Joseph Cirincione Quotes (33 Quotes)

Up until recently, I dismissed talk of military strikes against Iran as posturing or left-wing conspiracy theories. But I recently changed my mind after friends close to the White House and the Pentagon told me that some people in government have already decided the military option was the only one and there was active military planning.

If you don't have the president repeatedly telling his staff that he wants this job done, then the natural bureaucratic barriers ally to slow and eventually block progress.... If you were serious about this, if you really thought that the No. 1 threat was a terrorist getting hold of a nuclear weapon and hitting the United States with it ... you would vastly accelerate the effort to eliminate that material before the terrorists could get it.

As always, the different factions (in Washington) will use it to justify their existing positions. The vice president and his hawks will use it to show that the Iranian program can't be stopped through diplomatic means and, therefore, their preferred option of a military strike is the only option.

In the Middle East, it is an untenable position for the next decade to maintain that no Arab nation can have a nuclear weapon but Israel can,

We recommend the formation of a senior blue ribbon commission to examine this in an independent, nonpartisan way and make recommendations for how to insulate intelligence assessors from political pressures,

Secretary Rice has implemented a subtle but important shift in U.S. policy. There is no question that the lack of flexibility for the negotiators precluded any possibility of getting a deal for the past three years. Clearly, we are now in a period of give-and-take and genuine negotiations.

The president may have made a fatal error in putting nuclear weapons at the heart of improved US-India relations. Lawmakers want the latter, but not at the price of the former. Worse, Indian officials have made clear that India alone will decide which future reactors will be kept in the military category and exempt from any safeguards.

None of them wants to use the United Nations as a staging ground for another military adventure.

While President Bush argues that terrorism, not Russia, is the gravest threat to U. S. security, it was his Administration that thwarted Russia's desire for both sides to destroy the nuclear warheads that are to be taken off alert under the new accord. As long as the U. S. insists on keeping some of those weapons intact to face future threats, Russia is likely to follow suit. That means even more nuclear weapons--retired but still potent--will be crammed into the more than 300 buildings in Russia now holding the Holy Grail of terrorists atomic warheads or the fissile material critical to building them. Our greatest danger now isn't that Russia is going to attack the U. S. with nuclear missiles, ... It's that some group is going to get its hands on the growing number of nuclear warheads stored in less-than-secure conditions in Russia.

It's outrageous for American officials to sell out vital national security interests so that some companies can make a buck.

This administration is forced to follow this route because of the failures of Iraq.

We don't know what to make of these reports coming out from the White House yesterday,

Buffeted by political turmoil at home, President Bush sought a foreign affairs victory in India.

It is time for Israel to take it's nuclear weapons out of the basement and put them on the table.

The response in the Muslim world is unpredictable. But if you start seeing women and children pulled out of rubble caused by U. S. bombs, and this is flashed around the world, U. S. embassies could start going up in flames. I would not underestimate the anger that is out there against the U. S. and how much an attack would inflame that anger.

All nations that have nuclear weapons think that they are responsible and it is the other guys who are irresponsible.

So while there is no evidence at all that Iran has any significant quantity of nuclear material or any nuclear weapons, Iran is a much more difficult nuclear issue to resolve for the United States.

India got everything and they gave nothing. The president has sold out U.S. national security interests for a handful of mangoes.

You no longer heard comments about tyrants and pygmies. It may seem to be a small matter, but it's very important diplomatically.

The real danger is cherry-picking the data to support a preconceived idea and then connecting the dots to form a faulty picture. This is what happened in Iraq.

Even a limited strike on Iranian targets could have ... military or political consequences in Iraq.

They seem to be in a nuclear game of chicken and both cars are right smack in the middle of the road and heading towards each other in full speed. We don't know what is going to happen, we have to wait for somebody to swerve.

It is no surprise nations like South Korea are beginning to hedge their bets in light of the North Korean nuclear weapons advances.

Iran is five to 10 years away from having a nuclear weapon. We have time to try diplomacy.

For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran.

In just the past few weeks I've been convinced that at least some in the administration have already made up their minds that they would like to launch a military strike against Iran.

The factual debate during the next six months will revolve around the threat assessment.

I believe a military strike would consolidate the hold of the Islamic government, not loosen it.

The country is five to 10 years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs.

We looked at the intelligence assessment process, and we've come to the conclusion that it is broken, ... American Morning.

We found nothing. There are no large stockpiles of weapons. There hasn't actually been a find of a single weapon, a single weapons agent, nothing like the programs that the administration believe existed.

The South Korean disclosure will deflect attention from North Korea and Iran where it belongs,

It is very likely that intelligence officials were pressured by senior administration officials to conform their threat assessments to pre-existing policies.