8 - 12 months before Iranian A-Bomb?

If the data mentioned in this article are even half right, the future of Israel is very dark indeed. A group called the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) made the following claims:

"Khamenei has ordered his diplomats and his negotiators to prolong the negotiations as much as possible, possibly by between eight and 12 months, which is exactly the time needed to complete the bomb," [Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the NCRI's Foreign Affairs Committee] said.

Now anyone, even a dissident Iranian can make claims like these. An enemy of the Mad Mullahs will be eager to cast the rabid clerics in a bad light (which admittedly is not all that hard to do). But this group does have some credit to their name:

The group, however, gained credibility in August 2002 by exposing another secret uranium enrichment facility being built underground in Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, and a heavy water production facility at Arak, about 120 miles southwest of Tehran.

That exposure triggered the current nuclear standoff with Iran, by forcing the Islamist regime to open these sites to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

They know what they're talking about, and obviously have inside information. There's a slight problem though: In their fight against the Iran regime, they accepted various forms of aid from Saddam Hussein (who helped them for obvious reasons).

The Bush administration and European powers have branded the NCRI a terrorist group, mainly because its military wing was sheltered by Saddam Hussein at bases in Iraq, from which it launched attacks in Iran.

Saddam treated this as a case of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". So did NCRI.

In this case, perhaps so should the Americans.