Via WaPo: Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb
A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.
As much as I hate to say it, I must confess that my reaction to this report is that I don’t have much confidence in major U.S. intelligence reviews regarding the potential WMD capability of other countries at this point. Was it not a previous NIE that led to much of the justification for the Iraq war in terms of WMD capability?
In all honesty my fundamental assumption is that the Iranians are pursuing a nuclear weapon and will continue to do so until they obtain one and that while it may be possible to slow them down, I find it highly unlikely, short of massive military action, that anyone will be able to stop them from so doing. Basic international relations theory would dictate that Iran will seek to protect itself as much as possible, and there can be no doubt that Iranian perceptions would be that such security would require a nuclear arsenal–if anything because Israel has one.
Further, it seems unlikely to me that if Iran doggedly pursues a bomb, that it will take them ten years to acquire it. James Joyner concurs:
one can scarcely imagine a determined country with a few billions of dollars to spend more than a couple years away from a bomb. A decade? Hardly.
Meanwhile, McQ is skeptical of the assessment in general.
I am not happy about nuclear proliferation, but it does seem unlikely that the US will be able to prevent it (for example, see Pakistan and North Korea).
Back to the story, perhaps the best line in the piece is this:
“It’s a full look at what we know, what we don’t know and what assumptions we have,” a U.S. source said.
As such, the question becomes: what percentage of the report represents each of the three categories in question. I fear that “what we know” isn’t the modal category. Further, Roger L. Simon rightly ridicules the source of the quote:
A U. S. source!? [emphasis his] They actually printed that with a straight face. (I assume they did anyway.) What, pray tell, is a “U. S. source”? I guess they mean someone in the government, but it could just as well be your Aunt Fanny in Nome, Alaska. And they say bloggers don’t have editors!
Indeed, Simon is none too impressed with the sourcing of the piece (and, indeed, with the piece itself).
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