Israel's Dagan: No Iran nukes until 2015

Mossad's Dagan pushes Iran 'threshold' even further .... and further...
Israel is (suddenly) concurring with Washington's estimates, and in some cases pushing the dates of Iran's threshold enen further... the US does not consider the Iranian program as an immediate threat and Israel is suddenly saying that Iran' threat is serious, in comparaison to Hezbollah's 'acute' threat... Recent articles describing Mossad's prowess & feats under Dagan are intended to say: "This man should be trusted: let us not be hasty!" The WaPo: "... newly retired spy chief thinks Iran wil...

Iran wont have nuclear capability before 2015, reports outgoing Mossad Chief Meir Dagan
Meir Dagan, who retired from his post as Mossad chief on Thursday after eight years, does not believe Iran will have Nuclear Capability before 2015. In a summary given to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Dagan said Iran was a long way from being able to produce Nuclear Weapons, following a series of failures that had set its program back by several years. Dagan handed over the job to his successor, Tamir Pardo, in the Prime Minister’s Bureau Thursday morning, after havi...

FORMER MOSSAD CHIEF: IRAN WON'T BE ABLE TO MAKE A BOMB UNTIL 2015
I HOPE THIS IS CORRECT: Israel's newly retired spy chief thinks Iran will not be able to build a Nuclear Bomb before 2015, Israeli media reported Friday - further pushing back Israeli intelligence estimates of when Tehran might become a Nuclear Power. Meir Dagan, who left his post as head of the Mossad intelligence service this week, said Thursday that Iran's Nuclear Program had been delayed by unspecified "measures" employed against it, according to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. ... An I...

Mossad chief: Iran won't go nuclear before 2015
JERUSALEM - Israel's newly retired spy chief thinks Iran will not be able to build a Nuclear Bomb before 2015, Israeli media reported Friday — further pushing back Israeli intelligence estimates of when Tehran might become a Nuclear Power. Meir Dagan, who left his post as head of the Mossad intelligence service this week, said Thursday that Iran's Nuclear Program had been delayed by unspecified "measures" employed against it, according to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. Other Israe...

Mossad chief: Iran wont go nuclear before 2015
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s newly retired spy chief thinks Iran will not be able to build a Nuclear Bomb before 2015, Israeli media reported Friday — further pushing back Israeli intelligence estimates of when Tehran might become a Nuclear Power. Meir Dagan, who left his post as head of the Mossad intelligence service this week, said Thursday that Iran’s Nuclear Program had been delayed by unspecified “measures” employed against it, according to the Israeli dail...

Former Israeli Spy Chief: Iran Won't Go Nuclear Before 2015
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, hugs Meir Dagan, outgoing director of Mossad, Israel's spy agency, after thanking him at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. JERUSALEM -- Israel's newly retired spy chief thinks Iran will not be able to build a Nuclear Bomb before 2015, Israeli media reported Friday -- further pushing back Israeli intelligence estimates of when Tehran might become a Nuclear Power. Meir Dagan, who left his post as head of the Mossad intellig...

Mossad chief: Iran will go nuclear only in 2015
An Israeli paper cites Israel's outgoing spy chief as predicting Iran will not have a nuclear weapon before 2015. The daily Yediot Ahronot is reporting that Mossad director Meir Dagan said this week Iran's Nuclear Program has been delayed, crediting unspecified "measures" employed against it. Israeli officials have given shorter deadlines in the past, but the most recent estimates say the Iranians are years from a Nuclear Bomb. An Israeli Cabinet minister said last week that Iran is still at lea...

Israel: No Iran bomb before 2015
Jerusalem | Fri Jan 7, 2011 1:54am EST Jerusalem (Reuters) - Israel believes Iran would not be capable of producing a Nuclear Bomb before 2015 and a top Israeli official has counseled against pre-emptive Military strikes, intelligence assessments published on Friday said. The briefings, given by Mossad spy service director Meir Dagan upon his Retirement on Thursday, suggested new Israeli confidence in U.S.-led sanctions and covert action designed to discourage or delay Tehran's Uranium enrich...

Israel: No Iran bomb before 2015
Jerusalem | Fri Jan 7, 2011 1:54am EST Jerusalem (Reuters) - Israel believes Iran would not be capable of producing a Nuclear Bomb before 2015 and a top Israeli official has counseled against pre-emptive Military strikes, intelligence assessments published on Friday said. The briefings, given by Mossad spy service director Meir Dagan upon his Retirement on Thursday, suggested new Israeli confidence in U.S.-led sanctions and covert action designed to discourage or delay Tehran's Uranium enrich...

Outgoing Mossad chief: Iran won't have nuclear capability before 2015
Meir Dagan tells Knesset committee that Iran's Nuclear Program has been set back several years after a series of malfunctions....

Retired Israeli spy chief: Iran still years away from having a nuke
Israel's premier intelligence agency has changed its estimate of when Iran could develop a nuclear weapon. Again. Meir Dagan, who retired on Thursday as head of the Mossad, asserted in his final report to a parliamentary committee that Iran - which denies that it is seeking a Nuclear Arsenal - won't be able to develop a warhead until at least 2015, according to Israeli media reports. Dagan's assessment for the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee reportedly said that Iran...

Isreal less likely to bomb Iran
For years we have been hearing of Iran’s imminent and seemingly unstoppable drive towards creating a nuclear weapon. Now, it seems, they will not be able to achieve this feat until 2015, if at all. Intelligence agencies in the US, and now in Israel, have publicly declared that Iran’s progress has slowed considerably. The unusual certainty behind the most recent statements, particularly those made by outgoing Mossad director Meir Dagan, leads one to believe that covert action has been...

Iran says it can produce its own nuclear fuel
Atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi declared in a report on Saturday that Iran is now capable of making its own Nuclear Fuel plates and rods, technology the West says the Islamic Republic does not possess. Salehi, the driving force behind Iran's contentious atomic programme, said the country has completed the construction of a facility in the central city of Isfahan to the fuel plates and rods which power nuclear reactors. "We have built an advanced Manufacturing unit in the Isfahan site for the fue...

Iran says it can produce its own nuclear fuel
Atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi declared in a report on Saturday that Iran is now capable of making its own Nuclear Fuel plates and rods, technology the West says the Islamic Republic does not possess. Salehi, the driving force behind Iran's contentious atomic programme, said the country has completed the construction of a facility in the central city of Isfahan to the fuel plates and rods which power nuclear reactors. "We have built an advanced Manufacturing unit in the Isfahan site for the fuel ...

Iran and Nuclear Weapons: Public Attitude and Elite Preferences
Given his role also as a spiritual leader, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei tends to frame his opposition to Nuclear Weapons development in religious and Islamic jurisprudence terms. At the initial peak of international Controversy over Iran's Nuclear Program several years ago, he issued a religious Fatwa prohibiting the development, possession and use of nuclear weapons, and has reiterated this stance a number of times ever since. Employing the Islamic notion of haram to characterize ...

Iran arrests dozens of converts from Islam to Christianity
These people could be murdered, for that is the traditional penalty for apostasy in Islamic law. Islamic apologists in the U.S. routinely deny that Islamic law mandates that apostates from Islam be murdered. "Rev. Lorenz is then quoted in a local Television Station report saying that if a Muslim leaves his religion and does not return to Islam in a couple of days, then he must be killed. He claims that someone showed him the verse. There is no such verse, Rev. Lorenz. In every faith, apostasy...

January 7 Middle East quotes of the week
Follow the links to read the whole thing. For the past 30 years, state-approved television in Iran has consisted largely of Islamic prayers, interviews with government ministers, melodramatic soap operas and Talk Shows in which mullahs expound on the depravities of the West and the righteousness of their own society. . . . But lately, a couple of irreverent expats in Washington have captivated Iranians with a show that pokes fun at the absurdities of life in the Islamic Republic. Operating out ...

Apocalypse Not!
There is no religion, past or present, that has not generated an End Times prediction. As we prepare for the year 2011, you can be sure that the media will begin to fill up with articles about the Mayan calendar prediction that the world will end on December 12, 2012. There are two very good reasons to ignore this prediction. The first is that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old! The second is that the Maya civilization no longer exists, having achieved its peak around 900 A.D. and was in declin...

Israeli troops shoot dead Palestinian in West Bank
By Hassan Titi BEKAOT CHECKPOINT, West Bank | Sat Jan 8, 2011 7:34am EST BEKAOT CHECKPOINT, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli Troops shot dead a Palestinian brandishing a Pipe Bomb at a West Bank check point on Saturday, The Army said. An army spokesman said the man leapt from a taxi and ran toward the checkpoint holding the device, shouted in a threatening manner and refused calls to stop before being shot. "As well as the pipe bomb, Troops later found a second device on the man's body," the spo...

Israeli Spy Chief: No Iranian Bomb Before 2015, If That
Israeli Spy Chief: ‘No Iranian Bomb Before 2015, If That’ The outgoing head of the Israeli Mossad, Meir Dagan, puts some time back on Israel’s Iranian nuclear clock: “ Iran will not achieve a Nuclear Bomb before 2015, if that ,” Dagan said, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters. Dagan, who in June 2009 told Israeli lawmakers that Iran could have its first Nuclear Warhead by 2014, attributed his valedictory timeline to a variety of factors including domes...

Danger Close At Hand
It is an oppressive, oil-rich, Terrorist-supporting, atomic-seeking, missile-acquiring, arms-proliferating and American-hating regime. Hint: Iran is one of this Latin American country's few allies. Venezuela, the culprit regime, is 5 times closer to American shores than the Persian menace and potentially far more dangerous. Yet President Barack Obama has no visible Venezuela policy to counter the growing threat. Last year when Obama met Venezuela's leftist leader Hugo Chavez, he smiled, shook t...

Israel: No Iran bomb before 2015
The briefings, given by Mossad spy service director Meir Dagan upon his Retirement on Thursday, suggested new Israeli confidence in U.S.-led sanctions and covert action designed to discourage or delay Tehran's Uranium enrichment program. "Iran will not achieve a Nuclear Bomb before 2015, if that," Dagan said, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters. In June 2009, Dagan told an Israeli parliamentary panel that Iran could have its first Nuclear Warhead by 2014. Dagan, an ex-general whose ei...

Egyptian Media Present Conflicting Views on Church Bombing
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government is taking an unorthodox public-relations approach in the aftermath of the New Year's Eve Suicide bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria that killed 21 people. The semi-official media organ al-Ahram has featured heartwarming stories of how Egyptian Muslims have rallied to support the Copts, along with slanderous op-eds claiming Israel was behind the massacre. On Friday, the paper ran a story explaining that "Muslims had offered their bodies as 'hum...

Israel Democracy Watch
The Israeli Knesset has approved the establishment of an inquiry commission to investigate the funding of several left-wing organizations - B'Tselem, Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, Yesh G'vul, and others. This is after the attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, ruled in August that there should be no such investigation of these groups. The party that has brought this proposal forward is Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel Our Home"), the Racist and extreme right-wing party led by Avigdor Lieberman, the Israe...

Death Of Former Iranian General In Question
The mystery surrounding a former Iranian general believed to have defected to the U.S. or Israel has taken an even more puzzling turn. The individual in question, Ali Reza Asgari, left Iran three years ago and turned up in Istanbul. He is a former high ranking officer in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. It is believed he possessed valuable information the government of Iran would not want shared with the CIA, including knowledge on Iran's secret nuclear activities and on Iran's relationship wit...