The Biggest Deception of All? Does Iran Already Have Nuclear Weapons?

Shalom Freedman, Arutz Sheva:

While the world has been focusing on the IAEA negotiation with Iran on the extending of its moratorium on uranium-enrichment, there has been a revelation about the Iranian nuclear program which reportedly 'stunned' the White House and President Bush. ‘Geostrategy’ the Intelligence Agency directed by Bill Gertz has reported in the Washington Times that Iran thanks to the transfer of key plutonium- fuel technology from North Korea has already achieved nuclear capability.

The Iranians a month ago who first threatened to renew their work on uranium enrichment , and then temporarily backed down on this- were apparently throwing sand in the eyes of the world. For their real focus in developing the weapons has been most probably on the plutonium and not the uraniaum enrichment process. As for the delivery system for the weapon ,the report says that late in 2004 the “ Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps tested a command and control network that would permit a nuclear weapons warhead to be placed on an enhanced Shihab 3 missiles.” READ MORE

All this, if true, alters completely the Middle East and world strategic equation. For now the United States troops in Iraq and Southern Europe are under the threat of Iranian nuclear attack. All of the Middle East and most importantly Israel is under the Iranian nuclear threat. There is also the likelihood that, should this report be fully verified, a number of other nations will rush to go nuclear. Former American Secretary-of – State Henry Kissinger has envisaged the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran as leading to an exponential increase in the threat of nuclear disaster.

The fact that Iran has most likely deceived the world again is no surprise. They after all had a hidden nuclear program for twenty years before an Iranian opposition group revealed this to the IAEA in October 2003. They too reportedly now have a parallel secret uranium- enrichment program. The IAEA has never been allowed access at a number of Iranian nuclear installations it requested to visit.

A few days ago the Iranians publicly stated once again that they had no intention of attaining nuclear weapons. Statements along this line were made by former Iranian President Raftsanjani (The same Raftsanjani who has threatened that Israel would be destroyed in a nuclear exchange with Iran, while the much larger and more populous Iran would survive) and Hassan Rowhani, the chief Iranian negotiator with the IAEA. But the regime of the Mullahs in Iran has made so many contradictory statements over the years on the nuclear issue so as to have to say the least, questionable credibility.

It is not at all clear how ,or even if, the IAEA will react to this latest development. IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei is reported to be overjoyed at the success in Iran’s agreeing to temporarily extend its moratorium on uranium enrichment. And it is not clear what the United States will do, especially as it seems to be very much at a loss in what to do in regard to North Korean nuclear weapons. The US has just given Iran access to the World Trade Organization as a part of the deal for Iran to extend its uranium enrichment moratorium until July.

There, a lack of cooperation on the part of the Chinese prevented US pressure from being truly effective on North Korea. And it seems that North Korea in transferring technology to Iran was not simply seeking to aid a fellow rogue state, but rather making a serious strategic complication for the United States, one which will diminish US pressure on Pyongyang.

If Iran has attained nuclear capability, then all the tens if not hundreds of intelligence- estimates made by US and Israeli experts over the past few years as to when Iran would attain nuclear weapons have been wrong. So too, the hesitation and delay in forcefully dealing with the situation seems now to have been a critical error.

With the US deeply involved in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel worrying about how to retreat from Gaza without the process leading to too great a humiliation, neither of the countries most likely to deal with the Iranian program seem likely to do so immediately.

And this means that the world as a whole is likelier to be a much more dangerous place for a long time to come.