Clinton gets it wrong on Iranian nukes
foreignpolicy.com / Michael Singh
17-Feb-2010 (one comment)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the surprising assertion yesterday in Doha that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not directly threaten the United States:

“[P]art of the goal -- not the only goal, but part of the goal -- that we were pursuing was to try to influence the Iranian decision regarding whether or not to pursue a nuclear weapon. And, as I said in my speech, you know, the evidence is accumulating that that's exactly what they are trying to do, which is deeply concerning, because it doesn't directly threaten the United States, but it directly threatens a lot of our friends, allies, and partners here in this region and beyond.”

Secretary Clinton is surely correct about the threat faced by U.S. allies in the region, but her assessment of the potential threat to the U.S. does not comport with the evidence on Iran’s ballistic missile programs. Many U.S. facilities and thousands of American personnel are of course already within range of Iran’s short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, which Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair recently testified (pdf) are “inherently capable of delivering WMD.”

Furthermore, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency reported (pdf) this month that “Iran continue[s] to develop long-range ballistic missiles that will be threatening to the United States,” and the U.S. intelligence community has judged in the past that Iran may test an ICBM by 2015 (see here [pdf] for a full discussion o... >>>

recommended by Anonymous Observer

Share/Save/Bookmark

 
Bavafa

Lets see who are their

by Bavafa on

Lets see who are their allies and partners in the region:

Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, Pakistan… any more we can add to this list?

From the list above, there is only one country that has democracy with all other having the worse dictatorship/human rights abuse record in the world with the SA as their leaders and probably closes allay of US. The one that is a democratic state, it has been occupying multiple countries and has been subject to a number of war crime accusation/investigation and UN resolution.

This sort of record is not exactly some thing to be proud of.

Yes, Iran is not such shining star either, but at least they don't claim to be the lighting bacon in the world.

Mehrdad