US, Israel Intel Officials Agree: Iran Has No Nuclear Weapons Program

Old Program Abandoned Years Ago, Never Restarted

You wouldn’t know it by the repeated claims to the contrary by President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but top US and Israeli intelligence officials overwhelmingly agree that not only is there no evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, but strong evidence that the old program they had was indeed abandoned.

Iran’s old nuclear weapons program hadn’t gotten very far, and was abandoned in 2003. This is exactly what was said several years ago in the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, a claim which irked then-President Bush. Though Iran’s lack of a nuclear weapons program is really inconvenient for hawks, intelligence officials say that assessment hasn’t changed.

Indeed, while we seem to be down to the question of “when” and not “if” the US or Israel will attack Iran over the non-existent program, mixed with claims of Iran reaching some point of no return, there is broad agreement that Iran never even decided to try to build an atomic bomb.

This new comments from intelligence agencies are more of an admission than a discovery, since again there is nothing therein we didn’t hear in late 2007. Still one hopes that this time the various hawks are actually paying attention, and will realize that their excuses for starting a major war with Iran have been exposed, yet again, as false.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.