(The New York Times follows up their recent Iran editorial with a front-page piece today quoting nuclear analysts who say “nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.” But as we know intelligence estimates can overestimate AND underestimate a target nation’s nuclear program.) Posted on April 11, 2006: The editors at the paper have weighed in on what to do about Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons — in two words, not much. Their argument boils down to this: Tehran is a decade away from a bomb, so all the “saber rattling” is unnecessary and counterproductive. We should encourage Iran’s political evolution and let their government know that they’re “better off” without nuclear bombs. Sanctions are not mentioned. They make no statement that Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, which puts them to the left of Howard Dean who has declared, “Under no circumstances will a Democratic Administration ever allow Iran to become a nuclear power.” And they say nothing on the consequences should Tehran produce them. One person who has offered his thoughts on the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran is Gerard Baker of the Times (London), who wrote:
If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world’s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions. No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.
I hope Iran is “about 10 years away from building” nuclear bombs as the editors claim, but how do they know with such certainty? They don’t say where they got that number. In fact, their favorite weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has pegged the number at “five years” and the Los Angeles Times has reported that the number may be “within three years.”
Iran’s Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say VIENNA – With efforts to halt its nuclear program at an impasse, Iran is moving faster than expected and is just days from making the first steps toward enriching uranium, said diplomats who have been briefed on the program. If engineers encounter no major technical problems, Iran could manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within three years, much more quickly than the common estimate of five to 10 years, the diplomats said…. The three-year time frame for Iran to produce a bomb cited by diplomats is the same as an estimate by former nuclear weapons inspector David Albright. In a paper that will be released Monday by the Institute for Science and International Security, which Albright founded, he and a colleague give a detailed description of how, under a best-case scenario, Iran would be able to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium for a crude nuclear device in three years. Albright cautioned, however, that Iran faces many technical hurdles it might find difficult to overcome…. “We’re getting to the point where this fundamental difference between the U.S. and EU position and that of the Russians is being overtaken by Iran’s … putting new facts on the ground,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who previously worked for the U.S. State Department on nuclear issues. “Iran is closer and closer to enrichment, so the effort to deny them the capability is rapidly failing.”
Let’s hope the intelligence on the status of Iran’s nuclear program is better than the world had on Saddam’s program in 1991 — a Manhattan Project-sized nuclear program that went undetected by Western intelligence and the IAEA. It’s also a bit ironic that the New York Times Iran editorial was published on the same day Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, wrote the following:
Is the position of the left that America should allow the genocide minded Iranian leader to go along his merry way toward obtaining weapons of mass annihilation until a donkey occupies the White House? One does not have to be a fan of W to recognize the “waiting for the donkey” position to be morally and strategically disastrous…. The American left is increasingly moving toward the position that there is only one threat to our security in the world. Not the jihadists. Not the Iranian leader who denies the holocaust and his mullah buddies. No, the only foe of the left is W., and if the Iranians get the bomb, so be it. This is the partisanship of fools.”
Give that man a raise!
