The NYTimes was one of the lead newspapers in propagating the lies that led the US public to support the major escalation of the US-Iraq war in 2003. It is not the least bit surprising it continues that tradition.

The other major Times in USA, LATimes, did publish (in 2003) what is probably the most relevant fact related to Iran's possible development of nuclear weapons capability. Israel, with the help of the US Navy, developed a submarine nuclear weapon system specifically designed to carry out nuclear attacks against Iran. This was "publicly leaked" to the reporter. And, of course, we often read of another Israeli submarine going through the Suez canal to patrol the coast of Iran. And, that US Navy warships are equipped to launch nuclear weapons, and many of them are near the coast of Iran.

Given the military doctrines of both Israel and USA, it is understandable that most in leadership cannot believe that Iran not only wants, but needs nuclear weapons. That is why they believe that Iran must be developing nuclear weapons, despite the lack of direct evidence they are doing so.

As for newspapers and perspective, see Philip Knightley's The First Casualty for David Halberstam's take on the matter. (It's in the 1975 edition, maybe in the later one.) Specifically, newspapers do not want to publish historical perspective. Or, of the 5 W's (who, what, when, where, and why), why is deliberately left out.

One could...even if a little painfully...listen to Mr. Walt's opinions if they were said with some civility. But when he disses others' opinions by calling them "bogus" and "contorted," his own views become suspect -- because we don't really know if he disagrees on the merits or because he simply doesn't like Israel, Israelis and (perhaps Jews in general?).

My latest article on Iran."The US and its European allies should shift away from insisting on what Iranian government cannot have toward offering Tehran a raft of genuine incentives." argues iPolitiquest, adding that neither sanctions nor the idea of a pre-emptive strike can be considered effective tools to counter Iran.

http://www.ipolitiquest.com/2012/02/us-israel-vs-iran-requiem-for-diplobamacy/

The stand-off over Iran’s nuclear program has taken a turn for the worse in recent months as the leaders of the Islamic Republic and Israel continue to trade shrill and menacing exchanges amid a background rife with mistrust borne of lack of communication. Last week, major global news networks, newspapers and blogs turned the spotlight on the constant war of words and blistering bellicosity, which have reached a fever pitch between Iran, Israel and the US.

To bomb Iran or not is now the perplexing question riddled with extremely puzzling ifs and buts, inattention to which would risk triggering all-out Armageddon with potentially cataclysmic consequences. In the meantime, Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak has urged the US and EU leaders to tighten sanctions on Iran before the country enters a “zone of immunity”. The phrase refers to a vaguely defined point beyond which Iran could potentially produce weapon fuel without fear of an air attack. The Israeli regime seem to be chomping at the bit to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities that are dispersed throughout the country, making the job of carrying out a surgical attack similar to that of Israeli strikes against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 all the more difficult and indeed costly. The Iranian regime, on the other hand, seems to be hell-bent on going ahead with its nuclear agenda, warning Tel Aviv officials that it will launch a pre-emptive military strike against Israel if it really senses an attack is imminent. Largely ignored amid tug of war is a slightest degree of attention toward the devastating impacts of ever tightening sanctions on more than 70 million Iranians.

iPolitiquest argues that of all the proposed options by the West in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, neither sanctions nor the idea of a pre-emptive strike are useful and effective foreign policy tools in dealing with the Islamic Republic, and that the US and its European allies should shift away from insisting on what Iranian government cannot have toward offering Tehran a raft of genuine incentives. As former Swedish Foreign Minister and ex-director of IAEA, Hans Blix once stated, its is formidably difficult to scare a country away from going for nuclear weapons. “Carrots are better for persuading them.” In their quest to resolve the long-standing dispute with Iran, the US and the EU should gear toward diplomacy as a conduit through which persistent miscalculations and lack of communication can be replaced with calculated measures and constructive communication aimed at securing the interests of all disputing parties without having to recourse to any military confrontation or any other forms of kinetic reaction.

Tightening the noose around Iran

The United States imposed sanctions on Iran following the Islamic revolution of 1979, while the recent four sets of UN sanctions and a raft of unilateral US and European Union sanctions appear to have paralyzed the country’s economy. The primary purpose of enforcing sanctions is to force the regime to come to the negotiating table on the off chance that it halts its nuclear enrichment activities. Another objective long pursued by the US in line with its sanction policies toward Iran is to generate public discontent in the hope that such growing sense of disillusionment would ultimately translate into public pressure on the government to change its behavior or face its downfall. It is worthwhile to note that high-handed policies such as sanction have so far not borne fruition, as Tehran remains as obstinate as it has ever been throughout more than thirty years since the Islamic Revolution. It is also noteworthy to mention that unlike mainstream view among many US policy makers and analysts, the intensification of sanctions will not result in capitulation of Tehran to the pestering demands of the West in the face of existing threats. Quite conversely, the sting of sanctions has harmed only the ordinary Iranian people, whose dreams of cultivating an indigenous democracy trickled away in blood during post-election unrest in 2009.The sentiments of Iranians were bruised and battered when they witnessed the American and the West’s insouciance towards grave violations of human rights committed by the regime. Four years on, the US and its European allies are still fixated on the dangers of Iran’s possible acquisition of nuclear weapons, instead of scrutinizing Iran’s human rights abuses, the former relates to the regime’s fortes and the latter its foibles. But how do they differ? Unquestionably, pressurizing Iran over its nuclear agenda is somehow synonymous with dealing with the regime through its point of strength, because the nuclear issue is indeed popular among peoples of various stripes and is widely regarded as a matter of national pride, meaning that Iran will not change its behaviors when its right is being put into question by the outsiders. It is important to emphasize that the West is inadvertently playing into the hands of the regime by tightening its sanctions mainly because Tehran, if need be, will try every means to capitalize on the public sentiments and mobilize people around its inalienable right to achieving peaceful nuclear energy under Article IV of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In contrast to dealing with Iran via its point of strength, the west can deal with the Iranian government through its weakest point exemplified by its human rights violations that need to be properly addressed and be brought into the global gaze. All in all, the Iranian government huffs and puffs about its nuclear capabilities as well as its readiness for going to war on Israel mainly because it deliberately intends to deviate attentions away from the dire human rights conditions in the country toward the nuclear issue. There is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, as a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate suggest, but there is concrete evidence that Iran has breached its obligations and duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfill human rights. Only by focusing on human rights concerns can the US stand a chance to earn Iranians’ trust in good intentions, and not ulterior motives, of Washington to support a democratic Iran.

Proponents of sanctions assume that there is a positive relationship between broad economic embargoes and democratization. Some scholars have found in sanctions limited success. Meanwhile opponents of sanctions portray a different outlook and give a complex, nuanced picture of the factors that make for the success and failure of economic sanctions. Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliot, in Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy argue that of 116 cases of sanctions since 1914, only 34 percent have been successful. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit 2010 Index of Democracy, of the 88 non-democratic states, 71 percent have been under economic sanctions. Twelve of these 63 states—Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe—have had broad sanctions imposed on them in the form of financial, trade, or oil embargoes. All twelve withstood the pervasive embargoes without any sign of democratic change. What do all these hard evidence indicate? Sanctions are mostly ineffective and in the case of Iran it will only hurt the Iranian people.

Lost in the discourse of war

Just as the drums of war are beating louder than ever, a recent IAEA report revealed that Iran has tripled its capacity to enrich uranium to 20-percent purity since November, and was now producing around 14 kilos of uranium per month, with around 105 kilos already stockpiled. Enriching uranium to 20 percent is considered a major breakthrough towards purifying it to the 90-percent level needed for a nuclear weapon, although Iran denies intending to do so, insisting that its nuclear activities are entirely for peaceful purposes. Hours after the report was released, a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office noted: “The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency gives added proof that Israeli beliefs are true” about Iran’s nuclear program. The report is expected to fan the flames of a fiendish rhetoric between Tel Aviv and Tehran even further, to the point of a military confrontation. But if Israel takes the initiative and carries out a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facility, some analysts argue that Tehran will leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a likelihood that would leave no room for any attempt to use bargaining and diplomacy. The question is Israel may succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities but would it be successful in pulverizing the knowhow of Iranian scientists? The conundrum is that if Iran, on the other hand, succeeds in developing a nuclear warhead, would it use it against Israelis or it will use it as deterrence against both domestic and external threats, particularly at a time when Iranian people are blaming the government for economic downturn and the US keenly entertains the thought of regime-change. “Iran doesn’t want a nuclear weapon to attack Israel,” said Giora Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council who is now a senior research associate at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “What they want is regional deterrence,” Meanwhile, military experts close to the Pentagon caution that Israelis have to use at least 100 planes to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, their pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace (possibly Turkey, Iraq and Saudi Arabia), refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses and strike multiple underground facilities at a same time. Any such attempt by Israel in conducting a surgical military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites would have consequences too ghastly for Tel Aviv to contemplate. Regardless of the possibility that it could also light the fuse for World War III, any unilateral military strike against Iran could be rendered and mistranslated by the Iranian government as an all-out attack on Muslims all across the world.

At this juncture, it is ringingly clear that the US is lukewarm about the idea of going to war in Iran, particularly because Washington believes that diplomacy has not been exhausted despite Iran’s recalcitrance to stoop to the demands of the international community. “Contrary to common perceptions, diplomacy has not been exhausted. In fact, it didn’t even fail – it was prematurely abandoned,” argues Iranian International Relations scholar and president of the National Iranian American Council, adding that” As I describe in ‘A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran’, Barack Obama’s political maneuverability for diplomacy with Iran was limited – and whatever political space he had, it was quickly eaten up by pressure from Congress, Israel, Saudi Arabia and most importantly, by the actions of the Iranian government itself in the fraudulent 2009 elections. It is widely argued that US President Barack Obama squandered a unique opportunity to engage in direct diplomacy with Iran in October 2009 when Chief negotiator Saeed Jalili spoke with William Burns in the first senior US-Iran bilateral meeting for three decades. It is not the first time that Washington has missed the chance of rapprochement with Tehran during more than thirty years of mutual mistrust. In his recent book, Parsi casts a harsh spotlight on the diplomatic front, recalling that in May 2003, only weeks after US troops had overthrown Saddam, Iran offered comprehensive talks with the US, while giving unprecedented concessions to the later. Widely deemed as unthinkable and inexplicably unprecedented, many analysts were astounded by the main planks of the Iranian offer, but when the proposal reached the Oval Office, it was rejected by George W. Bush!

As the specter of war with Iran looms large these days, I`m puzzled why a country which is encircled by a galaxy of US military bases and has not waged any war against any other sovereign states in over 400 years, is falsely and ignorantly being portrayed as a threat to the global security and peace. Let’s not forget that under the UN Charter, all states have a right to self-defense and that only the UN Security Council can authorize the use of force against another country. Lost in the discourse of war amidst the requiem for diplomacy is even the slightest bit of attention to the predicament of the Iranian people. In either scenario, whether a war breaks out or sanctions keep biting, the people would suffer the most, least that they become real victims of power politics. Diplomacy beams whenever the whims of war grow dim.

After the 1981 Osirak bombing by Israel, Iraq did redouble its efforts to get a nuke. But without this key reactor, and fearing to build another central site, Iraq was set back years in being able to produce a nuke. Thus, redoubled efforts or not, Iraq was never again so close to having a nuke.

Iraq Goes Underground

Following the bombing of the Osiraq reactor, Iraq decided to: (1) replace the Osiraq reactor or to develop a heavy water or enriched uranium reactor and associated plutonium separation capability; and (2) develop a uranium enrichment production capacity.

Iraq tried to replace the Osiraq reactor, but by 1985, it realized that it could not buy a replacement. Before the bombing, Iraq had developed plans and purchased some minor items for a 20- to 40-megawatt heavy water natural uranium reactor. After delays in buying a replacement reactor, Iraq decided to pursue this reactor project again. In the late 1980s, however, it put its plans on hold, facing resource limitations. But Iraq continued its efforts to learn how to separate plutonium from irradiated fuel and to make heavy water. Depending on the success of the enrichment programs, Iraq may have reconstituted the nuclear reactor project.

Even before the Israeli bombing of the Osiraq reactor, Iraqi scientists had been evaluating the development of uranium enrichment technologies. However, Iraq has declared that a decision by the Iraqi leadership to pursue these options came after the June 1981 bombing. An Iraqi evaluation finished in 1981 concluded that electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) was the most appropriate technology for Iraq and that gaseous diffusion was the next most appropriate option. Gaseous diffusion was planned to produce low--enriched uranium (LEU) which could be used as a feedstock for EMIS, dramatically increasing overall HEU production in EMIS separators. If EMIS was unsuccessful, the plan called for expanding the gaseous diffusion facility to produce HEU directly. At the time, gas centrifuge technology was viewed as too difficult to accomplish. (See below.)

EMIS

The goal of the EMIS program was to build two production units, each able to achieve 15 kilograms per year of weapons-grade uranium using natural uranium feed. Iraqi estimates of the HEU output using LEU feed (enriched to 2.5 percent uranium-235) vary between roughly 25 kilograms and 50 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium per year. The variation reflects different plant designs and performance uncertainties.

After several years of research and development work of mixed success, Iraq nonetheless started in 1987 to build its first EMIS production facility at Tarmiya, north of Baghdad. Also in late 1987, Iraq decided to build a replica of Tarmiya at Al Sharqat, about 200 kilometers northwest of Baghdad. This facility, which was built by Iraqis only, was originally viewed as a second production site that would come into operation roughly at the same time as Tarmiya. In the late 1980s, this plan was modified to one where Al Sharqat would operate after Tarmiya was finished. Iraq also sought unsafeguarded LEU on the international market during the late 1980s. However, it has declared that its search was half-hearted and unsuccessful. Whether this declaration is complete is unclear. As of 1997, the Action Team had not pursued this issue further.

The EMIS program faced repeated delays and technical problems, and by the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Tarmiya was at least a year behind schedule. At that time, Tarmiya was not expected to produce its first goal quantity of weapons-grade uranium, or 15 kilograms, until at least 1992, assuming that the plant would function well and that a stock of LEU would be used. If natural uranium was used, the date for the production of the first goal quantity would have been 1993 or later.

Because of the large size of EMIS facilities, few expect Iraq to try to secretly rebuild its EMIS production facilities. In addition, it still has to overcome several technical problems, including problems in vacuum technology and ion sources, before its separators would work properly. Armed with a stock of LEU, however, Iraq could produce 15 kilograms per year of weapons-grade uranium with a facility about one-third the size of Tarmiya.

Enrichment Options

By 1987 or 1988, when it became apparent to the Iraqi leadership that the gaseous diffusion program was not progressing well, Iraq decided to de-emphasize this effort. It instead concentrated on chemical enrichment as a source of LEU feedstock for the EMIS program. By 1990, Iraq had made little progress in building a chemical enrichment plant. However, both programs could be reconstituted, although substantial technical challenges would need to be overcome before Iraq could operate production-scale facilities.

After the cancellation of the gaseous diffusion program, the team started to work on gas centrifuges. The team had already been transferred from the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center to a new site on the northern edge of Baghdad near Rashdiya, later named the Engineering Design Center (EDC). This change reflected a change of authority from the Atomic Energy Establishment to the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization.

This group managed to acquire extensive overseas cooperation in designing and building gas centrifuges, so much so that inspectors have characterized the assistance as key to progress in the centrifuge program.

Despite such help, at the time of the Gulf War, Iraq was still a few years from an operating plant able to produce goal quantities of weapons-grade uranium, declared by the centrifuge program as 1,000 centrifuges producing 10 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium per year. Because of the relatively small size of a gas centrifuge program and the extensive progress made before the war, Iraq is viewed as likely to reconstitute its gas centrifuge program.

Weaponization

Iraq's effort to produce a nuclear explosive started in the mid-1980s. Under a 1988 plan, Iraq intended to have its first weapon by the summer of 1991, based on an implosion design. Iraq had worked on developing the capability to make fissile material for many years prior to this date, and Iraq has explained that the decision at that particular time reflected the expectation that domestically produced HEU would become available within a few years. Iraq intended that its nuclear weapons would be put on ballistic missiles. Iraq faced many problems in trying to reduce and ruggedize its design to fit on top of a ballistic missile.

Questions remain about the status of Iraq's weaponization program at the time of the allied bombing campaign in January 1991, when most activities were halted. Nevertheless, the Action Team inspectors have concluded that with the accelerated effort under the crash program, Iraq could have finished a nuclear explosive design by the end of 1991, if certain technical problems were overcome. However, it would have needed longer to prove a design for the Al Hussein missile. This missile, for example, would have required a warhead with a diameter of 70 centimeters to 80 centimeters, much smaller than the diameter of the design nearing completion that had a diameter of about 120 centimeters.

Iraq was also planning to build a nuclear test site, called the Al Sahara Project. At the time of the allied bombing campaign, Iraq had picked candidate sites in southwest Iraq but it had not performed a site investigation. In addition, according to a senior Iraqi nuclear official, Iraq did not plan to conduct a test before it had accumulated a few nuclear weapons. Iraq has stated that it planned to develop confidence in its weapon designs through an extensive experimental testing program that stopped short of a full-scale nuclear test.

Crash Program

By the time Iraq invaded Kuwait, Iraq still lacked an indigenous source of fissile material; its enrichment plants were still far away from producing HEU. In mid-August 1990, the Iraqi leadership ordered the diversion of its stock of safeguarded HEU fuel. Iraq's initial plan was to extract the HEU from the fuel, further enrich a portion of it, and build a nuclear weapon. The goal was to execute this plan within six months, although by the time of the allied bombing campaign in mid-January 1991 which stopped the effort, Iraq had fallen several months behind. A nuclear warhead for a ballistic missile would have taken significantly longer.

because he fails to consider intervening forces. History is not so linear. Israel knocked out Iraq's Osirak facility. That delayed the Iraqis for years from having the bomb. Then, the Gulf War came which finally put an end to any realistic plans for Iraq to get the bomb.

How about this? What if Israel did nothing in 1981, and Iraq invaded Kuwait, and then planned to invade Saudi Arabia? What would we have done then, if Iraq had nukes?

Same thing with Iran...with time comes more options, comes intervening forces, comes changes.

Professor Walt

I respect your arguments, and what I write below does not necessarily negate or nullify them. I do question the extension to which you have become emotionally in this fray has impacted your analysis (i.e., the extent to which emotion is trumping cognition, all of us being imperfect boundedly rational cognitive misers at best). What has struck me of late has been the extent to which scholarship has undermined the general consensus that the Iraq War was a bad idea: Robert Jervis's work on the Intelligence Community has concluded that while its judgment regarding WMDs was *wrong,* it was not necessarily *unreasonable;* and for another example, the work of Kevin Woods et al (e.g., "Saddam's Generals," published by the Institute for Defense Analyses, as well as the "Iraqi Perspectives Project," published by or for Joint Forces Command) portray Saddam as quite bizarre and rather from any semblance of someone resembling the rational actor construct that theories of deterrence perhaps require. While I understand you do not want to bog yourself down in the comments - a perfectly understandable and justifiable course of action - I would be most intrigued if you would potentially address what I would term this revisionist historiography of the Iraq War and the debate prior to its run up (e.g., the work of Jervis and Woods) as well as any reflections on being a participant in as well as a spectator of current events.

Regards
A former student

I have to note that Mr. Walt is also guilty of being misleading in this article. In his article Syria and Iraq are linked together on Israel bombing their facilities, but he completely omits any mention of how Syria reacted to the bombing.The reason why is obvious, the case of Iraq better supports his argument but the absence of Syria is still a flaw that can't be overlooked. As this stands we don't know if all governments will have a stronger resolution to acquire a nuclear deterrent in response to attacks. It is entirely possible that government type or national history might lead to different results.

Push comes to shove they call for war like all the mainstream media.

Why is Israel bullying Iran? They have 300 nukes after all.

walt is an anti semite hiding behind the curtain of academia...as if being an academic precludes one from being a racist. All walt does is write predominantly on one subject ...israel. Its like the UN where quite disproportionately, all they do is censure israel whereas the wrongs of all the rest of the world go unoticed. I mean, where the hell is richard goldstone and navi pillay and the hrc and the security council on syria where a real slaughter is taking place? where is goddamn obama? people are dying in syria DAILY for MONTHS and MONTHS.

I am quite satisfied that yadlin knows whats going on inisde iran far better than what walt thinks he knows in his anti american anti israel ivory tower at harvard, home of the saudi dirty money that funds his tripe and the BS one state conference garbage.

get real walt. yadlin actually knows facts whereas you know crapass propaganda. I find it quite curious how you continuously are so cavalier about israel's security. You dont have to be a jew to care you moron....just like I care about france's security, or england's, or germany's....so too do I care about israel's.

walt, you are a stain on harvard. your cottage industry of hate and the followers you have engendered are pure sleeze.

Iran is developing nukes and every serious expert knows it. The ONLY reason you are arguing for a grand bargain or whatever it is you believe in is because you are shilling for obama's re-election....iran is a menace, and despite dagans best efforts with things like stuxnet, it wont be stopped and containment cannot be relied on. Its quite possible that dagan has alterior political aspirations and motives in mind for his own selfish reasons...and barak doesnt think iran with nukes is an existential threat..no- he believes it will survive a war with iran that will cause hundreds of thousands of deaths but that israel can withstand it and will in fact destroy iran in any counterstrike ..barak does not want this to happen BUT will fight to the death if need be. Is it existential? maybe, maybe not, but that's not a worry for armchair academics at harvard is it!..no, its israels concern you asshole. if oil skyrockets as a result of a middle east war, there will be no one else to blame but iran itself and the western media who have been living in denial...all of this was avoidable ,...there is PLENTY of blame to go around...but none of it rests with israel. Blame iran, blame russia, blame china, blame the EU, blame obama. They have helped to create this miss. If no one else will stop it, I assure you israel will.

What if they get the bomb and they use it?

If I was spouting off about killing co-workers and then a co-worker saw me walking into a gun store what conclussion would they draw? If they say nothing and I go on a rampage how would that sit with the families of the vicitms?

It seems to me that Iran is doing nothing to assuage everyones fears.

So let me see if I get Walt's logic.... It would be counterproductive to stop Iran from getting the bomb, since this would convince them to get one (or several).

But if the west's objective is to not let Iran have the bomb, then the west needs to stop them from getting it. But we can't stop them from getting it, since that would convince them the need to have more. checkmate or mindmelt (take your choice)

So I'm confused. Does the good professor argue that we should not take any action against Iran getting the bomb? My understanding is yes. So we have to wonder why professor Walt wants Iran to have the bomb.