An Israeli bombing attack might set back Iran's nuclear development program by one to two years, America's top intelligence official told a Senate committee Thursday, indicating that viable military options are far more limited than Israeli leaders have suggested.

James R. Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said he does not believe that Israel has decided to attack Iran's uranium enrichment and other nuclear facilities. Clapper said the U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran's leaders have not decided to build nuclear weapons but are pursuing technology that might allow them to do so.

"The Israelis aren't going to [attack Iran] … they can't do it, it's beyond their capacity," Hayden said. "They only have the ability to make this worse."

A monthlong U.S. bombing campaign would inflict far more damage, Hayden said, but it wouldn't be worth it. The George W. Bush administration studied the issue, he said.

"The consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that would build it in secret," Hayden said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-israel-bombing-20120217,0,3806847.story

aerdil posted:
fortunately american administrations always listen to their more rational generals & intelligence heads

so how is this attack goign to go down in your mind

Just get to the damn table. Just get to the table. The problem right now is we can’t get them to the damn table to at least sit down and begin to discuss their differences.You know, we all know what the pieces are here for a potential agreement.

christmas_cheer posted:
i was talking to my corner store guy, an indian, and he told me that he thinks we should let israel bomb iran's nuclear capability. 'not houses, not bridges' just nuclear bomb facilities

the person you called a "liberal" is probably better attuned to the reality of politics, which has nothing to do with the ideas of marcuse or zizek. just sayin

We have seen all this before. The US ratchets up its rhetoric, Israel threatens a military attack, escalating sanctions bite harder on the Iranian people, Iran refuses to back down on uranium enrichment. But at the same time, top US military and intelligence officials actually admit Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon, and has not decided whether to even begin a building process.

There is certainly a big dose of déjà vu. In 2004 Israel's prime minister denounced the international community for not doing enough to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In 2005 the Israeli military was reported to "be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran". In 2006 the House Armed Services Committee issued a report drafted by one congressional staffer (an aide to hard-line pro-war John Bolton, then US ambassador to the UN), claiming that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons-grade 90 per cent. That same year a different Israeli prime minister publicly threatened a military strike against Iran. In 2008, George W Bush visited Israel to reassure them that "all options" remained on the table.

The earlier crisis saw a very similar gap between the demonisation, sanctions, threats of military strikes against Iran, and the seemingly contradictory recognition by US, Israeli, United Nations and other military and intelligence officials that Iran actually did not possess nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons programme, or even a decision to try to develop nuclear weapons.

The 2005 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) determined that even if Iran decided it wanted to make a nuclear weapon, it was unlikely before five to ten years, and that producing enough fissile material would be impossible even in five years unless Iran achieved "more rapid and successful progress" than it had so far. By 2007, a new NIE had pulled back even further, asserting "with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme ... Tehran had not started its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007". The NIE even admitted "we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons". That made the dire threats against Iran sound pretty lame. So maybe it wasn't surprising that Newsweek magazine described how, "in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document".

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA - the UN's nuclear watchdog) issued report after report indicating it could find no evidence that Iran had diverted enriched uranium to a weapons programme. The UN inspection agency harshly rejected the House committee report, calling some of its claims about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons activities incorrect, and others "outrageous and dishonest". And outside of the Bush White House, which was spearheading much of the hysteria, members of Congress, the neo-con think tanks, hysterical talk show hosts, and much of the mainstream media went ballistic.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/201221510012473174.html

babyfinland posted:
hey aerdil did u know iran just moved several warship through the suez into the port of tartus in syria without a peep from israel or anybody lol

looking pretty shaky!!!

yeah of course i heard about it because israel loudly complained about it and is raving about monitoring the situation closely and shouting that they will take swift action should they appear near their coast & its being cited as being a prime reason for hightened tensions the past couple days. i was also alluding to it in my previous post.

wtf u talking about lmao

Last week, the Times of India revealed that a police fact sheet about “sticky bombs” that had been distributed to the media appeared partly drawn from the instructions to an online fantasy game.

“Sticky bombs are a type of explosive crafted from one Bomb and 5 Gel,” the document said, repeating word-for-word language found in the instructions for “Terraria.” “At point blank range, it can cause a total of 100 damage to mobs and 200 to the player.”