White House brushes off CIA report on Iran: report

[RORER-714]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House dismissed a classified
CIA draft assessment that found no conclusive evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program, the New Yorker reported.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said the CIA's analysis was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites and on other evidence like measurements of the radioactivity of water samples.

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that
Iran has declared to the
International Atomic Energy Agency," according to the article.

"A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it," it said.

The United States has accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian energy program.

The article, in the current issue of the magazine, discussed how Vice President
Dick Cheney believed the Bush administration would deal with Iran if the Republicans lost control of Congress as they did in the November 7 election.

"If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran," Hersh wrote, citing an unidentified source familiar with the discussion.

source

[eD]

The IAEA has found some minor evidence.

[RORER-714]

link?

[eD]

hold please

[eD]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15712210/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061114/...a/iran_nuclear

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...EA.xml&src=rss

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...C-RSSFeeds0312

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...8LD6HBO0.shtml

[ZOSO]

I wonder how they get those (water) samples they got soil samples from North Korea.

[RORER-714]

A senior U.N. official who was familiar with the report cautioned against reading too much into the new finds of traces of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, saying Iran had provided explanations for both that were now being examined by the IAEA and — if confirmed — could be plausibly classified as the byproducts of peaceful nuclear activities.

He said that while the uranium traces were enriched to a higher level than needed to generate power, they were still below weapons-grade.

.

[Tri]

They stormed Iraq for less than that.

[Peterpigman]

Originally Posted by Tri

They stormed Iraq for less than that.

Iran is a different situation though. To take Iran would lead to an awful lot of casualties. Which obviously the USA doesn't really want to do.