The White House reiterated on Friday that it uses covert means to spy on Iran’s nuclear program and that the US “would know if and when Iran made” the decision to start a weapons program.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters “we have eyes — we have visibility into the program, and we would know if and when Iran made what’s called a breakout move towards acquiring a weapon.”
The comment was an apparent rebuke Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s claim on Thursday that new US intelligence “transforms the Iranian situation into an even more urgent one.” Carney would not comment on any alleged new intelligence, other than to reiterate that the US estimate on Iran’s program hasn’t changed from the reigning consensus, that weaponization was halted back in 2003.
Following Barak’s statements, a senior White House National Security Council spokesman told Reuters, “We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon.”
According to Marc Ambinder, “the CIA’s ops arm, the National Clandestine Service, along with the U.S. military” have been “scrutinizing and seizing cargo shipments bound for Iran, tapping the black market for nuclear supplies and buying up spare parts, and maximizing the collection of Iranian signal traffic.”
One primary type of intelligence the U.S. has on Iran’s nuclear program is what is called “measurement and signature intelligence,” or MASINT. These are “sensors on satellites, drones, and on the ground” measuring “everything from the electromagnetic signatures created by testing conventional missile systems to disturbances in the soil and geography around a hidden nuclear facility to streams of radioactive particles that are byproducts of the uranium enrichment process.” The US “knows what Iran has and doesn’t have,” wrote Ambinder.
Nevertheless, pressure on the Obama administration from Israel continues to push hard for a war on Iran for having a nuclear weapons program that it actually doesn’t have.
What the pro-war crowd can’t seem to grasp is that an attack on Iran would be most likely to push them towards reconstituting their nuclear weapons program. As Thomas Pickering, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under George H.W. Bush, warned recently, a military strike “has a very high propensity, in my view, of driving Iran in the direction of openly declaring and deciding, which it has not yet done according to our intelligence, to make a nuclear weapon to seemingly defend itself under what might look to them and others to be an unprovoked attack.”
So the White House subscribes to the Psychic Hotline? Well, I'd be asking for a refund after nearly thirty years of false prophecies.
You people don’t know shit…, if you did you wouldn't play the war game with any nation, you wouldn’t want to have war all together, but you can always pretend that you know and pretend to be a democrat, not knowing how it works or what its social function is about.., democracy is about people.., I mean the real people not those who you are sold to like Goldman Sachs, a company that you know is a crocked, a thievery in action but you don’t dare to touch because they owe you all. Close the democratic party there is no democracy coming out of this non democratic party, let the American people build their new democracy with people as its social agenda, let the American people build a political party which would work for people.
We should take all the armchair Rambo, give you some military training and drop you into Iran to solve the so called problem.
Iran is only Israel's current fixation. America's entire electoral system has been corrupted by Netanyahu's Israel, AIPAC, Israel Firsters and ingenious distribution of enormous amounts of Jewish money. Our representative democracy is nearly defeated and the destruction of America as we know it well underway. Termination of the criminal treachery and treason demands immediate priority. The Government of the United States must again serve American interests, not the Jewish state's relentless pursuit of invulnerability, territorial conquest and apartheid supremacist empire in, and beyond, the Mideast.
However did we get it all so backwards? As a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty, Iran has an internationally recognized right to develop and implement nuclear technology. Israel rejected the NPT and has no such right. Yet, the Jewish state has ICBM nukes and openly threatens Iran; actually campaigns for war against Iran. Israel, not Iran, should be sanctioned and forced to reveal its nuclear machinations to IAEA inspection. However did we get it all so backwards?
John WV you ask how did we get it so wrong, CORRUPT American PoliticiansI
Alllowing AIPAC and other groups to financially corupt the political process, politicians so scared to say anything for fear of being targetted in the next election, and the introduction of Super Pacs has not helped!