(Spectator-UK) Douglas Davis - The Middle East is on the brink of going nuclear, and the rest of the world is fiddling or looking the other way. Israel's senior intelligence and military officials have produced a chilling countdown to Iran's imminent emergence as a nuclear power. Israeli intelligence is reported to have cracked the sophisticated Iranian code that enabled Israel to eavesdrop on communications between Iran and its nuclear suppliers over several years. While Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan is said to have provided Tehran not only with equipment for enriching uranium but also actual designs for the bomb, it is clear, said one Israeli intelligence source, that without the transfer of nuclear technologies from Russia, Iran could not have achieved the pace of progress that it has in developing nuclear weapons. Israel is facing a very serious threat, a senior official in the Vienna-based UN nuclear-monitoring industry - who is neither Jewish nor, indeed, Western - said this week, and the nuclear-monitoring industry has "utterly failed to address the profound and legitimate concerns it has about its national security." A senior Israeli intelligence source estimates that "since the Iranians are so bent on the destruction of Israel, there is a probability that they will use their nuclear weapons aggressively against Israel."
2005-01-14 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive