Hersh writes that Obama administration officials "have often overstated the available intelligence about Iranian intentions." He noted that Dennis Ross, a top Obama adviser on the region, told a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Iran had "significantly expanded its nuclear program."
Hersh noted further that last March, Robert Einhorn, the special arms control adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told the Arms Control Assn. The Iranians "are clearly acquiring all the necessary elements of a nuclear-weapons capability."
Additionally, Senator Joseph Lieberman, a strong Israel supporter, told Agence France-Presse, "I can't say much in detail but it's pretty clear that they're(Iran) continuing to work seriously on a nuclear-weapons program."
Hersh recalled that "As Presidential candidates in 2008, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had warned of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, and occasionally spoke as if it were an established fact that Iran had decided to get the bomb."
But last March, Lieutenant General James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence which creates the N.I.E. Assessments, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran had not decided to re-start its nuclear weapons work. When asked by Committee Chairman Carl Levin, "What is the level of confidence that you have (in that estimate)? Is that a high level?" Clapper replied, "Yes, it is."
At a round of negotiations in Istanbul five months ago, Iranian officials told Western diplomats that the United States and its allies need to acknowledge Iran's right to enrich uranium and that they must lift all sanctions against Iran.
Clinton adviser Einhorn has said that because of those sanctions Iran may have lost as much as $60 billion in energy investments and that Iran had also lost business in such industries as shipping, banking, and transportation. "The sanctions bar a wide array of weapons and missile sales to Iran, and make it more difficult for banks and other financial institutions to do business there," Hersh writes.
However, Hersh says, "The general anxiety about the Iranian regime is firmly grounded" even if there is no hard evidence it is working to build a nuclear weapon. "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned the Holocaust and expressed a desire to see the state of Israel eliminated, and he has defied the 2006 United Nations resolution calling on Iran to suspend its nuclear-enrichment program."
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