IRAN's Nuclear Program - The Clock is Ticking

BY: Adam Kredo
October 9, 2012 5:00 am

The recent collapse of Iran’s currency has led foreign policy experts to caution President Barack Obama’s administration against declarations that economic sanctions are the key to ending Tehran’s clandestine nuclear arms program.

Protests erupted in Tehran’s largest marketplace last week after Iran’s currency, the rial, plunged in value and lost about 40 percent of its worth against the U.S. dollar, according toreports.

The economic crisis led Obama administration officials to speculate that economic sanctions have reached a tipping point that could prompt the regime to cede its nuclear program.

Iran experts are skeptical of this view, however. They believe that economic sanctions alone cannot force Iran’s insulated leadership to reverse its nuclear course—and that sanctions could be accelerating Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Sanctions are actually serving not just to collapse the Iranian economy, but to accelerate Iran’s nuclear program,” Clare Lopez, a former CIA operations officer, told the Washington Free Beacon.

Intelligence reports, including those issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency, show that Iran has accelerated its nuclear weapons-related research since last year. This is an indication that Tehran is rushing to build a nuke before sanctions ravage its economy, Lopez said.

http://freebeacon.com/the-clock-is-ticking/