Reported: 21:34 PM - Mar/31/10 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/183599
"Iran continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so," said the CIA in its annual report to Congress.
Tuesday.
Citing unnamed sources briefed on the defection, the network said Shahram Amiri, a nuclear physicist in his early 30s, defected as part of a long-planned operation to get him to leave Iran and resettle in the United States.
"The significance of the coup will depend on how much the scientist knew in the compartmentalized Iranian nuclear programme," said Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official who now works as a consultant for ABC.
"Just taking one scientist out of the program will not really disrupt it," he said.
A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment.
Amiri, a university researcher working for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, disappeared during a pilgrimage to Mecca in June, three months before Iran disclosed the existence of its second uranium enrichment site near the city of Qom.
In December, Tehran accused Saudi Arabia of handing Amiri over to the United States.
The ABC report said Amiri has been extensively debriefed since his defection and said he helped confirm U.S. intelligence assessments about the Iranian nuclear program.
Amiri was one two Iranian nuclear scientists reported missing in October, since when speculation over his defection has grown in light of Iran's contacts with Saudi officials in an effort locate him.
The contacts were unusual, as Iranians often go missing during the annual hajj pilgrimage. In such cases, the foreign ministry usually makes no announcement and there is no effort made to locate them, despite their families' pleas.
A second scientist, mentioned in press reports only by his surname, Ardebili, was allegedly arrested in Georgia a few weeks before Amiri's disappearance.
Iran's foreign ministry has denied claims Ardebili worked in the Iranian nuclear program, maintaining that he was a businessman who was extradited to the U.S. following his arrest.
In 2007, the former Iranian deputy defense minister and senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Ali Reza Asgari defected to the West. Several reports linked both the American CIA and the Israeli Mossad to the operation.
British historian Paul Johnson titled one of the chapters of "Modern Times," his sweeping moral narrative of the 20th century, "America's Suicide Attempt." Why on earth would America, of all nations, attempt suicide?
Free, prosperous countries have more to protect — and more legitimacy in going all out to defend what they have — than most if not all of the state entities that came before them in history.
And America is the most successful country — free or non-free — ever. Yet today the free world seems to have such a death wish, it's guiding Iran's hand so that the gun now being cocked will be aimed perfectly between America's eyes.
What have we been doing these past five years as Tehran, with the help of Russia and China, has clearly been constructing and operating numerous facilities aimed at bomb-making?
Not only have we not prepared to attack, admittedly a risk in many ways. We also haven't tried to topple the mullahs' Islamofascist, terror-financing regime. And we've given neither material nor moral support to the leaders of Iran's resistance.
Now, the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center warns that Tehran is "keeping open" the option of building a bomb in spite of international pressure, "though we do not know whether Tehran eventually will decide to produce nuclear weapons."
U.S. officials say Iran's admission in 2010 of a second enrichment plant near Qom "is a clear sign Iran's nuclear program is geared toward producing weapons, because the facility is too small for nonmilitary uranium enrichment," the Washington Times reported.
The CIA report also said that production of medium-range missiles remains one of Tehran's "highest priorities," that China, North Korea and Russia are all helping Iran produce such missiles, and that Iran also has both chemical and biological weapons capabilities.
All this should be a shock. But what did the new head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, have to say Tuesday regarding Iran's nuclear weapons activities? "So far I haven't got the response that I hoped."
How about our own secretary of state? Appearing on Canadian television Monday, Hillary Clinton said: "China is part of the consultative group that has ... made it very clear that a nuclear-armed Iran is not acceptable to the international community."
Do we have this straight? China, one of the countries the CIA says is helping Iran build nukes, will now turn around and help us impose new sanctions to prevent Iran from building them?
That's about as effective as Secretary Clinton's feeble reproach to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for Moscow's building and fueling of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant.
The president's two priorities now appear to be gloating over passage of health reform and wrecking the coalition that rules Israel.
It might be time for the vice president, a frequent visitor to the Middle East, to remind the commander in chief: Iran is a big — fill in the blank — deal.
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