CIA Director Repeats Mossad's Iran Nuclear Story

The Trump administration appears to prefer the verbal assessment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence that Iran could acquire a nuclear weapon within as little as 15 days over the credible information gathered by the combined US intelligence community. These sources within the US intelligence community say that Tehran has not yet decided to build a nuclear weapon and would be at least a year away from producing a working weapon if it did. US intelligence also assesses that any US attack on Iran would encourage Tehran to develop a strategic weapon.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that US officials said these new assessments echo information provided by Mossad, which believes Iran could acquire a nuclear weapon within 15 days.

The report explained: "While a number of American officials view the Israeli assessment as credible, others have asserted that the American intelligence assessment has not changed. American spy agencies believe it could take several months, or even up to a year, for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon."

It's worth noting that last March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. Officials speaking to CNN earlier this week said that Tehran could take up to three years to build a strategic weapon and a delivery system.

However, sources in the Trump administration say Gabbard has been sidelined on the Iran issue. NBC News reported Wednesday that "Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, an outspoken critic of past U.S. military interventions abroad, appears to have fallen out of favor with President Donald Trump as he considers military action against Iran."

The report added that "several senior administration officials said that Gabbard had been marginalized in internal administration discussions about the conflict between Israel and Iran."

Publicly, Trump has disparaged his top intelligence official. "I don't care what Gabbard said," the president said on Air Force One earlier this week. "I believe Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon."

According to reliable sources, CIA Director John Ratcliffe is considered one of the defenders of Netanyahu and Mossad's claims within the White House. Sagar Injeti, host of the program "Critical Points," reported that "a senior US intelligence official told me that there is no independent US intelligence to support CIA Director John Ratcliffe's statement that Iran is 'meters away from a nuclear weapon.'" He continued, "All the intelligence comes from Israel."

A former intelligence official told Al-Quds correspondent on Wednesday, "There is nothing strange about distorting intelligence to serve important goals of foreign and security policy."

“Falsifying intelligence for the sake of politics is a long-standing American tradition,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “Thomas Jefferson gave Congress false intelligence to attack Tripoli between 1801 and 1805. President McKinley engineered intelligence to invade Cuba in 1898. President Johnson engineered intelligence to attack Vietnam in 1964 based on a fabricated incident that never happened.”

The former official added: "Perhaps the most important example is President George W. Bush, who falsified intelligence in order to invade Iraq in 2003. Therefore, people must understand that America is the greatest power in history, and if it wants to fabricate something related to its strategic interests, that is its right."

It's worth noting that the New York Times (along with other sources) said that the Israeli assessment may have been fabricated to satisfy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's desire to drag the United States into war. The newspaper reported: "Some officials believe that the Israeli assessments were influenced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's desire to gain American support for his military campaign against Iran."

According to all experts, Tel Aviv needs Washington to bomb some of Iran's most fortified nuclear targets, such as the Fordow facility. Some assessments indicate that the United States alone, with its heavy bombers and 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, is capable of disabling Fordow. However, the Pentagon believes Washington would have to use a nuclear weapon to destroy the site.

If President Trump authorizes a direct strike on Iranian nuclear sites, US intelligence agencies believe it could finally push Tehran to attempt to build a strategic weapon. The Times explained: "Senior US intelligence officials said Iranian leaders are likely to move toward producing a bomb if the US military attacks Iran's Fordow uranium enrichment site or if Israel kills Iran's supreme leader."