The November 2, 2009 issue of Newsweek magazine has a short article revealing that Iran is hiding more secret nuclear sites than the one recently acknowledged to be hidden at Qom, Iran. The website article is in the link below, but it varies somewhat from the print version of the article in Newsweek magazine. For instance, the print version has nothing in it re: any two- or one-year estimates about Iran’s time intervals for developing a nuclear weapon.
However, the article does assert that the inspection of the Qom site by western inspectors will be of “minimal” value, and that Iran is hiding “at least a half-dozen undeclared facilities in Iran’s ‘nuclear archipelago.'” It adds that “logic dictates that there are more sites out there that the West has yet to sniff out.”
If this sounds a bit familiar to you, readers of this blog were previously told this information about additional hidden Iranian nuclear sites in my October 1, 2009 blog. I’m glad that Newsweek mentioned this important international story, but readers of my blog learned about this development about a month before it appeared in Newsweek. I’ll repeat what I wrote on October 1: “This revelation means that the West really has no idea how advanced or extensive Iran’s nuclear weapons program really is.”
My own view is that the website version of this article added the part about the two or one year estimate about when Iran will have nuclear weaponry in an effort by the Council of Foreign Relations (the CFR, whose members furnish many of the articles in Newsweek) to try and minimize the nuclear threat from Iran in order to slow down a possible Israeli strike at Iran’s facilities. I think I can safely observe that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will not make a decision on the timing of a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities based on any “wishful thinking” timetables opined by Newsweek. The Israeli nation faces a very real existential crisis because Iran’s nuclear weapons program and Iran’s openly-stated goal of “wiping Israel off the map.” In order to make sure Iran’s nuclear program is stopped before it can successfully attack Israeli targets, the Israelis must strike at Iran well before they think the Iranians will have those nukes with which to attack Israel. Israel cannot afford the risk of risk making a mistake by waiting too long to make its strike. In the nuclear sites that the West has not discovered, Iran may already be making nuclear warheads to fit on ballistic or cruise missiles. We simply don’t know. Maybe the Israeli Mossad does know, but that is not certain.
As I’ve also pointed out in previous blogs, Iran can make a nuclear attack against the Israelis long before they have the capacity to deliver those warheads by missiles. Even if they have crude nuclear warheads, Iran can attack the Israelis by putting such a warhead in an innocuous freighter which could detonate its warhead as it sails into an Israeli port. It could do the same thing by sailing an inconspicuous freighter into an American port and doing the same thing. Maybe Iran would love to strike at both “the Great Satan” and “the Little Satan” at the same time. For this reason, it is also increasingly risky for the USA to wait much longer before making a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. If Iran strikes first with a nuclear weapon against either (or both) the USA and the Israelis, the damage to the Obama and Netanyahu governments will be incalculable as voters in each nation will furiously demand to know: “Why did you wait so long to strike at Iran?” If the unthinkable happens in an Israeli or American port city, the Netanyahu government could fall and President Obama could be impeached by an angry nation demanding such action by the U.S. Congress. The clock is ticking. With each passing week, the odds that the USA and Israel have underestimated Iran’s ability to produce and deliver a nuclear bomb grow greater.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2009/10/26/iran-likely-concealing-other-secret-nuclear-sites.aspx
