Retired US General: Attacking Iran a ‘Credible Option’

State Dept Officials Say Iran Wouldn't Be Able to Produce Weapons-Grade Uranium Before 2013

Despite the paucity of evidence supporting the allegations on which the case for war rest, retired Air Force General Charles Wald insists that attacking Iran is “a technically feasible and credible option.”

In an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Gen. Wald chastized the Obama government for its “lack of serious public discussion of the military tools available to us.” He also dismissed as “false” the claims that the US military is too overstretched to attack Iran and called for a naval blockade of Iranian ports.

He concludes that “the military can play an important role in solving this complex problem,” adding that failure to use military force against them risks “Iranian domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf” and destabilization of Iraq.

Despite repeated insistances from officials both active and retired that the Iranian civilian nuclear program is an immediate threat which must be dealt with as soon as possible, an updated State Department assessment says that Iran wouldn’t even have the technical capability to produce weapons-grade uranium before 2013. At present all of Iran’s enrichment to the low levels needed for energy generation is heavily supervised by the IAEA, which has repeatedly confirmed that none of it has been diverted to any secret program like those US officials claim justify action against them.

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.