Israel’s Mossad spy agency estimates Iran will develop a nuclear weapon within three years and continue to provide rockets to regional armed groups, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Mossad director Meir Dagan, in an intelligence assessment presented to Israel’s powerful foreign affairs and defence committee on Monday, said the Jewish state would face increased threats on all fronts, Maariv daily said.
Dagan’s estimate of Iran’s nuclear ambitions differs sharply from an assessment by the US intelligence community late last year that said Iran had mothballed its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
That report compiled by 16 US intelligence agencies said the Islamic republic would not be able to attain a nuclear weapon until 2015.
Israel has questioned those findings, claiming that although Iran may have temporarily halted its nuclear drive five years ago it has since relaunched it while pressing ahead with a public uranium enrichment programme.
Tehran has always insisted its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
As one wit darkly put it, membership in nuclear club imminent, membership in Hiroshima/Nagasaki club to follow soon after.
This seems to be a repeating pattern. Where has the intelligence in our spy agencies gone? I have long felt that if you really want to know, or really want some action, bring in Mossad. You don’t hear about what they do until they finish. You also don’t hear all the politically correct whinning when they do their jopb either. If CIA were as efficient, we wouldn’t be inthe mess we are in.
May God protect Israel!
If Israel knows so much, then Israel should feel free to attack Iran’s nuclear power and enrichment facilities just as they took out the reactor in Iraq years ago. The USA certainly will not do anything seriously punitive to Israel anyway, since for many reasons the USA feels that Israel gets to do whatever Israel wants. This is obvious to everyone on the streets in the rest of the world.
and of course we take our lead in international relations from uniformed man-on-the-street interviews in Cairo or Khartoum. Thanks for the tip.