Iranian Nuclear Threat Delayed???

From Joel Rosenberg's Blog

In the first video blog we produced for new Joshua Fund website in December, I offered a “Year End Assessment of the Iranian Nuclear Threat.”  Based on  discussions with numerous U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials and analysts, I concluded that the prospect of war between Iran and Israel in the first six months of 2011 had diminished and that there was a growing sense that the West’s covert war to slow Iran’s bid for nuclear weapons was working. The threat of Iran getting the Bomb is certainly still there, but for the moment the good guys seem to have the upper hand.

That was December. January now brings official confirmation of that assessment.

“Meir Dagan, who retired from his post as Mossad chief on Thursday after eight years, does not believe Iran will have nuclear capability before 2015,” reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “In a summary given to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Dagan said Iran was a long way from being able to produce nuclear weapons, following a series of failures that had set its program back by several years….Dagan concluded his term saying Iran was still far from being capable of producing nuclear weapons and that a series of malfunctions had put off its nuclear goal for several years. Therefore, he said, Iran will not get hold of the bomb before 2015 approximately.”

“The Israeli intelligence community’s assessments of Iran’s nuclear capability have changed during Dagan’s tenure,” the story noted. “In 2003, Israeli intelligence officials thought Iran would have its first bomb by 2007. In 2007, they thought it would be 2009, and a year later they put it at 2011. Now the date has moved to 2015. These adjustments were not the result of mistaken evaluations, but due to the difficulties Iran has encountered in advancing its program, largely because of the Mossad’s efforts.” The article also stated that “Dagan’s term centered around two main issues: the Iranian nuclear program; and the assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders and Iranian scientists, most if not all of which have been attributed to the Mossad.”

Dagan’s testimony is the strongest evidence so far that the covert war underway inside Iran — the Stuxnet computer virus, assassinations, defections, sabotage, and other measures – has had a dramatic impact on slowing down Iran’s effort to build nuclear weapons. The question is this: Is Dagan’s assessment accurate? Does Israel and the world really have until 2015, or do the mullahs have a separate, secret track they are operating on that could cause Iran to acquire the Bomb sooner? Time will tell.

In the meantime:

• let’s thank the Lord that He appears to have given the people of the epicenter more time (Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently said 2010 was one of the quietest and most secure years in modern Israeli history)
• let’s thank the Lord for the hard work of U.S., Israeli and other intelligence agencies in slowing Iran down
• let’s continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, according to Psalm 122:6
• let’s continue to care for the poor and needy in the epicenter
• let’s continue to “get ready, be prepared” for war whenever it comes (for prophetically we know several major wars, at least, are coming to the Middle East) — for The Joshua Fund, this means expanding our warehouse capacity, expanding the number of food distribution centers we serve, purchasing more trucks and vans, training more Israelis in humanitarian relief distribution, stockpiling more supplies, etc.
• let’s continue to pray for the persecuted Church in the Middle East, especially as a new surge of extremist violence has led to the murder of many believers, and left many more believers wounded in recent weeks and months, and let’s do everything we can to educate and mobilize Christians around the world to pray for believers in the epicenter
• let’s also continue to do everything we can to strengthen our brothers and sisters in Israel and the rest of the epicenter, to teach the Word of God, to encourage pastors and ministry leaders, and to give everyone in the region the opportunity to hear the good news of the love and salvation only offered through our Lord Jesus Christ, and to make disciples of all nations
• may the Lord bless you as you “learn, pray, give and go”!

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• Come to Israel with The Joshua Fund in May 2011, walk where Jesus walked, pray for the peace of Jerusalem, visit our warehouse, participate in a humanitarian relief project, worship with fellow believers, study the Word of God, and be a blessing to the nation of Israel at this critical time!
• Sign up for Joel’s free email updates, “Flash Traffic”
• Join the “Epicenter Team” on Facebook
• Purchase a copy of The Twelfth Imam, the New York Times best-selling thriller about a CIA operative sent into Iran to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program
• Donor update: Details on some of the latest projects The Joshua Fund is working on
• Prayer updates from Israel and the epicenter
• Visit The Joshua Fund’s new website — www.joshuafund.net – and make a contribution to help us educate Christians about God’s love for Israel and help us bless the poor and needy in the epicenter in the name of Jesus.

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua