IRAN: Another day, another U.S. bomb allegation
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CIA Director Michael V. Hayden became the third ranking Bush administration official to allege recently that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. This despite a National Intelligence Estimate last year that concluded Iran had halted its weaponization effort in 2003.
Hayden follows in the footsteps of his boss, President Bush, who said in March that Iran had ‘declared’ it was pursuing nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who alleged that Iran was trying to produce weapons-grade uranium. Neither statement appears to be rooted in publicly known facts.
But Hayden’s Sunday talk show allegation, reported on by The Times’ Greg Miller in Washington, was qualitatively different than those of Bush or Cheney. He admitted candidly that his assessment was not ‘court-of-law stuff,’ that he had no proof. ‘This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence,’ he told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’
Rather, he cast the Iranian leadership in the role of rational actors. He deduced that Iran wouldn’t tolerate all the international isolation and sanctions it’s now weathering for a mere peaceful energy program.
In fact, the international community has offered Iran help with its nuclear program provided it gives up the goal of mastering the enrichment cycle within its borders. Enriching uranium is a key step in producing material for a nuclear weapon, as well as fuel for a nuclear power plant.
Here’s Hayden:
Why would the Iranians be willing to pay the international tariff they appear willing to pay for what they’re doing now if they did not have, at a minimum . . . the desire to keep the option open to develop a nuclear weapon and, perhaps even more so, that they’ve already decided to do that?
This is an argument I’ve heard bandied about before. In an interview a few months ago, Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli of Iranian descent and a decent outside observer of the Iranian leadership and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told me pretty much the same thing:
Khamenei is a very pragmatic strategist. I do not believe that he would have made Iran isolated the way it is — rounds of sanctions and so many problems — if he had nothing to hide. If they had nothing to hide, this would defy the logical cost-vs.-loss analysis under which the government in Tehran has operated for so long.
This assessment prompts a question: If Iran’s leaders are rational actors carefully balancing costs and benefits to maintain their survival, would they ever use a nuclear or other kind of weapon against either Israel or Europe, a move that would probably result in their own annihilation?
This may be why officials like Hayden, though concerned about Iran’s nuclear program, are less panicked by it than others who see Iran’s leadership as more extreme and messianic.
— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut