Scott Ritter is a former intelligence officer with the United States Marine Corps. From 1991-98, he served as a Chief Inspector for the UN in Iraq, where he led inspections to find weapons of mass destruction.
Here is what he had to say in the London Review of Books.
__________________________________________________
The intelligence about the ‘possible military dimensions’ of Iran’s nuclear programme is of questionable provenance and most of it is more than a dozen years old.
The consequences of failure to reach a nuclear accord with Iran today are too serious for the world to embrace a process that has been so controversial while having so little impact on legitimate disarmament.
This is especially true when the inspected party, as is the case with Iran, has agreed to implement stringent verification measures and has a proven track record of abiding by them.
Iran has been put in the impossible position of having to prove a negative.
If it accepts inspections based on allegations it knows to be baseless, then it’s opening itself up to an endless cycle of foreign intrusion into its military and security infrastructure, and the inability of inspectors to discover something of relevance will only reinforce the belief that something is being hidden.
We saw this happen before in Iraq, and the end result was a war based on flawed intelligence and baseless accusations that left many thousands dead and a region in turmoil.