Running Out of Excuses on Iran

It was in late May that former Obama Pentagon official Michelle Flournoy assured her mostly Israeli audience at a major security conference in Tel Aviv that although a strike against Iran had not been disqualified as a possibility by the administration, its results would be limited. Any military strike, she told them, would, even "in its most wildly successful incarnation", only set back Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons by one to three years. Now time is surely running out, and the 'one-to-three' line has become a mantra for the White House, a sort of received wisdom. But is there any truth to it?

Lee Smith examines the claim of minimal delay:

Christopher Ford, a former State Department official who worked on nuclear proliferation issues, told me that the evidence on which the standard assessment is based could have various loopholes. “There are so many assumptions built into the idea that it’s only one to three years,” said Ford. “For instance, it’s true to a degree that you can’t really get rid of the knowledge, but the nuclear-weapons scientists themselves aren’t the only link in chain. There’s other human capital that might be part of your destruction package, like some minor metallurgy specialists, who maybe aren’t working on the most sophisticated parts of the nuclear program, but without it they can’t have one.”

Obama officials aren’t telegraphing any of this. Instead, top intelligence and military officials, like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Adm. Mullen, keep saying that the Iranians can be only minimally delayed. Keane, the retired four-star general, believes that’s because the White House, as much as it claims it won’t allow Iran to get a bomb, isn’t willing to strike. “I don’t believe this administration has any intention, ever, of attacking Iran,” says Keane. “I don’t believe it, the Israelis don’t believe it, and the Iranians don’t believe it.”

Jonathan Tobin thinks the administration is running out of excuses when it comes to Iran, and suggests that so long as the United States upholds its commitment to diplomacy, not military action, then Israel is unlikely to act on its own.

(Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images, via FP)