There Is No Iranian Nuclear Threat
By Anthony Gregory • Friday March 23, 2012 11:09 AM PDT • 17 Comments
I’m going to keep saying it until the American-Israeli threats against Iran stop. Reuters reports what everyone should know:
The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.
Those conclusions, drawn from extensive interviews with current and former U.S. and European officials with access to intelligence on Iran, contrast starkly with the heated debate surrounding a possible Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.
Indeed, this has obviously been true for years. The official position of practically every authority on this subject has been: Iran has no nukes and is not trying to get them. This “impending” threat from Iran is completely bogus. Yet we see the anti-Iranian rhetoric stepping up, month by month, all toward an increasingly likely culmination in the form of war. Insanity.
In the last nine years, we have heard the repeated myth that “everyone thought Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “everyone thought Iraq was a threat.” This is not true, of course. Shortly before the Iraq war, working as an intern at the Independent Institute, in my first op-ed, I warned:
Colin Powell revealed a photograph to the UN Security council, supposedly of a “terrorist poison and explosive factory.” He also accused Iraq of evading U.N. inspectors by moving mobile biological weapons labs before the inspectors arrived.
The so-called poison factory — located in Iraqi territory controlled by Kurdish allies of the United States — turned out to be a television studio.
The so-called mobile weapons labs were food-testing trucks, according to chief inspector Hans Blix. Blix has also said that there exists no proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and that the “reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity.” As long as Bush bases his reasons for attacking Iraq on Hussein’s disrespect for the United Nations, it would seem consistent that he listen to it.
The administration cites intelligence reports to infer an impending threat from Iraq. But CIA sources reportedly accuse Bush of misinterpreting the evidence. Last July the CIA reported that Iraq had no demonstrated connection to September 11, posed no threat for the “foreseeable future,” and that attacking Iraq would actually increase risks of terrorism against the United States — an assessment the agency has not abandoned despite its other shifting sentiments.
Even if Saddam had WMD that wouldn’t have justified invading the country, and even if today Iran were on the brink of getting nukes, it would not justify bombing Iran (just as it would be unjustified to bomb Israel or the United States, two countries that have hundreds and thousands of nukes, respectively, the latter of which has actually used them to kill many tens of thousands of innocents).
But I recall very clearly many antiwar voices in 2002 and 2003 pointing out that the claim that Saddam had WMD was without any credibility—it was mostly assertions relying on unsubstantiated evidence, such as Powell’s speech to the UN that millions of Americans saw for the transparent tissue of nothingness that it was. Many other sources cast serious doubts on Bush’s war propaganda before the bombs fell. Yet somehow after the war began everything got twisted around. The CIA in particular was blamed for furnishing false intelligence when, in fact, the CIA was probably more reluctant about the war than the administration had been.
So now I think it’s important that antiwar voices be even louder in calling out the war propaganda. If war breaks out and and a year later we hear, “Everyone thought Iran was seeking nuclear weapons,” I want it on the record that many of us did not.
See also my last two pieces on the topic:
“Insinuation as War Propaganda” and “Don’t Fear Iranian Nukes.”
Tags: Iran, Iraq, Propaganda, War 
paraphrasing May West, facts have nothing to do with it. Israel wants us to make war on Iran, and Israel and its Zionists, which includes Obama and Biden, and Congress as well, will get it.
richard | Mar 24, 2012 | Reply
huh?
tony | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
Proof of the hawk’s position is not public yet. It is indeed reason for pause. The Bush admin did a dog-and-pony show trying to prove WMDs in Iraq, but fell way short of proof. But CIA had all the receipts, and due to the volatile nature of the weaponry, most were probably inoperative by the time of W’s invasion anyway. Preventative strikes on Iraq, then, were perhaps somewhat useful, for other reasons, but that cannot be proven. The same thing goes for Iran. But then again, neither Israel nor the US need to prove anything to the public before they strike–but they’d be better off if they did. Iran’s record speaks for itself, and it is very likely that they are much closer to bombs (and using them) than the dovish author suggests–but, again, with no evidence. What we have then is potentially baseless propagandizing, since the pertinent proof is not in evidence to the public.
Todd Williamson | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
Why are you ignoring decades of rhetoric from iran calling for the destruction of isreal? I believe all of you peacenicks have ostrich disorder.
gittarfreek | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
It is not ever a justifiable war unless God Himself tells the Prophet that it is to be done, just like it is in the Bible, Book of Mormon, etc. God has not been sought out for His advice in these things for so long that mankind has just been doing his own evil. There is no provocation for war unless we are attacked and then someone up there in Washington had best make certain where that attack is coming from. We have been making too many enemies of late while subversives have been allowed to take over our Government and create some major problems for the people of this country. We have taxation without representation on every level. Now the “Heels in Washington” have been using subversive tactics to take our attention off what they are doing to usurp our Constitution, causing us to look away while they are destroying out jobs, our young military people, and our monitary system. Our enemies are those in Congress who have been sitting up there like little kings and queens on thrones for many terms so they could line their pockets with backdoor monies and destroy our country within. If you vote those subversives back into office, you are helping to destroy this country!
DeannaMH | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
Todd’s comment is another example of something that’s become all too common in American thinking. It goes something like this: “Well, we really, really hate to have kill a few more million people, but, on balance, it’ll be in the interest of the good and worth it in the end.”
We never seem to stop to:
Ask the 3+ million dead in S.E. Asia how worth it it was.
Ask the 1/2 million dead in the USA’s Latin American dirty wars.
Ask the million dead Afghans who died when we supplied the muhujadeen with training and weapons to attack the then-secular govt. in Afghanistan in hopes we could induce the USSR to come to Afghanistan’s aid so we could give the USSR its “Vietnam experience,” as Brzezinslki reported and Robert Gates have confirmed.
Ask the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, or the millions who’ve been displaced.
Ask the hundreds of thousands of dead Afghans who’ve died in our recent, 10-yr+ war.
Oh, but, golly; ya can’t ask dead folks, can ya?
Well, given that we Americans are the staunchest defenders of human rights, human liberty and human dignity in human history, it’s beyond doubt that those millions upon millions did NOT die in vain. The plush profits of our oil oligopolies and our defense industries attest to that.
So let’s all sing in unison: “Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran ... Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran .........
The men and women making our weapons love freedom as much or more than anyone. Why shouldn’t they do well in time of (endless) war?
GaryA | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
There’s always a boogie man, and it’s usually a construct of the PTB.
Daniel Tipping | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
What tosh!
President McKinley got down on his knees and prayed what to do about the Philippines in 1898. He finally decided we had to wage war because the Philipinos, who then lived in a country that had been Catholic for 200+ years, needed Christ in their lives. 200,000 lost their lives defending their homeland against American invaders.
No president in history has worn his rabid Christianity on his sleeve the way Bush did, and that didn’t stop him from engaging in mass murder on a false pretext in Iraq. (Read elsewhere at this website for how knowingly false Bush’s claims were.)
As with the Philippines and Iraq and the Crusades, “God” has been a convenient excuse for committing ghastly atrocities. It goes way back:
Numbers 31
In this chapter, the Israelite army continues its decimation of Canaan. Under the leadership of Moses, they attack another tribe, the Midianites. What happened after the battle is notable.
“And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.... And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? .... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
Can there be any doubt but that if in the future some uber-zealot Christian dictator (Guatemala’s Rios Montt comes to mind) announces that “God” ordered him to have his Christian Soldiers massacre women and babies that there’ll be those among us cheering?
GaryA | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
What disturbs me most is Obama’s abandonment of the idea of containment, should Iran build a bomb. Containment worked against the Soviet Union; it would work against Iran, too. But this administration, like the previous two, is beholden to Israel. The situation is even worse in Congress. And it is forbidden to discuss this in mainstream forums, lest one be labeled anti-semitic by Abe Foxman and the folks at AIPAC. It’s a very sad situation that the US has gotten itself into, and if the worst happens the average citizen will pay a heavy price — economically, in the forfeiture of liberty to combat terrorism, and even, perhaps, on the battlefield in yet another Middle East war. All this for a dinky little foreign country. What a world we live in.
Jon Harrison | Mar 27, 2012 | Reply
Why is it our place to invade anyone? That’s part of the reason we are in a depression,these so called wars on terrorism cost us billions not to mention the billions missing from the pentagon that’s never mentioned on the news,why is it never mentioned Israel is the only Mideastern country with nukes,the CIA even says they have no nuclear capabilities yet,if we’d spend more time doing what we should than be as imperialistic as Russia ever thought to be,we’d be much better off and a lot better liked around the world.
jim m | Mar 27, 2012 | Reply
Ah, but consider how well the North Koreans have played to fears in the West – real $$$ forthcoming while hard-core communism continues to enslave its people. Great.
The question isn’t whether we can coexist with an Iran with nukes. The question is whether nukes – or the perceived drive for nukes – helps the Iranian regime repress its own people so that the rest of the world looks away. So far left-liberals have added to the Iranian people’s misery with sanctions (when do they work?). So the question for people who value freedom for all people –Iranians included–is how do we help those on the other side? Even if we had a president and Congress singing “kumbaya” in Farsi, it still wouldn’t help Iranians.
Nukes aside, the Iranian regime is still a dire threat to human liberty.
Jonathan Bean | Mar 27, 2012 | Reply
Johathan Bean writes, “... Nukes aside, the Iranian regime is still a dire threat to human liberty.”
America has been the direst of threats to human liberty for decades now.
It was the USA that toppled Iran’s democracy in ’53 to install the totalitarian despot, the Shah, who ran the country via death squad with help from the CIA and Mossad (google, “Savak”)
The USA toppled the democracy in Guatemala in ’54 to, again, install a fascist tyranny.
The USA was the strongest supporter of Egypt’s fascist dictator, Mubarak, abandoning him long after it was clear he wouldn’t survive. Now a fascist, non-democratic military runs Egypt, and, as usual, the USA is funding the military, against the hopes and aspirations of the people.
The USA killed 3 million+ South East Asians in a war founded on Pentagon lies told about the non-events in the Gulf of Tonkin on 8.4.64.
And the beat goes on, with chaps like Jonathan arguing, as if per script, “Well, we really, really, really hate to have to murder a few million more in yet another country, this time Iran, but let’s face it, Iran is a “dire threat to human liberty. Iran, a country that has attacked no one and has said it’d only go violent in response to an attack by Israel/USA.
America is such a wacky place that comments like Bean’s are considered restrained, thoughtful, serious and responsible. Can a country get any crazier than ours?
GaryA | Mar 27, 2012 | Reply
Todd is not in the military, and he’s going to watch the war on CNN! He thinks the explosions are cool. He’s not going to see or hear the weeping survivors, as they stand by piles of rubble in which their wives and children, husbands and fathers are buried. Further, Todd thinks of himself as a member of the intellectual and moral upper crust. He may have even read a book or two – probably something by Tim LaHaye or Hal Lindsay.
Gregg | Mar 28, 2012 | Reply
We are being PAID to attack Iran, at least our policians on the payroll of AIPAC are.
End of story..
End of America the Free because we are now the paid lackeys of Israel and her Lobby, well, at least our policians (and media)
ginger | Mar 29, 2012 | Reply
This is the most telling statement and very true. It is not the nukes that are the issue for liberty loving individuals, it the repressive governments of Iran and Iraq(Hussein). We need to arm or support morally the other side who want freedom.
Jeff K | Apr 9, 2012 | Reply
Ignoring all of the calls for extinction of Israel by Iran as well other places......then you might be considering to not just be spewing psycho babble....but since those facts do exist Anthony Gregory you are ignorant and cruel!
catherine | May 30, 2012 | Reply
Jonathan Bean–you are so right! But the “moderators” of this page are so ignorant that they wouldn’t know the truth if their life depended on it. Well, maybe if “their” life depended on it, but could clearly not care that Israel’s life depends on it as they are threatened daily!!!!
I’ll be watching to see how long it takes the “moderators” to delete this one!
catherine | May 30, 2012 | Reply