Michel Chossudovsky: Dangerous Crossroads, The Threat of a r

Preemptive Nuclear war directed against Iran. For more than a decade, Iran has been doggedly accused, without evidence, of developing nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic is relentlessly portrayed by the Western media, as a threat to the security of Israel, and of the Western World. In a bitter irony, the assessment if America's Intelligence Community, concerning Iran's alleged nuclear weapons capabilities refutes the barrage of media disinformation, as well as the bellicose statements, emanating from the White House. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, judges with high confidence, that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. "We assess with moderate confidence, Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program, as of mid 2007, but we do not know, whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons. We continue to assess, with moderate to high confidence, that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon. Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program, suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons, than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment, that the program probably was halted, primarily in response to international pressure, suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue, than we judged previously. In February 2011, The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, while presenting the 2011 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, intimated with some hesitation, that the Islamic Republic was not seeking to develop nuclear weapons capabilities. We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons. The 2011 NIE, largely confirms the findings undertaken by the US intelligence community in the 2007 NIE, which remains, according to The New York Times, the consensus view of America's 16 intelligence agencies. First formulated in the Bush administration's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the preemptive nuclear war doctrine, integrated into the Global War on Terrorism, started to take shape in the immediate wake of war in Iraq. A preemptive defensive nuclear attack on Iran, using tactical nuclear weapons, was envisaged to annihilate the Islamic Republic's non existent nuclear weapons program. So called mini nukes were identified as the ideal weapon to conduct a pre emptive nuclear attack. In 2003, the mini nukes, consisting of bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads, were re-categorized by the US Senate as bona-fide conventional weapons.