In the two weeks, since I published my latest article, “The Phantom Menace: Fantasies, Falsehoods, and Fear-Mongering about Iran’s Nuclear Program,” on December 29, 2010, new predictions and allegations about Iran’s nuclear program have come to light, from retiring Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s assessment that Iran can’t produce a nuclear weapon until at least 2015 and IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano’s admission that “we cannot say that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.”
I have been posting updates to my article with these new statements and analysis. To read them, click here.
This is the latest:
UPDATE XI: For What It’s “Worth”
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down— Stephen Stills
January 13, 2011 — Larry Derfner of the Jerusalem Post has finally weighed in regarding outgoing Mossad head Meir Dagan’s prediction that, were Iran to actually have a nuclear weapons program and was actually trying to build a nuclear bomb (a claim with no basis in fact and without any evidence), the Islamic Republic would not even be able to have a working atomic weapon until 2015, at the absolute earliest.
Derfner, who calls himself part of the dovish “containment” camp, states bluntly his belief that “Iran is almost certain to get nuclear weapons,” though he tempers this assumption with his opinion that “while that’s not good at all, neither is it the catastrophe that the hawks foresee, because Iran will be deterred from using those nukes by the vastly superior ones held by Israel, the US and the other nuclear powers.” He continues, “And since a nuclear Iran would not be a catastrophe, it would be preferable to our starting a war, which would be a catastrophe, and would just delay Iran’s nuclear project anyway, not end it.”
Nevertheless, the article states that Dagan’s assessment presents an even more positive outlook for Israel-first-and-onlyers like Derfner, claiming that, based on Dagan’s conclusion, “sanctions work, sabotage and assassination work; the proof is that Iran’s nuclear project has been going backward.”
Just in case, lest anyone accidentally believe Derfner actually has a heart or any moral compass whatsoever, he then burnishes his Zionist, nationalist, exclusivist, ethnosupremacist, and survivalist credentials by declaring:
Myself, I don’t like starting fights, I don’t like having scientists killed, even Iranian nuclear scientists. I don’t like giving anybody a score to settle against my side. But coming back to the idea that a nuclear Iran, while not a catastrophe, would not be a good thing, would instead be a really bad, dangerous thing, then I have to say that although blowing up some Iranian facilities and killing a few Iranian scientists were risky acts of aggression, they were worth it. They contributed to the hobbling of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, pushed its goal off by at least several years, so these acts of sabotage and assassination were justified.
And they still are.
They were worth it, he writes, blatantly recalling the despicable words of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In 1996, Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes interviewed Albright about the tragic and genocidal effects of brutal economic U.S. sanctions against Iraq. Stahl asked, “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Nonplussed, Albright immediately replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.”
International law? Unimportant. The right to live without being murdered? Overrated, at least when it comes to Muslims, Arabs, or Iranians. Pretending Middle Eastern countries that challenge Israeli hegemony are acquiring nuclear weapons, despite the findings of the IAEA and all available evidence? Priceless.
Blithely justifying the murder of millions of innocent children or the assassinations of scientists and academics?
“Worth it.”