Israel Matzav

The US thinks they'll be forewarned

The Washington Post reports on why the United States believes that it will have advance notice before Iran tries to produce a nuclear weapon.

CIA stealth drones scoured dozens of sites throughout Iran, making hundreds of passes over suspicious facilities, before a version of the RQ-170 crashed inside Iran’s borders in December. The surveillance has been part of what current and former U.S. officials describe as an intelligence surge that is aimed at Iran’s nuclear program and that has been gaining momentum since the final years of George W. Bush’s administration.

The effort has included ramped-up eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, formation of an Iran task force among satellite-imagery analysts and an expanded network of spies, current and former U.S. officials said.

At a time of renewed debate over whether stopping Iran might require military strikes, the expanded intelligence collection has reinforced the view within the White House that it will have early warning of any move by Iran to assemble a nuclear bomb, officials said.

>“There is confidence that we would see activity indicating that a decision had been made,” said a senior U.S. official involved in high-level discussions about Iran policy. “Across the board, our access has been significantly improved.”

The expanded intelligence effort has coincided with a covert campaign by the CIA and other agencies to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and has enabled an escalation in the use of targeted economic sanctions by the United States and its allies to weaken Iran’s resolve.

The Obama administration has cited new intelligence reports in arguing against a preemptive military strike by Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israeli officials have pushed for a more aggressive response to Iran’s nuclear activities, arguing that Iran is nearing what some officials have called a “zone of immunity,” in which Iran can quickly complete the final steps toward becoming a nuclear power inside heavily fortified bunkers protected from Israeli airstrikes.

White House officials contend that Iran’s leaders have not decided to build a nuclear weapon, and they say it would take Iran at least a year to do so if it were to launch a crash program now.

“Even in the absolute worst case — six months — there is time for the president to have options,” said the senior U.S. official, one of seven current or former advisers on security policy who agreed to discuss U.S. options on Iran on the condition of anonymity.

But note how they keep fudging over the extent of operations since that RQ-170 was shot down last December.

Despite the setback, U.S. officials said that some surveillance flights continue and that the damage to American espionage capacity overall has been limited.

That is partly because the drone flights were only a small part of a broad espionage campaign involving the NSA, which intercepts ­e-mail and electronic communications, as well as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which scours satellite imagery and was the first to spot the uranium enrichment plant at Qom.

Color me skeptical whether the US (or Israel) will really know in advance whether Iran starts assembling a nuclear weapon.

Labels: Iranian nuclear threat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:53 PM