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Iran Allegedly Agrees To Deal On Exporting Nuclear Fuel
From The NYT:
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Iranian negotiators had agreed to a draft of a deal to ship much of Iran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel to Russia, but cautioned that it would still have to be approved by Friday in Tehran and Washington.
The draft, which came after three days of talks here, adds important details to an agreement in principle made on Oct. 1, after a preliminary round of negotiations. If approved, the deal would commit Iran to temporarily exporting 75 percent of its known stockpile of low-grade nuclear fuel to Russia for additional enrichment. Negotiators say that would prevent the possibility that Iran could turn the fuel into weapons-grade material anytime soon.
I don’t buy a word of this. First of all, anything the head of the IAEA says is suspect to begin with. Secondly, the keywords in the above paragraph are “known stockpile”. The Iranians have never been honest about their nuclear program and there’s no evidence to suggest that has changed.
Exporting 75% of the fuel we know they have means nothing as long as they keep 100% of the fuel they’re hiding and continue to enrich in secret.
This entire thing is a farce and unless Israel takes military action the Iranians will become a nuclear power.
The IAEA Can No Longer Be Taken Seriously
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headed up by Mohamed ElBaradei has been providing cover for the Iranian nuclear program for some time. They continue to hide their own reports from the international community which show Iran to be much further along in its nuclear program than previously disclosed.
Today, the impotent agency reached a new level of absurdity when it held a joint news conference in Tehran with Iran’s nuclear agency.
During the press conference, IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said this:
"Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses."
Such a ridiculous statement proves that the IAEA is not a serious organization or an honest broker. Nothing the IAEA says should ever be taken seriously again.
IAEA: Iran Increasing Stockpile Of Uranium
A new IAEA report out today says that Iran is rapidly increasing its stockpile of uranium which could be enriched into weapons grade material at any time.
But it gets worse:
The agency says that, as of this month, Tehran had amassed 630kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride, up from 480kg in late August. Analysts say Iran is enriching uranium at such a pace that, by early next year, it could reach break-out capacity – one step away from producing enough fissile material for a crude nuclear bomb.
“They are moving forward, they are not making diplomatic overtures, they are accumulating low enriched uranium,” said Cliff Kupchan, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy in Washington. “These guys are committed to their nuclear programme: if we didn’t know that, they just told us again.”
Obama’s first real test as president will be how he handles the Iran nuclear situation. I’m hoping he realizes that Ahmadinejad is not going to give up his weapons program just because he sits across the table from him and yuks it up.
The Iranian regime is not rational and the only thing that is going to stop them besides going to war — is continuing economic pressure from the world community. Britain, France, and our other allies have all expressed concern that Obama is going to muck things up and unilaterally meet with the dictator.
Hopefully, Obama’s campaign promises to meet without preconditions was only rhetoric — but we shall see.
Time To Act On Iran
The International Atomic Energy Agency issued its report on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, and it’s extremely troubling. What the report revealed is that Iran is much farther along in it’s weapons development than most intelligence agencies.
According to the report Iran has already installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium. That is enough to begin production of highly enriched uranium on an industrial scale. This would allow Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium to have a nuclear warhead within a year.
The installation of 3,000 fully-functioning centrifuges at Iran’s enrichment plant at Natanz is a “red line” drawn by the US across which Washington had said it would not let Iran pass. Israel has also expressed similar sentiments and is thought to already be ready to strike Iran’s nuclear sites.
It is my belief that Israel will take military action if the U.S. does not. If Mexico was developing nuclear weapons while at the same time threating to wipe us of the map, you can be sure that the United States would take action.
While I do believe we must continue diplomatic talks, I don’t believe they will ultimately be successful. If diplomacy does fail I think one of two things will happen.
The first possibility is that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran and the U.S. will back them up with sea based cruise missiles and stealth aircraft.
The second possibility is that the U.S. will take military action against Iran and Israel will stand down. The purpose of the attack will be to not just delay the Iranian’s nuclear program, but to effectively end it. We would achieve this not with an Iraq-style invasion, but with a combination of air and sea assets.
Whatever happens, I suspect it will be happen within the next 4-6 months or at least before the Bush Administration leaves office. In light of the campaign rhetoric on the Democratic side, it’s not likely that a Democratic President would ever take military action in Iran or anywhere else.
-Chris Jones
Iran hands over blueprints for nuclear warhead
Iran has given the UN nuclear agency blueprints (they don’t have) showing how to mold uranium metal into the shape of warheads (they’re not trying to build) .
The move is seen as an apparent concession meant to stave off the threat of new UN sanctions. But diplomats said Tehran has failed to meet other requests made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its attempts to end nearly two decades of nuclear secrecy.
The agency has been seeking possession of the blueprints since 2005, when it stumbled upon them among a batch of other documents during its examination of suspect Iranian nuclear activities.
Iran maintains it was given the papers without asking for them during its black market purchases of nuclear equipment through the AQ Khan network. Khan who is the father of the Pakistani nuclear program sold Iran everything it would need to build a bomb, and threw in blueprints for the warhead design for free.
AQ Khan perfected the technique of using thousands of small centrifuges to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. It’s considerably cheaper and much easier to conceal than the large plutonium reactors typically used.
His centrifuge design was a major breakthrough in nuclear science, so Khan formed a worldwide one-stop shop for nuclear weapons technology. The Chinese meanwhile had invented an excellent warhead that would be a perfect delivery system for Khan’s bomb.
So Khan agreed to swap his bomb design in return for the Chinese warhead design. This gave Khan the final piece for his thriving nuclear proliferation ring. He could now sell a complete nuclear weapons program from the design and construction, all the way to the weapon delivery to any country willing to pay.
How much you might ask?? What does a complete nuclear weapons program cost? Khan reportedly charged $200 million for the complete do-it-yourself nuke program.
Even in the face of everything we know, Iran still insists their only interest in nuclear technology is for energy purposes. Furthermore, they have never had an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, because they are only interested in peace.
Yeah, right.
-Chris Jones
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