Monday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 10th, 2011:

Commentary: Evelyn Gordon, writing on Commentary’s Contentions blog, pushes back against the claim by outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon before 2015. Gordon writes, “Precisely because Dagan is known to have vehemently opposed military action against Iran, his confident assertion that Iran won’t have the bomb before 2015 should be taken with a large grain of salt.” She concludes, “Dagan is both a dedicated patriot and a consummate professional, but even patriotic professionals are still human. And it is only human nature to read the tea leaves in a way that supports what you would most like to believe.”

The Atlantic: Jeffrey Goldberg takes a more positive approach to Dagan’s announcement: “[I]t is fair to say that the combination of sanctions and subterfuge has definitively set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least one and perhaps as many as four years.” Goldberg hails “the unknown inventor of Stuxnet, the miracle computer virus, which has bollixed-up Iran’s centrifuges” and the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He concludes with a warning, writing, “It is important to remember that Iranian intentions are unchanged, until proven otherwise, and it is also important to remember that technical difficulties are surmountable, but it is definitely fair to say that the zero hour is not yet here.”

National Review Online: Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, Rudolph Giuliani, and Frances Townsend defend their participation in a Mujahadin e Khalq (MEK) event in Paris. The MEK is a foreign terrorist organization, according to the State Department; speaking at a MEK event could be seen as providing support for a terrorist organization. But Mukasey, Ridge, Giuliani, and Townsend write, in response to a challenge by Professor David Cole, that the Material Support statute does not need revision, but “[w]hat it does need — and does not often enough get for fear of offending some Muslim organizations — is rigorous enforcement against accurately designated organizations, of which MEK is not one.”