No Threat of Nuclear Weapon from Iran: Intelligence Finding

Intel Estimate on Iran Blocks Neo-Con Plans

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - In the struggle over U.S. policy toward Iran, neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration spoiling for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites have been seeking to convince the public that the United States must strike before an Iranian nuclear weapons capability becomes inevitable.


Iranian employees pose for a picture at the newly opened heavy water plant in Arak, 320 kms south of Tehran, 26 August 2006. US President George W. Bush called Iran 's leaders "tyrants" as dangerous as Al-Qaeda terrorists and said they must not be allowed to get nuclear weapons -- "the tools of mass murder."(AFP/File/Atta Kenare)

In order to do so, they must discredit the intelligence community's conclusions that Iran is still as many as 10 years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon and that such a weapon is not an inevitable consequence of its present uranium enrichment programme.

Those findings were first circulated in a top secret National Intelligence Estimate on Iran completed in May or June 2005, and could be a rallying point for Democrats and dissident Republicans inclined to oppose an attack on Iran. It has also inhibited the neoconservatives from being able to launch the kind of propaganda campaign against Iran they would prefer.

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link: commondreams.org

I am looking forward to the day when the people of the USA understand and reject the neo-conservative agenda.

If Iran doesn't pose a nuclear threat, why is the US government pushing for political and economic sanctions against it?