WMD

2007, in a closed discussion: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.1"

2009: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.2"

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, "believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons."

Early last month, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: "Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability.3"

A week later we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that "three leading Israeli security experts — the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz — all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel."

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel's judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

• 1. Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26
• 2. Washington Post, March 5, 2009
• 3. "Face the Nation", CBS, January 8, 2012

SPIEGEL: Your optimism is admirable. When you were still the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, you even felt confident that you could solve the nuclear conflict between Iran and the international community. But that didn't work out.

ElBaradei: We were in fact on the verge of a solution on several occasions. The Iranians were willing in 2003, but the administration of then US President George W. Bush was not. Then, in 2010, when President Barack Obama extended his hand, the Iranians couldn't take it, because of domestic political power struggles.

SPIEGEL: In your soon-to-be-published memoirs, you describe how you were deceived in your attempts to investigate.

ElBaradei: I adhere strictly to the facts, and part of that is that the Americans and the Europeans withheld important documents and information from us. They weren't interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change -- by any means necessary.

SPIEGEL: And the poor Iranians were completely innocent?

ElBaradei: No, they too engaged in trickery. But the West never tried to understand that the most important thing for Iran was getting recognition and being treated as an equal.

I was First Secretary in the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York from December 1997 until June 2002. I was responsible for Iraq policy in the mission, including policy on sanctions, weapons inspections and liaison with UNSCOM and later UNMOVIC...

During my posting, at no time did HMG assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests. On the contrary, it was the commonly-held view among the officials dealing with Iraq that any threat had been effectively contained. I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed). (At the same time, we would frequently argue, when the US raised the subject, that “régime change” was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.)

Any assessment of threat has to include both capabilities and intent. Iraq’s capabilities in WMD were moot: many of the UN’s weapons inspectors (who, contrary to popular depiction, were impressive and professional) would tell me that they believed Iraq had no significant matèriel. With the exception of some unaccounted-for Scud missiles, there was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW, BW or nuclear material...

Iraq’s ability to launch a WMD or any form of attack was very limited. There were approx 12 or so unaccounted-for Scud missiles; Iraq’s airforce was depleted to the point of total ineffectiveness; its army was but a pale shadow of its earlier might; there was no evidence of any connection between Iraq and any terrorist organisation that might have planned an attack using Iraqi WMD (I do not recall any occasion when the question of a terrorist connection was even raised in UK/US discussions or UK internal debates).

Ross was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the UK Mission to the United Nations 1997-2002, responsible for liaison with the UN weapons inspectors

20. In all the policy documents I reviewed in preparation for this testimony, there is no mention prior to 9/11 of any increase in the threat assessment for Iraq. Instead, these documents discuss the difficulty in maintaining support for sanctions in the absence of clear evidence of WMD violations by Iraq. Post 9/11, the prevailing FCO view is summed up in a minute from the Political Director to the Foreign Secretary on 22 March 2002 to the effect that the assessment of Iraq’s WMD capability had not changed over recent years, but that the UK reaction to that assessment had changed. This minute explains that there had been “not much” advance in Iraq’s WMD programmes over recent years and that they had not been stepped up. The minute adds that there was no evidence whatsoever of any connection between Al Qaida terrorists and the Saddam Hussein regime. This judgement is repeated in many different documents during this period.

Ross was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the UK Mission to the United Nations 1997-2002, responsible for liaison with the UN weapons inspectors

17. It remains my view that the internal government assessment of Iraq’s capabilities was intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public government documents during 2002 and 2003. Throughout my posting in New York, it was the UK and US assessment that while there were many unanswered questions about Iraq’s WMD stocks and capabilities, we did not believe that these amounted to a substantial threat. At no point did we have any firm evidence, from intelligence sources or otherwise, of significant weapons holdings: most of the unanswered questions derived from discrepancies in Iraq’s accounting for its past stocks and the destruction of these stocks.

18. The UK believed that the Iraqi threat had been effectively contained. Indeed, at many of the UK/US FCO/State Department bilateral discussions of Iraq policy which I attended between 1998-2002, discussion would often begin with an
overall assessment of whether containment was working or not. Invariably, the conclusion, shared by both the US and UK, was positive. The last of these discussions that I attended took place in June 2002.

19. Before I took the New York post in late 1997, I was briefed by relevant departments in the FCO. At Non-Proliferation Department (NPD), which was responsible for the Iraq disarmament issue, I was told that the UK did not believe that Iraq possessed any substantial stocks of CW, BW or nuclear weapons or the means to deliver them. None of the intelligence I saw subsequently in the 4 ½ years that I covered the issue, where I read on most days a thick folder of “humint” and “sigint” relating to Iraq, or the Joint Intelligence Committee assessments, during this period, substantially changed this assessment.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".