Iran « Aletho News

An Israeli attack is risky–and it might not even eliminate Iran’s nuclear facilities

By Philip Giraldi • The American Conservative • October 25, 2012

During the Napoleonic Wars, when it was reported that the French were preparing to invade England, Admiral John Jervis said “I do not say they the French cannot come–I only say they cannot come by sea.” Barring the movement of a regiment of sans culottes across the English Channel by a fleet of Montgolfier balloons, the Jervis comment pretty much summed up the limits to French ambitions as long as Britannia ruled the waves.

A similar bit of military overreach appears to be surrounding the alleged planning by the Israelis to stage an air assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The US media and even some Pentagon spokesmen have suggested that Israel cannot do the job alone, but the problem is much larger than that, leading to the question whether Israel can do it at all. Israel has over 400 fighters, but many of them are configured to establish air superiority over an opponent by shooting down opposing aircraft and disabling air defense facilities on the ground. They are fighters supporting ground operations first with a limited secondary capability as bombers.

Israel has no dedicated bomber force but it does have an estimated 125 advanced F-15I and F-16I’s, which have been further enhanced through special avionics installed by the Israel Aircraft Industry to improve performance over the types of terrain and weather conditions prevailing in the Middle East. The planes are able to fly long range missions and very capable in a bombing role but they do have their limitations.

It is generally agreed that any attempt to destroy the hardened and well-defended Iranian nuclear sites would require use of the United States-provided GBU-28, a five thousand-pound laser-guided smart bomb that can be directed to the target. The GBU-28 is regarded as accurate and able to penetrate deep into a target, which is why it has been described as the “bunker buster.” Exact performance specifications of the weapon are classified, but it is believed to be able to penetrate twenty feet of reinforced concrete. Whether that would be enough to take out the expected Iranian targets at the research centers in Natanz and Fordow, the heavy water facility at Arak, and the operating reactor at Bushehr is unknown and some analysts have opined that it might require multiple hits on the same spot to do the job. As Bushehr, the most accessible target of the three, is an active reactor, an attack would release considerable contamination.

Assuming that the US has supplied Israel with a sufficient supply of GBU-28s to go around to all the available aircraft, there remain two additional problems with the weapon that impact Israeli ability to stage an attack. First, it is so heavy that only Israel’s twenty-five F15Is are able to carry it, one bomb for each plane. For optimum use against a target, the GBU-28 also requires a clear line of sight, which means that the plane has to be flying low and relatively slowly, making the fighters more vulnerable to ground defenses, particularly with their maneuverability limited due to the bomb load. This first problem creates the second problem, which is that an attack will require a separate fleet of F-16 fighters unencumbered by GBU-28s to go in first and suppress the defensive fire, further complicating the mission.

Assuming that all the Israeli fighters capable of carrying the GBU-28 are available, which would not normally be the case, twenty-five bombs might not be enough to do critical damage to the targets. Perfect intelligence is required to place the bombs where they will do the most harm, an element that will likely be lacking with the underground targets. Some bombs will miss while others might not function perfectly and will detonate before penetration. And before the bombs are dropped the planes have to arrive over Iran.

Let’s assume that the Israelis opt for an attacking force of 50 fighters, one third of which would be designated for suppression of ground fire. The planes would be equipped with conformal fuel tanks built into the fuselages for extended range. They would also have auxiliary tanks that could be jettisoned when empty. Nevertheless, the attacking force would have to take off from Israeli airfields and then almost immediately refuel either over Israel or above the Mediterranean because fighters burn considerable fuel in getting off the ground. Refueling from Israel’s twelve modified Boeing 707 and C-130 tankers would take some time even though a plane using a flying boom for refueling can top up in thirty seconds. It is the maneuvering and connecting to enable the refueling that takes considerably longer. Refueling all 50 planes will be a major task essential to the success of the mission and while the planes are in the air and forming up they will be detected by radar in Egypt and Lebanon, information that one must assume is likely to be shared with Iran.

The objectives in Iran are more than 1,000 miles from Israel and the planes must be able to spend some time over their targets, which is why the refueling is necessary. But even then there would be problems if the Israeli jets have to engage any enemy planes either en route or over Iran. They would have to drop their auxiliary tanks to take defensive action and would probably have to return immediately to Israel.

There are three possible routes to Iran. One route to the south violates Saudi airspace and it is by no means certain that the very capable 80 plus F-15s of the Saudi Air Force would not scramble to intercept. The other is to the north over Syria, skirting the Turkish border. Syria is unlikely to be able to interfere much given its current troubles though it does possess some capable Russian made anti-aircraft missiles, but a Turkish response to possible airspace violations cannot be ruled out. The third and most likely option is to fly along Syria’s southern border, avoiding Jordan, and then through Iraq, which has only limited air defense capabilities since the US military’s departure at the end of 2011.

Israel’s previous attacks on nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria hit targets that were above ground while relying on the element of complete surprise. Upon arrival over Iran, the Israelis would be confronted by something quite different, targets that are deep underground or hardened with reinforced concrete and further protected by layers of ground defenses that will be alert and waiting. Iran is known to have batteries of Russian supplied SA-5s for high altitude targets and SA-15s for lower level attackers. Both systems are regarded as very effective. It has also been alleged that Tehran has been able to acquire advanced Russian S-300 long range missiles, which, if true, would pose a serious problem for the Israeli fighters. The Israelis would have to be very lucky to avoid losses.

Assuming that the Israeli Air Force is able to carry out the refueling, fly successfully to Iran, suppress ground defenses, and carry out its bombing, it still has to return home, again flying over Iraq with every air force and air defense battery in the region on full alert. Depending on how much maneuvering was required while over Iran, some planes might well need to be refueled again which would mean deploying highly vulnerable tankers over Iraq or Jordan.

Back at home the Israelis would have to expect volleys of missiles of all kinds and varieties launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon to retaliate for the attack. The US-funded Iron Dome defense missile system would intercept many of the incoming missiles, but some would certainly get through and Israeli civilian casualties could be high.

It is clear that staging the attack on Iran would be fraught with difficulties and intelligence estimates suggest that at best the bombing would set back the Iranian ability to construct a weapon by only a year or two. Plus the attack would make certain that Iran would pursue a weapon, if only for self-defense, an essentially political decision that has not yet been made by the country’s leadership.

Israel has other military assets–including ballistic missiles and submarine-launched cruise missiles–that could be used to attack Iran, that would invite retaliation from Iran’s own ballistic and cruise missiles, considerably complicating post-attack developments. There is also the Israeli nuclear weapons capability, use of which would invite worldwide condemnation and instantly escalate the fighting into a regional or even broader conflict.

On balance, all of the above suggests that the frequently repeated threat by the Israeli leadership to attack Iran is not a serious plan to take out Iran’s nuclear sites. It is more likely a long running disinformation operation to somehow convince the United States to do the job or a deliberate conditioning of the Israeli and US publics to be supportive if some incident can be arranged to trigger an armed conflict. If one believes the two presidential candidates based on what they said in Monday’s debate, both have more-or-less conceded the point, agreeing that they would support militarily any Israeli attack on Iran. Whether Romney or Obama is actually willing to start a major new war in the Middle East is, of course, impossible to discern.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

October 26, 2012 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Iran, Israel, Israeli Air Force, Middle East, Philip Giraldi | Leave a comment

The Israel Lobby’s War on America’s Middle East Oil Dependence

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | October 26, 2012

A couple of days ago, I wrote about an article in The National Interest magazine by a visiting fellow at a pro-Israel think tank that argued that the United Arab Emirates may be violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act by its funding of ostensibly environmental anti-drilling films. As might be expected, Susan Schmidt’s piece entitled “Lobbying through the Silver Screen” appears to be part of a broader campaign by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to end America’s energy dependence on Israel’s recalcitrant neighbors.

On October 15, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) website published an op-ed piece by FDD senior fellow John Hannah tellingly entitled “How Oil Dependence Undermines America’s Effort to Stop the Iranian Bomb.” Citing the neocon-mentored Mitt Romney campaign promise of achieving “North American energy independence,” Hannah goes on to argue that dependence on Middle East oil not only endangers U.S. economic security but also serves as a constraint on its strategic freedom of movement in the region. “Concerns about oil prices,” claims Hannah, “have often badly distorted U.S. policy toward the Middle East.” As the title of his piece suggests, however, the “distortion” that most troubles the FDD is how this energy dependence makes Washington think twice before doing Israel’s bidding in the region:

The most acute example is the effort to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. U.S. policymakers have long known that the most effective step we could take against the mullahs is to cut off Iran’s oil sales and starve them of the enormous revenues they need to keep their repressive regime afloat. Yet for years, first President Bush and then President Obama fiercely resisted sanctioning the Islamic Republic’s petroleum sector. The reason? Because they quite legitimately feared that removing Iranian crude from the market would disrupt global supplies and trigger a devastating price shock. Only in late 2011, with Iran rapidly approaching the nuclear threshold, did Congress finally steamroll the administration by forcing through legislation that targeted Iranian oil.

Even then, implementation of the sanctions was watered down. The administration was given a six-month grace period to assess the possible impact that sanctions would have on the global oil market. And rather than demanding that customers of Iranian oil end their purchases entirely, countries were granted waivers from U.S. sanctions if they only “significantly reduced” their buy — which in practice required them to cut back between 15 and 20 percent. While the U.S. effort, together with complimentary EU sanctions, have no doubt had a major effect on Iran’s economy — reducing its oil exports by as much as 50 percent — a full embargo would have been far more impactful and the obvious course of action for Washington to pursue if not for the countervailing concern about oil markets. In the meantime, the Iranian regime continues to pocket perhaps $3 billion per month from the million or so barrels of oil that it still exports daily, all the while pressing ahead with its nuclear program.

America doesn’t have a higher national security priority than stopping the world’s most dangerous regime from going nuclear. And yet the sad reality is that our dependence on oil has for years, and to our great peril, systematically deterred us from fully deploying the most powerful tool in our arsenal — all-out sanctions on Iran’s petroleum sector — for resolving the crisis peacefully. Not surprisingly, that underlying logic applies in spades when it comes to any discussion about the possible use of force against Iran, where predictions of oil spiking to an economy-crippling $200 per barrel are commonplace.

The fact that our oil vulnerability has put such severe constraints on our freedom-of-maneuver to address the most pressing national security threat we face is deeply troubling.

Fortunately, there is a solution to the think tank’s concerns about U.S. “freedom” to address what it and other pro-Israel groups have worked so hard to convince Americans is their latest “most pressing national security threat.” As Hannah points out, “the United States is experiencing an oil and gas boom that promises to transform our energy landscape in very fundamental ways”:

Thanks to American ingenuity and technology, U.S. production is poised to increase dramatically over the next decade, after years of steep decline. As Governor Romney has correctly emphasized, through close cooperation with democratic allies in Canada and Mexico, the goal of energy self-sufficiency for North America may well be within reach — an unthinkable prospect just a few years ago, and one whose benefits in terms of job creation and economic growth could be quite profound.

Presumably more important — at least from a pro-Israel perspective — than the “potential economic windfall” for Americans is, as Hannah puts it, “how we can best exploit the coming energy boom to really enhance U.S. national security.” For him, enhancing U.S. security seems to be synonymous with going to war with Iran — notwithstanding the view of more objective analysts that this would seriously, if not fatally, exacerbate American insecurity. Nevertheless, according to the FDD fellow, the major obstacle to this supposedly security-enhancing military action are fears that it would lead to rocketing oil prices. To remove this problematic impediment in the way of another war for Israel, Hannah proposes:

It seems that what really needs to be part of the mix is a viable, bipartisan, market-driven strategy for reducing the monopoly that oil has over our transportation sector. If a sensible way could be found to begin moving some significant portion of U.S. cars and trucks to run on cheaper, domestically produced alternative fuels — natural gas, methanol, electric — it would largely eliminate the sword of Damocles that Middle Eastern tyrannies like Iran now hold over the West’s economic wellbeing and its strategic decision-making. That would put us on the path toward true energy independence, and restore to the United States a degree of flexibility, leverage, and strength to pursue its interests and values abroad, especially in the Middle East, that we have not known for at least a generation.

While acknowledging the difficulty of the task ahead, Hannah is cautiously optimistic:

Perhaps once the upcoming election is over, a new administration will be prepared to look seriously at developing a bipartisan, comprehensive energy strategy that both fully exploits America’s new oil and gas bonanza while taking meaningful steps to reduce our vulnerability to extortion by hostile, repressive dictatorships in unstable parts of the world.

And as luck would have it, there is already “one place that a new president should definitely look to mobilize ideas as well as political support.” Explains the FDD fellow:

Securing America’s Future Energy (an organization that I’m proud to advise), […] has brought together an extraordinary group of American business and military leaders to highlight both the economic as well as national security dangers posed by our dependence on oil, and to recommend possible solutions. Co-chaired by Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx and General P.X. Kelley, former commandant of the Marine Corps, the group includes such luminaries as General Jack Keane, former vice chief of the Army; Admiral Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence; David Steiner, CEO of Waste Management; Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines; and John Lehman, former undersecretary of the Navy.

So there you have it. America’s energy dependence on the Jewish state’s regional rivals may soon by a thing of the past thanks to the ingenuity of the new environmentally-friendly Israel lobby.

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA (Aletho News)

October 26, 2012 Posted by aletho | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Mitt Romney, Sanctions against Iran, United Arab Emirates, United States | Leave a comment

No proof of Iran decision to build nuclear weapons: Russia

Press TV – October 24, 2012

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says there is no evidence suggesting that Iran has made any decision to militarize its nuclear energy program.

In an interview with the Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Tuesday, Lavrov said Iran’s nuclear energy program is under the full supervision of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the country is enriching 4.5-percent uranium to meet its fuel needs, Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) reported.

Lavrov emphasized that the production of nuclear fuel is not a violation of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and confirmed the legitimacy of Iran’s bid to produce 20-percent enriched uranium to provide fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).

Iran decided to enrich uranium to 20-percent level to provide fuel for TRR, which produces medical isotopes for cancer patients, after potential suppliers failed to provide the Islamic Republic with the required nuclear fuel.

On September 17, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Fereydoun Abbasi, said Iran has no intention of enriching uranium above the 20-percent level.

Abbasi added that Iran started producing 20-percent enriched uranium when it could not obtain fuel for TRR from international market due to sanctions imposed against the country.

The Iranian official added that the main objective of 20-percent enrichment is to produce radiopharmaceuticals, but certain parties are trying to connect Iran’s nuclear activities to non-civilian purposes.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear energy program, but Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the NPT and a member of the IAEA, it is entitled to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s nuclear energy program has been diverted toward military objectives.

The Constant Countdown: Never-Ending Hype, Hysteria, and Hyperbole about Iran’s Nuclear Program (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Analysis of latest IAEA report on Iran – August 2012 (alethonews.wordpress.com)

October 24, 2012 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran, Iranian Student News Agency, Press TV | Leave a comment

PBS and Iran’s ‘Nuclear Weapons’

NewsHour botches basic fact about Iran

FAIR – 10/24/12

In an October 22 discussion of the foreign policy presidential debate, the PBS NewsHour‘s Jeffrey Brown stated that “Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been a particular flash point.”

A few weeks earlier (10/5/12) on the NewsHour, Ray Suarez said that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had

continued to thwart American efforts on a range of international issues, such as Washington’s attempt to convince Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to halt his country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

As most people following this story should know, there is no intelligence that shows Iran has a nuclear weapons program. The country has long denied the accusation, and regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have failed to turn up evidence that Iran’s enriched uranium is being diverted for use in a weapon (Extra!, 1/12).

Some governments claim otherwise, but journalists are supposed to convey the evidence that is available–not to make claims that are unsupported by the facts. If there was one clear lesson from the Iraq War, it was that reporters need to carefully distinguish between what is known for certain and what some government leaders claim.

There have been questions about the NewsHour‘s Iran reporting before (FAIR Blog, 1/10/12). On January 9 the broadcast reported that Iran’s denial that it is pursuing a nuclear weapon was “disputed by the U.S. and its allies.” The show turned to a clip from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to bolster that point — but edited out the part of his statement in which he said: “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.” A NewsHour editor (FAIR Blog, 1/17/12) agreed that “it would have been better had we not lopped off the first part of the Panetta quote.”

CONTACT:
PBS NewsHour
onlineda2@newshour.org

October 24, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Iran, PBS NewsHour, Ray Suarez | Leave a comment

Iran may stop oil sales if sanctions intensify: minister

Mehr News Agency | October 24, 2012

TEHRAN – Iran has threatened it may stop oil exports if the West tightens sanctions against Tehran.

“If sanctions intensify we will stop exporting oil,” Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi told reporters in Dubai on Tuesday.

Qasemi said Iran had a “Plan B” contingency strategy to survive without oil revenues.

“We have prepared a plan to run the country without any oil revenues,” Qasemi said. “So far to date we haven’t had any serious problems, but if the sanctions were to be renewed we would go for ‘Plan B’.

“If you continue to add to the sanctions we (will) cut our oil exports to the world… We are hopeful that this doesn’t happen, because citizens will suffer. We don’t want to see European and U.S. citizens suffer,” he said.

The minister added the loss of Iranian oil on the market would drive oil prices up.

October 24, 2012 Posted by aletho | Economics, Wars for Israel | Iran, Mehr News Agency, Qasemi | Leave a comment

Iran not to hold “independent” nuclear talks with U.S. outside P5+1: FM

Xinhua | October 21, 2012

TEHRAN — Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said Sunday that Iran will not hold “independent” talks with the United States outside the framework of nuclear negotiations with six world powers, dubbed P5+1, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

“We don’t have something to be named talks with the United States,” said Salehi when asked about the recent media reports that Iran and the United States have agreed to hold direct talks over Iran’s nuclear issue.

“We will talk (with the U.S.) within the framework of P5+1 … and we don’t have (other nuclear) talks independent from that,” he was quoted as saying.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the United States and Iran had agreed for the first time to have one-on-one talks over the latter’s controversial nuclear program after the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.

The paper said the agreement was the result of intense and secret exchanges between officials of the two countries, which began almost immediately after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

The White House on Saturday denied the press report. “It’s not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections,” Tommy Vietor, spokesman of the National Security Council, said in a statement.

“We continue to work with the P5+1 on a diplomatic solution and have said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally,” he said

October 22, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Iran), New York Times, United States | Leave a comment

US Probes South Caucasus’ Attitude to Iran

Nezavisimaya Gazeta | October 18, 2012

Eric Rubin, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, is touring Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia to promote democracy and cooperation and develop partnership on the issues of Syria and Iran.

The media in Azerbaijan reports that Rubin’s visit to Georgia focused on economic issues, civil freedoms and Nagorno-Karabakh.

The US Embassy in Armenia’s press service said Rubin would attend a meeting of the US-Armenian group on economic cooperation to discuss stimulating investment in energy and trade, as well as nuclear power.

The agenda for high-ranking Washington officials’ visits to the South Caucasus seldom varies, and this is not simply because Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia face largely similar problems, but also for ethical reasons. Washington wants to convince them that they are all equal partners. Therefore, if Rubin talked about Iran in Georgia, he did or will do the same in the other two South Caucasus states.

“During the meetings with the President and future Prime Minister of Georgia, we discussed the international community’s efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” Rubin told a press briefing at the US Embassy in Tbilisi as quoted by Azernews. “We are broadly cooperating over the Turkish-Syrian issue, and Georgia is called upon to play a peacekeeping role in the region.”

However, some Georgian experts believe that Rubin met with Mikheil Saakashvili and Bidzina Ivanishvili to probe Georgia’s attitude to Iran, where Washington will want Georgia to play a special role if the situation escalates.

Georgian politician Irina Sarishvili said before Rubin’s visit that many hospitals built in Georgia recently under a presidential program bear an alarming likeness to standard US military hospitals. Considering the speedy modernization and construction of airports for heavy transport planes and other infrastructure improvements, this could be more than straightforward concern for the Georgians.

Eric Rubin also said in Tbilisi, clearly referring to Russian bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia that “the US position regarding the obligations that Russia undertook in 2008 to withdraw its troops from the Georgian territory remain unchanged.” He said the US stance on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia is firm and clear.

Commenting on the recent parliamentary election, Rubin congratulated Ivanishvili on the victory and praised Saakashvili’s personal contribution to positive developments in Georgia. He said the world can see that democracy in Georgia is real, and that the country can become a model for the region.

Rubin also met with ministerial nominees, notably Irakly Alasania who is slated to become the Defense Minister. Alasania assured him that Georgia would honor its commitments in Afghanistan. In response, Rubin said that Washington would redouble its efforts to promote Georgia’s rapprochement with NATO.

The US official refused to comment on Ivanishvili’s plans to participate in the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. He said he was pleased with Saakashvili’s assurances that Georgia is committed to strengthening ties with Euro-Atlantic organizations and the United States, and to guaranteeing press freedom.

October 22, 2012 Posted by aletho | Militarism | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, United States | Leave a comment

The Constant Countdown: Never-Ending Hype, Hysteria, and Hyperbole about Iran’s Nuclear Program

By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | October 21, 2012

On Monday evening, the final presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will focus primarily on foreign policy. Needless to say, the issue of the Iranian nuclear program will feature prominently. While both the Democratic and Republicantickets are quick to employ bellicose rhetoric and myriad falsehoods regarding the issue, a quick review of the candidates’ stated positions shows a slight difference between the two parties.

Taking into account the conclusions of U.S., European and Israeli intelligence agencies, President Obama explained earlier this year that “our assessment, which is shared by the Israelis, is that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt.”

Vice President Joe Biden made the same point during his debate with Romney running mate Paul Ryan. “The Israelis and the United States,” he said, “our military and intelligence communities are absolutely the same exact place in terms of how close the Iranians are to getting a nuclear weapon. They are a good way away. There is no difference between our view and theirs.” Biden went on: “There is no weapon that the Iranians have at this point. Both the Israelis and we know we’ll know if they start the process of building a weapon.”

Meanwhile, both Republican candidates have repeated the claims that Iran is now closer than ever to having a nuclear weapon. On October 11, 2012, Paul Ryan declared during the vice presidential debate, “When Barack Obama was elected, they had enough fissile material — nuclear material to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five. They’re racing toward a nuclear weapon. They’re four years closer toward a nuclear weapons capability.”

Five days later, on October 16, 2012, Mitt Romney repeated that formulation, warning the town hall debate audience in Hempstead, Long Island, “We have Iran four years closer to a nuclear bomb.”

This talking point will surely be repeated on Monday in Boca Raton.

It should also be remembered when the Israeli Prime Minister stood before the Knesset and declared:

“Iran is in the initial stages of an effort to acquire non-conventional capability in general, and nuclear capability in particular. Our assessment is that Iran today has the appropriate manpower and sufficient resources to acquire nuclear arms within 10 years. Together with others in the international community, we are monitoring Iran’s nuclear activity. They are not concealing the fact that the possibility that Iran will possess nuclear weapons is worrisome, and this is one of the reasons that we must take advantage of the window of opportunity and advance toward peace.”

That address was given in January 1993 by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Just as Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons ten years later, it still doesn’t as 2013 approaches.

It has been nearly two years (22 months, really) since I published “The Phantom Menace: Fantasies, Falsehoods, and Fear-Mongering about Iran’s Nuclear Program,” a timeline of constant U.S., Israeli, and European assertions regarding the supposed inevitability and immediacy of a nuclear-armed Iran – hysterical allegations that have been made repeatedly for the past thirty years, none of which has ever come true.

Subsequently, over fifty updates – cataloging new alarmist claims and predictions – have been added to the original piece (they can be read here) and a more extensive follow-up was posted in November 2011.

With a renewed spate of relentless warmongering, regurgitated propaganda by U.S. and Israeli officials, and endless talk of red lines, deadlines, end zones, zones of immunity, windows of opportunity and points of no return, it’s time for another update.

So, culled from the last eleven months, this never-ending saga continues:

Following a lengthy and thoroughly–overhyped IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear program in November 2011, the media was filled with howls of imminent Iranian atomic bombs and the need to carry out an illegal, unprovoked military attack on Iran.

A Washington Post opinion piece by members of the hawkish Bipartisan Policy Center on November 7, 2011 claimed that, “if it chooses, Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear device in just 62 days using its existing stockpiles and current enrichment capability,” but also stated the timeline could be even shorter. “Once Iran acquires more than 150 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent — which could happen by early 2013 if Iran’s announced plans are realized,” Stephen Rademaker and Blaise Misztal wrote, “it would need only 12 days to produce enough fissile material for a bomb.”

On November 8, 2011, Simon Henderson of the AIPAC-affiliated Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) suggested “the IAEA report should serve to shift the public debate from whether Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, to how to stop it,” while career mouthpiece for the Israeli government Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote in Bloomberg View that the report offered “further proof that the Iranian regime is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.”

A November 9, 2011 editorial in The Guardian noted that, as usual, the latest “flurry of leaks” about the Iranian nuclear program “tend[s] to suggest, without being able to absolutely prove, that Tehran is working to acquire nuclear weapons capacity.” Undaunted by this absence of evidence, the British paper concluded that, not only is it “time to drop the pretence that Iran can be deflected from its nuclear path,” but that “[i]t really is time for Iran to drop the pretence that it is not on that path.”

Furthermore, editorials in both the The New York Times (“The Truth About Iran“) and The Washington Post (“Running Out of Time“) endorsed the IAEA’s insinuations without the slightest hint of skepticism or scrutiny. The Times claimed that without “a new round of even tougher sanctions…Iran will keep pushing its nuclear program forward,” while the Post, drawing conclusions that are actually rejected by the IAEA itself, stated the latest report “ought to end serious debate about whether Tehran’s program is for peaceful purposes,” and warned that “the danger is growing, not diminishing,” suggesting Iran is “at least a year or more away from completing” a bomb.

The same day, November 9, 2011, analysts for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments stated, “Iran might have both the technology and material to build a nuclear bomb in a matter of months” and recommended that “Obama should take out Iran’s nuclear program…before it’s too late.”

Columnist Carlo Strenger, also writing on November 9, 2011 in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, claimed that the IAEA report “confirmed Israel’s and the Western World’s fears: there can be no reasonable doubt that Iran is working actively towards the atomic bomb.” Even Ha’aretz‘s most rational and articulate commentator Gideon Levy fell for the hype, lamenting in his column, “Iran will apparently have an atom bomb, and that is very bad news.”

On November 10, 2011, a Ha’aretz editorial declared, “The [latest IAEA] report clearly shows that Iran carried out tests which cannot be interpreted in any way other than as signaling an intent to develop nuclear weapons,” while t he same day, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece by then-GOP nomination hopeful Mitt Romney (though certainly written by the war-crazy cabal known as his “foreign policy team“) which stated, “Iran is making rapid headway toward its goal of obtaining nuclear weapons.”

Also on November 10, 2011, former Director of Policy Planning in the Obama State Department and current Princeton University professor Anne-Marie Slaughter opined that the IAEA report “affirms what western governments already know or believe: that for all the sanctions and diplomacy, Iran continues to make steady progress toward producing a nuclear weapon.”

On November 11, 2011, contributing columnist for The New York Times Magazine and ForeignPolicy.com James Traub lamented, “Neither Bush nor Obama has stopped Iran from pursuing a goal to which Iranian leaders are single-mindedly dedicated,” adding that “Iran has been seeking for years to develop a nuclear warhead and is continuing to do so.” Traub continued: “Iran is still enriching uranium and is now estimated to have enough to produce four bombs.”

The Wall Street Journal published its own editorial on November 14, 2011, claiming that the new IAEA report “lays to rest the fantasies that an Iranian bomb is many years off” and insisted that “[t]he serious choice now before the Administration is between military strikes and more of the same. As the IAEA report makes painfully clear, more of the same means a nuclear Iran, possibly within a year.”

In truth, as acknowledged by Greg Thielmann and Benjamin Loehrke in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

Most analysts familiar with the report agree that there “is nothing in the report that was not previously known by the governments of the major powers” — a nuclear Iran is “neither imminent nor inevitable.” While it is clear that Iran’s continuing research on nuclear weapons is a serious concern for international security, there “has been no smoking gun when it comes to Iran’s nuclear weapons intentions.”

Nevertheless, Jerusalem-based right-wing conspiracy theory website DEBKAfile released a new prediction in mid-November 2011. “According to the briefing given to a closed meeting of Jewish leaders in New York…the window of opportunity for stopping Iran attaining a nuclear weapon is closing fast” and “will shut down altogether after late March 2012,” the report said. Why? Because “intelligence reaching US President Barak Obama is that by April, Iran will already have five nuclear bombs or warheads and military action then would generate a dangerous level of radioactive contamination across the Gulf region, the main source of the world’s energy.”

On November 20, 2011, CNN aired an interview in which Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Fareed Zakaria that Iran would reach a “zone of immunity” within six to nine months, at which point its nuclear infrastructure would be redundant, dispersed and protected enough to be invulnerable to an attack. Misunderstanding Barak’s allegation, Israeli media outlet Ha’aretz ran the alarming headline “Iran less than a year away from producing nuclear weapon” in anticipation of the broadcast.

Two days later, during a CNN debate between Republican presidential candidates sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation, two neoconservative bellwether organizations, AEI’s Danielle Pletka stated that “Iran is probably less than a year away from getting a nuclear weapon” before asking whether anything short of a military assault “could stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

On December 19, 2011, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, when asked by CBS News anchor Scott Pelley whether “Iran can have a nuclear weapon in 2012,” replied, “It would probably be about a year before they can do it. Perhaps a little less,” but added a “proviso” that, “if they have a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel,” the timeline to developing a nuclear weapon would be “on a faster track.” The Pentagon quickly walked back the assertion.

On December 31, 2011, The Wall Street Journal quoted Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti telling reporters, “There is strong concern on the advancement of Iran’s nuclear program reaching a point of nonreturn and the strategy, which Italy agrees with, is the urgency to strengthen instruments of pressure on Iran.”

In the December 2011/January 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, Matthew Kroenig, a former defense and Iran policy strategist for U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, published a call for the United States to launch an unprovoked and wholly illegal attack on Iran, citing Institute for Science and International Security “estimates that Iran could now produce its first nuclear weapon within six months of deciding to do so.”

On January 4 and January 6, 2012, Reuters reporter Fredrik Dahl wrote that “Western experts give different estimates of how quickly Iran could assemble a nuclear weapon if it decides to do so – ranging from as little as six months to a year or more.”

On January 8, 2012, Defense Secretary Panetta told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation that the United States will take all necessary measures to make sure Iran “cannot continue to do what they’re doing,” adding, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us.”

On January 9, 2012, David Sanger of The New York Times noted, “Already Iran has produced enough fuel to manufacture about four weapons, but only if the fuel goes through further enrichment, nuclear experts say.”

The following day, January 10, 2012, the Times of London claimed that a recent Israeli security report revealed “Israel is preparing for Iran to become a nuclear power and has accepted it may happen within a year.”

On January 11, 2012, Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman issued a joint press release that stated, “Despite the increased sanctions put in place over the last several years, the American people should have no illusions: time is now quickly running out to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.” The statement called upon Congress to officially rule out “containment” as a policy option “should economic and diplomatic pressure fail to force Iran to abandon its pursuit of acquiring nuclear weapons.”

On January 12, 2012, retired U.S. General Barry McCaffrey delivered a briefing to senior executives and producers at NBC News in which he determined that Iran “will not under any circumstances actually be deterred from going nuclear” and predicted that it “will achieve initial nuclear capability within 36 months.” He also concluded that, not only will Iran instigate a major war against the United States, it will acquire “a nuclear capability of dozens of weapons within 60 months with the missile and fighter delivery systems required to strike targets in Israel, the GCC states, and regional US military forces.”

On January 13, 2012, Fox News contributor Liz Cheney asserted on Fox and Friends that Iran (which she accidentally called “Iraq”) was merely “months, not years, away” from enriching enough uranium needed for a nuclear weapon.

On January 16, 2012, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal published a dazzlingly Orientalist and bloodthirsty article entitled “The Intrigues of Persia,” which praised the then-recent murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, claiming – without providing evidence, of course – he “was engaged in building a nuclear bomb in violation of four binding U.N. Security Council resolutions.” The piece also described the Iranian government as an “evil regime” and insisted “the mullahs…are building a bomb,” the success of which is now “closer than ever.”

A blockbuster article by Ronen Bergman, senior political and military analyst for the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, published in The New York Times on January 25, 2012, quotes Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon (who is also Minister of Strategic Affairs) as saying, “Our policy is that in one way or another, Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped. It is a matter of months before the Iranians will be able to attain military nuclear capability.” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak tells Bergman that “no more than one year remains to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry.”

Bergman also writes, “According to latest intelligence, Iran now has some 10,000 functioning centrifuges, and they have streamlined the enrichment process. Iran today has five tons of low-grade fissile material, enough, when converted to high-grade material, to make about five to six bombs,” and adds, “It is believed that Iran’s nuclear scientists estimate that it will take them nine months, from the moment they are given the order, to assemble their first explosive device and another six months to be able to reduce it to the dimensions of a payload for their Shahab-3 missiles, which are capable of reaching Israel.”

Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, stated on January 25, 2012, “Never has it been so clear Iran is seeking to build a nuclear weapon. Now is the time to act. Tomorrow is too late. The stakes are too high. The price of inaction is too great.” Prosor also declared that “Tehran’s efforts to enrich uranium to 20 percent-levels at its reactor in Qom could serve no other plausible aim other than to develop an atomic bomb,” despite the fact that such enrichment is known to be used in the creation of medical isotopes that treat cancer patients.

On January 26, 2012, Reuters reporter Frederik Dahl wrote, “The IAEA issued a detailed report in November that laid bare a trove of intelligence suggesting Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability,” and added that “some experts say” Iran “could have the potential to build at least one nuclear device as early as next year.”

On the January 29, 2012 edition of 60 Minutes, Defense Secretary Panetta again addressed the Iranian nuclear program. “The consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb,” he said, “and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.”

At the same time, Israeli military chief Benny Gantz said he had “no doubt” Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons and Defense Minister Barak warned, “We must not waste time on this matter; the Iranians continue to advance, identifying every crack and squeezing through. Time is urgently running out.”

On February 2, 2012, Director of Israeli Military Intelligence Major General Aviv Kochavi told a panel at the Herzliya Conference that “Iran is vigorously pursing military nuclear capabilities and today the intelligence community agrees with Israel on that” and assessed that “Iran has enough nuclear material for four bombs.” Kochavi said, “We have conclusive evidence that they are after nuclear weapons,” adding, “When Khamenei gives the order to produce the first nuclear weapon – it will be done, we believe, within one year.”

On February 17, 2012, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom announced on MSNBC, “Everyone now knows most of the world, if not all the world, knows the Iranians are trying to develop a nuclear bomb. It’s out of the question. They have all the proof. Everyone knows the security and intelligence of the western world knows very well the Iranians are developing a nuclear bomb, and they should be stopped.”

On February 23, 2012, The Los Angeles Times‘ Ken Dilanian wrote that, although “U.S. intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb,” David Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security estimates Iran “could enrich uranium to sufficient purity to make a bomb in as little as six months, should it decide to do so.” The article also states that “Albright and many other experts believe that if it decides to proceed, the country has the scientific knowledge to design and build a crude working bomb in as little as a year” and that it would take three years “for Iran to build a warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile.”

On March 5, 2012, David Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security released a report claiming that “Iran is already capable of making weapon-grade uranium and a crude nuclear explosive device” and cataloging the different routes Iran might take to obtain a nuclear weapon by 2015.

On March 6, 2012, Mark Fitzpatrick, Director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies wrote that “Iran already is nuclear capable” and “has everything it needs to be able to manufacture a nuclear weapon. All it would take is a political decision and time.”

The next day, on March 7, 2012, Israeli Prime Minister was interviewed on Fox News by Greta van Susteren, who asked “What’s the timeline? How much time do we have?” Netanyahu replied, “Every day that passes makes it closer and closer.” When van Susteren pressed, “Is it weeks, months, or years?,” the Israeli leader declared, “It was a lot further away 15 years ago when I started talking about it. It was a lot further away 10 years ago. It was a lot further away five years. It was a lot further away five months ago. They are getting there, and they are getting very, very close.”

On March 18, 2012, an Associated Press report noted Israeli concerns that the Iranian nuclear program may be allowed “to reach the point where there is enough enriched weapons grade material that a bomb could quickly be assembled, within a year.”

Five days later, on March 23, 2012, AP published a “Special Report” that laid bare the hysteria over the Iran nuclear program. “The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead,” AP stated plainly. “Those conclusions, drawn from extensive interviews with current and former U.S. and European officials with access to intelligence on Iran, contrast starkly with the heated debate surrounding a possible Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.”

Nevertheless, on April 5, 2012, Ehud Barak told Fareed Zakaria on CNN that, with regard to the goal of stopping Iran’s “nuclear military program,” Israel has “limited time. We don’t have to make a decision next week and we cannot wait years.”

On May 7, 2012, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird stated in an interview with CBC that Iran could “very quickly” produce a nuclear weapons if it so desired. After compiling “all the ingredients” for a bomb, Baird suggested, “they could certainly dash to the end which could be done in as few as nine or as many as 18 months.”

On May 10, 2012, career warmonger Marc Theissen insisted that “Iran is determined to obtain a nuclear weapon” and claimed that “made more progress toward this goal in the past three years under Obama than it has in the three decades since the Iranian Revolution.” He condemned the incumbent administration’s handling of the Iranian nuclear issue, claiming, “Before Obama took office, Iran needed months to make a dash to a bomb. Today, it could make that dash in a matter of weeks.” Theissen concluded that “the Iranian regime has developed a rapid nuclear weapons breakout capability on President Obama’s watch” and that “Iran is closer than ever to building a nuclear bomb.”

On May 25, 2012, David Albright and his staff at ISIS calculated that Iran had already stockpiled enough 3.5% low enriched uranium that “if further enriched to weapon grade” could “make over five nuclear weapons.”

In the May/June 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, USC professor Jacques E. C. Hymans pointed out that despite the “underlying assumption” that, unless challenged violently, Iran will soon acquired nuclear weapons, “there is another possibility.” Hymans explains, “The Iranians had to work for 25 years just to start accumulating uranium enriched to 20 percent, which is not even weapons grade. The slow pace of Iranian nuclear progress to date strongly suggests that Iran could still need a very long time to actually build a bomb — or could even ultimately fail to do so.”

A veritable who’s-who of warmongering neocons including Elliott Abrams, Matthew Kroenig and Ray Takeyh published a monograph in June 2012 entitled, “Iran: The Nuclear Challenge,” which states, “Nongovernment experts believe that if Iran made the decision to enrich to a higher level today, it could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb in four months. The same experts estimate that by the end of 2012 the time might be as little as one month…Extrapolating from these estimates leads to public estimates that it would take Iran about a year to produce such a nuclear weapon if it decided to do so.”

On June 15, 2012, David Albright and crew were back with a new assessment of Iran’s breakout capabilities, reporting that “Iran will have enough [19.75% low enriched uranium] by early next year, if further enriched to weapon-grade in a breakout, for a nuclear weapon,” but adding that “it could have enough…for a nuclear weapon by the end of 2012.” Albright also concludes, “Production of enough for a second nuclear weapon would take many additional months,” estimating Iran “would have enough for a second weapon in about October 2013. By November 2015, Iran would have enough for three to almost five nuclear weapons.”

In late June 2012, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted by Foreign Policy as saying, “In my judgment…if nothing will be done about it, within several years Iran will turn nuclear.”

On July 13, 2012, the British press quoted Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, Britain’s international espionage agency, as telling a gathering of civil servants that without risks taken by his intelligence operatives, “you’d have Iran as a nuclear weapons state in 2008, rather than still being two years away in 2012.”

On August 3, 2012, RAND policy analyst Alireza Nader stated the obvious: “According to the U.S. intelligence community, the Iranian leadership hasn’t even made the decision to weaponize their program. They’ve been creating the technical know-how and the infrastructure, but they haven’t made that decision, and there is much more time than the Israelis portray there to be. I don’t think an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is inevitable or imminent.”

On August 5, 2012, Israeli daily Ynet reported that Netanyahu estimates that “Iran is a few months away from becoming nuclear,” quoting the Prime Minister as predicting, “The time frame isn’t measured in days or weeks, but not in years either.”

On August 24, 2012, The Los Angeles Times stated, “At its current pace, by next year Iran may be able produce enough fuel for a bomb within two months,” according to timeline favorite David Albright. The report continues, “Fairly soon after that, as Iran continues to add to its centrifuge capacity, the time will be reduced to one month, he said in an interview. ‘You will see much shorter breakout times coming into play early next year or late this year,’ he said, referring to the time Iran would need should it choose to rush to build a nuclear weapon. ‘You have this growing enrichment capability that starts to get the breakout down to an order of a month.'”

On September 4, 2012, former director of the CIA Michael Hayden told Ha’aretz, ““While it is probably true that the so-called ‘window’ regarding effective action is closing, there is still some time, as real decisions are to be made in 2013 or 2014.”

On September 7, 2012, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that if Iranian leaders “decide to do the dash” for nuclear weapons, it could take a s little as “four weeks to eight weeks” for Iran to acquire an atomic bomb. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence analysts believe it would “take a little longer than that,” Rogers said. “But the problem is nobody really knows for sure.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking on CBS‘ “This Morning” on September 11, 2012, said that, were Iran to make the decision to develop a nuclear weapon, the U.S. would have “roughly about a year right now” to take action to halt such a process. “A little more than a year. And so…we think we will have the opportunity once we know that they’ve made that decision, take the action necessary to stop [them],” Panetta revealed, adding that the U.S. has “pretty good intelligence” on Iran. “We know generally what they’re up to,” he said. “And so we keep a close track on them.”

The same day, Associated Press reported, according to unnamed “diplomats,” that the IAEA “has received new and significant intelligence over the past month that Iran has moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon.”

In mid-September 2012, a bipartisan report spearheaded by William Luers, Austin Long, Thomas Pickering and Colin Kahl and endorsed by over thirty former government officials and security experts, including General Anthony Zinni, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Brent Scowcroft, Dick Armitage, Leslie Gelb, Admiral James Fallon, Admiral Joe Sestak, Anne Marie Slaughter, Chuck Hagel, Paul Volcker, Lee Hamilton, Zbigniew Brezinski, Nicholas Burns, and Joe Cirincione, determined, “Conservatively, it would take Iran a year or more to build a military-grade weapon, with at least two years or more required to create a nuclear warhead that would be reliably deliverable by a missile.”

On September 14, 2012, deputy speaker of the Knesset Danny Danon wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times advocating an illegal military attack on Iran, claiming that Iran is “developing its nuclear program at an alarming rate.”

On a September 16, 2012 Sunday morning panel, ABC News reporter Brian Ross claimed that Iran was “four to six weeks away” from acquiring a nuclear weapon, “if they made the decision to do it.” Ross justified his assessment by adding, “That’s some of the intelligence.” In response, Christiane Amanpour countered, “That has been so vastly disproved. Others say that it could be a year. So, this is a guessing game that has gone on for years.”

The same day, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said on Face the Nation that, while “Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon,” there is only “perhaps six months” before it achieves that capability, leading him to predict that “2013 is going to be a year in which we’re going to have a military confrontation with Iran.”

Also that day, September 16, 2012, Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared on CNN, warning that Iran “moving very rapidly to completing the enrichment of the uranium that they need to produce a nuclear bomb. In six months or so they’ll be 90 percent of the way there.”

On September 24, 2012, Israeli UN representative Ron Prosor issued a condemnatory statement about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which read, in part, “Three thousand years of Jewish history illustrate the clear danger of ignoring fanatics like Iran’s president, especially as he inches closer to acquiring nuclear weapons.”

On September 25, 2012, PBS correspondent Margaret Warner remarked that Iran has “so much uranium they can break out in a matter of weeks or months and make a weapon.”

On September 26, 2012, Iran attack enthusiast John Bolton opined, “Tehran is perilously close to achieving nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles for worldwide delivery,” stating that the nuclear program is “far too advanced” to be stopped by anything other than a military assault. “And because the world’s intelligence on Iran is imperfect,” Bolton added, “Iran may be even closer to a nuclear bomb than we think.”

The next day, September 27, 2012, Benjamin Netanyahu descended upon the United Nations General Assembly, cartoon bomb diagram in tow. He bellowed that Iran is “70 percent of the way” to stockpiling enough enriched uranium needed for a nuclear bomb. “And by next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”

On October 2, 2012, Reuters‘ Frederik Dahl posted an extensive run-down of current assessments regarding the Iranian nuclear program. “Iran already has enough low-enriched uranium for several atomic bombs if refined to a high degree but it may still be a few years away from being able to build a nuclear-armed missile if it decided to go down that path,” he begins.

“I still think that we are talking about several years…before Iran could develop a nuclear weapon and certainly before they could have a deliverable nuclear weapon,” said Shannon Kile, head of the Nuclear Weapons Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Greg Jones, a senior researcher at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and world-class Iran hysteric, claimed that “Iran could refine uranium for a nuclear weapon in 10 weeks and produce the required non-nuclear components in six months or less, he said, adding this could be done simultaneously.”

An anonymous Israeli official told Reuters reporter Dan Williams, “Once Iran gets its first device, no matter how rudimentary, it’s a nuclear power and a nuclear menace. With that said, we have always noted that, from this threshold, it would take Iran another two years or so to make a deployable warhead.”

On October 4, 2012, IISS‘ Mark Fitzpatrick wrote in Canada’s Global Brief that “Iran continues to move closer to a virtual weapons status,” suggesting that “by mid-2013, Iran will have enough low-enriched uranium (LEU), if further enriched, for perhaps six weapons.” He also noted, “As of late summer 2012, Iran was still several months away from being able to make a successful dash for nuclear weapons. Producing missile-deliverable weapons would take longer.” Nevertheless, “As Iran’s stockpile of enrichment uranium increases,” Fitzpatrick hedged, “the timelines shorten.”

On October 8, 2012, David Albright issued a new report which found that it would take “at least two to four months” for Iran to enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to produce a single nuclear bomb, while Mitt Romney delivered a foreign policy stump speech at the Virginia Military Institute, in which he declared, “Iran today has never been closer to a nuclear weapons capability. It has never posed a greater danger to our friends, our allies, and to us.”

On October 11, 2012, Oxford Analytica, a global corporate and governmental consulting firm, reported that Iran had already acquired enough “enriched uranium nuclear fuel to get breakout capability but the extra steps to produce a weapon [would] take months.”

The fever-pitched predictions over just how imminent and inevitable an Iranian nuclear weapon will surely continue unabated, regardless of how many decades Iranian leaders consistently deny such intentions or how many IAEA reports affirm Iran has never diverted any nuclear material to a weapons program or even had a weapons program in the first place.

It is no wonder that a Zogby poll from late February 2012 found that 78% of Americans “believe Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons production.” Quite simply, in our current debate, facts just don’t matter.

October 21, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Iran, Israel, Mitt Romney, Yitzhak Rabin | Leave a comment

New Flame-linked malware detected

RT | October 16, 2012

A new cyber espionage program linked to the notorious Flame and Gauss malware has been detected by Russia’s Kaspersky Lab. The anti-virus giant’s chief warns that global cyber warfare is in “full swing” and will probably escalate in 2013.

The virus, dubbed miniFlame, and also known as SPE, has already infected computers in Iran, Lebanon, France, the United States and Lithuania. It was discovered in July 2012 and is described as “a small and highly flexible malicious program designed to steal data and control infected systems during targeted cyber espionage operations,” Kaspersky Lab said in a statement posted on its website.

The malware was originally identified as an appendage of Flame – the program used for targeted cyber espionage in the Middle East and acknowledged to be part of joint US-Israeli efforts to undermine Iran’s nuclear program.

But later, Kaspersky Lab analysts discovered that miniFlame is an “interoperable tool that could be used as an independent malicious program, or concurrently as a plug-in for both the Flame and Gauss malware.”

The analysis also showed new evidence of cooperation between the creators of Flame and Gauss, as both viruses can use miniFlame for their operations.

“MiniFlame’s ability to be used as a plug-in by either Flame or Gauss clearly connects the collaboration between the development teams of both Flame and Gauss. Since the connection between Flame and Stuxnet/Duqu has already been revealed, it can be concluded that all these advanced threats come from the same ‘cyber warfare’ factory,” Kaspersky Lab said.

High-precision attack tool

So far just 50 to 60 cases of infection have been detected worldwide, according to Kaspersky Lab. But unlike Flame and Gauss, miniFlame in meant for installation on machines already infected by those viruses.

“MiniFlame is a high-precision attack tool. Most likely it is a targeted cyber weapon used in what can be defined as the second wave of a cyber attack,” Kaspersky’s Chief Security Expert Alexander Gostev explained.

“First, Flame or Gauss are used to infect as many victims as possible to collect large quantities of information. After data is collected and reviewed, a potentially interesting victim is defined and identified, and miniFlame is installed in order to conduct more in-depth surveillance and cyber-espionage.”

The newly-discovered malware can also take screenshots of an infected computer while it is running a specific program or application such as a web browser, Microsoft Office program, Adobe Reader, instant messenger service or FTP client.

Kaspersky Lab believes miniFlame’s developers have probably created dozens of different modifications of the program. “At this time, we have only found six of these, dated 2010-2011,” the firm said.

‘Cyber warfare in full swing’

Meanwhile, Kaspersky Lab’s co-founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky warned that global cyber warfare tactics are becoming more sophisticated while also becoming more threatening. He urged governments to work together to fight cyber warfare and cyber-terrorism, Xinhua news agency reports.

Speaking at an International Telecommunication Union Telecom World conference in Dubai, the anti-virus tycoon said, “cyber warfare is in full swing and we expect it to escalate in 2013.”

“The latest malicious virus attack on the world’s largest oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco, last August shows how dependent we are today on the Internet and information technology in general, and how vulnerable we are,” Kaspersky said.

He stopped short of blaming any particular player behind the massive cyber attacks across the Middle East, pointing out that “our job is not to identity hackers or cyber-terrorists. Our firm is like an X-ray machine, meaning we can scan and identify a problem, but we cannot say who or what is behind it.”

Iran, who confirmed that it suffered an attack by Flame malware that caused severe data loss, blames the United States and Israel for unleashing the cyber attacks.

Stuxnet, Flame…Gauss: New spy virus found in Middle East (alethonews.wordpress.com)

October 16, 2012 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Information Technology, Iran, Israel, Kaspersky Lab, Middle East, MiniFlame, United States | Leave a comment

On U.S. Efforts to Take Away Iran’s Rights by (Unilaterally) Rewriting the NPT: And the Complicity of America’s Iran “Experts” in the Charade

By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | The Race for Iran | October 14th, 2012

One of the more striking passages in President Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly last month presented Obama’s view of Iran’s nuclear rights. Specifically, the President noted, “We respect the right of nations to access peaceful nuclear power, but one of the purposes of the United States is to see that we harness that power for peace.”

This is a more restrictive formulation than Obama and senior officials in his administration have deployed in previous statements, which emphasized that Iran has a right to “pursue peaceful nuclear energy.” In normal English usage, the verb “to pursue” implies that, in the official American view, Iran might at least have a right to generate its own “peaceful nuclear energy.” By contrast, Obama’s more recent phrasing implies that, in Washington’s current reading, Iran does not even have a right to generate its own nuclear power, but may have to content itself with trying to “access to peaceful nuclear power” that is generated by others.

Needless to say, all of this is far removed from Iran’s longstanding insistence on its right to enrich uranium if it chooses to do so. And, of course, Iran has long recognized that, as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), it must exercise that right under international monitoring.

Initially, even the George W. Bush administration acknowledged that there was, somewhere in a vague legal ether, an Iranian right to enrich—but it argued that Tehran had somehow managed to “forfeit” this right. Such an argument did not persuade most of the lawyers working on the issue in the Bush administration, much less most of the other nations of the world. Eventually, the Bush administration retreated to a rigid demand that the Islamic Republic obey Security Council resolutions calling on it to suspend enrichment before the United States would negotiate with Tehran—and without ever stipulating that a negotiated settlement would include an explicit recognition of Iran’s nuclear rights. Predictably, this stance was diplomatically dysfunctional.

When the Obama administration came in, it dropped the Bush administration’s insistence on suspension as a precondition for negotiations. But it has been even less willing than the Bush administration to acknowledge Iran’s nuclear rights—and it, too, has the diplomatic (non)results to show for its obtuseness.

From a global perspective, the positions of the Bush and Obama administrations on Iran’s right to develop indigenous nuclear fuel cycle capabilities and to pursue internationally safeguarded enrichment of uranium on its own territory make the United States a real outlier. This reality was underscored in August at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, convened in Tehran, where NAM members—including the vast majority of the world’s nation-states—strongly endorsed the Islamic Republic’s right to pursue uranium enrichment. Although hardly covered in the American media, the NAM summit marked a significant international repudiation of U.S. policy regarding the nuclear rights of Iran and, by extension, other non-Western NPT signatories.

In the United States, this prompted defenders of the Bush/Obama line to spring into action. One of them, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, co-wrote a piece for the U.S. government-sponsored Iran Primer last month, see here, which argued that the NAM communique “misconstrues the NPT.” This sparked a vigorous online exchange between Albright—who is not a lawyer or student of international legal regimes—and Daniel Joyner, professor at the University of Alabama’s School of Law and one of the legal academy’s most accomplished scholars of the NPT. That exchange reveals much about the contribution of many Western Iran “experts” to America’s Iran debate.

According to Albright and his co-author,

“Under Article IV [of the NPT], Iran cannot claim the right to nuclear energy production—or a right to enrich at all—while under investigation for possible non-peaceful uses of these capabilities. Iran’s right to nuclear energy is qualified—a long as there are no major lapses in its Article II obligations…the NAM communique failed to acknowledge the need for Iran to fully comply with the international treaty on nuclear weapons. Iran tried to portray that the final communique represented a diplomatic victory for Tehran and its controversial nuclear program. But the summit’s resolution instead undermined the Non-Aligned Movement’s credibility, since it demonstrated that developing nations cannot be counted on to deal seriously with nuclear nonproliferation issues.”

Leaving aside the patronizing tone of the last sentence—in effect, Albright and his co-author are positing that responsible Americans and Europeans (the rightful masters of the universe) cannot possibly think non-Westerners are “dealing seriously” with important international issues unless those non-Westerners simply accept, uncritically, the views advanced by their Western superiors—this statement is wrong on several substantive points. Among other things, it is wrong as an interpretation of the NPT and in its assertion that there have been “major lapses” in Iran’s Article II obligations. These features prompted Daniel Joyner to offer the following observations on his blog, Arms Control Law, see here:

“Why is it that in the nonproliferation area everyone, including engineers, physicists, chemists and general policy wonks, think they can do legal interpretation? You won’t find me writing articles about the technical aspects of missile capabilities, or the internal physics of a warhead core. I know these things are outside of my training and qualification to do. But apparently everyone thinks they can do legal analysis. With respect, I think David should stick to obsessing over satellite pictures of tarps at random military bases in Iran.”

On our own, we found Joyner’s comment mildly amusing. But it clearly touched a nerve in David Albright, see here, who responded with a remarkable broadside characterized by ad hominem invective and fallacious arguments from authority:

“I have belatedly read Joyner’s rant about our Iran Primer article with amusement and likewise find his chorus of lackeys a pathetic bunch. Now I understand that Joyner’s blogging is supposed to be an ego trip for him and a safe haven for commentators, but Joyner’s blogging is particularly egotistical and, with respect, off-the-wall. In the comments and in Joyner’s writings, I can see the deep ignorance of the NPT. I certainly see no need to revise our analysis and statements in our Iran Primer article. We have consulted with many lawyers who find Joyner’s analysis deeply flawed and agenda driven… I would recommend that Joyner have his work reviewed by competent lawyers. He would need to revise most of his work.”

Joyner responded vigorously, see here, making the point, among his other rejoinders, that he has published two peer-reviewed books, with Oxford University Press, on interpreting the NPT. But, for our purposes, the most important part of his response concerns the public posture adopted by too many Washington, DC-based policy “experts” and the motives for their adoption of such a posture. Joyner’s analysis focuses on nonproliferation specialists, but, in our view, it also applies very well to many who claim expertise on other Iran-related issues:

”A colleague in D.C. once said this to me about the U.S. nonproliferation epistemic community—and by this community we both meant the entirety of the various NGOs and think tanks and the few University based centers that focus on nonproliferation studies in the U.S.: that the community is very D.C. centric, cliquish, incestuous and self-referential, to its detriment. These words have really stuck with me, because I find them to be absolutely true, and both insightful and parsimonious as I’ve observed the community over the years.

I would take it even further and say that in addition, in my opinion, the whole U.S. based nonproliferation experts community—with few exception—is systematically biased toward support of USG positions on all the top nonproliferation issues. They maintain an essentially common narrative and set of emphases that is in line with, and that provides support for, the narrative and emphases of the USG, with only the smallest amounts of quibbling around the edges (Albright will talk all day long about his “aluminum tubes” work). I think that there is in the work of the U.S. nonproliferation epistemic community far too little real, independent evaluation and criticism of USG positions. As I see it, the U.S. nonproliferation community almost acts as a second wave of apologists for U.S. policy, after the USG itself—though it sometimes shrouds this effort in a lot of technical and sometimes academic-looking jargon. But in the end what the U.S. nonproliferation community ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT DO is serve in the role of an independent, rigorous, analytical check on USG nonproliferation positions, as it could and should do, and as the nongovernmental nonproliferation community in other countries does. And I think there are some clear reasons for this. Much more so than in other countries, the members of the U.S. based nonproliferation community tend, with very few exceptions, to

1) have been employed by the USG in the past;

2) want to be employed by the USG in the future;

3) be funded by or hope to be funded by the USG; and/or

4) want to maintain the access and good favor they have with USG officials, for the sake of information and for the sake of invitations to cool events, etc.

Basically what I’m saying is that they are biased towards the positions of the USG, because of their overly close personal and institutional associations with the USG, and because they see their own professional success as being tied to the favor of the USG.

I think there’s also a significant degree of media whorishness at work here as well. As a colleague once wrote to me while we were discussing this topic: ‘I think there is another—very important—aspect you may be missing that may even over-ride the ones you mention: aside from taking USG positions, the non-proliferation community likes the high-media profile allotted it, when it loudly tut-tuts 3rd world nuclear arms capacities (or enemies of the west’s nuclear arms capacities), whether or not such capacities are consistent w/ NPT and/or CSAs. People like being quoted, appearing on TV, and generally feeling important. The Non-proliferation community “loves” the attention and basks in this glow, and though they would “privately” acknowledge that Iran is not so far outside bounds (if at all), they nonetheless pass on statements and innuendo to media indicating the alleged dangers and thus wittingly or not, fan the flames. Others like ISIS simply pass on opinions dressed as expert findings. It just would not do for Non-proliferation types to tell the media: “well, no, Iran’s program is actually not a threat to world peace yet” like the DNI did.’”

Not surprisingly, Joyner sees David Albright as embodying this description, as he points out in criticizing some of Albright’s analysis on Iran’s nuclear activities:

“All [Albright] really does is make provocative speculations about what “could” be happening at locations in Iran, and what “maybe” Iran will do in the future. And it’s so clear that he’s working on the basis of a set of unproven, but firmly held assumptions about Iran—the same assumptions he had about Iraq, for which his work has been widely discredited—that they have a nuclear weapons program, and he is ginning up all the evidence he can that might support that assumption, speculating about what that evidence may mean, but only in a direction that would tend to support his preexisting assumption. There’s no rigor here in thoroughly considering and evaluating other possible explanations for the same observations—like a real academic or even a real, quality NGO analysis would. Maybe it’s because David has never done PhD level academic work, and so he doesn’t understand what is expected of quality scientific analysis. But this is an assumption-driven piece of provocative speculation that serves only to provide support for the USG’s contentions about Iran’s nuclear program. That’s just what he infamously did in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq war too. That’s not rigorous and independent analysis. That’s biased and low quality work…

I know very well how the D.C. nonproliferation crowd feels about me… They think my work is pro-Iranian and generally pro-developing country, and anti-U.S. They say I’m biased and agenda driven… Am I personally sympathetic to or biased towards the policies of the Iranian government? Absolutely not… However, do I think that the legal arguments of the current government of Iran deserve a fair and independent and rigorous hearing and analysis by the international community, just as the legal arguments of any other government do? Yes I do, for many reasons, not least of which is the prevention of unnecessary and unjust economic sanctions and possibly war against the Iranian people, and the fairness and perceived legitimacy and relevance of international law. I don’t see anyone else stepping up to make these arguments, and make sure that they are taken seriously in the West, and that’s why I keep doing it.

Am I sympathetic to developing countries’ positions in the nuclear energy area generally? Yes I am. I admit that freely. And it’s because I genuinely think that they are bullied by the West in the nuclear area, as in many other areas, for a whole range of political and economic reasons, and that the legal advisors of Western governments have concocted erroneous legal arguments to give perceived credibility to these policies. I can’t change the policies and the politics they’re based on, but I think there is a real need to lend whatever professional abilities I have to making sure that their legal arguments are made at a high level of competence and sophistication, and are given due consideration by the international community. Again, no one else seems to be doing this in the West, and so I keep doing it. But I maintain that my legal analysis is independent and essentially objective, and that I follow the proper analysis of a legal source to its most persuasively correct conclusion, no matter what that conclusion is.

I think that the U.S. nonproliferation community, linked so closely as it is to the USG itself, generally takes a negative view of my work for a number of reasons. One of the primary reasons is that they are so used to being able to effectively tell the rest of the world what to think about the NPT regime, and how to interpret the law associated with it, that when someone independent comes along and poses a genuine intellectual challenge to the warped and USG driven legal views of the NPT regime that they’ve been spouting for decades, they genuinely don’t know what to do about it. With the errors and intellectual bankruptcy of their legal arguments laid bare, they make only feeble attempts to defend themselves substantively because, honestly, they don’t have very good substantive arguments to make and they never have. The only argument they have left to make is to argue in desperation that the challenger is biased and agenda driven—which is in the end the ultimate irony, because it’s precisely their own bias and USG-centric agenda that has made their arguments so weak, and has provided the legal errors that the challenger now corrects, to the persuasion of everyone else in the world.”

Our compliments to Prof. Joyner.

NAM demands that Israel join the NPT without further delay (alethonews.wordpress.com)
IAEA resolution casts doubt on benefit of NPT: Iran (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Iran Urges Israel to Join NPT (en.rian.ru)
NAM calls for total nuclear disarmament (alethonews.wordpress.com)
What If Iran Leaves the NPT? (nationalinterest.org)

October 15, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security, Iran, NAM, Non-Aligned Movement, NPT, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, United States | Leave a comment

Eutelsat set to take Iran satellite channels off air

Press TV – October 14, 2012

European satellite provider Eutelsat SA is set to pull the plug on several satellite channels and radio stations broadcast from Iran.

The company has ordered media services company, Arqiva, to take the Iranian satellite channels off one of its Hot Bird frequencies.

The Iranian channels being taken off the air include Press TV, al-Alam, Jam-e-Jam 1 and 2, Sahar 1 and 2, Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, Quran TV, and the Arabic-language al-Kawthar.

The ban will also affect the satellite broadcast of several Iranian radio stations.

The move follows months of jamming of Iranian channels by European satellite companies. It also shows that the European Union does not respect freedom of speech, and spares no efforts to silence the voice of alternative media outlets.

Iranian news channels affected by the decision only aimed to break the West’s monopoly on news broadcast by reflecting the voice of the oppressed people to the world.

The illegal move by Eutelsat SA, therefore, is a step to mute all alternative news outlets representing the voice of the voiceless.

The Iranian channels, however, reserve the right to take legal action against Eutelsat’s decision in order to restore their rights and compensate for any material and spiritual damages thereof to the full extent possible under international law.

TAS to enter North Africa market with Eutelsat satellite (bikyamasr.com)
NileSat, Arabsat Suspend Broadcast ,Union of Syrian Journalists Denounces Suspending Broadcast of Syrian Satellite Channels as Media Piracy (toolwielder.wordpress.com)

October 14, 2012 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Eutelsat, Hot Bird, Iran, Press TV, Satellite television | Leave a comment

Iranian hostages can be freed through talks with West’s 3 proxies

By Sabah Zanganeh | Mehr News Agency | October 13, 2012

TEHRAN — The practice of taking hostages is a serious crime that violates all accepted humanitarian principles.

The kidnapping of 48 Iranian nationals in Damascus in early August by an armed terrorist group is a clear example of this issue.

Senior commanders of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have repeatedly declared that they will free the Iranian nationals if the Iranian government uses its influence over Damascus to obtain the release of jailed rebels. The fact that the FSA is trying to take advantage of the friendly relations between Iran and Syria is nothing new. However, the group must understand that the rebel prisoners are being detained by the Syrian government and the authority to release them is in the hands of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad not Iran.

The FSA has claimed that it is fighting for democracy and the establishment of a free and humanitarian society. However, the threats to kill the Iranian citizens have clearly revealed the true nature of the group to the Syrian people. What would the fate of Syria be if it came under the rule of such terrorists?

Certain Western governments and their regional proxies, namely Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, continue to support the FSA and other opposition groups in Syria. Iran is strongly opposed to the policy adopted by these governments and regards it as the main cause of the intensification of violence in Syria. However, the Iranian government should engage in talks with these governments to obtain the release of the hostages.

Even if the FSA kills the Iranian nationals, it will have no effect on the friendly relations between Iran and Syria. But it would seriously harm diplomatic relations between Iran and the three governments supporting the insurgency in Syria. And if the hostages are killed, it would encourage terrorist groups in other countries to use the same methods to realize their malevolent objectives.

Sabah Zanganeh is a political analyst based in Tehran.

Majority in Turkey against war with Syria: Opinion poll (alethonews.wordpress.com)
FSA threaten to kill Iranian hostages if rebels not freed (rt.com)

October 14, 2012 Posted by aletho | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Free Syrian Army, FSA, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria | Leave a comment

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