A
prudent U.S. foreign and defense policy would assume that Iran's
nuclear weapons program is probably on a par with North Korea's.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry
The
writer is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland
Security and Director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both
congressional advisory boards, and served in the Congressional EMP
Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House
Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of Apocalypse
Unknown: The Struggle To Protect America From An Electromagnetic Pulse
Catastrophe available through CreateSpace.com or Amazon.com.
The biggest liar is in the White House.
For
several years now, myself and others have been warning that Iran
probably already has the bomb. Contrary to Obama Administration promises
that they will know when Iran crosses "the red line" to build the bomb,
we have warned that such claims are false.
U.S. intelligence is not good enough to so precisely and with such high confidence monitor and verify the status of Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Defense Science Board Report
A
recently published Defense Department study "Assessment of Nuclear
Monitoring and Verification Technologies" (January 2014), by the blue
ribbon Defense Science Board, concludes the following:
"Closing
the nation's global nuclear monitoring gaps should be a national
priority. It will require, however, a level of commitment and
sustainment we don't normally do well without a crisis. ....monitoring
for proliferation... presents challenges for which current solutions are
either inadequate, or more often, do not exist. Among these challenges
are... Small inventories of weapons and materials.... Small nuclear
enterprises designed to produce, store, and deploy only a small number
of weapons...Undeclared facilities and/or covert operations, such as
testing below detection thresholds, or acquisition of materials or
weapons through theft or purchase... Use of non‐traditional technologies..."
These
intelligence blind-spots align perfectly with U.S. monitoring gaps
against Iran's nuclear weapons program. The Defense Science Board Report
is tantamount to an admission that Iran probably already has the bomb.
Reza
Varjavand is associate professor of economics and finance at the Graham
School of management at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. In this
short piece at Iranian.com, he asks a common-sense question that has
been obscured by the fog of jihad-enabling propaganda pumped out
endlessly by the likes of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) and Reza Aslan’s Aslan Media. His title, “Is Fear of
Islam Unfounded?,” is of course prompted by the use of the term
“Islamophobia,” which literally means fear of Islam; however, I think
the best response to the atrocities he mentions is not fear, but
resoluteness in the defense of freedom and human rights.
An especially important point here is that the converse is true. The conditions for major war develop much more easily when the U.S. is too weak. They are developing as we speak.
The gathering storm
The collapse of order in the Arab nations in 2011 was the first significant stage of the process. The perception that the United States would do nothing about a Hezbollah coup in Lebanon was tested in January of that year. The perception proved to be true, and when protests erupted in Tunisia and Egypt, for causes both natural and manufactured, a set of radical Islamist actors – the “establishment” Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni jihadists, Iran – saw an opportunity. The establishment Muslim Brotherhood has largely won out in Tunisia, but the battle still rages among these radical actors for Egypt, Syria, and now Iraq. Lebanon is being incrementally sucked into the maelstrom as well.