- 19 April 2010
- 1 Comments
- Diplomacy, Nuclear file, Sanctions, US-Iran War
The New York Times on Sunday reported on a secret memo written by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January warning that the US has no long-term strategy for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.
As always, a lot has been written about this already, so I’ll only focus on one aspect of it that I think is important. This bit about predicting Iran’s intentions:
But in his memo, Mr. Gates wrote of a variety of concerns, including the absence of an effective strategy should Iran choose the course that many government and outside analysts consider likely: Iran could assemble all the major parts it needs for a nuclear weapon — fuel, designs and detonators — but stop just short of assembling a fully operational weapon.
I’ve long argued that this option — the so-called “Japan option” — whereby Iran has a weapons capability but not an assembled, usable weapon, is what Iran actually wants.