Intelligence²: The threat posed by Iran has been grossly exaggerated

Intelligence² is an organisation that holds sessional debates on different issues reported on the media. "Intelligence² takes information and analysis as its raw material, and translates this into discussion, conversation, and sexy debate."

Their session on April 25th was on the following statement:

The threat posed by Iran has been grossly exaggerated
Speaking for the motion: Iradj Bagherzade, Dr Ali Ansari, and Martin Woollacott.
Speaking against the motion: Dr Mehrdad Khonsari, Dr Patrick Clawson, and Roey Gilad.
Chair: Richard Lindley.

BBC-Persian has a detailed coverage here.
About 700 people attended the session and cast their votes before and after the debate:
Before the debate, 268 of the attendees believed that "Iran is an imminent threat"
253 of them thought that the threat is exaggerated, and 214 (about 30%) of them were not sure.

After the debate, two third of those undecided chose their stance and guess what:

	The threat posed by Iran has been grossly exaggerated
	Date	April 25, 2006
	Votes		Before debate	After debate
	For		34.4%	51.1%
	Against		36.5%	38.7%
	Don't know		29.1%	10.2%

(results taken from their website)

It is very interesting to see that the percentage of the people thinking that the threat is exaggerated increased from about 34% to 51%. However, it can be described by considering the reports broadcasted by the mainstream media around the world. The US officials have systematically and consistently described the Iranian nuclear program as "Nuclear Weapons Program". John Bolton, for example, draws the following conclusion from the recent report prepared by IAEA (his voice from BBC-Persian, fast forward to 3:08):

"... The IAEA report shows that iran has accelarated its efforts to aquire nuclear weopons ..."

Apparantly, IAEA still has no evidence of existence of such nuclear weopons program.

Iran: The Next Neocon Target

I recommend following the link below and listening to what Ron Paul has to say:

Iran: The Next Neocon Target

Ahmadinejad: Three Balls and No Experience

UN security council has asked Iran to re-establish "full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities". Iran has not yet done so, but they still have a little bit of time left. If they don't do it by the deadline, I'll be certain that Ahmadinejad has 3 balls, but no experience. He is either so sure that nothing will happen, or he is stupid.

This is the best time for them to announce a 1-year suspension on enrichment: to alleviate the tensions, to let the Bushehr power plant become operational, to start contracting the new power plants, and to let the worries drain. They will have nothing to lose. They seem to be ahead of their schedule for fuel production: fuel production with no working reactor is worth nothing but trouble (considering the fact that Russia has guaranteed fuel for a couple of years).

We Do Not Have a Nuclear Weapons Program - New York Times

An Op-Ed by Javad Zarif, Iran's Embassador to UN:
We Do Not Have a Nuclear Weapons Program - New York Times