The ever-unhelpful Senator Inhofe has been repeating his silly mantra that Iran will be in a position to deliver weapons of mass destruction against the United States by 2015. My friend Greg Thielman takes him to task in a recent blog, pointing out that the emphasis of Iranian missile development has been on medium-range rockets capable of striking countries in the greater Middle East. Longer-range missiles will be available in the medium term only if Iran gets a lot of foreign assistance–an unlikely prospect, Thielmann points out, given the international sanctions the United Nations has adopted.
In the real world [as opposed to Inhofe’s], Thielmann concludes, “the Obama Administration’s program for deploying European-based missile defenses to help cope with a potential Iranian ICBM threat by 2020 appears chronologically appropriate. Whether or not it is wise or necessary is another question.” (Whether wise or not also is an important question, I’d add.)
For those with medium-range memories, Thielmann had his five minutes of fame when, as a State Department intelligence chief, he blew the whistle on the alleged Niger yellowcake for Iraq. That yellowcake is back in the news with the publication of a memoir by former vice president Cheney, who remains unrepentant and unreconstructed.