Is U.S. Attack on Iran Closer? Some Believe So

From Nieman Watchdog:

Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Center at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes in Foreign Policy magazine (registration required) that he used to think that the Bush administration wasn’t seriously considering a military strike on Iran. But now he thinks some U.S. officials have already decided they want to hit Iran hard.

“Three years after senior administration officials systematically misled the nation into a disastrous war, they could well be trying to do it again,” he writes.

“[A] military strike would be disastrous for the United States. It would 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. And it would accelerate, not delay, the Iranian nuclear program. Hard-liners in Tehran would be proven right in their claim that the only thing that can deter the United States is a nuclear bomb. Iranian leaders could respond with a crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years.…

“The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war. It is now trying to link Iran to the 9/11 attacks by repeatedly claiming that Iran is the main state sponsor of terrorism in the world (though this suggestion is highly questionable).”

In an interview with former New York Times foreign editor Bernard Gwertzman, on the Council on Foreign Relations Web site, Cirincione says: “I previously dismissed talk about U.S. military strikes as left-wing conspiracy theory and the kind of stuff that bloggers are chattering about on the Internet. But in just the past few weeks I've been convinced that at least some in the administration have already made up their minds that they would like to launch a military strike against Iran… I've also been convinced by some of the reports in the papers about discussions with the Israelis, for example, or even articles in the British press of leaked documents that indicate that the British believe that a military strike against Iran is inevitable….

“The Iranian threat is a serious one but it is not an imminent one. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon; it is not going to get a nuclear weapon this year or even this decade. The Iranians are at least ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium either for fuel rods or a nuclear weapon.” [Click here for a bio of Joseph Cirincione.]