The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead. ...
Reuters has learned that in late 2006 or early 2007, U.S. intelligence intercepted telephone and email communications in which Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading figure in Iran's nuclear program, and other scientists complained that the weaponization program had been stopped. ...
Current and former U.S. officials say they are confident that Iran has no secret uranium-enrichment site outside the purview of U.N. nuclear inspections.
They also have confidence that any Iranian move toward building a functional nuclear weapon would be detected long before a bomb was made.
First of all, might not the Iranians have learned from Iraq that we listen to our enemies? With Iraq, we overheard Iraqis discussing their WMD and concluded--since they apparently believed it--that Iraq had WMD (the chemical sort, anyway) in firing condition. I keep saying that the Iranians aren't stupid. Knowing that we seem fixated on the "imminent" issue, might they not want to seem safely outside that possible trigger for strikes?
What if the narrow weapons program was halted only because the Iranians purchased the design from North Korea or Pakistan and those caught complaining don't know about it? So concluding that the halt of those programs--if the halt is even real--just doesn't matter?
The confidence of the intelligence community is touching, but their track record isn't great. And what if Iran has facilities outside of Iran? What if Iran does have extra enrichment capacity? Either in facilities not known to us or by using known facilities at a greater capacity than we calculate?
And worse, what if the uranium enrichment issue isn't as key as they believe?
What if Iran is well aware that as they approach the ability to build a nuclear warhead, they become a target?
The problem from Iran's point of view is that they can't know if crossing one of these lines could trigger an American or Israeli preemptive strike out of fear that further delay in attacking would be too late to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And if I was an Iranian nutball, I wouldn't assume the Americans and Israelis couldn't knock out my infrastructure.
Were I an Iranian nutball, under those circumstances, I'd want at least a few atomic warhead on hand before I announce capabilities to produce atomic weapons-grade material. Which would mean I'd have had to have bought some from either North Korea or Pakistan--or possibly even from some broke custodian of Russia's arsenal.
I'll say it again, if I was an Iranian nutball, I'd want a few nukes on hand before I got the ability to build my own nukes just to deter America or Israel.
