Tulsi Gabbard, the improbable US Director of National Security, seems to have had a Paulian revelation.
Where once she merely repeated what her national security and intelligence team told her - that Iran was not building nuclear weapons - she now fully espouses what her boss Donald Trump tells her, that Iran is months, or weeks, or even days, away from having functioning nuclear weapons.
It's only a couple of months since Ms. Gabbard testified before Congress that, although Iran seemed to have a strangely large stock of enriched uranium (which can also be used to make nuclear fuel, it might be added), it had not resumed its suspended 2003 nuclear weapons programme. "Iran is not building a nuclear weapon", she stated, pretty conclusively.
However, Trump, taking Netanyahu's line, seems to know better, and told reporters he did not "care what she said", and that he somehow knows that Iran is "very close to having a weapon". "She's wrong", blithely asserts Trump, with no evidence or explanation.
Miraculously, Ms. Gabbard completely changed her views, and now believes that Iran "can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months". This was always the publicly-stated excuse for Netanyahu to start bombing Iran, and it remains his official line. It would also be Trumps's excuse if he were to decide to assist with said bombing.
Unfortunately, that's probably not the case. As mentioned, the US intelligence community (which is what Trump is supposed to rely on) says there is no evidence if it. The IAEA says "there used to be ... a structured and systematic effort in the direction of a nuclear device, that is not the case now". The IAEA also says that the enriched uranium Iran has is about 60% enriched, not the 90% needed for a bomb. The US-based Arms Control Association says that Netanyahu "did not present any clear or compelling evidence that Iran was on the brink of weaponizing". The Economist is likewise unconvinced, despite some related nuclear activity.
In fact, there is evidence coming to light that the line about Iran being very close to having nuclear weapons may have been supplied to Netanyahu (and from him to Trump) by the IAEA's "Mosaic" artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm. If it turns out that a war was started by AI, that would be a first... (A major war started based on false information about weapons of mass destruction? Well, that's been done before.) The IA report, dated June 12th, was subsequently refuted by IAEA on June 17th, although "too late", as the Iranian foreign ministry lamented. By that time, Israel had already stated its atracks, and the ball was inexorably rolling.
The actual evidence, if any at all, is very thin. But Trump knows what he knows (i.e. very little), and no-one around him has the cojones to contradict him.
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