Nuclear Scaremongering about Iran from Clinton

[Happy Face 29]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engaged in some fearmongering on Iran on Sunday on Candy Crowley's CNN magazine show, State of the Union. Here is how the exchange went:

 

'CROWLEY: If you were to say to the American people, this country is the most dangerous to Americans and to the U.S., where is that country?

 

CLINTON: You know, Candy, in terms of a country, obviously

a nuclear-armed country like

North Korea or

Iran

pose both a real or a potential threat.

 

CROWLEY: And you're convinced Iran has nuclear...

 

CLINTON:

No, no

, but we believe that their behavior certainly is evidence of their intentions . . .

 

 

Kudos to Crowley for not letting that ridiculous assertion pass. To put Iran in the same category as North Korea in 2010 and to make it among the primary 'threats' challenging the United States is just bizarre. The US intelligence establishment continues to doubt that Iran has or wants a nuclear weapons program. Tehran does have a nuclear enrichment program, which is permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran allows United Nations inspections of it nuclear facilities. Although Iran is not as transparent as the UN International Atomic Energy Agency would like, there is no dispositive evidence of a weapons program. For the Secretary of State to frame Iran as she did is just muddled or dishonest.

 

Clinton again repeated that the new facility near Qom is evidence that Iran intends to build a bomb. But then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammed Elbaradei was invited to inspect it in late October and found a 'hole in a mountain' with no equipment or uranium on-site. The facility is too small to be an efficient producer of High Enriched Uranium for bombs, and is more likely intended to serve as a repository of equipment and know-how that cannot be bombed by the Israelis or Americans.

 

It is a trick of the Washington Establishment to scare apparently easily frightened Americans into a conviction that some small, poor, third world country is a dire threat to the most massively funded and armed military in the world. Repeating falsehoods is one way the Big Lie is implanted, that then allows US belligerence to be unquestioned at home.

 

Clinton did go on to defend the Obama administration's attempts to engage North Korea and Iran (again, placing them on the same plane), but not on the grounds of success in negotiations. Rather, she argued that attempting to engage the problem countries made it easier, when the negotiations failed, to convince countries such as Russia and China (in N. Korea's case) or Russia (in the case of Iran) to ratchet up sanctions at the UN. But if all engagement accomplishes is to make imposition of sanctions easier, it isn't really engagement, it is just posturing.

 

News from Iran will be spun by the US press to justify Clinton's fears. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made headlines Sunday by directing Iran's (regularly inspected) nuclear research establishment at Natanz near Isfahan to begin attempting to enrich uranium to 19.75% so that that country will eventually have the ability to supply its own fuel for its sole reactor that produces medical isotopes for treating, e.g., cancer. Any uranium enriched to 19.75% and fed through the reactor is transformed into isotopes and then used up.

 

Note that Iran is openly announcing this decision and is informing the International Atomic Energy Agency of it, in accordance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

 

But if all Iran does is enrich to 19.75% (the upper level of low-enriched uranium) for the isotope reactor and then use up the isotopes, this step is the least dangerous one it could take.

 

Iran in the past bought the enriched uranium for the isotope reactor from Argentina. So it would be nothing new if Iran came to possess that grade of LEU. Iran's government is horrible, but it is less dictatorial than that of the Argentinean generals of the 1970s and early 1980s who developed Buenos Aires' nuclear enrichment capabilities to the point where it really could have made a bomb. But the country foreswore any such ambitions despite its knowledge. Iran likewise denies it wants a bomb, and there is no good evidence to the contrary. It is just that Washington adored the far rightwing generals in Argentina who made people disappear in the thousands, and didn't care if they had the Bomb. And much of Washington is determined to lie about what is known of Iran's capabilities and intentions.

 

The list of other countries capable of producing LEU of 19.75% includes Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Holland, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There would be nothing extraordinary about Iran joining this list, and none of the others on it except N. Korea is being sanctioned-- and that is for constructing a bomb, which Iran is not doing. Argentina was sanctioned neither for enriching to 19.75% nor for selling that stock of LEU to Iran! And South Korea was never sanctioned for secretly enriching to 77%, near bomb grade, something Iran has never been accused of.

 

It is not dangerous for Iran to produce low enriched uranium, whether for reactor fuel for the nuclear electric plants it is building or for its small medical isotopes reactor (given to it in 1969 by the United States).

 

It would be dangerous if Iran determined to enrich to 95% to make a bomb. In order to do so, it would have to evade all US electronic surveillance, withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and throw out the UN inspectors. No country being actively and continuously inspected by the IAEA has ever developed an atomic bomb. The US National Security Agency can hear a walkie-talkie conversation in the jungles of Guatemala, and for Iran to hide a decision to make a bomb would be very difficult. The US has also been successful in enticing Iranian nuclear physicists into defecting, with insider knowledge and documents. The idea that Iran could conceal a major enrichment facility somewhere is far-fetched, because enrichment is a water- and electricity-intensive activity that can be detected. Even just the building activity for the new small facility near Qom showed up on US satellite surveillance.

 

Does the step Ahmadinejad announced on Sunday make sense for Iran? The answer is yes. Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation writes that:

 

'Iran has developed plans to use naturally occurring uranium as a “target” for producing an important medical diagnostic isotope of molybdenum, an isotope whose decay product can be used to scan for cancers in bone, heart, lung, and kidney. Iran already imports a sizable quantity of this pharmacological radionuclide but producing it indigenously would not only save Iran a considerable amount of money each year, much more than it would pay for the fuel for the reactor it would use to produce it, but also allow a more efficient use of this short lived isotope by preventing the decay of nearly half of the amount bought before it even reached the patients. Perhaps the biggest incentive indigenous production of 99Mo in Iran would be the encouragement of its entire nuclear medicine infrastructure; an infrastructure that might right the imbalance of medical isotopes into this developing country relative to other nations." '

 

Iran is already producing low enriched uranium for reactor fuel. That it has decided to produce a higher grade of it for its medical infrastructure is neither surprising nor a cause for panic. You'll know if Iran decides to build a bomb. It will throw out the inspectors or refuse them access, including to places the US detects a huge electromagnetic signature but which Iran declines to declare as facilities. None of that has happened. Until then, the world should relax.

 

http://www.juancole.com/2010/02/more-nucle...about-iran.html

[Christmas Tree 4729]

They look guilty to me. Not dressed for swimming but wearing strange goggles!!!!!.....Bomb em, just to be sure.

 

[Park Life 71]

They look guilty to me. Not dressed for swimming but wearing strange goggles!!!!!.....Bomb em, just to be sure.

 

 

Yeah definately bomb THEM.

 

With regards Eyeraaan I can't see how they're going to do it without starting WW3.

[manc-mag 1]

They look guilty to me. Not dressed for swimming but wearing strange goggles!!!!!.....Bomb em, just to be sure.

 

 

 

"Pull my finger, Clinton. I'll show you fucking 'nuclear'"

[LeazesMag 0]

blinkered and deluded

[Meenzer 15561]

It is a trick of the Washington Establishment to scare apparently easily frightened Americans into a conviction that some small, poor, third world country is a dire threat to the most massively funded and armed military in the world.

 

Does this joker really think Iran is small?

[snakehips 0]

They look guilty to me. Not dressed for swimming but wearing strange goggles!!!!!.....Bomb em, just to be sure.

 

 

 

This 3D porn is just the bizzzzzzzzzz. Look, LOOK, I'm touching her nipple with my finger!! Jiggedy jig.

[ChezGiven 0]

Have the Iranians been enriching unobtanium then?

[snakehips 0]

Have the Iranians been enriching unobtanium then?

 

No, but they have been enriching their coffee..

 

Tehran Treat; the new smoother, richer, coffee from Asda.

[@yourservice 67]

Hillary Clinton = reptilian

[Park Life 71]

Hillary Clinton = reptilian

 

Spot on. Reticuli variety.

[Happy Face 29]

IRAN REACTS TO BECOMING A U.S. NUCLEAR TARGET

 

As we noted last week, the Obama Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, issued last Monday, included a provision asserting a U.S. prerogative to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapons states that Washington deems not be in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Following the release of the Nuclear Posture Review last week, both President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates clearly stated that this new provision in America’s declaratory posture regarding the use of nuclear weapons was aimed at Iran, along with North Korea and other potential “outlier” states. (Even though the International Atomic Energy Agency has never concluded that Tehran is in breach of its NPT obligations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Obama Administration officials have been asserting for some time that the Islamic Republic is not in compliance with the Treaty.)

 

President Obama, Secretary Gates, and other Administration officials argue that making the Islamic Republic subject to nuclear first use will somehow incentivize Tehran to back away from the further development of Iranian nuclear capabilities and become more cooperative with U.S. nuclear proposals. We find this argument nonsensical in its causal logic. As we noted in our original piece, making Iran a potential U.S. nuclear target will, from a purely strategic perspective, reduce Tehran’s incentives for restraint in developing its own nuclear capabilities, not bolster them:

 

“If Iran, as a non-nuclear-weapons state, will face the threat of nuclear ‘first use’ by the United States, why shouldn’t Tehran proceed to the actual acquisition of nuclear weapons”?

 

Over the past few days, Iranian officials have been reacting to the Nuclear Posture Review—and, not surprisingly, they appear neither amused nor intimidated by the newest wrinkle in the Obama Administration’s Iran policy.

 

It is remarkable that the Iranian/North Korean exception has not gotten more critical attention in the United States. Republicans and hawkish Democrats appear to have bought the specious argument that threatening Iran with nuclear attack will somehow deter Tehran from further development of its nuclear capabilities. (Republicans, of course, are generally unhappy with most other parts of the Nuclear Posture Review.) More liberal Democrats and the professional arms control/nonproliferation community have been inclined to see the Obama Administration’s nuclear weapons policy as a “glass half full” rather than a “glass half empty”. These actors portray the Review as, on balance, a positive step in the right direction of reducing the role of nuclear weapons in America’s military posture; they depict the Iranian/North Korean exception as an unfortunate byproduct of interagency compromise which can be “worked on” in the future.

 

This is regrettable, because the Iranian exception is a serious step in the wrong direction for American policy toward the Islamic Republic. Overall, Iranian reaction to the Nuclear Posture Review has focused on highlighting the illegitimacy of U.S. threats to use nuclear weapons against Iran and other non-nuclear-weapons states. According to Iranian media, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told senior military commanders on Sunday that President Obama’s threats to use nuclear arms against Iran

 

“are very strange and the world should not ignore them because in the 21st century, the century of claiming to advocate human rights and fight terrorism, the head of a country has threatened a nuclear attack”.

 

Khamenei added that

 

“these remarks show that the U.S. government is a wicked an unreliable government…In recent years, the Americans made many efforts to show that the Islamic Republic of Iran is unreliable in the nuclear issue…it is now clear that the governments that possess atomic bombs and shamelessly threaten to bomb others are the unreliable ones. Therefore, the U.S. president’s remarks are scandalous.”

 

Also on Sunday, parliament speaker Ali Larijani added his own criticism of the Nuclear Posture Review, charging that threatening nuclear first use against Iran and other states violates the NPT. The spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that the Iranian government would lodge a formal complaint with the United Nations regarding the Obama Administration’s nuclear stance toward the Islamic Republic.

 

Iranian officials have said repeatedly, over years, that the Islamic Republic does not want nuclear weapons and is not seeking them. Furthermore, political and religious authorities have said that acquiring nuclear weapons would be a departure from Islamic ethical standards. (In this regard, it is interesting to note that Iran decided not to weaponize and use chemical agents during the Iran-Iraq war, even though Saddam Husayn subjected both Iranian military forces and civilian targets inside Iran to chemical attack.) Our understanding is that, within the Islamic Republic’s decision-making circles, Ayatollah Khamenei has steadfastly rejected the weaponization of Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities—and that opposition to nuclear weaponization remains his position. Certainly, Ayatollah Khamenei’s public statements on the subject are consistent with such a position.

 

This is important in the context of the Islamic Republic’s political order and culture. Given Tehran’s record of official and religious rejection of nuclear weapons, for Ayatollah Khamenei to shift course at some point in the future and endorse nuclear weapons fabrication by the Islamic Republic would require him to explain, to the Iranian public and his followers throughout the Shi’a world, how Iran’s strategic circumstances had changed to such an extent that it was now both necessary and legitimate for the country to develop a full-fledged nuclear deterrent. But, as a highly regarded Iranian analyst pointed out to us last week, having the United States threaten to “nuke” the Islamic Republic could plausibly be an important element in the changed circumstances that might warrant a fundamental shift in Iran’s posture toward nuclear weapons.

 

There is no indication that Iran’s leadership is preparing to depart from its longstanding position regarding the acquisition of nuclear weapons. But America’s nuclear weapons policy should not incentivize nuclear proliferation—and that, unfortunately, is precisely what the Obama Administration has done. In the wake of the Nuclear Posture Review, we anticipate that Tehran will be even more inclined to push the development of its nuclear capabilities to a point where it will be perceived as having all of the major “building blocks” for fabricating nuclear weapons, should the Iranian leadership at some future point decide that such a step were necessary to ensure the Islamic Republic’s survival.

 

http://www.raceforiran.com/iran-reacts-to-...-nuclear-target

[Happy Face 29]

President Barack Obama has said the biggest threat to US security is the possibility of a terrorist organisation obtaining a nuclear weapon.

 

BBC

 

The irony.

[Park Life 71]

I thought the Chinese had already given Iran nukes.

[Rob W 0]

nah - they bought them from that nice Pakistani take-away on the corner as you know well - the missiles on the other hand............ well

everyone knows the Chinese specialise in fireworks eh?

 

I'm damn sure Mr Dinner Jacket and friends are trying to build an H-bomb - after they set it off (hopefully in their own country) then there will be 5 years of sanctions followed by "engagement" and eventually they'll be sitting at the table withe US, Russia, us the Frogs, etc etc. Actually acquiring the damn things seems to sober people up pretty fast

[Park Life 71]

nah - they bought them from that nice Pakistani take-away on the corner as you know well - the missiles on the other hand............ well

everyone knows the Chinese specialise in fireworks eh?

 

I'm damn sure Mr Dinner Jacket and friends are trying to build an H-bomb - after they set it off (hopefully in their own country) then there will be 5 years of sanctions followed by "engagement" and eventually they'll be sitting at the table withe US, Russia, us the Frogs, etc etc. Actually acquiring the damn things seems to sober people up pretty fast

 

I'd go with most of that.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

In all honesty, I'm amazed there are still countries out there that don't have the BOMBZ. Its 50 or 60 year old technology. Hell, 30 at least.

 

EDIT: Godammnit, why can't I type T E H BOMBZ? It keeps correcting me...

Edited April 14, 2010 by Cid_MCDP

[Rob W 0]

It is VERY EXPENSIVE to do all the R&D yourself and it takes a long time

 

The theory is relatively simple - what is a real bugger is getting the engineering right - lots of nasty corrosive materials (fluorine gas for example), radioactivity, need some damn good engineers - and a lot of them

 

It takes 5-10 years to get a plant up and running - after that it's pretty cheap to run

[Happy Face 29]

Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command are updating military plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites, preparing up-to-date options for the president in the event he decides to take such action, an Obama administration official told CNN Sunday.

 

The effort has been underway for several weeks and comes as there is growing concern across the administration's national security team that the president needs fresh options ready for his approval if he were to decide on a military strike, according to the official who is familiar with the effort.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/18/us....dex.html?hpt=T1

 

[Rob W 0]

well that;s what they're paid to do - no much bloody point having a military and finishing up as Flashman said about British planning for the Crimean War

 

" Well where do you think it is on this map? Really??? My God that's a long way away....."

Edited April 20, 2010 by Rob W

[Happy Face 29]

well that;s what they're paid to do - no much bloody point having a military and finishing up as Flashman said about British planning for the Crimean War

 

" Well where do you think it is on this map? Really??? My God that's a long way away....."

 

 

Of course the pentagon have a playbook for every country.

 

The fact they've announced the news that they're concentrating on the Iran war plan is not a coincidental bit of spring cleaning though. It's something to sadden us that a peaceful, NPT compliant, democratic country is being pressured by this kind of aggressive posturing.

Edited April 20, 2010 by Happy Face

[Park Life 71]

Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command are updating military plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites, preparing up-to-date options for the president in the event he decides to take such action, an Obama administration official told CNN Sunday.

 

The effort has been underway for several weeks and comes as there is growing concern across the administration's national security team that the president needs fresh options ready for his approval if he were to decide on a military strike, according to the official who is familiar with the effort.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/18/us....dex.html?hpt=T1

 

 

There will be no strike on Iran. I really can't see it.

[Happy Face 29]

Iran has signed an agreement to send uranium abroad for enrichment after mediation talks in Tehran with Turkish and Brazilian leaders.

 

Iran's foreign ministry said it was ready to ship 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium to Turkey, in return for nuclear fuel for a research reactor.

 

Correspondents say the plan could revive a UN-backed proposal and may ward off another round of sanctions.

 

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling on world leaders for new talks.

 

He said it was time for talks "with Iran based on honesty, justice and mutual respect".

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8685846.stm

 

More reasonable behaviour from those dangerous Iranians.

 

 

Being spun as Machialvellian tactics by the actual most dangerous country in the region...

 

Israel was quick to react to the deal. The AFP news agency reported an unnamed official as accusing Iran of "manipulating" Turkey and Brazil to stave off further sanctions.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8685846.stm

Edited May 17, 2010 by Happy Face

[Park Life 71]

Yeah just give them stuff to build nukes.

[Happy Face 29]

Renowned US scholar Noam Chomsky has been denied entry to the West Bank by Israeli immigration officials.

 

Prof Chomsky said the officials were very polite but he was denied entry because "the government did not like the kinds of things I say and they did not like that I was only talking at Birzeit and not at an Israeli university too."

 

He added: "I asked them if they could find any government in the world that likes the things I say."

 

Prof Chomsky's Palestinian host for the visit, Mustafa al-Barghouti, told Reuters: "This decision is a fascist action, amounting to suppression of freedom of expression."

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8685930.stm