Quote for the Day

by Chris Dierkes on October 6, 2009

Our knowledge of any Iranian nuclear bomb, with only a little exaggeration, is reduced to Google maps, the words of exiles with axes to grind and shady defectors, and studies by think tanks as ill informed as the rest of us.

–Bob Baer in Time

Chris Dierkes (aka CJ Smith). 29 years old, happily married, adroit purveyor and voracious student of all kinds of information, theories, methods of inquiry, and forms of practice. Studying to be a priest in the Anglican Church in Canada. Main interests: military theory, diplomacy, foreign affairs, medieval history, religion & politics (esp. Islam and Christianity), and political grand bargains of all shapes and sizes.

{ 3 comments }

1 Roque Nuevo October 6, 2009 at 10:57 am

What’s the point? Do you believe that the story of Iranian nuclear weapons capability is yet another so-called scare tactic to gin up support for another war of choice? Or what?

The Iranians’ admission to the UN that they had a uranium enrichment site in Qom doesn’t count as “knowledge”? The list of Russian scientists working on nuclear weapons for Iran made public by Netanyahu either?

Anyhow, even if Bob Baer in Time was the truth, it’s only because Iran has consistently refused to comply with its treaty obligations to allow inspections. Or what am I missing?

2 Vertov October 6, 2009 at 11:24 am

The point is simply that government officials can easily mislead the public on what we know about Iran – we’ve been told for the better part of a decade that Iran is two years away from building a nuclear bomb, to no effect. To say the least, the reputation for U.S. intelligence on the mid-east isn’t exactly the equivalent of rock-solid evidence.

While its certain there’s a nuclear program in Iran, it gets sketchier when we talk about a nuclear weapons program.

Baer is asking for skepticism and caution with regards to our knowledge of Iranian abilities and motives. After this decade only a fool espouse certainty about the mideast and “weapons of mass destruction.”

3 Chris Dierkes October 6, 2009 at 5:03 pm

What Vertov said. And basically to be skeptical of anything you hear about Country X’s intelligence community says Iran is at stage Y wrt to nuclear component Z.

It just means we don’t know. And neither does anybody else. Not necessarily a point to it or an angle, just that this a factual piece of information being neglected. And I would add a fairly important one at that.

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