US admiral winds it up on Iran 'nuke threat'

The head of the US military thinks Iran has enough fissile material to make a bomb. But then again this is from the same people that told us Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless the news will be making the Israelis sweat, which is no bad thing.

The admiral thinks it would be a 'very bad outcome for the region and the world'. Why? Surely it would create a balance of power in the region which currently only has one nuclear power - Israel.

Bush apparently managed to stop Israel from trying to hit Iran's perfectly legal nuclear power facilities and this latest 'news' may portend a ratcheting up of the sabre rattling by the west and its watchdog Israel.

An article on today's Dow Jones Marketwatch site talks of oil going up to $300 a barrel on the basis of pent-up demand in India and China waiting to be unleashed. That seems unlikely - but if Israel attacks Iran, well that would be something altogether different.

Some commentators believe that this is reason enough for the US to continue to lean on Israel. Who knows. Suffice to say the west is only too happy for Israel to continue to have a monopoly of nuclear weapons in the region; after all it's such a peaceable country that never initiates wars against its neighbours, does it?

Israeli daily Haaretz reports today that the Israeli government is presenting the US with a series of 'red lines' that the US shouldn't cross in any forthcoming negotiations with Iran - and there's me thinking the United States of America was an independent country that decided its own foreign policy. Silly me.

Israeli intelligence agencies, unlike the admiral, do not think Iran has enough material to make any kind of bomb (the fissile material the Admiral talks of is not 'weapons-grade'), but will have by 2010.

Israel and the US should stop fretting about Iran and consider the fact that there is another nuclear-armed country - which in western-speak is in danger of becoming a failed state - that borders a country into which the US is currently pouring in troops. It's called Pakistan.

From the Wall Street Journal

"We think they do, quite frankly," have enough fissile material to make a bomb, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "And Iran having a nuclear weapon, I've believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world."

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