Obama prepares public to accept first Iranian nuclear test

By Debka File  President Barack Obama is obviously preparing for his second term in office a policy that lines up his Middle East unconventional weapons ducks – Syrian chemical and Iranian nuclear – under the same revised estimate. Contrary to previous official US statements, Albright now establishes that US intelligence is incapable of pinning down the moment when Iran starts assembling a nuclear bomb, any more than it can detect the Syrian order to embark on chemical warfare.

Therefore, a preemptive operation is out and people must get ready to wake up one morning to find Iran has carried out its first nuclear test, in the same way as they must expect to be surprised by Bashar Assad’s launch of a chemical attack. Only then, may Washington and Jerusalem begin wondering what to do.

But to stave off that moment, Obama still hopes the secret negotiations he initiated with Iran last month plus stiff sanctions (so for ineffective for slowing down Iran’s nuclear progress) will do the trick of holding Tehran back from building a bomb. Failing this result, the Albright report provides him – and Iran – with another eighteen months’ grace.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources affirm that this new estimate may be convenient for some but it is false: Iran already has enough enriched uranium – produced or procured – for building at least five nukes. This is no secret. Wednesday, Jan. 9, the Financial Times reported that a stock of 5 tonnes of un-enriched uranium, enough to produce weapons-grade fuel for five atomic devices, had gone missing in Syria and may have passed to Iran. The stock had been prepared for the nuclear reactor Bashar Assad was building at Al-Kibar in eastern Syria before it was destroyed by Israel in 2007. The information was based on British intelligence sources.

The nuances in Netanyahu’s current reference to the Iranian nuclear threat suggest that he too is aware of the new winds blowing in Washington. In his latest statement, he departed from his standard assertion that his government would not permit Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and said instead: “The government which I head has invested billions to prepare the country for the Iranian threat.”

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