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US: Iran a year away from nukes, strike 'not off the table'

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US: Iran a year away from nukes, strike 'not off the table'



Published: 20 December, 2011, 21:36

leon-panetta-17.n.jpg


US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gestures as he prepares to depart Tripoli, December 17, 2011 (Reuters / Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Pool)

Washington is not ruling out a military operation against Tehran if it gets wind of an Iranian nuke program, declared US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The US believes Iran could develop a nuclear bomb in under a year.
Just two weeks ago, Panetta discouraged Israel from attacking Iran in the wake of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which raised concerns that the Iranian nuclear program was veering off the civilian path. But on Monday, Panetta told CBS that the military option “was not off the table” if the US learns of nuclear weapons being built in Iran.
“The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us and that's a red line, obviously, for the Israelis,” the US Defense Secretary told CBS in a preview of “60 Minutes.”
“If they proceed, and we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon, then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it,” he added.
Iran has accumulated enough material and technology to assemble a nuclear bomb in about one year, added the US Defense Secretary. If Tehran has a "hidden facility somewhere,” Panetta says, that could speed up the process.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak expressed similar determination, saying Tel Aviv and Washington would do whatever it takes to obstruct Iran’s nuclear intentions.
"Our two countries clearly believe that a nuclear Iran is neither conceivable nor acceptable,” Barak told Israeli public radio on Sunday.
Though earlier this month Barak ruled out a strike on Iran, in Sunday's interview he reiterated “the fact that we must not take any option off the table."
Iran denies the pursuit of any military objective in enriching uranium. But according to a leaked April 2010 US Department of Defense assessment of Iran's military capability, the veil of mystery over its nuclear plans plays to Tehran’s advantage. As Iran’s military can only afford the defense, the uncertainty Iran keeps up around the nuke question is a part of a “deterrent strategy” the country has adopted in the face of “external or ‘hard’ threats from the US and Israel.”
Meanwhile, American and European diplomats met in Italy on Tuesday to discuss further sanctions on the Persian country. The meeting was joined by Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Korea, and sought to halt Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. The group has called for further pressure on Iran, until the country restarts peace talks with the international community. The statement comes despite the fact that the Iranian envoy to the UN has offered to allow IAEA officials to visit the county in order to solve any outstanding problems.

US: Iran a year away from nukes, strike 'not off the table' — RT
 
Basically America wants to declare a war against Iran.
That is what military strike is.
If you ask my opinion.
 
These people are ******* retards


1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be "uprooted by an international front headed by the US."

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999. "Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East," Peres warned, "because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militanCY."

1992: Joseph Alpher, a former official of Israel's Mossad spy agency, says "Iran has to be identified as Enemy No. 1." Iran's nascent nuclear program, he told The New York Times, "really gives Israel the jitters."

1992: Leaked copy of the Pentagon's "Defense Strategy for the 1990s" makes little reference to Iran, despite laying out seven scenarios for potential future conflict that stretch from Iraq to North Korea.

1995: The New York Times conveys the fears of senior US and Israeli officials that "Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought" – about five years away – and that Iran’s nuclear bomb is “at the top of the list” of dangers in the coming decade. The report speaks of an "acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program," claims that Iran "began an intensive campaign to develop and acquire nuclear weapons" in 1987, and says Iran was "believed" to have recruited scientists from the former Soviet Union and Pakistan to advise them.

1997: The Christian Science Monitor reports that US pressure on Iran's nuclear suppliers had "forced Iran to adjust its suspected timetable for a bomb. Experts now say Iran is unlikely to acquire nuclear weapons for eight or 10 years."

1998: The New York Times said that Israel was less safe as a result of the launch even though Israel alone in the Middle East possessed both nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to drop them anywhere. "The major reaction to this is going to be from Israel, and we have to worry what action the Israelis will take," the Times quoted a former intelligence official as saying. An unidentified expert said: "This test shows Iran is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, because no one builds an 800-mile missile to deliver conventional warheads."

1998: The same week, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reports to Congress that Iran could build an intercontinental ballistic missile – one that could hit the US – within five years. The CIA gave a timeframe of 12 years.

2002: CIA warns that the danger from nuclear-tipped missiles, especially from Iran and North Korea, is higher than during the cold war. Robert Walpole, then a top CIA officer for strategic and nuclear programs, tells a Senate panel that Iran's missile capability had grown more quickly than expected in the previous two years – putting it on par with North Korea. The threat "will continue to grow as the capabilities of potential adversaries mature," he says.

2004: Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell tells reporters that Iran had been working on technology to fit a nuclear warhead onto a missile. "We are talking about information that says they not only have [the] missiles but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together," he said.

2005: US presents 1,000 pages of designs and other documentation allegedly retrieved from a computer laptop in Iran the previous year, which are said to detail high-explosives testing and a nuclear-capable missile warhead. The “alleged studies,” as they have since been called, are dismissed by Iran as forgeries by hostile intelligence services.

2006: The drums of war beat faster after the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh quotes US sources saying that a strike on Iran is all but inevitable, and that there are plans to use tactical nuclear weapons against buried Iranian facilities.

2007: President Bush warns that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to "World War III." Vice President Dick Cheney had previously warned of "serious consequences" if Iran did not give up its nuclear program.

2007: A month later, an unclassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran is released, which controversially judges with "high confidence" that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons effort in fall 2003.

The report, meant to codify the received wisdom of America's 16 spy agencies, turns decades of Washington assumptions upside down. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls the report a "victory for the Iranian nation." An Iranian newspaper editor in Tehran tells the Monitor, “The conservatives … feel the chance of war against them is gone."

June 2008: Then-US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicts that Israel will attack Iran before January 2009, taking advantage of a window before the next US president came to office.

May 2009: US Senate Foreign Relations Committee reports states: "There is no sign that Iran's leaders have ordered up a bomb."

2010: US officials note that Iran's nuclear program has been slowed by four sets of UN Security Council sanctions and a host of US and EU measures. The Stuxnet computer virus also played havoc through 2011 with Iran's thousands of spinning centrifuges that enrich uranium.

January 2011: When Meir Dagan steps down as director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, he says that Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon until 2015. "Israel should not hasten to attack Iran, doing so only when the sword is upon its neck," Mr. Dagan warned. Later he said that attacking Iran would be "a stupid idea.... The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible."

January 2011: A report by the Federation of American Scientists on Iran's uranium enrichment says there is "no question” that Tehran already has the technical capability to produce a "crude" nuclear device.

February 2011: National intelligence director James Clapper affirms in testimony before Congress that “Iran is keeping the option open to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities and better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so," Mr. Clapper said. "We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."

---------- Post added at 09:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:12 PM ----------

Wow, they dont stop with predicting, do they ?
The year: 2258
Prediction: Iran is 2 years away from a nuke
Source: Idiot Americans
 
These people are ******* retards


1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be "uprooted by an international front headed by the US."

LOL, I thought they were whining about this for 10 years.

But in fact it is closer to 20 years. :lol:
 
LOL, I thought they were whining about this for 10 years.

But in fact it is closer to 20 years. :lol:
And when we do strike, there will a sheeple chorus of how the US 'jumped the gun' and 'knee-jerk' and 'did not used diplomacy' and so on...To cover up all the years figures originally used to mock US. :lol:
 
And when we do strike, there will a sheeple chorus of how the US 'jumped the gun' and 'knee-jerk' and 'did not used diplomacy' and so on...To cover up all the years figures originally used to mock US. :lol:

I remember you boasting to me a while back that America would leave the United Nations for some "Concert of Democracies" BS.

I'm still waiting. :lol: Stop whining and do it.
 
I remember you boasting to me a while back that America would leave the United Nations for some "Concert of Democracies" BS.

I'm still waiting. :lol: Stop whining and do it.
That was my opinion, not a 'boast'. Learn the difference. And what are you waiting for on Taiwan? Who is really boasting empty boasts here?
 
Iran has too much oil for its own good also it has no puppets in place like in the middle east / pakistan /india ....the nukes will make it impossible for uncle sam and its allies to go on some adventure later.
 
It has been "on the table" since 79 so far the US ain't done $hit. At this point I would start worrying if they "stop" barking not the other way around.
 

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