US President Barack Obama for yet another "dumb war"?
A group of former US intelligence officials have issued a memorandum to US President Barack Obama, advising him against starting another long "dumb war", this time against Iran.
"Another Long War is not in America's or Israel's interests, whatever Israel's apologists claim," US Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) wrote in the letter published on the consortiumnews.com website on Wednesday.
The intelligence officials said the militarists, who "represent one Muslim country after another as major threats to US security," this time are using a "dubious report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)" to portray Iran as a major threat to the US.
The White House has stepped up its anti-Iran war rhetoric after the IAEA released a report in November, accusing Tehran of activities aimed at developing nuclear weapons before 2003 and speculating that these activities "may still be ongoing".
Iran, however, has categorically refuted the allegations as "baseless", saying that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
The accusations come despite the fact that the IAEA makes regular inspection visits to Iran's nuclear facilities and has TV cameras monitoring those facilities around the clock.
Former IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei has said in a published report that during his time at the IAEA he had not seen "a shred of evidence" that Iran was "building nuclear-weapons facilities and using enriched materials."
Robert Kelley, a former IAEA director and nuclear engineer, has also said he was "quite surprised" by the lack of new information in the report, further stressing that the report is "highly misleading."
Referring to the failure of US to find any Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, Washington's justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the VIPS members said, "We are seeing a replay of the 'Iraq WMD threat'."
The VIPS officials added, "We are currently winding down what you (Obama) labeled a 'dumb war;' we should not undertake another dumb war against a country almost three times larger than Iraq, that would set off a major regional war and create generations of jihadist."
Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.
"Such a war, contrary to what some argue, would not make Israel or the US safer," the ex-US intelligence officials concluded.
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