[GPSCC-chat] history of "imminent" nuclear threats from Iran

[Jim Doyle]

Professor Juan Cole in his blog Informed Comment
http://www.juancole.com/
wrote


    Netanyahu in 1992: Iran close to having nuclear bomb
    <http://www.juancole.com/2012/09/netanyahu-in-1992-iran-close-to-having-nuclear-bomb.html>


Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is trapped in reflection theory.
He was allegedly himself
involved in illegally smuggling nuclear triggers out of the US, and he 
assumes 
<http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2012/07/03/netanyahu-worked-inside-nuclear-smuggling-ring/>
that Iran desperately wants a nuclear weapon as well. 
<http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2012/07/03/netanyahu-worked-inside-nuclear-smuggling-ring/> 
But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
has given a fatwa against nukes, and there is no solid intelligence 
pointing to an Iranian
weapons program. Iran can’t be close to having a weapon if it doesn’t 
have a weapons program.

He has no credibility left on such warnings.

Reprint edn.: Scott Peterson at the Christian Science Monitor 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/422252> 
did a useful timeline for dire
Israeli and US predictions of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon, 
beginning 20 years ago.

1992: Israeli member of parliament Binyamin Netanyahu predicts that Iran 
was “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear weapon.

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres predicts an Iranian nuclear 
warhead by 1999 to French TV.

1995: The New York Times quotes US and Israeli officials saying that 
Iran would have the bomb by 2000.

1998: Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress that Iran could have an 
intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the US by 2003.

The full article is at
http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/422252