Scott Ritter: …I have to take exception with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he says that (Syria’s) alleged activities are against international conventions. Actually, they’re not. If Syria had in fact been constructing the reactor they’ve been accused of, they were in total conformity with international law. The nonproliferation treaty, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Syria is a signatory, requires that facilities be declared to the IAEA only when nuclear materials are to be introduced to these facilities, that a facility under construction is not a declarable item. And so, it’s absurd to sit there and say that just because Syria and North Korea were pouring concrete that they are somehow breaking the law.

And this notion that the reactor was on the verge of becoming operational, again, is absurd. You know, there would have to be literally thousands of pounds of pure graphite that would have to be introduced to this facility, and there’s no evidence in the destruction. You know, there were a number of reporters who went to the site after it was blown up. If it had been bombed and there was graphite introduced, you would have a signature all over the area of destroyed graphite blocks. There would be graphite lying around, etc. This was not the case.

I don’t know what was going on at this site. If the images are accurate, it appears that Syria was producing a very, very small research reactor. But it is not a reactor usable in a nuclear weapons program. Syria was not violating the law.

And if there were concerns over this reactor, a simple referring of the material, these photographs, to the International Atomic Energy Agency would have produced an insistence on special inspections that would have had the inspectors on the site actually determining what was going on and a peaceful resolution of the problem. This shows that the United States and Israel have a wanton disregard for the rule of law. And this is especially critical when the United States is holding up the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a standard in which we hold Iran and North Korea accountable to.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/28/un_nuclear_watchdog_chief_blasts_us

ELBARADEI: (Iran) might acquire a little bit more, perfecting the knowledge (to enrich uranium), but to aim at denying a country knowledge is almost impossible, to say the least. And there´s a big difference between acquiring the knowledge for enrichment and developing a bomb. It is almost impossible for a country to, particularly because this right is quoted under the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty], and the difference between acquiring knowledge and having a bomb is at least five to ten years away…

(snip)

What you see right now, all this talk about the use of force, it´s not only counter-productive but in fact does not in any way help resolve the issue. Imagine what a regime would feel if they hear that force will be used against them, in additional to being called names, in addition to talk about regime change in the past. Even if they were not going to develop a nuclear weapon today, this would be a sure recipe for them to go down that route.

FT: And how worried are you that the US or Israel might carry out military action, an air strike?

ELBARADEI: I of course cannot give hundred per cent guarantees that this will not happen because you read about this all the time. I don´t know whether it is hype or if there is some kernel of truth to it.

I know for sure that this would be catastrophic, counterproductive, whatever you called it because for a variety of reasons.

One, I know that what we see in Iran right now is not the industrial capacity you can [use to develop a] bomb. You have small R&D at the knowledge level… to enrich uranium. And I said a hundred times you cannot bomb knowledge.

So there is not really much to bomb. And if you [do] then [you] turn the Iranian drive or you put it in high gear for developing a nuclear weapon. We know that if you jolt a country´s pride, all the factions, right, left and centre will get together and try to accelerate a programme to develop a nuclear weapon to defend themselves.

That´s classic strategic thinking in any country, whether it´s a democracy, a theocracy, whatever… There is a fundamental choice people need to make, which is either you understand that there is a limit to military power, that these issues mask a sense of insecurity or even competition for dominance or influence but force is not the appropriate means to address these issues. Or [you] go for the military option and then either you´ll have a repeat of North Korea or you have a repeat of Iraq and these are not our greatest achievements as civilised human beings.

Now, of course Iran is trying to get a nuclear weapon simply because it is trying to get – or pretending to ebe trying to get – so much bomb grade uranium or plutonium.

The recent election fraud lends great weight to the idea that they not only want to have a bomb they want to USE a bomb. This may be part of what is encouraging some high ranking clerics to defy Khamenei.

Talk of an Israeli or other attack can only encourage an Iranian revolution so should continue. There are some people in Iran who might not want to see that happen. It’s a good thing also, it turns out, although who knows what could happen another time, that everybody waited because in the meantime the Iranian regime became a little shaky. If nothing happens, who knows if things will stay that way, but there is a real chance of a toppling of Khamenei and Ahmadinijad. The opposition, though, doeds need to have a bit of a sense of urgency

It looks like Israel, at the moment is not seeking to attack, but rather to get many countries to see the current Iranian regime as a threat to all of humanity. At a minimum, Israel would very much prefer someone else to do the attacking. Or to stop it some other way.

It may be that Israel fears it cannot and it doesn’t want military retaliation. The Weekly Standard just writes off a Syrian decision to go to war as unlikely. Unlikely, maybe. Certainly not, you can’t say, and a lot may depend on the kind of international support Syria might feel it could get. It might not feel that risky to Bashir Assad. After all, the previous history of wars in the Middle East is that the Arab side can get a ceasefire pretty much whenever it feels it wants it, pr at least after o more than a few days, so there is not so much of a downside to a war. Unless teh world’s attitude is very different there.

It is true that Israel stopped the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981, and the Syrian in 2007. But this may not be so easy. One kind of mistake people make in analyzing war is that just because something happened before, if it happened again it would happen the same way with the same result.

Along the same lines, the 1990 Iraqi program was halted by the first Gulf War, after which Saddam Hussein buried some material and waited for a better day, and Libya decided in 2003 it was the better part of wisdom to get rid of its nuclear program. Iran also may have decided in 2003 to get rid of all obvious and easy targets (undeclared but known sites)

Those are most of the successful examples of nuclear disarmament. The Begin Plan you might call it.

South Africa and some former Soviet republics got rid of their nuclear weapons because of a change of government, and in the case of the Soviet republics maybe because they never really had the nuclear weapons – no codes etc.

So, it’s either the Begin Plan for the control of nuclear weapons, or it’s an Iranian revolution. Let us hope for the second, which maybe has a really good chance of hapepning.

This does not, however take care of North Korea, or of Al Qaeda’s and others’, ambitions in Pakistan.

And bear in mind also, if there are no big obstacles, North Korea could deliver plutonium to Iran. The bggest problem is that they’ve got too much Plutonium-240 in relation to Plutonium-239 (an oversight for which hopefully some North Korean scientists have been executed, so they won’t have any more comptetent scientists) so now someone has to redesign – and test! – an atomic bomb all over again.

I am in no way confused. An Israeli attack on Iran will lead to a missile strike on Tel Aviv in reprisal and then Israel will be forced to use nuclear weapons. The consequence of such a likely scenario will be contamination on wide scale and the possible entry of Russia and/or China into a spreading conflict that can seriously interrupt oil supplies worldwide with the attendant economic fallout. Do not underestimate the possible consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran. To think otherwise is to be simplistic in the extreme.

Pardon me for going off topic slightly. Is that not what you did for Bush with the WMD propaganda? Once Bush got his WMD cover he initiated Shock and Awe. Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqis were killed, but I have heard estimates of many tens of thousands. He targeted both military and civilian facilities including the whole power grid system. The fallout from lack of clean water, power and sanitation killed additional many more tens of thousands in a longer period and include many children. Johns Hopkins University study indicated up to 1 million increased deaths.

You have advocated bombing Iran back to a failed state in a separate discussion. I hope that you do know what the consequences are.

Well exactly! An Israeli nuclear attack against Iran might increase Israel’s self-esteem but at the expense of possibly thousands of innocent lives being lost around the globe – nobody knows the exact consequences of such a self-serving action.

Please stop making this about me and Cordesman. It’s about whether the reactor is fueled or not.

FIGster — your questions have to be big ones the Israelis are asking themselves. If they conduct a strike that provokes an uncontainable backlash from Iran, will the US step in and contain it, even if Israel didn’t get “permission” first?

For what it’s worth, I think the US under Obama would take action of some kind. I don’t know how much effort Obama would put into stabilizing Israel’s particular situation. The priority — in my view — would be stabilizing the backlash to reassure our Arab partners in the region. In a pragmatic sense, Israel might well assess that that would be more beneficial to her than not.

>>bluecanary — the Cordesman assessment is quite obviously predicated on attacking the Bushehr reactor after it has been fueled, and has been in operation for long enough to have spent fuel being stored and/or processed in its vicinity. The only way to have radionuclides produced from these sources is to have the reactor fueled and operating. Look at the wording of the slide you reference from his summary. The Bushehr reactor is not even fueled yet. If you asked Cordesman whether attacking it now would produce the radioactive fallout described on his slide, he would say No.<<

You are merely repeating the misinformation, and have thereby invalidated all your comment.

The published Cordesman Report for the CSIS is authoritative and based on validated sources. He made no such assertion that you have tried to ‘put into his mouth’. The predicted fatalities made no such qualification and I will, as others, accept his findings.

Perhaps you should consider writing and publishing your own report under your own name and then we can determine which has the greater weight.

1. BTS, my analysis is based on far more than one IAEA report. I provided a link so that you and others could verify that my comments are not made up. Ritter had 12 years in USMC intelligence; I had 20 in Naval intelligence. I know the intelligence business at least as well as he does, had the same access he had to intelligence on Iraqi programs when he was with UNSCOM, and better access than he has had to intel on Iranian programs since he left UNSCOM. I have every respect for his direct experience with the UNSCOM inspections in Iraq. But much of what he said in the Intel Daily interview was political in nature, not an assessment that attempted to convey straight analysis or ground truth.

2. There are not tens of thousands of people at the high priority nuclear facilities in Iran. Attacking those facilities would indeed result in casualties, but not of tens of thousands of people. All four of the highest-priority ones — Natanz, Esfahan, Arak, and Bushehr — can be attacked with little or no collateral damage to civilians outside of them.

There are a set of targets in Tehran, related to R&D and manufacturing for the nuclear programs, that WOULD involve probably extensive collateral damage to attack. I have never thought it was a good idea to attack those targets, mainly because of the collateral damage doing so would entail.

3. BP: not seeing evidence when you haven’t been allowed to inspect everything is not conclusive. It doesn’t matter who says he sees no evidence. The record is there that the IAEA has not been allowed to inspect all the facilities it needs to inspect, or had answered all the questions it needs answered, to be sure there is no evidence to see. Mr. Amano has made a political statement, not an analytical one.

4. bluecanary — the Cordesman assessment is quite obviously predicated on attacking the Bushehr reactor after it has been fueled, and has been in operation for long enough to have spent fuel being stored and/or processed in its vicinity. The only way to have radionuclides produced from these sources is to have the reactor fueled and operating. Look at the wording of the slide you reference from his summary.

The Bushehr reactor is not even fueled yet. If you asked Cordesman whether attacking it now would produce the radioactive fallout described on his slide, he would say No.

>> bluecanary — Please note that the CSIS evaluation of a strike on the Bushehr reactor assumes a fueled and operational reactor. The reactor at Bushehr is not fueled yet (no uranium oxide packed in the fuel rods). Therefore, the core is not critical, there is no spent fuel, and no uranium reprocessing is underway. These are the conditions under which the evaluation of the CSIS summary would be valid.<<

You write very authoritively in this thread, but I have to assume that you are a HASBARA writer on behalf of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, otherwise why would you disseminate the misinformation above?

A so-called pre-emptive strike against Iran would, according to the CSIS report, potentially cause many thousands of deaths. I prefer to accept their considered conclusions after extensive research, rather than your anonymous, unsubstantiated one. Sorry.

The incoming head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms.
Newly-elected Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano of Japan briefs the media at Vienna’s UN headquarters July 3, 2009.

“I don’t see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this,” Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran’s atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

“There was something interesting missing from Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner’s introductory remarks to journalists at his regular news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday: the word “Iran,” or any form of it. It was especially striking as Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman here, announced the extraordinary list of weapons and munitions that have been uncovered in recent weeks since fighting erupted between Iraqi and U.S. security forces and Shiite militiamen.

(snip)

Not once did Bergner point the finger at Iran for any of these weapons and munitions, which is a striking change from just a couple of weeks ago when U.S. military officials here and at the Pentagon were saying that caches found in Basra in particular had revealed Iranian-made arms manufactured as recently as this year. They say the majority of rockets being fired at U.S. bases, including Baghdad’s Green Zone, are launched by militiamen receiving training, arms and other aid from Iran.

(snip)

A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin.
When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/05/iraq-the-elusiv.html

Note that the initial “Iran sponsors the insurgency” theme was all-over the media and that the “misunderstanding” was barely mentioned anywhere (except in the LA Times blog).

Israel has nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines- against which Iran has no defense. Iran may be lucky enough to actually hit Israel in the unlikely event that they decide to launch a rocket attack; but Israel could park a sub off Iran’s coast and start picking-off cities. Would Iran be able to march her armies through Iraq, or Turkey? –or fly jets in their airspace? –or send her Navy unnoticed? Would Israel’s protector, the US, allow that? Is Israel really facing an “existential threat”?

And why should our foreign policy be tied to the threats that another country perceives? Our best interest is served by playing peacemaker, not arms dealer.

Have you, or Bolton, or Boot, considered how China might react? They have a good relationship with Iran. What if China decides, in response to the US sponsored annihilation of her ally, to stop buying US Treasuries and dump her USD reserves on the open market (China holds more USD than exist in our entire money supply)? And if China, Russia, India decide to buy oil from Iran and S. America using an alternate currency? $12, $15, $20 per gallon gas. Plummeting value of the dollar. Sky-rocket inflation.

Bolton is an ideology driven fool. How many times must he prove it, and at what cost, before he is ignored?

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/IAEA_Iran_Report_26May2008.pdf

Ritter misstates the scope of IAEA’s purview, suggesting that it is limited by the IPT in the kinds of facilities it may deem it appropriate to inspect, as part of its verification process, and the kinds of questions it “may” ask. The IAEA has latitude to use technical expertise to make judgments. As the history of its inspections in Iran demonstrates clearly, such proposals and requests are then negotiated with the country being inspected.

There is also nothing untoward in UN member nations requiring Iran to demonstrate specific forms of compliance. Ritter suggests this is some kind of dirty politics, when it is merely policy, exercised on the part of the UN nations that don’t want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

There was plenty of press reporting about the foreign intelligence documents Iran was asked to answer questions on (see the appendix in the May 2008 report). All of them are from non-US sources, and other nations made an issue of them independently, in UNSC deliberations on the sanctions against Iran. Ritter’s “the CIA made them do it” trope only flies with people who don’t know the facts on this whole issue.

But read the report for yourself, and see if you think it either trumps up the foreign intelligence on weaponization activities, or finds, as Ritter asserts, that there is no infrastructure in Iran that supports a nuclear weapons program. Given the number of facilities IAEA has NOT been allowed to inspect — either recently or ever — IAEA knows full well it is not in a position to make that judgment.

Mr. Amano made that statement, but it is NOT a statement the IAEA has ever made in its reports. Rather, IAEA says it cannot verify that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons, and it lists the reasons why not (the ones I have summarized).

It is actually Iran’s obligation under the IPT to demonstrate that she is not working on nuclear weapons, by allowing the inspections requested by the IAEA, and answering IAEA’s questions regarding foreign intelligence on weaponization activities.

Therefore, it is sound and appropriate to put the issue in these terms. The correct source of reassurance is not the conclusion Amano personally draws from a lack of evidence (a conclusion his predecessor never drew). The correct source is EVIDENCE, not the lack of it, as verified by inspections and responses. There is actually no valid basis for proclaiming a lack of “hard evidence,” given the number and type of inspections that have been denied, and the questions Iran has refused to answer.

Here is someone who is far from a casual observer. US Marine Intel officer and former Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq for the UN, Scott Ritter:

“The CIA is asking intelligence based questions about issues that are not relevant to the safeguards agreement, which, by the way, is the legally binding mandate that gives the IAEA the authority to do its work in Iran. You have to read the small print.

“The IAEA acknowledges that what it’s asking Iran to answer has nothing to do with its mandate of the nuclear non proliferation treaty. It is related to Security Council resolutions calling for the suspension of uranium and an investigation into a nuclear weapons program but the bottom line is what the IAEA has said is that Iran has not been forthcoming and Iran is saying it’s not their job to answer the CIA’s questions. So the IAEA reports that Iran is not being forthcoming on these issues and now it’s unnamed diplomats, i.e. American and British diplomats, who say they are very concerned because Iran’s refusal to cooperate only reinforces their concern that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

“This is purely CIA instigated tripe. When we get down to the nuts and bolts of the technical question of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and whether or not there’s any infrastructure in Iran that supports a nuclear weapons program and the IAEA technical find says there is none,” Ritter said.”

http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=173&a=7254

I agree, but tell that to Congress who blindly supports Israel. The neocons have set the debate so that Iran is always wrong and Israel is always the victim and a democratic one at that.

J.E. Dyer, quote “The consistent theme in the IAEA reports is of Iran denying inspectors access to facilities, and of Iran failing to answer questions about foreign intelligence on her nuclear weaponization activities”

You can nickpick all day long, but in the end the IAEA concludes that they have no hard evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons, and this after a decade of intense monitoring!

The fact is, people have their dignity. Saddam would not allow the inspectors to go into his bedroom and harem among other private places. Then he was accused of hiding WMD (in his bedroom, hahahaha!). Similarly, Iranian have their own dignity. I don’t know if you people can relate to me at all since I am talking about humanity.

—-

“”It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure. It’s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,” Drumheller tells Bradley.

Drumheller was the CIA’s top man in Europe, the head of covert operations there, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t:

“The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other,” says Drumheller.

Drumheller says he doesn’t think it mattered very much to the administration what the intelligence community had to say. “I think it mattered it if verified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government that now is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will,” he says.

(snip)

(T)he National Intelligence Council, which oversees all U.S. intelligence agencies, did a final assessment of the uranium rumor and submitted a report to the White House. Their conclusion: The story was baseless. That might have been the end of the Niger uranium story.

But it wasn’t. Just weeks later, the president laid out his reasons for going to war in the State of the Union Address — and there it was again.

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” the president said.

“I didn’t even remember all the details of it because it was such a low-level, unimportant thing. But once it was in that State of the Union address, it became huge,” says Drumheller.

“So, let me see if I have it correctly. The United States gets a report that Saddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa. But you and many others in our intelligence community quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story is removed from the speech that the President is to give in Cincinnati. Because the head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn’t believe in it?” Bradley asked.

“Right,” Drumheller appeared.

It then appeared in the State of the Union address as a British report. Drumheller, who oversaw intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe doubts the British had something the U.S. didn’t. “No. I don’t think they did,” he says.

-http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

(One of many credible sources)

We will have to see if Amano fits ElBaradei’s pattern, which was of publicly warning that Iran was likely to develop nuclear weapons, but announcing each of his IAEA reports with the warning that there was nothing to justify a STRIKE on Iran.

You can judge for yourself whether IAEA has the information it needs to determine that Iran is not planning to develop nuclear weapons. According to its own 5 June report on Iran, it does not. Iran continues to deny IAEA access to facilities, and continues her suspension of cooperation on the “Additional Protocal” (to the IPT) she signed in 2003, which provides for more rigorous and short-notice inspections of nuclear-related facilities. Regarding these issues, and IAEA’s requests to Iran for explanation of documents provided by global intelligence agencies that show Iran working on nuclear weaponization, there has been nothing but, as noted in the 5 June report, an unproductive exchange of letters.

Report here:

http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/IAEA_Iran_Report_5June2009.pdf

You can track the entire history of the IAEA reports at the ISIS Nuclear Iran site (which is “nonpartisan” and opposes military strikes, incidentally). The consistent theme in the IAEA reports is of Iran denying inspectors access to facilities, and of Iran failing to answer questions about foreign intelligence on her nuclear weaponization activities, which includes documentation of activities associated with the A.Q. Khan network, and at least one other foreign technology supplier. 18 of the foreign intelligence documents are referred to as the “alleged studies” in the IAEA reports. In addition to denying access to facilities, and understating the total amount of her converted uranium (an understatement disclosed early this year), Iran has repeatedly refused to satisfy IAEA on the foreign intelligence documentation of her weaponization activities.

———————————-

Any casual observer knows that Iran has not been fully open. Access to reactors denied because of ’security drills’ scheduled for the same time as pre-announced inspections. Installation of centrifuges capable of enriching Uranium to weapons-capable quality. Underground facilities all over the country.

These are not the actions of a peaceful nuclear power.

Respectfully, it has nothing to do with democracy, or freedom. It is about ancient tribal conflicts that existed when Aramaic was common, and Latin was still finding its roots.

Jews are the only tribe that has managed to maintain an identity as a recognizable people with a culture and customs over many thousands of years.

Iran, interestingly enough was the home of the only culture to put up a real fight against the spread of Islam, and as a result, is now the home of Shia Islam. I have met many Iranians who describe themselves as Persian first. The call to history beats Islam it seems, and the mullahs seem to understand they are on top of a volcano of opinion that harkens back to Persian culture, which for many centuries hosted a very vibrant, active, and politically powerful Jewish community.

It is possible that Israel may know enough about the location of key Iranian facilities to delay bomb construction for several years. It is unlikely they have the force required to guarantee that those facilities are destroyed, either in numbers of planes, or the size of the bombs.

Israel’s air force demonstrated last year that their air force is capable of making the journey.

I don’t believe they will, given what is at stake. At the moment Israel has peace with Egypt and Jordan, and a non-fighting state of war with Hezbollah and Syria.

Something those who casually consider striking Iranian nuclear or other facilities don’t seem to understand is that Sunni and Shia extremists can exist quite peacefully when the opportunity to hurt Israel presents itself.

An Israeli first-strike (nuclear or kinetic) would almost guarantee a response that Israel could not afford to suffer. Perhaps months or even years later. Tit-for-tat killing is a feature of those very tribal cultures.

I cannot envision most of the mullahs in Iran supporting an Iranian, nuclear tipped missile headed for Israel. It would almost certainly mean the end of Iran, the Persian culture, and Shiism as a valid alternative to Sunni Muslims. However, a small group of end-times believers waiting for the 13th Imam could smuggle 1-2, or even 3 dirty bombs to Iranian proxies in Lebanon or Syria. If not the bombs, then the supplies and knowledge over a long period of time.

“My gut feeling is that Iran definitely would like to have the technology … that would enable it to have nuclear weapons if they decided to do so,” he claimed.

That is totally different from Iran actually pursuing nuclear weapons. Just because one “likes” something does not mean that one has it or the ability to have it.

FYI, my article refers to the new head of IAEA, Mr. Yukiya Amano. Who, like ElBaradie said that there is no hard evidence that Iran is working on making nuclear weapons.

I hear from Gordon Chang that he “likes China to collapse”, that Israeli settlers “likes the Palestinians to go away”, etc, so many likes and dislikes in this world. These are opinions and usually no big consequences.

Yet, if a Palestinian says he “likes Israel to go away” then to the neocons bombings and massacres are necessary.

An IDF soldier was asked why he shoots so easily at Palestinians. He says to the effect “They don’t accept us, we kill them”. Same mentality as most of the necons here.

Yet, we say we support Israel because its a democracy and its people believe in democratic values. Such a people deserve our support because they share the same values with us. Really??? Kill because others have a different opinion??? Palestinians and Iranians both say that all can make peace without declaring that all accept each other or like each other. Only Israel makes the geopolitical demand that all must accept Israel before it stops killing. I don’t know any other nation that makes this demand. Neocons fully support this policy and is in fact behind this type of thinking.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98383&sectionid=351020104

The incoming head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Friday he did not see any hard evidence that Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear weapons.

http://www.reuters.com/article/gc08/idUSTRE5623GU20090703

Of course such facts does not matter to Bolton and the neocons.

Iran is signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as is the US, and is granted the right to pursue a civilian nuclear program. Iran has consistently met the disclosure obligations therein. The IAEA says emphatically that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Our own NIE (from 2007) says that Iran does not have such a program- only that they might have had one prior to 2003 (that claim is disputed, for instance here: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,158248,00.html). Iran provided logistical support and intelligence to the US when invading Afghanistan. Iran held a national moment of silence for the victims of 911. Ruling clerics issued fatwas condemning terrorism, al Qaeda and nuclear weapons. Iran has not attacked another country in the 30 years that the mullahs have been in power.

Bolton is writing propaganda aimed at achieving what he and his fellow neoconservative PNAC members want: justification for increased military spending, permanent military bases in the Middle East and to prevent China, Russia and India from making business deals with Iran.

These are the conditions under which the evaluation of the CSIS summary would be valid.

Russia provided fuel for the Bushehr reactor in a series of shipments in 2007-8. Russian technicians are currently training Iranians to run the reactor. In February 2009, Iran conducted a core test using lead as a stand-in for uranium oxide. Iran has announced her intention of fueling the reactor this year, and may begin doing so soon. Estimates from the time of the lead-dummy test were that fueling could begin as early as this summer. It is when the fueling has been completed that the reactor begins to pose an environmental hazard from kinetic strike. Once there is spent fuel, and any fuel reprocessing is underway, these activities post a collateral hazard from a facility strike.

Literally destroying the core is difficult if attempted by airstrike. Reactor core housings are hardened facilities that require penetration for reliable breach and disabling. Overpressure from proximate detonation won’t reliably breach them. With the reactor facility fully completed, disabling it effectively would require multiple strikes or a special forces operation.

In short, I agree with many of the assessments here, in particular, John Bolton’s but Israel should not use nuclear weapons themselves, that would be unjustifiable.

I would, unlike many others here, advocate troops on the ground as well, to liquidate the clerics, IRG, Basij and their supporters as much as possible. Bombing alone is insufficient; if this diseased regime retains power it has plenty of oil to sell to the chinese to re-build its program, putting us all back to where we are now in just a few years.

Were Israel to attack the nuclear facilities, I anticipate that the Iranian response would be asymmetric: an attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz coupled with an attack on Suez Canal shipping by its Hezbollah/Hamas surrogates.

All this because Isreal fels the need to be the ONLY nuclear power in the middle east. All Isreal has to do is come clean and then make it very clear – you hit us we annhilate you. Because our weapons are more plentiful and far more powerful. And then let it be known wichever ME state carreirs out such an attack, if will also forfiet all territory claims to the jewish state.

The Iranian regime has become very predictable in terms of survival. Weve seen it before a 100 times. Let it implode from within, and then offer peaceful nuclaer help to offset their internal energy crisis. Hard to believe but Iran has them too.

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/689qoqom.asp?pg=1

There’s no way to describe the Iranian ayatollahcracy thought process other than madness on an oceanic scale. In the eighth century most of the world wouldn’t have known or cared. Now, we have no choice. And the idea that the possible retaliation for a military solution to the Iranian menace makes such a course too costly is the kind of thinking that leads to the loss of millions more lives.

• Attacking the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor would release contamination in the form of radionuclides into the air.

• Most definitely Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE will be heavily affected by the radionuclides.

• Any strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor, will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.

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