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Israeli intelligence revises estimate: Iran is progressing fast towards a nuclear bomb

DEBKAfile Special Report

September 21, 2008, 7:37 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli military intelligence chief of research, Brig. Yossi Baidatz

The director of research at Israeli military intelligence (AMAN), Brig. Yossi Baidatz, surprised the Israeli cabinet Sunday Sept. 21, with a new appreciation of Iran’s nuclear timetable. Tehran, he disclosed, has already stocked one-third or even half the quantity of enriched uranium needed for a nuclear bomb. He warned the ministers that Iran is dashing at top speed towards a nuclear weapons capability and nothing stands in the way of its headlong advance, including international sanctions.

Separately, former Israeli army chief Lt. Gen (Res.) Moshe Yaalon said in a radio interview that an Israel-Iranian war is unavoidable.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources say Israeli intelligence has drastically revised its former evaluation of the Iran’s nuclear progress and intentions. Although Iran has only 4,000 centrifuges producing 4-5-grade uranium, it is fasting building up a stock of enough low-grade uranium – 1.5 tons - to convert quickly and simply into weapons grades material - within a year or eighteen months.

The conventional intelligence view until now was that Tehran, in the final reckoning, would take its program up to the brink of a weapons capability and stop there before its consummation. It was based on Iran’s decision not to follow through on the detailed plans for building a device for an underground nuclear test it obtained from Pakistan in 2002.

Baidatz’s update Sunday has reversed this evaluation.

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Israel: Iran close to going nuclear, must be fought

Israel's military intelligence warns that Iran is closer than many want to believe to obtaining nuclear weapons, and a former army chief says that ultimately Israel will have to fight the Islamic Republic.

In his briefing to the Israeli cabinet on Sunday, Military Intelligence Research Division chief Gen. Yossi Baidatz said that Iran is progressing rapidly toward the technological know-how required to build a nuclear bomb.

Said Baidatz in remarks carried by Ynet: "Iran is focusing its efforts in enriching uranium and improving the operational capabilities of its centrifuges. It is mastering the necessary technology and now has one-third of what it need to create a bomb."

Baidatz believes Iran is accelerating its nuclear program amid assessments that the UN Security Council will fail to pass and enforce a fourth round of limited sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with Reuters, former Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon likened the situation to the international community's weak response to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in 1939.

"Today, we in the West are facing the same situation, the lack of decisiveness towards a threat that is no less severe than that which Hitler posed in 1939," said Yaalon, warning that ultimately Israel will have no choice but to militarily confront Iran.

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Supporters of Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz have urged him to retain both that post and his Knesset seat, despite his announcement last Thursday that he plans to take a break from politics following his loss to Tzipi Livni in Kadima's leadership primary.

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz at a cabinet meeting.
Photo: AP

Slideshow: Pictures of the week

Mofaz cannot formally quit as long as there is a transitional government in place. In the past three days, he has stayed away from political life but has taken no formal steps to show that he intends to quit.

His supporters believe he is rethinking his options and they remain hopeful that he will be swayed to remain.

"We are pressuring him to stay," Mofaz associate Avi Duan told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Duan said that on Tuesday, Mofaz loyalists planned to gather for a Rosh Hashana toast and publicly ask him to resume work and announce that he intends to stay in his post as one of the top figures in Kadima.

MK Otniel Schneller, who supported Mofaz in the primary, said he believed that after some contemplation, he would indeed choose to hold onto his political posts.

"I do not believe that Mofaz intends to quit" either as minister or as an MK, Schneller told the Post.

One thing is certain, Schneller said: Mofaz will remain in Kadima.

Although Mofaz lost the primary to Livni, his political future remained in Kadima, where he could still play a powerful role, Schneller said. He said he did not see any scenario in which Mofaz left Kadima, and he certainly would not choose to return to his former party, the Likud.

A number of Likud MKs told the Post that Mofaz's only political options were in Kadima.

The return of Mofaz would not be an asset to Likud, MK Yuli Edelstein told the Post. Party members had not forgiven him for the manner in which he left, Edelstein said.

He recounted how in the winter of 2005, when Mofaz had been in the midst of a primary race for the Likud chairmanship, he had sent a letter to the party's members about how you don't leave your political home, and had then proceeded to withdraw from the race and leave for Kadima.

It would be hard to trust him after that, Edelstein said.

MK Yuval Steinitz said Likud "should not accept as members of the Knesset or as ministers who left the Likud for Kadima in order to destroy the Likud or to preserve their jobs."

This would be true of anyone in Kadima, not just Mofaz, he said.

Beyond that, Mofaz was also a liability because he was responsible for many of the failures of the Second Lebanon War, Steinitz said.

He was defense minister for four years prior to the campaign and left just a few months before it started.

Mofaz failed to properly train and supply the IDF to fight such a war, Steinitz said.

Mofaz was more responsible for the war's failures than then-defense minister Amir Peretz, Steinitz said.

Many large, long-established mainstream American Jewish organizations have outlived their usefulness.

An Iranian Shihab-3 missile paraded in Teheran.
Photo: AP

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, United Jewish Communities, UJA-Federation of New York, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs commendably sponsored a "Rally to Stop Iran." But after Republican vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin accepted an invitation to speak at the event, they disinvited her. This followed Sen. Hillary Clinton cancelling her planned appearance upon learning of Palin's planned appearance.

The event organizers claimed they did not want political figures to appear at the rally - despite the fact that they touted such appearances in the past, and logically so, as high-profile personalities lend weight to the cause.

WHAT CAN we conclude from this chain of events?

1. The importance to Clinton of avoiding an appearance with Palin is greater than the need to stand together and speak out against Iran's nuclear weapons program and incitement to genocide.

2. For the Jewish organizations sponsoring the rally, placating some behind-the-scenes groups with an apparent hatred of Palin is more important than ensuring decency and fairness; the interests of the Jewish people and Israel; and opposing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

There is an element of hypocrisy here, as well. Palin's appearance was deemed "political," but Clinton's attendance would not have been?

THE UNFORTUNATE recurring theme seems to be that too many American Jewish organizations place the interests of the community, the nation, and Israel a distant second to their own political and personal agendas.

In 2003, when Israel was battling relentless, deadly Palestinian violence, one major Jewish organization that one might have relied on to lend its support was devoting its resources to filing a brief supporting the University of Michigan's affirmative action program.

The next year, the Union for Reform Judaism criticized Congress "for passing one-sided pro-Israel resolutions." The URJ leadership also opposed the US intervention in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, who was, among other things, paying the families of Palestinian terrorists who killed Israelis. Did URJ leaders oppose US action in Iraq because they were looking out for Israel's or Jews' best interest, or because it was more important for their positions to fit in with their leftist milieu?

Most recently, URJ President Rabbi Eric Yoffie declared that the movement would not cooperate with Christian Zionists. That in itself is bad enough for Israel, but the URJ and other Jewish organizations' hostility to Christian Zionists hardly encourages more support for Israel.

OTHER MAINSTREAM Jewish organizations are slow to focus on fighting Islamofascism's threat to the Western world as a whole, and to Jews in particular. They don't realize or let on that anti-Semitism today is centered in the Muslim world, with a virulence every bit as horrific as the Nazis'. They prefer to warn us about the relative non-threats of conservative Christians, sightings of neo-Nazis in Europe, or Jewish cemeteries being desecrated with swastikas.

Often, the fact that Israelis in Sderot and elsewhere have been bombarded daily from Gaza often doesn't rate as much concern as the neo-Nazi bogeyman. Is it a perceived need for atonement for their failures during the Holocaust that these organizations seem to prefer to wallow in its "lessons" and the last-war threat of neo-Nazis, rather than face today's enemies?

Recent turmoil in the financial world has claimed a number of hallowed names. Others were bailed out by American taxpayers. A number of the old-line Jewish organizations will - no doubt - also have their saviors, but it would make more sense to let the hoary, wizened ones pass from the scene and leave the battlefield to the others. Newer groups like JINSA, Stand With Us, CAMERA, and MEMRI, and a few older ones like ZOA* are better attuned to today's challenges and more effective at meeting them.

*Acronyms stand for Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America; Middle East Media Research Institute; and Zionist Organization of America, respectively.

The writer does volunteer work on behalf of US national security and Israel. He is retired from a career in the transportation industry and lives in the northeastern US.