Iran and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Interesting Piece in todays Jerusalem Post -

- Eye of the storm: For Iran, think regime change
By AMIR TAHERI

Remember Donald Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns? The US defense secretary used the phrase in 2003 in the context of the controversy over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

More than three years later the Bush administration is still paying a political price for basing its case for the liberation of Iraq on those "unknown unknowns."

It was always clear that the only way to find out whether Saddam had WMDs was to topple him and seize control of his secrets. And then, when the unknowns became known, there was always the possibility that no WMDs would be found.

The truth is that the case for getting rid of Saddam had little need of those "unknown unknowns." That Saddam might have had WMDs in March 2003 was neither here nor there. It was an established fact that he had used WMDs against Iran and his people on many occasions. It was also clear that a regime like his could at any time revive a WMD program.

At the time there were enough "known knowns" that had nothing to do with WMDs, to justify toppling Saddam a hundred times over.

To reduce the issue to WMDs was a mistake.

The question now is whether the Bush administration is moving toward a new version of that mistake - this time in the case of Iran.
The "unknown unknowns" in the case of Iran concern its alleged project to develop nuclear warheads.
More than three years of Gaston-Alphonse diplomacy between Teheran and the European Union trio of Britain, Germany and France has shown that this "unknown" cannot become known through routine negotiations. Teheran insists it is not developing nuclear weapons. The Europeans, however, want it to confess that it has been lying, and to provide evidence that it is not doing what it has always said it was not doing.

Continued - http://snipurl.com/m5il