by: Adam Burke
Wednesday (12/05) at 09:56 AM
Nearly 200 people crowded into a meeting room at the Iowa City Public Library on Monday afternoon to hear Sen. Joe Biden talk about avoiding war with Iran.
He quoted from declassified sections of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Monday that said, "Tehran halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003." Although the NIE said Tehran continues to process uranium, Iran couldn't process "fissile material" into a nuclear weapon before 2009. However, Iran could have a nuclear weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015, according to the NIE.
The presidential candidate said that unlike the rest of the Democratic field, he believes that nuclear proliferation is a greater security threat than global warming. He said that, "a nuclear Iran will spark an arms race ... it is not a very big step to ... a nuclear Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Venezuela."
The event hosted by the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council was a foreign policy speech and discussion with the sitting Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
snip
http://www.iowaindependent.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1578