Iran Just Two Years From Bomb: Britain
In an unusually frank briefing to senior British civil servants, Sir John Sawers, the chief of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service said that British agents have been active against Iran’s nuclear program since 2008. Despite their efforts though, Sawers said that Iran would likely achieve nuclear capability by 2014.
Sawer’s remarks reported today in the Daily Telegraph were made last week at a lecture to a hundred senior civil servants in London. He said that since Iran was “two years away” from becoming a nuclear power, and that Israel and the United States would have to decide before then whether to attack Iran. He is quoted saying that “the Iranians are determinedly going down a path to master all aspects of nuclear weapons; all the technologies they need,” and that “it’s equally clear that Israel and the United States would face huge dangers if Iran were to become a nuclear weapon state.”
Regarding his own service’s performance, he took credit for delaying Iran’s ambitions saying that without MI6’s operations, “you’d have Iran as a nuclear weapons state in 2008 rather than still being two years away in 2012” and that the service’s goal was to “delay that awful moment when the politicians may have to take a decision between accepting a nuclear-armed Iran or launching a military strike against Iran… it will be very tough for any prime minister of Israel or president of the United States to accept a nuclear-armed Iran.”
This is the first official confirmation that Britain’s intelligence services are actively involved in the campaign against a nuclear Iran, though the Tehran regime routinely accuses Britain of cooperating with the U.S. and Israel against its interests.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
