The Weekly Standard quotes Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Matthew Kroenig on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and what a nuclear deal would mean:

However, it’s not entirely clear where that assessment—a couple years, or a few years, or two to three years—comes from. “When U.S. government officials have given specific estimates, like two to three years, these are for an Israeli attack on Iranian facilities,” says Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon official. “They’re not talking about a U.S. attack, which would obviously be more than what an Israeli strike could accomplish.”

Even then, says Kroenig, author of A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat, these estimates regarding American strikes are based on worst-case scenarios. “That is, if after a strike Iran decides to rebuild immediately, encounters no significant difficulties, and is able to get whatever it needs in the international marketplace. But that’s hard to imagine.”

Kroenig, who worked on defense policy and strategy against Iran in the office of the secretary of defense, says it’s misleading that many experts claim the American estimates are the best-case scenarios when actually they’re worst-case scenarios. “Either these experts don’t know,” says Kroenig, “or they do know and they’re trying to make a case that is not intellectually honest.”


Read the full article here.

Related Experts: Matthew Kroenig