U.S. Officials Reaffirm Assessment of Iran’s Program

August 10, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Leah Fae Cochran

Assessment - After a flurry of media rumors about a National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had made “surprising progress”, the leak was traced to Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and doubts about the existence of the NIE grew. However, the U.S. government reaffirmed its prior analysis in comments made yesterday that Iran is not nearing nuclear weapons capability.

--"We believe that there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path, backed by growing international pressure on the Iranian government," a National Security Council spokesman said. "We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon." Reuters has the story. http://reut.rs/O8I286

Quote - In a recent interview, former Secretary of State James Baker argued that there is still time for diplomacy with Iran and the military option should only be a last resort. “We ought to do everything we can, tighten these sanctions as tight as we can get them -- they're showing some indication of beginning to work. We ought to see if we can't get them to work better, keep doing that. We're not at a critical point yet,” said Sec. Baker. From Josh Rogin at The Cable. http://bit.ly/Nk56lF

USA Gold - Talking to reporters yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney got a little thrown off by the USA Women’s Soccer Gold Medal victory over Japan. “I can tell you that the president remains committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and that we are leading an international effort to -- yes, something exciting happened in soccer. Sorry, excuse me, now I'm distracted...” Hat tip to Austin Wright at Morning Defense. http://politi.co/NQShLB

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Report - “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues” by Paul Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin of the Congressional Research Service. June 26, 2012. (pdf) http://bit.ly/QlmGlW

Future regrets - “Israeli leaders must consider that striking Iran could drag the US into a war against its wishes. This would be bad for one of Israel's core survival strategies: the defence and intelligence alliance with America,” writes Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv in the Guardian.

--”It would be far wiser for Netanyahu and Barak – Israel's two prime decision makers – to focus their efforts on helping the international community – with America in the lead – do everything possible to eliminate the Iranian threat. They have to guard against talking themselves into a simple but bloody bilateral conflict that Israelis could well come to regret.” Full story here. http://bit.ly/MV2dF1

Y-12 security breach - “The American people must know that the nuclear material entrusted to the government and its contractors is safe from harm...Never again should intruders be allowed to break into one of the nation's most sensitive national security facilities,” writes the Knoxville News Sentinel. http://bit.ly/MmGmtx

Tweet - @TalkingWarheads: On this day in 1984, Soviet and Cuban paratroopers invaded rural Colorado, later to be repelled by teenage ruffians. #RedDawn

August, 1945 - “Put a bunch of different newspaper headlines together, from different parts of the country, and you get an even more interesting portrait of a specific time and place.” Alex Wellerstein offers a collection of US newspaper headlines from that fateful week in August, 1945.

--Headline from The Paris News (Texas) on August 6th, 1945: “War’s Horror Weapon is U.S. New Atomic Bomb.” http://bit.ly/QMHs2m

Dept. of Tinfoil Hats - “The International Atomic Energy Agency has verified that Iran has test-launched ballistic missiles off ships in an exercise similar to an EMP attack. Studies have shown that a successful EMP attack would devastate America, slaughtering up to two-thirds of the United States population within a year of the attack,” writes Reza Kahlili in a pro-regime change article on Iran for The Washington Times. http://bit.ly/PJxidH

Mortuary services - Read excerpts from a 1956 Civil Defense pamphlet which was “essentially a manual for disposing of extremely large volumes of (radioactive) corpses,” writes Alex Wellerstein of Restricted Data. The pamphlet, complete with a flowchart on how to move the “dead when found” to a “holding area” to being placed in trenches “head to foot rather than side-by-side” is a much more grim depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear explosion than most Civil Defense efforts.

--Wellerstein notes, “In any case, I think Bert the Turtle would have been a lot more disturbing if Bert, having done his duck-and-cover thing, had immediately started digging trench-graves for his less fortunate animal compatriots…” Read more excerpts here. http://bit.ly/zgvltX