WP, 2005: Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy

[tuvor]

(Via BuzzFlash)

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A15

Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, "They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."

Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago.

Ford's team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium -- the two pathways to a nuclear bomb. Either can be shaped into the core of a nuclear warhead, and obtaining one or the other is generally considered the most significant obstacle to would-be weapons builders.

Iran, a U.S. ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to Washington. U.S. companies, including Westinghouse and General Electric, scrambled to do business there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html

[babylonsister]

1. That's so 2005. Go back a bit to see/hear/absorb Kerry's

take on nuclear proliferation. Post that, because he's right and has been all along.
We got the wrong president in so many ways.

[nealmhughes]

2. Iran is still pretty miffed at the way the West and the US in particular

has treated them since the days of the Shah. They were coalesced into a formidable mob by the Ayatollahs, since they had noone else to whom to rally, since SAVAK had taken care of all the secular opposition.

If Bush wants to talk about a "comma," then the revolutionary students' occupation of the US embassy was the real comma -- noone got hurt, save people's pride. Actually considering the bankrolling of the ex-Shah's cruel totalitarian megalomaniacal regime, the US got off pretty lucky, once "we" backed Iraq in their war against Iran which was a bloodbath for Iranian youth and civilians in the streets of Teheran.

Take Sammy Salama and Karen Ruster's article at the Nonproliferation Center at Monterrey IIS at <2> http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040812.htm in 2004, as well as the following links via Monde Diplomatique, Socialist Voice, and Agence France Presse:
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/dossiers/iran/

Le Monde Diplomatique, L'Iran relance la production d'uranium enrichi

Time line from


http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2005/02/RAMONET/11885

L'Iran, la cible
Ignacio ramolet
Feb. 2005


http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Selfa0128.htm reprint of article from socialist worker by Lance Selfa "What the US has in store for Iran" cites Walid Charara of le Monde Diplomatique in 2005 saying that the IAEA cannot get the Neocons to stop preaching death to Iran

Writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, Walid Charara explained: “Behind the ideological window-dressing of the new ‘democratic messianism,’ there are two main reasons for the Bush administration’s uncompromising determination. First, there is Iran’s geo-strategic status. It is an independent and middle-ranking regional power that has engaged in military cooperation with Russian and China...his makes it the last bastion still to be holding out against a permanent U.S. takeover of the Middle East. Iran is the last surveying ally in the region of those states and organizations still opposed to Israel.”

In the coming months, we will be subjected to a barrage of scare stories about the Iranian bomb, Iranian backing for terrorism, Iranian support for the resistance in Iraq--even Bush’s delusions about a post-Islamic Republic of Iran. That’s why it will be important to remember the real reasons why the U.S. worries about Iran.

Lance Selfa writes for the Socialist Worker. This article first appeared on the SW website: www.socialistworker.org. Thanks to Alan Maass.



AFP "Inspectors have not uncovered any concrete proof that Iran's nuclear program is of a military nature" IAEA 31-08-06



It is pretty obvious from these writers and scholars that Iran may or may not be developing a bomb with their Uranium, but they have a lot of it and are doing exactly what Brazil is doing! Developing their own atomic power infrastructure. Why is noone howling at Lula?

Look at Iran's neighbors: Pakistan with its own nukes, which can go west as easily as towards India ( Pakistan, so-called ally or sometime-client of the US), Afghanistan (semi-occupied by the US), and Iraq (hereditary enemy of the Sunnis there and titularly-occupied by the US).

Gee, with neighbors like that, and a wacko figurehead president who still has to answer to the Ayatollahs and their council, who needs enemies? Ahamadmenajad has no real power -- the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution has all of it. Iran has some 70,000,000 people inside its borders and is about one quarter the size of the US! Nothing to sneeze at, that Iran, eh, Mr. Wolfowitz?

Iran is doing what she needs: to prepare for the oil going dry. What are the people to do then? Burn dung for power? Turn into North Korea and feed the people gerbil pellets and rice husks or whatever Kim feeds them?

Going to war with Iran would be the worst mistake of Bush's miserable life.