Word: nuclearism
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That the new U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear program has put the kibosh on hawkish calls for a military response has been discussed to death, but there's been very little focus on a second potential casualty: the U.S. plan to base ground-based missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. The plan to station interceptor missiles in Poland and tracking radars in the Czech Republic is regarded warily by citizens of those countries, and with outright hostility by the Russians who see it as aimed at blunting their own missile capability in the event...
Israeli officials were shocked and disappointed by the U.S. intelligence agencies' report downgrading the risk of Iran's building nuclear weapons. That's because not only do some of the key conclusions of the latest National Intelligence Estimate undercut some of Israel's own assessments, they also seem to dim the likelihood that the U.S. will take military action against Iran's nuclear facilities - a step the Israelis had been quietly urging the White House to take should sanctions fail to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program. With the new U.S. assessment, one Israeli cabinet official told TIME, "It looks...
...Israelis politely disagreed. As Barak later told Israeli Army Radio, "It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear program, but as far as we know it has probably since revived it." He added: "We are talking about a specific track connected with their weapons-building program, to which the American [intelligence] connection, and maybe that of others, was severed." The Israeli defense minister implied that the new U.S. assessment was "made in an environment of high uncertainty...
...Ephraim Halevy, ex-chief of Mossad and now an academic, tells TIME that what hasn't changed, is that the view - reiterated in the NIE - that Iran is "capable of producing a nuclear weapon." He adds, "You put that together with Iran's devious ways and evasive tactics with the U.N. atomic inspectors, and you have a very real threat." Dr. Ephraim Kam, Deputy Director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, concurs. "Even if it's true that Iran has shut down its military nuclear program, it can start it up at any time...
...clarifications about the NIE report. "It has many inner contradictions," says one cabinet official involved in intelligence matters. Israeli officials don't want to disagree too openly or publicly with the Americans, but they also don't want world opinion to dismiss the threat of Iran's becoming a nuclear power. Foreign Minister Livni has instructed Israeli embassies to maintain a focus on the menace that she says Iran poses to Israel and the West...