Back in December, the Washington Post’s ombudsman Patrick Pexton criticized his newspaper for conflating Iran’s nuclear program with a nuclear weapons program. Noting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one,” Pexton warned Post writers against asserting that Iran has a nuclear weapons program because it could “undermine The Post’s credibility” and “also play into the hands of those who are seeking further confrontation with Iran.”

Yesterday, torture apologist and Washington Post “opinion writer” Marc Theissen ignored that advice, twice. In a column on the Post’s website attacking Vice President Biden’s recent speech touting the Obama administration’s Iran policy, Theissen claimed:

But since Biden is so proud of the increased “pressure” the Obama administration has put on Iran to stop its drive for the bomb, it’s fair to ask: What are the results of that increased pressure? [...]

But make no mistake: Iran is determined to obtain a nuclear weapon. And the regime in Tehran has arguably made more progress toward this goal in the past three years under Obama than it has in the three decades since the Iranian Revolution.

Indeed, while Pexton noted that the IAEA does not share this view that Iran is “determined to obtain a nuclear weapon,” neither does U.S. and Israeli intelligence. Iran “is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile,” Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said last month.

But the thrust of Theissen’s argument however, is that Iran is closer to getting a nuclear weapon under President Obama’s watch than at any other time. “Before Obama took office, Iran needed months to make a dash to a bomb. Today, it could make that dash in a matter of weeks.” This is also not true, as a recent CAP report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities notes:

The most common estimates by U.S. and Israeli government officials, as well as outside groups such as the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security, are that Iran could develop a crude but workable nuclear explosive device within a year of deciding to do so. [...]

Other estimates such as the joint technical assessment by a U.S.-Russian team of scientists reached similar conclusions in early 2009, with the caveat that the year timeframe for a simple nuclear explosive would occur only “under the most favorable circumstances.” … In fact, Russian team members concluded that more unfavorable circumstances would be more realistic, leading them to suggest a timeframe of two years to three years to build a simple nuclear bomb. The U.S.-Russian team estimated it would take Iran another 5 years after testing a bomb to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon.

And New America Foundation president Steve Coll noted in a recent New York Review of Books article that in order to move forward with a weapons program, Iran “would have to defy international inspectors and break the monitoring seals they have attached to its enrichment sites.” By doing this, Coll adds, “Iran would instantly expose its intentions and invite a response from the Security Council.”

Iran with a nuclear weapon does indeed pose a threat to regional and international security. American officials including President Obama vow to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, but questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the West’s crisis with Iran.

House Republicans have passed their plan to avoid cuts to the defense budget. And the House Armed Services Committee, under Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon’s (R-CA) leadership, even boosted the budget by $8 billion. Neither Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey nor Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had requested the larger budget and new polling data shows that 65 percent of Americans think defense spending is already too high.

But while the military’s leadership and the American public are all opposed to the House Republicans’ ballooned defense budget — which includes a $5 billion missile defense project described by Dempsey as totally unnecessary — Armed Services Committee member Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) took to CNN this morning to pushback against the critics of the proposed budget. Forbes was asked about the polling data and responded:

Do [the American public] really want a reduction in capacity? I think when they hear the president and many people over in the Senate talking about the fact that they can have some of these cuts but still maintain the security of the United States I think any of us would want those reductions. But I think when you ask the American people ‘Do they really want to reduce the security of the United States of America?’ I think the answer comes back they don’t. They want to make sure that we’re maintaining and guaranteeing that security.

Watch him:

But Forbes’ questions were answered yesterday. Panetta warned that ignoring the spending blueprint submitted by himself and Dempsey, as the Congressional Republicans have done, could actually hurt national security. He told reporters:

If members try to restore their favorite programs without regard to an overall strategy, the cuts will have to come from areas that could impact overall readiness. There is no free lunch here. Every dollar that is added will have to be offset by cuts in national security.

And the polling data showed that Americans are surprised by the size of discretionary defense spending when viewed alongside discretionary spending for other budget items. “This suggests that Americans generally underestimate the size of the defense budget and that when they receive balanced information about its size they are more likely to cut it to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation.

Analyzing Tuesday’s surprise announcement of a national unity government in Israel, Charles Krauthammer suggests a parallel to 1967, in which Israel formed a unity government shortly before launching a pre-emptive strike on the massed forces of Egypt.

“Everyone understood why,” Krauthammer writes. “You do not undertake a supremely risky preemptive war without the full participation of a broad coalition representing a national consensus“:

Because for Israelis today, it is May ’67. The dread is not quite as acute: The mood is not despair, just foreboding. Time is running out, but not quite as fast. War is not four days away, but it looms. Israelis today face the greatest threat to their existence — nuclear weapons in the hands of apocalyptic mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s annihilation — since May ’67. The world is again telling Israelis to do nothing as it looks for a way out. But if such a way is not found — as in ’67 — Israelis know that they will once again have to defend themselves, by themselves.

“Nuclear weapons in the hands of apocalyptic mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s annihilation” would obviously represent a serious threat to Israel, but it’s worth unpacking this statement and examining each of its three claims.

First, with regard to an Iranian nuclear weapon, while Iran still has yet to answer key questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the nature of its nuclear work, the current position of both U.S. and Israeli intelligence is that the Iranian government has not yet made a decision to obtain a nuclear weapon. In an interview last month, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said Iran “is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile.” Surveying the enormous pressure being brought to bear on Iran, Gantz continued, “I believe he [Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei] would be making an enormous mistake” by manufacturing a nuclear bomb, “and I don’t think he will want to go the extra mile.”

Second, while Twelver Shia theology does speak of an End Times scenario (as do other faiths), there’s no evidence that a desire to trigger the apocalypse is driving Iranian policy. In the same interview, echoing former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, Lt. Gen. Gantz said, “I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.” This isn’t to diminish Iran’s various aggressive actions, such as its continuing support for terrorism, only to point out that the evidence strongly suggests that Iran’s leaders are very much focused on the here and now, and not the afterlife.

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