Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu warned Barack Obama that Iran could deploy operational SATs within a year. Obama reiterated that Washington wants to continue down the diplomatic route for the time being, even though Israel is pushing for a pre-emptive strike. However, Obama did agree that all options, including military ones, are the table.
Netanyahu insists Israeli intelligence regarding SATs is better than George W Bush had in 2001. Bush went to war in Iraq based upon the false intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed SATs. Bush feared Hussein could launch a Sunni SAT at America and Condi Rice advised, "We don't want the smoking gun to be SAT questions on the Koran."
Bush had witnessed the destructive power of SATs when Yale raised their standards for brain-addled legacies in the late sixties and refused to admit his younger siblings: Jeb (University of Texas), Dorothy (Boston College), Neil (Tulane), and Marvin (University of Virginia).
Playing on Bush's fears Vice President Dick Cheney evoked horror scenarios of Hussein's SATs reaching America: Upscale parents hiring private Arabic tutors, SAT math questions using Arabic numerals, Shiites being tapped for Skull and Bones, and Bush himself, who had average SAT scores of 606, being ignominiously relegated to a community college.
While he never found evidence of SATs in Iraq, Bush still defends himself. "I accomplished a more important goal. I showed Dick Cheney that I had brass balls."
Now Obama faces the same the same question: Is Iran capable of deploying SATs? Mossad agents secretly recorded of Iran asking Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the following question:
At the beginning of 2012, both Mustafa and Esfandian were taller than Hooshmand, and Hooshmand was taller than Shahruz. During the year, Mustafa and Esfandian both grew three inches, while Shankam, who we have not yet met, did not grow at all. Esfandian's hands were cut off after being convicted of stealing while Shahruz was beheaded for irony. Of the following, which could not have been true at the beginning of 2013?
(A) Shankam was shorter than Mustafa.
(B) Shahruz was taller than Hooshmand.
(C) Esfandian quit basketball and took up soccer.
(D) Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, may Allah protect him, is taller and wiser than Barack Obama.
(E) None of the above.
Shin Bet operatives overheard Revolutionary Guards commander General Mohammad Ali Jafari telling brigadier general Morteza Rezaie that he had three minutes to solve a problem:
Water flows into a swimming pool at the rate of 9.97 liters per minute, and a 15-centimeter diameter pipe simultaneously drains the pool. If the pool is 9.1 meters wide, 14.2 meters long and 8.6 meters deep, how long does it take to fill the pool?
Netanyahu labeled this intercept "the smoking gun." "Who but an SAT designer would try to fill up a pool with the drain open?"
However, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel cautioned, "There is a big step between designing and deploying SATs. Iran is years away from deployment. They have no number 2 pencils. We have embargoed these for years."
But even if Iran is years away from deployment the Obama administration is still concerned that SATs may fall into the hands of terrorists. "A single terrorists armed with Iranian SATs could result in Princeton rejecting the entire high school population of a mid-size American city," Secretary of State John Kerry said. "We don't want the smoking gun to be the thin envelopes."