Republicans are Beating The Drums of War, Again. This Time Against Iran.

[Abel Malcolm]

All the Republican candidates for President are busy trying to beat
the drums of war again, this time against Iran, while at the same time
these guys are decrying the high price of gasoline. One thing that
all economists can agree on is that another war of choice in the
Middle East will only increase the price of gas at the pumps.

If sanctions and diplomacy fail to alter Iran's nuclear ambitions,
then an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran is still not likely to set back
Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Iran has made advances in nuclear technology, with enrichment of
centrifuges and domestically made reactor fuel, but this still doesn't
mean that Iran has developed a nuclear weapon.

Within the intelligence community, in both Israel and America,
experienced analysts believe that Iran’s leaders with nuclear weapons
will not be much different than they are today, their first concern is
holding onto power, and not to use a weapon to wipe out Israel a move
that is certain to bring about their own destruction.

Paul Pillar is a former senior CIA intelligence analyst, he was deeply
involved back when there were doubts about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of
mass destruction programs, doubts that were deliberately low-keyed and
ignored by the Bush White House.

Pillar says that Iran with a bomb would not be anywhere near as
dangerous as most people assume, and a war to try to stop it from
acquiring one would be less successful and far more costly than most
people imagine.

Pillar teaches at Georgetown University, and says that "despite all
the “bellicosity and political rhetoric about the issue, the idea of
an Iran with the bomb has been subjected to precious little careful
analysis.”

Pillar says that there is a repeated stereotyping that Iran’s rulers
are “religious fanatics who value martyrdom more than life, and
therefore cannot be counted on to act rationally." But in the past 30
years, the Iranians have proven that although they promote martyrdom
to defend their homeland, “they have never given any indication of
wanting to become martyrs themselves.”

An aspect of Iran's history that Americans tend to forget is that it
was the CIA who overthrew a popularly elected government, that of
Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in August 1953. This is
what makes Bush's open policy of “regime change” less than likely to
be accepted by the people there.

For the most part, US and Israeli intelligence agencies agree that
Iran has not restarted its development of a nuclear bomb. That
assessment, among top US officials is that Iran has not yet decided to
pursue a nuclear weapon, a conclusion which was been established based
on the strongest intelligence analyses.

Israel sees an existential threat in Iran's pursuit of a nuclear bomb,
but Israel still agrees with the U.S. assessments that Iran has not
really decided to pursue "the bomb". Mossad, which is Israel's
equivalent of our CIA, tends to, for the most part, agree with
America's assessment on Iran's weapons program,

http://www.haaretz.com/news/report-barak-says-iran-is-not-existential-threat-to-israel-1.7710