President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will accuse Iran Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying it has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years, according to senior administration officials.
The revelation, which the three leaders will make before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit here, appears bound to add urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambitions to build a nuclear weapons capability. Mr. Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, will demand that the country allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran.
American officials say that they have been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a “pilot plant” under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.
But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing about the plant during his visit this week to the United Nations, where he repeated his contention that Iran had cooperated fully with inspectors, and that allegations of a nuclear weapons program are fabrications.
This will surprise no sensible person, but will shock [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/25430/#394264]others[/url] who have been in deep denial about Iran.
Heh – denial? This is blogging, Jefferson, not a place for Ph.D’s in Persian politics. The evidence is more that they want to build a secret nuclear facility. Why would I be surprised? Nations do things in secret, especially if they want to avoid being attacked.
To be more precise, there are more incentives for Iran to develop weapons than not to. Nuclear weapons would be more likely to ensure they weren’t attacked. Personally, I think much of this is about making us look like aggressors to the Muslim world. It is to their benefit to look powerful, even if they’ve left building weapons on the shelf. It’s not a wise strategy (after all, see what happened to Iraq).
The article did note that Iran had halted construction of a nuclear weapon on 2003. But the article does not really explore what Iran’s intentions are. You think that Judenrein is their ultimate goal. I think their anti-Israel polemic is strategy for direct negotiations with the US.
What Iran wants is to become a wealthy, prosperous country independent of the US. Parties (the revolutionary Guard, the council) in Iran want to maintain their hold on Iranian society.
But that a country would want Nuclear Weapons for pride or self-defense doesn’t come as a surprise to me. After all, it is what India, Pakistan, Israel and NK all believe.
Isn’t Obama handling it well, though, Jefferson? If it weren’t for our troops being sitting ducks in Iraq, perhaps we could pull off another invasion.
That’s even less coherent than your usual missives, JW. Why would Iran be “attacked?” You mention Iraq, presumably referring to the Osirak facility, but you didn’t mention that the reason Israel did so was that Saddam Hussein had boasted the reactor would be used to develop a bomb to destroy Israel. IOW, he had made clear his intent and was developing the capability. Just like Iran.
You’ve gone from denialist to apologist to craven tout in just a few short posts. Time to go get your daily strongly-held beliefs downloaded from the OfA website, comrade!
The news indicated that the US, GB, and France have know about this second reactor for over a year and Iran just came clean with the IAEA, as if it just started building it, because it found out the US knew it had the facility last week. Thus, the news conference today with Obama, Gordon Brown, and Sarkosy. Of the 3, even MSNBC said that Obama look wimpish, Brown and Sarkosy looked strong and forceful, and that Obama, being a multilateralist, simply is not comfortable being the leader of the free world. Great! Just what we need in this time… a reluctant leader of the free world. Where’s Hillary when you need her – trying to get Rahm Emmanuel to get our of her seat at the UN. Boy, aren’t we all glad that no one listened when the opposition was saying before the election that the lack of Obama’s experience made no difference in his being President. Now we know, after just a few months, that the man really is not a leader, he really is just an organizer and a coordinator, which is all he had ever done before becoming President. Now we know why all of his votes in the ILL Legislature for his few years in the Senate were “present.” Boy is this going to be fun to watch the next few years.
[Comment deleted at the request of commenter – Elf]
[Will commenters please note that uncivil remarks addressed to one another and intemperate remarks are against T19 comment policy, even if the balance of the comment is interesting and even adds to the debate. If you find it difficult, please write your reply in word or notepad, leave it for 10 minutes, and then reread it before posting it to the thread. We have tried editing, deleting and moderation. We hope that it will not be necessary to take further action – Elf]
Hi Elves, please delete my previous comment. Thanks!
RE: “I don’t approach Iranian politics with any ideological baggage.”
Other than touting deconstructionism and collectivism, along with the usual TEC revisionism, this is entirely true of John Wilkins.
I have no idea where all this “realpolitik” is ending up, or if it indeed has an end. What I do see is a willingness to argue endlessly in the alternative:
* Iran isn’t interested in developing nuclear weapons
* Well, even if they are interested, we have no evidence that they are acting on that interest
* Okay, so there’s evidence that they are acting on the interest, but it’s just in the planning stage
* So what if it’s actually been built? The doesn’t mean they’re going to do anything with this technology!
* Yeah, well all those threats about wiping Israel off the map are just bluster. The mullahs are nice, rational people who love their country and puppies with sad eyes.
* Okay, so what if they’ve made the open, public calculation of sacrificing a few million Iranian citizens in exchange for incinerating the Zionist entity? I mean, haven’t you had a bad day now and then?
* Really, I don’t care if the ayatollahs get the bomb at all. The real sociopaths are Reagan and Thatcher! And Father Coughlin!!! (A:huh? B: Coughlin was a big supporter of FDR in the early years)
So while our President dreams of nuclear-free worlds, the mullahs laugh and laugh. It’s this sort of pigeon-like thinking that brought them to power in the first place.
[url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100010499/barack-obama-president-pantywaist-restores-the-satellite-states-to-their-former-owner/]Realpolitik!![/url]
Jefferson,
My guess is that you think the the Iranian Mullahs are driven primarily by anti-semitism, and that the main thing driving their foreign policy is a hatred of Jews. I think you also make a philosophical mistake of confusing what is descriptive with what is normative. It’s an easy one to make.
I also don’t think that Iran is fundamentally peculiar. They don’t have a lot of reasons to trust the US after our support of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and the bombing of flight 655. They think we’re pretty murderous and don’t value human life. Do I think they are right? Nope. But I see how they could think that way.
Keynes had a great quote, Jefferson. “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” I admit, I’ve had to change my mind. I do think Iran probably want nuclear weapons. However, I also think nations have the right to defend themselves against attack. And this is where it gets complicated.
I think you underestimate the animosity between Arab countries and Iran. And I’ve not heard a rebuttal against my primary argument: that Iranian politics is local, and that their main object of attention is the US, not Israel.
At least this time, if we do attack Iran, we’ll have the support of Russia, China, the Arabs and the Iranian people. And we’ll have evidence. A much better place to be than where the previous president was.
I’m not sure what your last link is supposed to prove. So, should the American taxpayer fund a program our own military doesn’t like? So Poland and the Czeck Republic require handouts now? Personally, I’d rather fund universal health care for Americans.
The point of the link is, of course, to point out that if your velvet glove has no iron fist in it, there’s no reason for the mullahs to pay the slightest attention to you.
I’m delighted to see you are able to change your mind in the face of facts. I noticed that malleability in the whipsaw change you made in the illegal immigrant/healthcare discussion. You’re going to need that flexibility in the coming months regarding Iran. See, Iran is surrounded by a gaggle of what can be described, without a lot of exaggeration, as failed states. They’re looking for a model that works, and Iran is going to make a play for providing that political model just as Saddam once tried to. The bullet train to that spot is the annihilation of Israel. You’re right about one thing…their willingness to perform that one hideous act will hinge on one factor: Whether more retaliation will be forthcoming than just Israel, or what’s left of it, can muster. And with a passel of advisors who quote Walt and Mearscheimer to a guy who listened to Jerry Wright for two decades, they’re likely to come to the conclusion that the time to strike is now.