits
=========PS: Eric Margolis has an insightful brand new post on Iran's military capabilities:
"HOT AIR FROM IRAN HIDES ITS WEAKNESS"
http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/hot-air-from-iran-hid...
========PeterGreenaway
Yes - you're completely wrong. Apology accepted.
I'm not vague at all, it's just that most people are not good at logic.
I don't play games, never have, never will - unlike many here on CD.
Read my posts again - carefully. This requires work and thought - something obviously alien to the Western Way.
Have you even heard of Carl Sagan's "The Cold and the Dark", or the TAPPS study, which definitively showed scientifically that all lose in a major nuclear exchange, let's spell that out for the word impaired - Mutually Assured Destruction.
Given that, it is conclusive that I would emphatically not favor any nuclear exchange, never mind dancing about a Third World War, nor would I advocate attacking Iran. I'd like to see Iran reject nuclear power and all of its offshoots right now, and grow up. Small chance of that. I'd like to see Canada and the US actually lead and dismantle all of their nuclear facilities, and in the case of the US, most of their nuclear weapons - DITTO China, Russia, Israel, etc... Small chance
Have also never heard of Chris Busby, or Yaklobov of the Soviet Union, and his groundbreaking study on the true consequences of Chernobyl.
Possibly you think depleted uranium and other such weapons an "improvement"?
I'll apologize in advance if you have read any of these studies, or John Gofman's "An Irreverent, Illustrated View of Nuclear Power", and other such treatises on nuclear by real experts in the field.
But I've had it up to the eyeballs with politeness. You have candidates running for president of the most powerful country on Earth who are delusional God-fearing sycophants, who think global warming and evolution are beliefs, like their own fantasies.
And you think me vague?????????????
I said that no nation, and that includes Iran, my country Canada, and the word "any" is pretty much inclusive, i.e., ALL, who have nuclear power plants or who aspire to have them, do so for PRESTIGE and the BIG STICK that gives them.
That's pretty plain language - if you twist words you can say anything you want, but calling a horse a dog don't make it so.
Full of pre-conceived so called progressive ideas, you write to your own beliefs in what I said, rather than to what I said. You tire me.
=============If you say something and half a dozen people think it's bullshit, maybe you should give up some of your self-satisfied arrogance and humbly consider their opinions, not call them dumb and lazy. You are no Sagan, just another poster on CD, no matter how full of yourself you are. You give a fucked up, arrogant, self-satisfied, vague reply, full of strawmen and false accusations. You seriously need to get rid of some of that ego.
Iran is an easy target with no means to strike back. So not only is there no "Iran threat", but Iran is not even in a position to threaten its neighbors, even if it wanted, just as Saddam Hussein was not. If the article is correct, then this is probably one of the reasons why the "hyenas and jackals" are circling now. Not because Iran is a threat, but because Iran cannot pose a threat. If Iran possessed even the capacity to bloody the US nose, the bullies would leave it alone.
"The mindless comments which often appear here on Common Dreams leave one with a less than reverent view of human capacity in a complex world, but then one realizes not everyone has been fortunate enough to be born with a brain or the opportunity to use it."
Such displays of arrogance downgrade your post and your reputation.
That would be your opinion. You stick to progressive politeness - I'll stick to facts.
=======