[New Republic] Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren - The first reports from Israeli military intelligence about an Iranian nuclear program reached Yitzhak Rabin shortly after he became prime minister in May 1992. Only a nuclear Iran, Rabin told aides, could pose an existential threat to which Israel would have no credible response. But the CIA's assessment - which wouldn't change until 1998 - was that Iran's nuclear program was civilian, not military. According to Israeli intelligence, Iran will be able to produce a nuclear bomb as soon as 2009. "No one knows if Iran would use the bomb or not," says Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh. "But I can't take the chance." With regime change, the threat posed by an Iranian bomb would ease: After all, the problem isn't the nuclearization of Iran but the nuclearization of this Iran. "Whoever spends several billion dollars just for anti-aircraft systems around nuclear sites is saying that those sites are vulnerable. There would be no need to invest those sums if their bunkers were deep enough," noted Yuval Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
2007-01-29 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive