‘We can live with a nuclear Iran’
Danielle Pletka | American Enterprise Institute
March 05, 2012

http://www.kremlin.ru/events/chron/2009/06/217876.shtml

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Just in time for your post-Monday morning coffee jitters comes a calming article from Paul Pillar, former CIA Near East hand: We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran. The article is little more than a rehash of why those who aren’t psyched about a nuclear Iran are wrong (one assumes Mr. Pillar also means Barack Obama, who told AIPAC yesterday that we could not live with a nuclear Iran); why America is concerned because we are channeling Israel; why Israel has enough nukes to destroy Iran if threatened; why war is not the answer. Lalala. It’s not that everything in the piece is wrong; certainly, an attack on Iran will result in blowback and could well strengthen hardliners in Tehran. But the overall conclusion is wrong.

More importantly—and I say “more” because this piece will only serve as cannon fodder for the fusillades of the anti-war left; it doesn’t seek to educate—“We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran” reminds us how foully politicized the U.S. intelligence community is, how partisan its analysts have become, and how little we can rely on their judgment. Here’s a piece I did in 2006 about the selfsame Pillar, and the selfsame problem. Is it any wonder that the CIA estimates that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program?

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About the Author

 

Danielle
Pletka

  • As a long-time Senate Committee on Foreign Relation senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia, Danielle Pletka was the point person on Middle East, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan issues. As the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI, Pletka writes on national security matters with a focus on Iran and weapons proliferation, the Middle East, Syria, Israel and the Arab Spring. She also studies and writes about South Asia: Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.


    Pletka is the co-editor of “Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats” (AEI Press, 2008) and the co-author of “Containing and Deterring a Nuclear Iran” (AEI Press, 2011). Her most recent study, “Iranian influence in the Levant, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan,” was published in May 2012. She is currently working on a follow-up report on U.S.–Iranian competitive strategies in the Middle East, to be published in the summer of 2013.


  • Phone: 202-862-5943
    Email: dpletka@aei.org

  • Assistant Info

    Name: Alexandra Della Rocchetta
    Phone: 202-862-7152
    Email: alex.dellarocchetta@aei.org
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