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Iran will not have bomb for years, and
President Ahmadinejad is losing power
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Iran’s strongman loses grip as ayatollah offers nuclear deal
Summary: Ahmadinejad can be replaced by supreme leader Khamenei, who is very upset with him. The Iran economy is a mess, unemployment up. This has greatly reduced his popular support. New threats of UN sanctions, as well as US and Israeli threats of attack, have cause Khamenei to begin reigning him in.
Jan 21, '07. The Sunday Times
IRAN’S supreme leader is considering a change of policy on the country’s nuclear programme in an effort to defuse growing tension with the West, according to senior sources in Tehran.
Alarmed by mounting US pressure and United Nations sanctions, officials close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei favour the appointment of a more moderate team for international negotiations on the supervision of its nuclear facilities.
The move would be a snub to the bellicose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose threats to destroy Israel have left Iran increasingly isolated and facing a serious economic downturn.
Tehran sources said the impetus for a policy switch was coming from Khamenei, who has ultimate power over Iran’s foreign policy, security and armed forces.
Khamenei is said to believe that Washington’s aim is not only to halt Iran’s nuclear programme but to overthrow the regime.
He also considers the national interest is being undermined by an inexperienced president whose rhetoric is unnecessarily inflammatory.
Under proposals now being debated, an international group made up of the permanent five members of the UN security council, plus Germany or a nuclear power such as India, would oversee and monitor Iran’s nuclear programme. full story
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If Iran does get the bomb in five to ten years, then what?
It is not good to have another country, especially a somewhat belligerent one, get the bomb, and it is well worth trying to stop it. But compared with Russia having 10,000 plus warheads aimed at the US, Iran's threat is minor indeed. Pakistan is highly unstable, and much of its military, though not its president, supports Al Qaeda. It has the bomb and has actively spread the technology. North Korea has as well. It should also be noted that there is essentially no chance of Iran taking a shot at Israel, since Israel has an estimated 250 nuclear warheads on missiles that can and would reach Iran. We do not need to risk a super-size "Iraq war" with Iran to protect Israel—it can, and does, take care of itself.
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Iran enriches uranium and joins the club.
To turn natural uranium into reactor fuel, you must enrich it. To make a bomb, you must enrich it a lot more, and lots of it. Currently Iran has taken the first step in the process, but it only has a few hundred centrifuges, and needs several thousand working for a long time to build a bomb.
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zPoint: According to US intellegence, Iran will not have a nuclear bomb until after 2010. It would then be a danger, but the Soviet Union has tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, each far more powerful what Iran hopes to develop. For decades it was more threatening to the US than Iran will be in 2010.
Even today, Pakistan, which is quite unstable and whose army often protects Al Qaeda, already has nuclear weapons, as does North Korea, a far more repressive country.
As with Iraq, the question is why war and why now? It took fifty years, but we won the cold war without bombing Russia. Compared with Russia, Iran is a lightweight with a tin-horn dictator.
So why now? The answer is exactly the same as for Iraq, whose non-existent weapons were declared by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice to be an "imminent threat." There is no imminent threat; there is no reason for war now.
But that's the American answer. The answer for Bush is different. His party is losing, and rushing into Iraq gave him an instant huge boost in the polls. It would be best to bomb Iran right before the November elections.
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Iran is ``some years away'' from developing a nuclear bomb.
--Thomas Fingar, April 13, 2006 more
The U.S. assessment on the timeframe of Iran's weapons development [due to U enrichment] has not changed.
--Kenneth Brill, April 13, 2006 more
"We have time on our side in this case. Iran can't have a bomb ready in the next five years,"
--Hans Blix, April 3, 2006 more
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U.S. intelligence says Iran remains several years from nuclear weapon
By Katherine Shrader,ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10:14 a.m. April 13, 2006
WASHINGTON – Iran remains years away from obtaining the materials and technology necessary for a nuclear weapon despite its announcement this week that it has begun enriching uranium, several top U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday.
Kenneth Brill, the head of the newly created National Counterproliferation Center, said the U.S. assessment on the timeframe of Iran's weapons development was sufficiently broad that it does not need to be modified.
Senior intelligence officials alternatively say Tehran will have a nuclear weapon within a decade, or within several years.
“What the Iranians have announced, is what they've announced,” said Brill, speaking alongside nine senior intelligence officials at a discussion of the Office of the National Intelligence Director's first year. “They need to let the (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors in there to see it, because they have obligations.”
He noted that the regime has blustered before about developments that did not readily materialize.
“We really have to see what's happened in Iran,” Brill said. “There is still a very significant amount of time that needs to be worked through by the Iranians to get to where they want to go.”
Defending the quality of intelligence assessments, Brill said much of what the intelligence agencies have predicted has been validated by the IAEA and others.
U.S. intelligence officials are scrubbing their information and analysis on Iran as tensions increase over its nuclear program. Tehran insists its work is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes, but the U.S. and a number of its allies believe it is after a nuclear arsenal.
The nation's No. 2 intelligence official, Gen. Michael Hayden, said the Iran intelligence has benefited from the lessons-learned exercises on estimates about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Based on all the data available to spy agencies, he said confidently that Iran is intent on developing a nuclear weapon. Over time, he added, “We are able to be more clear.” He declined to offer specifics about the information – or the gaps in information.
The top U.S. intelligence analyst, Thomas Fingar, said changes have been made in how analysis is done. “All of us have greater confidence in the judgments that we are making and bringing forward on Iran,” Fingar said.
He said the various intelligence agencies took to heart the various reports on the flawed intelligence leading up to Iraq. “We get it,” Fingar said. “We realize we have got to rebuild confidence.”
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Iran can't have a bomb ready in the next five years
OSLO, Norway, Apr. 3, 2006
(AP) Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday "We have time on our side in this case. Iran can't have a bomb ready in the next five years,"
"But there is a chance that the U.S. will use bombs or missiles against several sites in Iran," he was quoted by Norwegian news agency NTB as saying. "Then, the reactions would be strong, and would contribute to increased terrorism."
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http://zfacts.com/p/290.html | 01/18/12 07:19 GMT
Modified: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:41:26 GMT
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