Posted on 01/29/2014 9:06:46 PM PST by logi_cal869
Iran now has all the technical infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons should it make the political decision to do, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a report to a Senate intelligence committee published Wednesday. However, he added, it could not break out to the bomb without being detected.
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In the “US Intelligence Worldwide Threat Assessment,” delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Clapper reported that Tehran has made significant advances recently in its nuclear program to the point where it could produce and deliver nuclear bombs should it be so inclined.
“Tehran has made technical progress in a number of areas — including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors, and ballistic missiles — from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” Clapper wrote. “These technical advancements strengthen our assessment that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons. This makes the central issue its political will to do so.”
In the past year alone, the report states, Iran has enhanced its centrifuge designs, increased the number of centrifuges, and amassed a larger quantity of low-enriched uranium hexafluoride. These advancements have placed Iran in a better position to produce weapons-grade uranium.
“Despite this progress, we assess that Iran would not be able to divert safeguarded material and produce enough WGU [weapons grade uranium] for a weapon before such activity would be discovered,” he wrote. Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper (photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper (photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
He said the increased supervision and other “transparency” to which Iran has agreed under the new interim deal, reached with the world powers in Geneva in November and finalized last week, could offer earlier warning of a breakout to the bomb. Should Iran cooperate with the interim deal, halt enrichment, and “provide transparency,” then “This transparency would provide earlier warning of a breakout using these facilities.”
Clapper told the Senate committee that the interim deal will have an impact on Iran’s nuclear weapons program’s progress and “gets at the key thing we’re interested in and most concerned about,” namely, Iran’s 20 percent enriched uranium.
Iran had also worked hard to advance its program at the Arak heavy water facility, wrote Clapper. Its ballistic missiles, he noted, of which it has “the largest inventory in the Middle East,” are “inherently capable of delivering WMD.” And its space program gives it the means to develop longer-range missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” Clapper wrote. But he noted that Iran’s overarching “strategic goals” were leading it to pursue the capability to do so.
The national intelligence director reiterated that imposing additional sanctions against Iran would be “counterproductive” and would “jeopardize the [interim] agreement.” He advised that additional sanctions against the Islamic Republic should only be kept “in reserve.”
The report was released a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the interim nuclear agreement only set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program by six weeks.
“This agreement merely set Iran back six weeks — no more — according to our assessments, in relation to its previous position, so that the test, as to denying Iran the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, has been and remains the permanent agreement, if such [a deal] can indeed be achieved,” Netanyahu said at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Last Wednesday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused the Obama administration of mischaracterizing the terms of an interim nuclear deal. “We did not agree to dismantle anything,” Zarif told CNN.
Zarif repeated that “we are not dismantling any centrifuges, we’re not dismantling any equipment, we’re simply not producing, not enriching [uranium] over 5%.”
The six-month deal freezes key aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, while allowing limited enrichment to continue, in exchange for some economic sanctions relief. It went into effect on January 20.
The next round of international nuclear negotiations with Iran is expected to be held in New York next month, according to officials involved in the planning.
Israel has threatened to attack Iran should it not back off from its alleged pursuit of a military nuclear capability.
On Tuesday, UN nuclear inspectors arrived in Tehran to visit Iran’s Gachin uranium mine for the first time in several years, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. The visit was part of the framework of a separate deal between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency in November.
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POTUS POS SOTU 2014
Obama lies yet again. This is the most serious of all the lies he told that night. To actually declare not only that Iran are being ‘inspected’, but that they are reducing their stockpile, is weapon’s grade BS.
Netanyahu better fire up the engines on Israel’s bombers. Clock’s ticking...
I believe all the talk about Israel being the primary target is nothing but subterfuge. Iran will spirit warheads around the globe through established smuggling channels, and then one day we wake up to the biggest hostage crisis in history.
Israel = “Little Satan”
US = “Great Satan.”
“It’s becoming a dangerous world and the seeds the President unknowningly [sic] or not has sown are going to bear bitter fruit and kill many.”
NWO intelligence chiefs pushing hard to justify immense espionage and military spending. Oversight is a joke.
The banking families pushing real hard in news media as well to create fear in Americans, fear of everything.
Israel is being attacked ! We must bomb Iran ! Terrorists are all over the place ! Militarize the police ! America is paralyzed by snow and cold ! Snowden is letting out all our livesaving secrets !
According to news media, all you can trust in is American socialism and the news media.
The US government is run by the elite global financiers.
How stupid do these idiots think we are? Those A holes made that decision a long time ago.
The h*ll with that mouth-breather Clapper. Lets hear what Ed Snowden has.
Want it just last year or so bammy and crew were telling us Iran was years, like ten plus years, from having a bomb? Lying POS.
Yes, but we will be able to detect one if they set it off.
Bread and circuses on the tube tonight.
Another Obama Kerry defense and foreign policy “achievement.” Alas!. Now USA is vulnerable ( and as their declared number one “great satan” target) to nuclear attacks from this bunch of aggressive mad men. Pray for America! .
Why hasn’t Clapper been at the short end of an indictment for lying to Congress? Hell the feds went after Clemmons and wasted tons of money trying to do so.
“How stupid do these idiots think we are?”
For the most part, pretty stupid, actually. They apparently aren’t wrong, either.
in ten or twenty years, when the history of this era is written, I think we’ll find that the same thing we now realize about the soviets, that they had no desire for a suicidal nuclear war, will apply to iran. and that their hatred for Israel, while probably real, was used mostly to whip up the the populace.
all governments, good or bad, always need an external enemy.
If Israel were nuke-baked, the militar-political chain reaction would put the entire world in volley-bomb mode anyway
All this hope that little Israel or the Arabs might take out the islamoNazi nuke factories was, I think, pretty much ended when Obama threatened war against anybody that dared to do it. (Remember Obama has the USAF deployed all around Iran protecting those factories.).
>> for lying to Congress?
You mean the kabuki theater?
I’d rather have Clapper hunting nukes than dancing for Snowden.
I don't trust the guy and Snowden has shown us the "intelligence" community in general cannot be trusted.
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