How dangerous is Iran? Let’s take the temperature of two leading figures in the debate. First up, the man who was right all along about the lack of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before the ill fated, and strategically disastrous US invasion carried out by the Bush/Cheney regime, Mohamed ElBaradei, Chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency:
“I cannot judge their intentions, but supposing that Iran does intend to acquire a nuclear bomb, it would need between another three and eight years to succeed,” ElBaradei told Le Monde. “All the intelligence services agree on that.”
“I want to get people away from the idea that Iran will be a threat from tomorrow, and that we are faced right now with the issue of whether Iran should be bombed or allowed to have the bomb,” the Nobel peace prize winner said.
“We are not at all in that situation. Iraq is a glaring example of how, in many cases, the use of force exacerbates the problem rather than solving it.”
Three to eight years away from making a bomb, if that is what they intend. Doesn’t seem that imminent a threat, does it?
Now a word from the man who saw an Al Qaeda/Saddam connection long after everyone else had given up pretending that claim had any shred of truth to it, and the man who famously warned that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program, would “acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon”, and that Saddam Hussein “is in fact actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons” before invading Iraq, Vice president Dick Cheney:
Vice President Dick Cheney issued a pointed warning to Iran on Sunday, calling the government in Tehran “a growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East” and promising “serious consequences” if the government there does not abandon its nuclear program. […]
“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences,” Mr. Cheney said, without specifying what those might be. “The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” […]
… Mr. Cheney reserved his harshest language for Iran. Calling it “the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism,” he said, “our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions.”
So, who are you going to believe? The man who has been consistently correct in his evaluations of the nuclear ambitions and capabilities of Iraq and Iran, or a serial liar and bullshit artist, and the man widely recognized as the person behind the single greatest betrayal of a serving covert US intelligence officer in our nation’s history? Unfortunately, it may not matter much, since the serial liar has the ear of the worst President in our history, a man who apparently believes we can only prevent World War III by stopping Iran from “obtaining the knowledge” necessary to make nuclear weapons, despite the statements from his own former commander of CENTCOM, General Abazaid, who stated that the world could live with a nuclear Iran.
But then, what do nuclear proliferation experts and 4 star generals with an intimate knowledge of our national security issues in the Middle East really know? In the world according to Cheney and Bush, not very much. Too bad the reality Bush and Cheney may very well “create” out of their dark desire to wage more wars in the Middle East (i.e., bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran) is the one in which the rest of us will have to suffer the consequences of their mendacity and megalomania.
