All we hear about in our news media is the looming danger of Iran’s nuclear program. According to Ex-General, now Cable News Military Expert, Barry McCaffery, Iran is certain to get nukes (and Saudi Arabia, too), and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Former UN Ambassador (by back door appointment) John Bolton claims diplomacy with Iran has failed (before we’ve even tried it), and its time to kick our unilateral “regime changing machine” into high gear. Even Iranian President Ahmadinejad has gotten into the act, claiming that soon Iran has started “industrial scale” enrichment of uranium with thousands of new centrifuges.
Sounds like a dire situation doesn’t it? Well, yes, it does, unless …
… you’re paying attention to what the head of the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog organization responsible for monitoring nuclear facilities in Iran pursuant to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (of which iran is a member) had to say today about the actual scope of Iran’s nuclear program:
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Wednesday Iran is operating only several hundred centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, despite its claims to have activated 3,000.
Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran’s nuclear program was a concern, but he discounted Tehran’s claims of a major advance in uranium enrichment, a process the United Nations demands Iran suspend or else be hit by increasing sanctions. […]
ElBaradei, head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said “Iran is still just at the beginning stages in setting up its Natanz enrichment facility.”
“The talk of building a facility with 50,000 centrifuges is just at the beginning, and it is (currently) only in the hundreds,” he told reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Diplomats in Vienna familiar with IAEA efforts also gave a much lower figure for the centrifuges. They told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Iran was running only about 650 centrifuges in series _ the configuration that allows the machines to spin uranium gas to various levels of enrichment. And they said the machines were running empty, with none producing enriched uranium.
ElBaradei also played down suspicions that Iran is running a hidden uranium enrichment program.
“It has not been demonstrated until now that there are underground nuclear facilities in Iran working covertly, and Iran doesn’t have the material that can be used to make a nuclear weapon,” ElBaradei said.
I know this won’t lead the nightly news shows on the networks, and that CNN, MsNBC and Fox are unlikely to say much about it, but the reality is that Iran’s nuclear program simply isn’t advanced far enough to produce enough enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, now or for the foreseeable future. In fact, what centrifuges Iran is operating are running empty. That is, no uranium is being enriched by the Iranians right now. Not the low enriched uranium needed to fuel nuclear power generation, and not the highly enriched uranium needed to construct bombs.
The the danger of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, much less using them against the US or Israel, is not an imminent one. They aren’t enriching uranium. They do not have no thousands of operating centrifuges to make enriched uranium. And there are no signs of any secret Iranian facilities to build nuclear weapons. So what exactly is imminent? The arrival of this aircraft carrier, for one:
Like a giant piece in an intricate, if ugly, jigsaw puzzle, the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, and its strike group are now sailing toward the Persian Gulf. On arrival, they will join the strike groups of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (which it is officially replacing) and the USS John C. Stennis patrolling the region, as stunning an example of “gunboat diplomacy” as we’ve seen in our lifetimes. I think it’s a fair guess that, like most Americans, few, if any, of the Nimitz strike group’s 6,000 sailors and Marines, who may become part of a massive Bush administration air assault on Iranian nuclear and other facilities, know much about modern Iranian history.
Has there ever been a more over-hyped threat to America’s national security, than the threat of Iranian nukes? I mean, since the last over-hyped threat from the Bush administration, that is:
First, some ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone — because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.
By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, “The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.” […]
We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. […]
… We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. […]
We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints. […]
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his “nuclear mujahideen” — his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. […]
If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists. […]
Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
Ah yes, I remember it well.
