In the end no one is dead sure of the final conclusion.
David Kay, screams "Striking Iran" is the option that Washington might, exclusively, find at its disposal if the Mullahs regime stayed the course it seems to be pursuing.
Iran has achieved the effective status of a nuclear-weapons-capable state. No matter what American policy makers want to believe, Iran has built a uranium-enrichment establishment, procured a workable design for a weapon, carried out work to enhance and validate that design, and developed longer-range missile-delivery systems.
(...) The fact is, Iran’s nuclear program has progressed considerably beyond where it was when President Bush first uttered what would become a useless policy prescription, and is now at a point where only a severely intrusive on-the-ground inspection regime—at least as tough as the one we carried out from 1991–95 in Iraq—could have any hope of verifying that Iran’s nuclear program has stopped.
(...) If the latest round of talks allow Tehran to drag out discussions—while further enhancing its nuclear capabilities, and any meaningful sanctions continued to be postponed to avoid “poisoning the negotiations” (...) The danger ahead is that Tehran(...) will push its nuclear program further and faster than it otherwise would have, and enter the dangerous arena of actually deploying nuclear weapons.
David Kay is an authority on nuclear issues. He led the UN inspection after the first Gulf War that uncovered the previously unknown Iraqi nuclear program and, after the most recent Gulf War, led the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group that determined that there had been no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the time of the war. Hence, what he offers should be insightful.
Well, it is, till you continue reading.
David Ignatius summarizes an articled that appeared in Oct. 8 issue of Nucleonics Week in which the author, Mark Hibbs, reports that Iran's supply of low-enriched uranium suffers from certain "impurities" that "could cause centrifuges to fail" if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade.
Ignatius, not less than how confused you might be, sites some contrary assessments.
there's some uncertainty among experts about how serious the contamination problem is
Elsewhere, confusion rules within the intelligence community.
U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted, with "high confidence", Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, current and former U.S. intelligence officials told WSJ.
The American assessment contradicts the findings of at least the 3 main European allies, Germany, France and UK.
If undertaken, a new NIE likely wouldn't be available for months. The U.S. and its allies have imposed an informal December deadline for Iran to comply with Western demands that it cease enriching uranium or face fresh economic sanctions.
A shift in the U.S. intelligence community's official stance -- concluding Iran restarted its nuclear weapons work or that Iran's ambitions have ramped up -- could significantly affect President Barack Obama's efforts to use diplomacy to contain Tehran's capabilities.
Any timeline for negotiations could be shortened if a new NIE concludes Tehran has restarted its atomic-weapons work, said officials involved in the diplomacy. But the White House could also use the new report to galvanize wider international support for sanctions against Tehran.
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