Wikileaks: fear of Iran’s nuclear ambition.

1 ANSWERS

1. Guest6345
   

   Sound familiar? Three years ago, campaigning U.S. presidential hopeful John McCain set the belligerent refrain to the tune of an old Beach Boys song. But the ditty, and McCain, failed to top the charts. Now it’s been revived by WikiLeaks — without the music — in reports that Iran has imported powerful North Korean missiles capable of hitting West European cities. One chilling document claimed that “with sufficient foreign assistance” Tehran could likely produce an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States by 2015. Those leaks, coupled with disclosures that Arab states were urging the U.S. to take drastic action against Iran before it gets a nuclear bomb, have brought the rattle of sabres to a new pitch. “We have already concluded from 2008 that the only solution that would stop the Iranians would be war,” said Sami Alfaraj, a Kuwaiti crisis manager and former military commander. “If we don’t do it today it will be extremely difficult to fight a nuclear-capable nation.” “The elephant in the room was the supposed verification that 19 North Korean BM-25 missiles were shipped to Iran,” said Michael Elleman, a missile engineer and senior fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. “But on reading it, the cable doesn’t really say that.” The 53 pages of secret cables labelled Joint U.S.—Russia Threat Assessment Talks, reported on a December 2009 meeting between American and Russian officials in charge of monitoring threats from Iran and North Korea. They record candid and detailed information from both sides, as well as disagreements on the magnitude of the threats. But Elleman said, while there may have been a sale of North Korean technology to Iran, “it’s important to know that if the BM-25 was transferred, it is not yet a missile. It would be three to five years away from that if testing started tomorrow.”

   Report (0) (0)  |   12 years, 7 month(s) ago