“Nearly all intelligence sources who’ve gone public think Iran poses no immediate threat of having the bomb, and no possibility of going nuclear for at least three to five years. Even the Israelis now seem to agree. According to the Jerusalem Post, Mossad chief Meir Dagan told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that Iran could not build nuclear bombs overnight and would need a few years to do so.
The threat, as Dagan sees it, is that by the end of the year Iran could have all the technology it needs to produce military quantities of bomb-grade uranium without any further outside help. Even with monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, this would be ‘a point of no return,’ he warns. But he sees no imminent military threat.
This is the reality. But, let’s pretend: What if all the spies are wrong? What if the Ayatollahs are only weeks away from getting the bomb? How, then, should Washington and Jerusalem respond?
Middle East mavens, foreign policy experts, and military strategists increasingly offer some surprising advice…” — Steve Weissman (truthout)
