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Wikileaks- Australian intelligence analysts advised softer line on Iran

Australia’s top intelligence agency has also privately undercut the hardline stance towards Tehran of the United States, Israeli and Australian governments, saying that Iran’s nuclear program is intended to deter attack and that it is a mistake to regard Iran as a ”rogue state”.

WikiLeaks | fears of potential nuclear war in the Middle East,  Sydney Morning Herald, Philip Dorling December 13, 2010 AUSTRALIAN intelligence agencies fear that Israel might launch military strikes against Iran and that Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities could draw the US and Australia into a potential nuclear war in the Middle East.

Australia’s top intelligence agency has also privately undercut the hardline stance towards Tehran of the United States, Israeli and Australian governments, saying that Iran’s nuclear program is intended to deter attack and that it is a mistake to regard Iran as a ”rogue state”.
The warnings about the dangers of nuclear conflict in the Middle East are given in a secret US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald. They reflect views obtained by US intelligence liaison officers in Canberra from across the range of Australian intelligence agencies.
The warnings about the dangers of nuclear conflict in the Middle East are given in a secret US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald. They reflect views obtained by US intelligence liaison officers in Canberra from across the range of Australian intelligence agencies……
cable sent in July 2008 further records that the former prime minister Kevin Rudd was ”deeply worried” that the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intransigence concerning Tehran’s nuclear program meant that the window for a diplomatic solution was closing and that “Israel may feel forced to use ‘non-diplomatic’ means”.

Last week Mr Rudd called on Israel, which has a large undeclared nuclear arsenal, to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as part of a broader effort to head off the development of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability and to establish the Middle East as a nuclear weapon-free zone………..

the Australian intelligence analysts “asserted that 20 years of hostility [towards the US] and associated rhetoric aside, regime attitudes ‘have fairly shallow roots’, and the most effective means by which Tehran could ensure its national security would be a strategic relationship with the US via some ‘grand bargain’.”

WikiLeaks | fears of potential nuclear war in the Middle East.

December 13, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, politics international