U.S. Official: Iran Can Make Atomic Arms

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-exec/2006/feb/06/020603670.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Iran used negotiations with the European Union to play for time and has now achieved the ability to both develop nuclear weapons and deliver them, a senior Bush administration official said Monday.

At a news conference at the Foreign Press Center, Robert G. Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, cited "tremendous resources" as well as a "very sophisticated, a very advanced scientific and technical community" as helpful to Iran.

He offered no assessment of how long it might take Iran to produce nuclear weapons.

President Bush, approving of a decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, said in a statement Saturday that Iran was "continuing to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons."

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[htuttle]

1. "Next up on the Propaganda Top Ten Countdown..."

"Did Iran try to buy yellowcake Uranium from Niger?"

[Toots]

3. No but I'm almost positive Saddam personally delivered his WMDs to Iran

That should be our next excuse to invade Iran...

[Danieljay]

2. I heard as many as 20 years.... these alarms are simply to prepare us for

another attack on a sovereign nation.

[movonne]

4. And we should believe this..Remember wmd's in Iraq..THAN WAS A LIE...

[radfringe]

14. some Iraqi WMD reports came

from a guy code-named "CURVEBALL"

are the bushies basing the Iranian nukes on "intel" from a guy code-named "SPITBALL"?

We had Yellow Cake with Iraq. Look out!!!! It's GREEN SALT with IRAN!!!!

Iran's Green-Salt Blues
By ELAINE SHANNON
TIME -- Sunday, Feb. 05, 2006
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156595,00.html

Green salt isn't something you'd want to sprinkle on French fries. It's what nuclear chemists call uranium tetrafluoride, a grainy substance that can be used to make fuel for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a bomb. In short, it's scary stuff, which is why the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confronted Iran late last month about a secret Iranian research effort called the Green Salt Project. Iran has long maintained that it wants to enrich uranium to generate nuclear power, not to make a bomb. But disclosure of the project--and its apparent links to the testing of high explosives--seems to have been just what Washington and its allies needed to send Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, a measure the IAEA's board of 35 member nations approved last week in a 27-to-3 vote, with five abstentions.

-----------

deja vu all over again. War Drums beating, sabers rattling and ramping up the fear factor. Yellow Cake, Green Salt - sounds like a Dr. Suess book or the makings of a tea party - we're just missing Pink Sugar, or are they saving that one for Syria/North Korea?

[brainshrub]

5. Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Everyone run for your lives!!!!

[megatherium]

18. But remember the story of the boy who cried wolf. When a real wolf

came, no one believed him.

In the present circumstance: We have reason to believe that the Bush people were themselves deceived regarding Iraqi WMD -- by Iranian agents, namely Ahmed Chalabi and his people. (Chalabi sent four different operatives of his own, pretending to be Iraqi dissidents unconnected to Chalabi, to the US to tell them where the WMD was hidden or that an invasion would be well-received by the Iraqi people. Chalabi himself positioned himself as the prospective ruler of Iraq, and he said in that position he would recognize Israel: this was too tempting to the neocons.) So we invade, only to find no WMD and a hostile Iraqi people. Meanwhile, Chalabi went to Iran to relax as their guests.

So the Iranians screwed Bush and company but good -- they had their mortal enemy, Sunni dictator Hussein, removed from power; paving the way for Iran-friendly Shiite domination of Iraq. And they made Bush look stupid, vicious and dishonest -- greatly weakening Bush's political ability to move against Iran.

(I should say at this point I certainly do not support military action against Iran, nor do I trust Bush, who is stupid, vicious and dishonest. If Iran gets the bomb, which I am certain they will, it would increase the risk to Israel -- when Iran uses its nuclear deterrant to press home a nasty terrorist unconventional war against Israel. But the risk of either Israel or the US attacking Iran now would be far greater.)

[wordpix]

19. also, 911 Commission found links between bombers & Iran but not Iraq

[megatherium]

21. Yes. My belief is that after 9/11 Bush and his people had a list

of countries to "do," and I presume Iran was at the top of that list. But I believe that (with some careful encouragement by the Iranians) the decision was made to do Iraq first. I think that decision was made because (1) Iraq would provide bases for subsequent action against Iran, and (2) Iraq was "low-hanging fruit" (its decrepit military was expected to be easy to defeat).

But this turns out to have been a blunder by Bush: Iraq was easy to defeat but difficult to occupy, which ties us down with regards to action against other countries. And everyone was left wondering what the real reason we went to Iraq was. Everyone supposed that if one country or another needed our attention, it was Iran. Iraq was only a convenient bit of preparation for Iran. I personally do not think this was for the oil: it would have been far easier to just let the oil sanctions drop against Saddam Hussein; he would have obliged by pumping more oil, and world oil prices would have dropped nicely. But politically it smells bad; whether it was for the oil or not, it is very easy for our adversaries to sell this notion to their audiences around the world.

Iran is I'm afraid to say not a nice country: They've been funding a low-level war against Israel through terrorist proxies. They've done direct terrorist actions of their own (allegedly the Argentine Jewish center bombing in the late 1980s; the Beirut bombings against our own Marines, and Khobar Tower in Saudi Arabia). They're very repressive to their own population (oppressing domestic minorities such as the Bahai; banning music; imprisoning political opponents and worse). And they have engaged in pointed provocations of the west (announcing a conference questioning the Holocaust). I fear a war against Iran may be coming, but if it does, I dare say it won't be entirely our fault.

[daleo]

6. A meaningless statement

"He offered no assessment of how long it might take Iran to produce nuclear weapons."

Any country with money and a scientific infrastructure has "achieved the ability" by this reasoning.

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. Weapons/Weapons programs, it's all the same to jr & jr's posse

[kurth]

8. Robert G. Joseph/Bob Joe/Joe Bob is Condi's errand boy

[boobooday]

9. But do they have DRONES

Supersonic, remote control drones! 45 minutes or less!

Grave and gathering threats, get yer grave and gathering threats here! Fight 'em in Iraq so we don't have to fight 'em here! Fight 'em in Iran so we don't have to fight 'em here! Attack today, or tomorrow Daddy's Little Princess will be wearing a burka!

Their fearmongering seems to be losing its effectiveness except among the hardcore GOP submissives. What will they do when it stops working? I shudder to think.

[Heewack]

10. Wasn't that Paki nuke scientist in Iran for a few years?

I think they could be very close and they seem to have been working on delivery systems. With the IAEA declaration of their weapon plans they found and the world's reactions as of late it's probably sooner than later.

[OneBlueSky]

11. I call bullshit . . . n/t

.

[Whoa_Nelly]

12. Robert G. Joseph This guy is NOT good news

People keep popping out of the woodwork, and this is another scary cog in the worst administration in the neocon unfolding world.

This stuff is beginning to freak me out.

This is who he is:

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1235


Highlights & Quotes

The top U.S. government official in charge of arms control advocates the offensive use of nuclear weapons and has deep roots in the neoconservative political camp . Moving into John Bolton’s old job, Robert G. Joseph is the right-wing’s advance man for counterproliferation as the conceptual core of a new U.S. military policy. Within the administration, he leads a band of counterproliferationists who—working closely with such militarist policy institutes as the National Institute for Public Policy and the Center for Security Policy—have placed preemptive attacks and weapons of mass destruction at the center of U.S. national security strategy.

[wordpix]

20. no, he's not and he's a Star Wars fan---scary bio on that site, thanks

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1235

[peacetalksforall]

13. Last July, the NSC said it would be ten years. This guy's words are

equivalent to Powells' little vial with its little cork top.

[wickerwoman]

15. Hell, I can make atomic arms...

just give me a couple billion dollars, some blueprints, some enriched uranium and thirty years, and no problem.

[goodboy]

16. boy I'm sure glad we invaded Iraq instead of working to prevent iran

from developing this new q lar technology.

also, thanks pakistan for helping too!

[goodboy]

17. DON'T FORGET TO THANK OUR GOOD 'FRIEND' PAKISTAN

for helping Iran get the materiel and technology and guidance.

[jpak]

22. Pakistan

The "5th Beatle" of the Axis of Evil.

No UN referral for them....

[goodboy]

23. oh no...the most dangerous and far-reaching nook-you-ler plo-rif-elrater

of all time get's a wink and a nod, even as they PARDON THE FUCKER WHO SOLD THE SECRETS TO IRAN AND N. KOREA!!!! I thought King George the Idiot said that "any country that aids terrorists" is the enemy.

Maybe that's why we shot a couple of rockets into their country to get the 104th AlQaeda #2 guy?

[HuffleClaw]

24. "We are giving every chance to diplomacy to work,"

hmmmm. i'm sure i've heard that phrase before somewhere. this recycled iraq war propaganda is really getting tiresome.

[leesa]

25. And they have a right ot make them if they choose to.