"Iran Is Judged 10
Years from Nuclear Bomb," the Washington Post
reported recently, citing leaked portions of a
January 2005 national intelligence estimate. Well,
you can't trust American intelligence to get it
right, Gary Schmitt, director of the
neo-conservative Project for the New American
Century, is quick to point out in a "memorandum to opinion
leaders" published on the PNAC website.
After all, Schmitt says, "The fact is -
and as both the estimate apparently admits and the
presidential commission on WMD recently reported -
US intelligence knows very little about what is
going on Iran ... Indeed, given how little we
know, the intelligence community estimate is just
as likely to be wrong as right when it comes to
predicting Iran’s program. Remember, US
intelligence on Iraq first missed how close Saddam
was to having a bomb
prior to the first Gulf War
before overestimating Iraq’s WMD program in the
run up to the second war."
So, Schmitt
argues, it's quite possible that Iran could have a
nuclear bomb much sooner. And "interestingly
enough", he adds, "the Jerusalem Post reported
yesterday that Israeli intelligence had also
adjusted its estimates of Iran’s program.
According to the paper, Israeli intelligence is
now saying, 'Iran will probably have a nuclear
bomb by 2012, but could have the capability as
early as 2008.'”
Now Schmitt has even
stronger backing - maybe. As Kaveh Afrasiabi
reports today (Building
a case, any case, against Iran), the
International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS), has just released a new study that
declares that Iran is five years or so from
developing nuclear bombs.
Hold on a
moment. It was the IISS that boldly stated, in
2002, that "Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons
within months if fissile material from foreign
sources were obtained." How wrong that turned out
to be. And, applying Schmitt's logic, the IISS was
wrong before, so it's quite likely wrong again.
Anyway, to Tehran's very short-term
relief, Schmitt concludes that "None of this means
that the US should be planning an attack
tomorrow." But "it does mean that we have no
reason to relax, nor can we postpone difficult
decisions indefinitely".
Asia Times Online
sincerely hopes that Gary Schmitt is not one of
the "we" who must make the difficult decisions.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing
.)
