Both US And Russia Assure Israel: You Have Nothing To Fear From Iranian Reactor!

Good news: U.S. Assures Israel That Iran Threat Is Not Imminent:

The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a “dash” for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials.

Administration officials said they believe the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike against the country’s nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats.

Hey, wait a minute--dash for a nuclear weapon?


Jane's Defense Weekly was reporting that Iran was close to having a nuclear bomb--back in 1984.
And for years now the media has been talking about how close Iran is to going nuclear and about how Israel may end up bombing Iran's reactors.

While the US is assuring Israel that technically there is no immediate threat for Israel to be concerned over, Russia is telling Israel that Iran is too pragmatic:

“Israelis must understand the negative implications of Israel attacking Iran for the region and the world,” one of the diplomats said. “According to international law, it is absolutely prohibited to strike a facility that possesses nuclear fuel. There is no international threat to Israel from Bushehr, so there would be no purposes for Israel to bomb it.”

The diplomats said the Iranians were more pragmatic than Israelis gave them credit for and that they were not interested in a clash with the West. They stressed that Russia was fully cooperating with the fourth round of sanctions placed on Iran by the UN Security Council in June, including refraining from delivering S-300 anti-aircraft missiles that are on the list of weapons banned from being transferred to Iran.

“Russia borders Iran,” one of the diplomats said. “We are much closer to Iran than you are, and we do not have an interest in having a threat on our borders, so we don’t believe [Israelis] have to worry.”

This from the country that gave us Chernobyl.

As far as John Bolton's statement that Israel only has until the end of the week to stop Iran--in her Thursday post From Israel: Searching Facts, Arlene Kushner notes:

Bolton has made some very specific statements with regard to Bushehr, which have been picked up and inflated by the media. (Some of you have already written to me about this and received private responses.)

Bolton's contention is that we are facing a deadline only days away. For, he says, once the fuel is loaded into the reactor (with loading scheduled to begin August 21), Israel would no longer hit it for fear of releasing widespread radiation.

Many people -- aided by some of those media reports -- are drawing the conclusion from this that if Israel doesn't attack Iran in the next couple of days, all chance to do so will have been lost. Yet Bolton hasn't said this -- if you pay careful attention to his words, you see that he only addresses the issue of this one reactor.

See, for example: http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/John--Bolton--Iran--Nuclear--israel/2010/08/13/id/367449

It would be reasonable to conclude that Israel's opportunity to effectively strike Iran at all would be lost after this deadline only if destruction of that particular reactor were a critical and necessary part of Israel's attack plans.

Right now, shining a bit of light on this issue is of considerable importance.

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A fact that is frequently neglected when there is talk of an Israeli attack on Iran, is that Israel does not have the ability military to completely destroy Iran's capability to become a nuclear power. I've heard this directly from Israeli generals here. The best that we could do would be to cripple that capability for some (disputed) period of time.

There may be multiple ways to cripple Iran, with hitting Bushehr not necessarily critical at all.

Read the whole thing.

At this point, it may make more sense to ignore US and Russian assurances and just stick with Kushner.

Technorati Tag: Iran and Bushehr.