http://www.juancole.com/2008/11/us-documents-on-iran-nukes-forged.html"Monday, November 10, 2008
US Documents on Iran Nukes Forged?
I'm shocked, shocked that allegations are emerging at the International Atomic Energy Agency that US-supplied "documents" from a laptop acquired in 2004 indicating a secret Iranian weapons program were probably forgeries.
The IAEA clearly hopes that the Obama administration will stop trying to undermine it and will stop the Washington habit of using forged documents as a basis for aggressive military responses to nuclear programs and instead will opt for diplomacy."
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/10/2008 02:17:00 PM
http://www.juancole.com/2008/11/obama-and-iran.htmlSaturday, November 08, 2008
"Obama and Iran
President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that "Iran's development of a nuclear weapon, I believe is unacceptable. . . Iran's support of terrorist organizations, I think is something that has to cease."
What I cannot understand is why American politicians who speak publicly on this issue do not at least acknowledge that to the best information of the American intelligence community, Iran has no nuclear weapons research program, as opposed to a civilian enrichment research program. A pdf of the National Intelligence Estimate on this issue is here. The Bushies and "anonymous senior officials" vowed that the NIE would not be allowed to enter the national debate on this issue and that they would ignore it and go on insisting that Iran has a weapons program. Since they lost, can't we lose the alarmist rhetoric on all this? Some of the information in the NIE was based on information brought out of Iran by defectors.
It is legitimate to maintain suspicions of Iranian intentions and activities in this regard. I'm not saying we should be patsies. But let's just talk straight about the issue, based on what real evidence is available...
...Anyway, can't a new administration speak in a more nuanced way about all this?..."