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From The Washington Post: The Iran Bomb Myth
You have to read this. It is featured in today's Washington Post and is written by Joseph Cirincione, an expert adviser of nuclear proliferation for the the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.
The five myths:
1) Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.
2) A military strike would knock out Iran's program.
3) We can cripple Iran with sanctions.
4) A new government in Iran would abandon the nuclear program.
5) Iran is the main nuclear threat in the Middle East.
Cirincione's piece should deliver a knockout blow to the Iran hawks, assuming neocons care about facts -- which they don't. Iran, not Iraq, is the war they really want!
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I hope we never lose sight of the fact that it takes continual war and threats of war for the US military industrial complex to continue to be a cash cow for some very wealthy people. That alone is a major reason for the constant drumbeat for war in our country. If there were a way to eliminate the profits from war making, peace would be much easier to achieve. And, that can be done, but it won't be.
October 18, 2009 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Always keep in mind that it is the same people touting war with Iran who brought us the following:
Iraq has WMD's.
Iraq is trying to buy yellowcake from Niger.
Iraq is affiliated with Al Queda.
Saddam was the financial backer of 9/11.
Iraq has mobile biological weapons laboratories.
The Iraq war will be a pushover and will pay for itself.
etc., etc.
How much longer will they be granted a forum for their nonsense?
Of course, now that Iraq has been destroyed as a functioning country and is no longer a threat to Israel, Iran must be the next to go since they are now the major threat to Israel in the Middle East.
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October 20, 2009 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hartung has already posted on this exact article on TPM. Maybe move all this there?
October 18, 2009 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
The article starts out saying that Iran's nuclear program is one of the most vexing problems and then follows with four good reasons why Iran's nuclear program is not an imminent threat. Those reasons seem self-evident to me and I think his analysis is probably correct. Joseph Cirincione's treatment of the fifth point seems mostly wrong.
From the article: "While Israel's possession of nuclear weapons has not spurred other countries in the area to develop their own, over the past three years a dozen states in the Middle East, including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Libya (again), have begun civilian nuclear programs. These programs, alas, are not about reducing the countries' carbon footprint -- they are a hedge against Iran."
Of coarse there is no way that Israel could be part of the proliferation problem. None of the countries listed ever worry about conflict with Israel. It is only Iran that makes them react. Also, he dismisses out of hand any possibility that these countries could have any legitimate reasons to pursue nuclear research.
October 18, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
guess who is building nuclear power plants?
one of the dishonest arguments against iran having nuclear energy is that they have an abundance of oil and have no need for it. as such, their quest for nuclear power is suspect. well, that argument is nothing but neo-con-likud propaganda.
see this 1950's advertisement about nuclear energy in iran
difference between 1950's and 2009? Ahmadinejad is not our puppet bad guy and Reza Shah Pahlavi, emperor of iran, was.
October 18, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
correct link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shah-nukeIran.jpg
October 18, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
William says that we should read the WaPo article and MJ says we have to read it. What's next, a bitch-slap coming out of the screen if we don't read it?
Anyhow the article has a lot of BS. See my comments on the other thread which I won't repeat here. Let's put it this way -- I'll try to be subtle -- you have to read my comments.
October 18, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two issues:
1) An unending focus on Iran by the US elevates that nation to the level of a Superpower. Perhaps Iran loves this, because it allows challenges deserving Superpower attention (emergent China, India, anyone?) to go unnoticed.
2) In 1961 General Eisenhower warned the nation about a military-industrial complex. In 2007 General Powell warned the nation about terror-industrial complex. The latter has largely gone unnoticed.
October 18, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
General Powell lost much of his credibility at his United Nations speech where he "confirmed" that Iraq had WMD's.
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October 20, 2009 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
The WaPo piece by Cirincione is one of the better articles on Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions to appear recently. In particularl, it steers a fact-based middle course between alarmist extremism implying a need for military action on one hand, and on the other hand, a desire by others to dismiss the threat as an illusion. It's not imminent, but not illusory either, and will require not threats of force but patient multilateral diplomcacy, reinforced by the prospect of sanctions and incentives as necessary to convince Iran that it's in its own interest to forego nuclear weapons capability.
October 18, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, of course. Good old patient multilateral diplomacy reinforced by the prospect of rewards if Iran kowtows and genuflects in just the right way or large explosive devices if it disappoints.
Fred's patient multilateral diplomacy goal is to get Iran to forego something it's already repeatedly vowed that it has foregone, and despite the fact that there's no evidence to the contrary there must be patient diplomacy to get Iran to forego something they've already . . .oh dear, Fred's repeating himself again in the same sort of mindless circular fact-less argument that never fails to amuse and delight.
October 18, 2009 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that there is incontrovertible evidence of Tehran harboring ambitions to destroy Israel with nukes. To wit, an inspector found in a Tehran factory that makes watches and centrifuges (and propaganda spin?) a video showing a missile exploding on an altitude of 600 meters above a city.
Which reminds me: was there a story of Hezbollah producing a video game that allows to wreck havoc in Israel, virtually of course? This is a diabolic mischef. Make no mistake: the ultimate goal is to destroy Israel, a.k.a. "Zionist Entity", ZE for short. And the means? Striking where the ZE is most vulnerable.
It was established that ZE has an insatiable addiction to self-pithy. Which may lead to pretended paranoia. Which may lead to actual paranoia. Eventually, all "best and brightest" will emigrate, leaving behind a quarrelsome motley of Haredim, hilltop fanatics and artsy cafein addicts in the coastal region. At this point ZE will be defenseless: group 1 does not like to serve in the military, group 2 requires to be defended on daily basis, so it will be up to badly depleted group 3.
Nice to dream, enemies of ZE, but so far, ZE dispatch every single real danger so efficiently than none is in sight. Do not snicker, ZE! We will produce an imaginary threat so dreadful that you will never sleep through an entire night, and so elusive that it can be never dispelled!
Some special effects deployed to terrify the denizens of ZE are beyond normal (non-diabolical) imagination. Imagine a walrus emerging from the warm waters of Mediterranean (far away from his natural Arctic habitat) and speaking in human voice to Israeli beach goers, warning them of doom unless they nuke Iran within two months. Which they cannot do.
October 18, 2009 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The US has war plans to basically attack every country on earth. Are 99% of these plans every going to be carried out? No.
Do we pride ourselves on the foresight to plan for all contingencies? Yes.
What happens when other countries plan for contingencies? We call it a "threat."
I guess only The White Man is allowed to have contingencies....or the right of self-defense.
October 19, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink