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| Gates Says U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Iran's Nuclear Drive | |
| 2010-04-18 | |
| WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document. Of course we don't. Bambi thought his charisma and his obvious appeal to the Mad Mullahs™ would do the trick.
Note the date: January. Think we're any more prepared today? Think we'll be more prepared in the next few months? They include a revised set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course. Bambi isn't going to use military alternatives. The leak of this information is being done today so that when the Iranians do build their bomb, Bambi can 'show' everyone that we didn't have any military options available to us -- the Pentagon let him down, doncha know. Officials familiar with the memo's contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies. Don't worry, the NYT will get hold of those sections and publish them by Wednesday ... One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as "a wake-up call." But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran's nuclear program. Name them ... In an interview on Friday, General Jones declined to speak about the memorandum. But he said: "On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don't announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn't mean we don't have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies -- we do." But in his memo, Mr. Gates wrote of a variety of concerns, including the absence of an effective strategy should Iran choose the course that many government and outside analysts consider likely: Iran could assemble all the major parts it needs for a nuclear weapon -- fuel, designs and detonators -- but stop just short of assembling a fully operational weapon. In that case, Iran could remain a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty while becoming what strategists call a "virtual" nuclear weapons state. Israel is sort of like that. The world is unhappy about Israel's nukes. Think Egypt, Jordan and Turkey will complain about Iran's nukes? According to several officials, the memorandum also calls for new thinking about how the United States might contain Iran's power if it decided to produce a weapon, and how to deal with the possibility that fuel or weapons could be obtained by one of the terrorist groups Iran has supported, which officials said they considered to be a less-likely possibility. Mr. Gates has never mentioned the memo in public. His spokesman, Geoff Morrell, declined comment on specifics in the document, but issued a statement on Saturday saying, "The secretary believes the president and his national security team have spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort considering and preparing for the full range of contingencies with respect to Iran." "And have come up with bupkis," Mr. Morrell continued under his breath ... Pressed on the administration's ambiguous phrases until now about how close the United States was willing to allow Iran's program to proceed, a senior administration official described last week in somewhat clearer terms that there was a line Iran would not be permitted to cross. The official said that the United States would ensure that Iran would not "acquire a nuclear capability," a step Tehran could get to well before it developed a sophisticated weapon. "That includes the ability to have a breakout," he said, using the term nuclear specialists apply to a country that suddenly renounces the nonproliferation treaty and uses its technology to build a small arsenal. Nearly two weeks ago, Mr. Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, was asked about whether he saw a difference between a nuclear-capable Iran and one that had a fully developed weapon. "I'm not going to parse that right now," he said. But he noted that North Korea was considered a nuclear-capable state until it threw out inspectors and, as he said, "became a self-professed nuclear state." We didn't do anything about that, either. Mr. Gates has alluded to his concern that intelligence agencies might miss signals that Iran was taking the final steps toward producing a weapon. Last Sunday on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," he said: "If their policy is to go to the threshold but not assemble a nuclear weapon, how do you tell that they have not assembled? I don't actually know how you would verify that." But he cautioned that Iran had run into production difficulties, and he said, "It's going slow -- slower than they anticipated, but they are moving in that direction." We won't know when they're ready to hit breakout mode until they decide to do it. When it happens we won't do anything about it. I'm guessing Bibi is making the same calculation. I'm also guessing the Israelis have a plan, which is more than we have. I'm further guessing that Bambi understands that, and that in part is why he was rude to Bibi. Mr. Gates has taken a crucial role in formulating the administration's strategy, and he has been known over his career to issue stark warnings against the possibility of strategic surprise. Some officials said his memo should be viewed in that light: as a warning to a relatively new president that the United States was not adequately prepared. He wrote the memo after Iran had let pass a 2009 deadline set by Mr. Obama to respond to his offers of diplomatic engagement. Of course they did: they knew it was all show. Both that process and efforts to bring new sanctions against Iran have struggled. Administration officials had hoped that the revelation by Mr. Obama in September that Iran was building a new uranium enrichment plant inside a mountain near Qum would galvanize other nations against Iran, but the reaction was muted. The next three months were spent in what proved to be fruitless diplomatic talks with Iran over a plan to swap much of its low-enriched uranium for fuel for a medical reactor in Tehran. By the time Mr. Gates wrote his memo, those negotiations had collapsed. Mr. Gates's memo appears to reflect concerns in the upper echelons of the Pentagon and the military that the White House did not have a well-prepared series of alternatives in place in case all the diplomatic steps finally failed. In fact, just before Mr. Gates issued his warning, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, wrote an official "chairman's guidance" to his staff saying that while any military option would have "limited results" against Iran's nuclear facilities, preparations needed to be stepped up. "Should the president call for military options, we must have them ready," the admiral wrote. Administration officials testifying before a Senate committee last week made it clear that those preparations were under way. So did General Jones. "The president has made it clear from the beginning of this administration that we need to be prepared for every possible contingency," he said in the interview. "That is what we have done from day one, while successfully building a coalition of nations to isolate Iran and pressure it to live up to its obligations." No one -- no one -- believes Bambi will pull the trigger and hammer Iran. So go ahead and plan, but it's just a staff exercise. At the same hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the military's most experienced officers on nuclear matters, said that Iran could produce bomb-grade fuel for at least one nuclear weapon within a year, but that it would probably need two to five years to manufacture a workable atomic bomb. Nonsense. We did it in less time in the Manhattan Project, and we weren't sure of what we were doing. The Iranians have all the principles and knowledge. For them it's just an engineering problem. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #15 ION DEBAK > THE "NEW HIZBALLAH" BY SYRIA SPARKS MIDDLE EAST WAR FEARS | SYRIA TURNING HIZBALLAH INTO A REGULAR ARMY [Missle-armed this time = Anti-Air, Anti-Naval, LR BMS, anti-tank/Armor]. HMMMMM, HMMMMM, TANGOS = relabeled as TIAGOS/TIGOS > T-errorist, A-rmed, I-ndependent, G-overnment O-perated; or perhaps the "A" in TANGO should be changed to A-UTONOMOUS??? I chose "TAIGO" to reflect the RISE OF CHINA + CHIN = "ASIAN/ASIA-PACIFIC CENTURY". * SAME > IRAN CLOSE TO PLUTONIUM-MAKING/PROD CAPACITY. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-04-18 23:20 |
| #14 Oldspook nails it but then again you don't need me to point that out. |
| Posted by: Hellfish 2010-04-18 21:08 |
| #13 but hey, that's been done before too. Why don't we just go for preemptive surrender and get it over with, Shipman? President Obama the Much Beloved can inform the Israelis they have a choice of leaving or being turned into rivers of blood by text message as he flies to Tehran for his final bow. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-04-18 16:20 |
| #12 ShockandAwe II. It's worked before, let's do it again. The Iranian people will greet this us as um.... friends and be instantly transformed into a paragon of liberal democracy. Or we could simply seal their coast and make all trade move overland, which would invite a cheap shot, but hey, that's been done before too. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2010-04-18 15:07 |
| #11 No half measures are adequate. and in a nutshell that rules out any action by the US at this time. |
| Posted by: abu do you love 2010-04-18 14:54 |
| #10 Actually the problem is political courage. The only wya to prevent Iran having nukes now is to strike and take out the ability for them to produce them. The problem with that precise a strike is that it does not take out the cause: the Islamic leadership. So a decapitation strike is needed as well. The problem is that leaves a lot of the machinery in place. So a full devastation of the military capacity of Iran is needed. So once you do the analysis, you see that the only way to do this in a military manner is to take out the leadership first: a lightning strike which takes down the leadership and the communicatiosn infrastructure nearly instantly, and take down the military capacity to impose any sort of command on the populace, and after that, take out the nuclear production and storage facilities. The bottom line: No half measures are adequate. The Iranian government and the machinery that maintains it in power must be decapitated and then sufficiently destroyed. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-04-18 14:15 |
| #9 I guess we can reason this out in a circular fashion WolfDog but what does that have to do with a Defense Secretary that has been around long enough to know better? |
| Posted by: yo adrian 2010-04-18 12:57 |
| #8 Where does Barry's pro-Muslim and anti-Semetic bent come from you ask? Could it possibly be from sitting quietly each Sunday and listening to Jeremiah Wright spew hatred for decades? Could it be from his neighbor and enthusiastic endorser the Louis Farrakhan? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-04-18 11:43 |
| #7 I think Obama's attitude toward Jacket is like Chamberlain's to Hitler: he knows that Jacket lies, but he doesn't believe that Jacket would lie to him. In that context, I think Obama's plan is predictable. |
| Posted by: Matt 2010-04-18 11:33 |
| #6 ...How does the frikkin' Secretary of DEFENSE admit to having no plan to DEFEND us? Posted by: Yo Adrian 2010-04-18 11:01 'Cause he is the eunuch Bambi chose for the position. |
| Posted by: WolfDog 2010-04-18 11:31 |
| #5 Has anybody seen that old Nostradamus documentary narrated by Orson Welles? I saw it numerous times when I was a kid and have never forgotten the ending which ( as Nostradamus supposedly predicts )actually specifies Iran as hitting the U.S. with a nuke. It was scary then (Welles did a great job) and seeing it now in my lifetime as a possibility is totally surreal. My personal opinion is that Obama and Gates should step aside if they have no plan to protect us. How does the frikkin' Secretary of DEFENSE admit to having no plan to DEFEND us? |
| Posted by: Yo Adrian 2010-04-18 11:01 |
| #4 Nearly two weeks ago, Mr. Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, was asked about whether he saw a difference between a nuclear-capable Iran and one that had a fully developed weapon. "I'm not going to parse that right now," he said. Ahhhh...with the wisdom of |
| Posted by: tu3031 2010-04-18 10:52 |
| #3 Gates Says U.S. Lacks There you go P2K. It's a sheep leading lions kinda thing. |
| Posted by: Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division 2010-04-18 10:21 |
| #2 Iran and the Mad Mullahs have always had a vision of where Iran and islam is going. They are not going to stray, deviate, or negotiate from that vision--No matter what. If they negotiate in any way, it is simply Taqiyya to buy time as a part of their overall strategy. Their vision is one of domination over others. We'd better have a strategy for coping with Iran or we will have to deal with it big-time later--and the price will be high. The Donk Congress, Hollywood, and the MSM needs to dump the goal of Obama deification and look at the threat. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-04-18 09:25 |
| #1 Gates Says U.S. Lacks FIFY. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-04-18 08:46 |