The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear industry was published in early 2005. It concluded that Iran could not possess a nuclear weapon until “early-to-mid next decade.”
At his confirmation hearing last December, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, declared: “While they are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for a nuclear capability, I think they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons--Pakistan to the east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west, and us in the Persian Gulf.”
In a press conference on August 7, President Bush bluntly stated: “This (Iran) is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon.” He did not reveal his source for this assertion. On August 28, he again warned: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”
Yet, on the same day the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported: “The agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful use.”
Faced with unwelcome IAEA findings and increasing domestic and foreign opposition to a unilateral strike on Iranian targets, Messrs. Bush and Cheney apparently concluded that Iran’s “nuclear threat” is--in Lyndon Johnson’s jargon--“a dog that won’t hunt.” So now the two prefer to accuse the Iranian government of aiding attacks on American troops in Iraq.
On August 28, the President related that “coalition forces seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents.” Defense Secretary Gates publicly acknowledged that we “do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling, or exactly what's behind it."
While U.S. media allegations about the Iranian threat to the region have been increasing, they usually remain vague and unsubstantiated. On August 14, James Woolsey, the neoconservative former CIA director, told Lou Dobbs on CNN--without any citation of evidence--that the U.S. may have to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities because “I’m afraid within, well, at worst, a few months, at best a few years, they could have the bomb.”
The Bush administration insists that Iran’s support for militant Shi’ites in Lebanon and Palestine justifies designating the country as a supporter of “global” terrorism. Yet, when Afghan President Karzai met with the President, he explained that Shi’ite Iran has consistently opposed the Sunni extremism of the Taliban.
"Iran and Afghanistan have never been as friendly as they are today," Karzai told Mr. Bush. "In the past five years, Iran has been contributing to Afghanistan's reconstruction, and in the past five years, Afghanistan has been Iran's very close friend." Iranian exports over the last five years have grown from less than $10 million a year to more than $500 million. Amazingly, Karzai even claimed that "It has been possible for Afghanistan to be so close with Iran because our partners in the international community, especially the United States, understood and supported this relationship."
Practically all of America’s allies--except for Israel’s right-wing-- have expressed the view that the differences between the Bush administration and Iran’s leaders can be mitigated, if not resolved, through diplomacy. Numerous allied leaders and commentators, moreover, have been warning that another unilateral “shock and awe” bombing of a Muslim country, be it Sunni or Shi’ite, would incite more terror attacks by anti-Western Muslims on targets under American and allied control.