Tuesday, April 04, 2006

"For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran," Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment, writes in Foreign Policy magazine. "In the last few weeks, I have changed my view." Cirincione says his shift was partly triggered by "colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran." The ramifications of such an attack could be disastrous. Not only would it likely "rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq"; most importantly, a military strike would "almost certainly speed up" Iran's nuclear weapons development by sparking a "crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years." (Longtime U.S. counterrorism chief Richard Clarke also spoke out yesterday against military action in Iran.) Cirincione advises that the key now is to get as much information about the status of Iran's nuclear program "on the table for an open debate."
The link is to Laura Rozen. Her source is here.
I'm speechless.

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