Iran has had numerous political defectors warning "The West" about the clerical leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran developing nuclear weapons for over twenty years and as recently as November of 2004.  Colin Powell, during his last official trip as the U.S. Secretary of State, told reporters in Chile that the intelligence community had recently been given a gift -- a walk-in Iranian defector carrying with him about a thousand pages of documents detailing the technological efforts of the Iranians to marry nuclear warheads with the missile already in Iranian inventory.

It would seem to me that those kind of technological efforts are one of the last steps one does to become a nuclear power.  In other words, there really should be no doubt that Iran has already developed nuclear warheads.  The fact that the Mullahs with Nukes are not driving them around Tehran in a proud Soviet-style military parade for the western intelligence agencies to photograph shouldn't be of any comfort to anyone.  One of the many problems the Bush administration has created for itself -- and by extension, all of us -- by their pre-emptive and prolonged romp around Iraq is that now if Condoleeza Rice stands in front of the United Nations Security Council with polaroid pictures of Iranian nuclear weapons, there are few people in the world that would believe her since the Bush administration lied, and lied again, concerning Iraq.

Why didn't we see this coming?  Why do they hate us?

We have and we have not.  They do and they don't.  One of the many primary failures in the administrations of the last three U.S. presidents (Bush-Clinton-Bush) is simply not taking this Mullahs with Nukes problem seriously enough, and a mistaken presumption concerning the relationships between the enemies of the United States.  Old school, Cold War warriors in the CIA evaluated everything about most of the countries in the Middle East as simply a logistical problem whose only strategic considerations were boiled down to the question of, "Can we fuel our war machine there?"  I can personally affirm, from my own experience, that that was the general mindset of the intelligence and defense crowd in the 1980's, even from the limited, personal keyhole through which I had access to know about the bigger picture of the world at that time.

First, let's not forget that Iran officially declared war with the U.S. way back during the 444 days of the U.S. embassy hostage crisis more than 25 years ago.  Have the Iranian clerics somehow changed their minds about their desires to kill Americans since that time?  No, not at all.  As a matter of fact, I just watched a very tedious speech by the leader of Iran in front of an audience of Iranian military that was broadcast on C-Span this year which concluded with everyone in the room chanting, "Death to Israel, Death to the Zionists, Death to America!"  Second, let's not forget that the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein's side of the regionally devastating Iran-Iraq war.  The Iranian Mullahs with Nukes have ample historical and current points to justify their reasons for wanting to strike a devastating blow to the United States, or any of its closest allies.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Despite the obviousness of this old Arab proverb, the head of the middle-eastern bureau at the CIA operated under the assumption that Sunni Wahabbi terrorists would never covort with the Shia Iranian Mullahs with Nukes.  A very under-reported fact that was brought out during the extensive work of the 911 Commission (perhaps because it is in the classified portions of that report) is that nearly half of the Saudi terrorists perpetrating their 911 terror were helped and fascilitated by Iranian intelligence agents at many earlier points along their way to 911.

The Iranian - Al Qaeda intelligence reports were literally discovered by the 911 Commission staffers a week before their report was due to be published.  They found a CIA summary report at the bottom of document box that caused them to request 75 more intelligence reports at the eleventh hour detailing Iranian and Al Qaeda collaboration.  As a matter of undisputed fact: an Iranian defector told a CIA section chief at the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijian that "Arab fighters" (before they were tagged with the Al Qaeda name) were training to hijack commercial airplanes in a facility, north of Tehran, in the Spring of 2001.

Do you remember the last three years of "unspecified" threats that made the Secretary of Homeland Security raise the stupid color code alert system based upon terrorist chatter?  Guess what?  The very same man in Azerbaijian that warned of a major hijacking operation planned for the U.S. also told our man from the CIA exactly what date it was to occur, very specifically, September 11th.  He was ignored and discredited by the CIA.  However, if it is any consolation to the relatives of the thousands of 911 victims, this top-level bureaucrat was just fired by Porter Goss.

The nightmare scenario

The Pentagon has already war-gamed the nightmare scenario that the Pakistani nuclear guru A.Q. Khan has given the Iranian clerics his rolodex of black market nuclear technology suppliers from France to North Korea.  Iran has nukes, but since Iran doesn't want a traditional confrontation with the U.S. in the Persian Gulf, they prefer to fascilitate plausibly deniable actions against its enemies. Porter Goss had an accidental slip of the tongue this year when he exclaimed that the CIA knew where Osama Bin Laden was located but he was unfortunately being protected by a sovereign state.

That probably doesn't mean Afghanistan.  Karzai has been openly battling Al Qaeda for several years.  It probably doesn't mean Pakistan either, unless Bin Laden is tucked away in the Kasmir region, where Musharev has little control.  I think after seven assassination attmepts on Musharev, he's not Osama's buddy, anyway.  The fact that no one seems to want to talk publicly about Iran is telling.

When Iran publicly admitted their nuclear capabilities after the U.S. showed up in Iraq, it was an obvious warning to anyone paying attention to this tidbit in the news.  The Bush administration isn't making Iran a focus to the American people simply because there are not any easy cookie cutter Karl Rove outcomes to this problem.

The one nightmare scenario that worries most people is the one where Iran gives an Al Qaeda cell one little nuclear weapon, an anonymous ocean vessel, and a scud missile launcher for it.  A small team could literally sail up next to Cuba, and toss a scud missile-propelled nuke at Washingtion, D.C., or any major city on the eastern seabord.  Within 3-5 minutes, a quarter million people would likely be vaporized and our military would be left scratching their collective heads as to whom to retaliate against since there is no specific country of origin for the nuclear attack.

The Dark Ages

More and more though, I am seeing lawmakers on C-Span discuss in committee and give speeches on the floor of their legislative bodies concerning a topic about which any casual fan of Sci-Fi already knows.  Despite the obvious Hiroshima-style aftermath of a quarter-million cooked Americans in some city, a nuclear blast at around 100 miles above a city would produce an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP).  It is thought that the after effects of an EMP blast might actually cause enough chaos and mayhem to kill many more hundreds of thousands of people.

An EMP would shut down all electrical devices that were not hardened against that threat over the entire region of the country.  In other words, if D.C. got nuked, the EMP from that nuke could shut down everything containing any electronics from Miami, FL to Bangor, ME, depending upon the size of the nuke and its detonation altitude.

What does that mean?  That means that we all get to go back to Dark Ages.  Most major U.S. cities only have about three days worth of food unless interstate trucking can resupply a city's hundreds of grocery stores.  Millions of people without water, or food, or even transportation to leave the city could turn New York City and many other places into a gruesome place to be.  It also means that whatever city on the eastern seaboard that gets hit by the actual nuclear blast will burn until fire trucks from somewhere like Kansas arrive, since all vehicles within the EMP radius will be rendered useless.  People who get paid to imagine the worst don't call this the "nightmare scenario" for lack of a better name.

What can be done?

Taking the problem to the United Nations probably will not be very helpful in the short term.  The other countries on the U.N. Securitiy Council will likely blow the United States off.  First, because of the previously mentioned lies about Iraq that will kill our credibility about any future wolf cry, even if it is the truth.  Bush squandered our international credibility there.  But, second, the European Union has had a good grasp of the Iranian nuclear problem for ten years.  And frankly, they and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council feel safe that Iran and Al Qaeda are fairly focussed on the U.S., or Israel, for anything so spectacular as a nuclear attack.

Leaders of a number of countries wouldn't care about this threat because the Mullahs with Nukes have clearly stated that the U.S., and Israel, and those shadowy Zionists are Iran's enemies, not anyone specifically in the European Union.  Their only real concern would be the possible shutdown of many world markets from the knee-jerk U.S. retaliatory response of nuking Iran.  But, when the shit does hit the fan, it will likely be in New York City or even Los Angeles that suffers from a nuclear strike.  The modern technologically entrenched cities in the U.S. are more vulnerable to the lifestyle change coming from an EMP blast than the rural, agricultural areas on the planet that might not even have an electrical grid.

You'd think that Israel might get nuked first, but that may not happen because of the unblinking scrutiny of everyone's satellites and intelligence services focussing on that region.  Yet, some group of guys can sail a vessel from Sudan almost up to the port of Miami fairly little interference in international waters.

The long term solution must be embarked upon.  The U.S. government must fund and support the many Iranians wishing to reform their current government of Iran.  It is a hopeful sign that the last election in Iran was boycotted massively by many Iranians.  If a regime change by Iranians is not put forward, the only other option for stability and peace will be a military one.  Iran is a serious national security problem for the U.S. for which the Bush administration does not have many good answers so far.

Further reading:

Countdown to Crisis : The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran
by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it
by Curt Weldon

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