Ignorance Will Get People Killed
The BBC notes: IAEA findings on Iran dismissed
France and the US have dismissed a finding by the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog Mohammed ElBaradei that there is no evidence of Iran building a bomb.
French Defence Minister Herve Morin challenged Iran to allow UN inspectors unlimited access to sites.
A White House spokeswoman said Iran was “enriching and reprocessing uranium, and the reason that one does that is to lead towards a nuclear weapon”.
Mr ElBaradei said on Sunday that Tehran was years away from developing a bomb.
Iran denies it is seeking to build nuclear weapons and says it wants only civilian nuclear energy.
The IAEA has a proven track record of being right. Their people are specialists, with expertise in their field who have been watching people attempt to cheat and lie about what they are doing for years. They have no personal agendas and are trusted by the world.
The US has gotten just about everything wrong for the last 6+ years.
Iran’s oil infrastructure was built by colonial powers with the standard aim of taking raw materials from the country while making them dependent on the colonial power for finished materials. This is why Iran, a major oil exporting nation, must import gasoline and diesel – it lacks the refining capacity to serve its own people.
The Iranians want to use nuclear power to reduce the amount of fuel they use internally, as oil is their major source of wealth, and to reduce the extreme level of pollution in the country.
They do not want to be dependent on another nation for nuclear fuel, as they currently are for refined petroleum products. They have uranium in the country and want to refine their own fuel.
Everyone in the world knows that complying with every request made for inspections did not prevent Iraq from being invaded, as new demands were constantly made. Why would anyone agree with any demand of the US?
As for France, take off the stupid cowboy hat, Sarkozy, you aren’t fooling anyone.
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But if you say “the Velveteen rabbit is real” enough times, eventually Elmer Fudd will show up with a blunderbuss to bwow away the wascawy wabbit.
Bush’s mommy, Karl, told him that every night at sleepytime. You don’t want to destroy a kid’s dream do you?
Liberals are such meanies.
Bush would have blown up the bunny just to watch the stuffing float in the air.
Why don’t they build their own oil refineries? I’m not trying to be snarky, I mean, is there a reason they don’t have the ability to do that more easily than developing nuclear power?
It sounds like the same pig headed arrogance that got us into the mess in Iraq is still in play If Barbara Tuchman was still alive she would be updating the March of Folly with gusto.
On an separate note, the absolute stupidity of the occupation was underlined by one suggestion commented on by one of Jay Garner’s assistants (I forget her name) in Part 2 of the BBC programme on Iraq. Apparently there was a proposal to bring Serb troops into Iraq. While the troops themselves would not have been involved in Srebrenica etc, who teh hell would have thought of bringing in soldiers from a group of people who had been involved in the slaughter of Muslims just a decade before… The mind really boggles
They are building refineries, Whig, but it takes time and there have been sanctions in place for decades by the US. In addition, every additional unit consumed internally, is a unit that generates a fraction of the income it does when exported, important because there is almost no foreign investment in the country. Nuclear electrical generation provides more money to country, as well as reducing the air pollution which approaches the level of Mexico City in Tehran.
Good grief, Jams, that would have drawn every Islamic whacko in the world to Iraq. That would have really been a mess, as every country in the region donated aid to the Bosnian Muslims and some sent fighters. It was one of the few things that the Taliban, Iranians, and Saudis all agree on, and after the Shrubbery’s “crusade” remarks there would have been wholesale slaughter.
None of the people in charge ever reads the newspaper or knows anything about history.
[…] When always wrong meets always right,they can’t rely on reason or evidence. They’d lose that debate. So they cancel the debate, claim the right guys are wrong. […]
Whig, Bryan,
An additional legitimate reason why Iran might want to invest in nuclear power rather than hydrocarbon refineries is that they, as a country with finite hydrocarbon resources, understand where the world is on the peak oil curve, and can see that the refineries will only get them so far into the future. They’re simply thinking longer term.
FWIW, I think Iran would be happy to have nuclear weapons if they can manage it. They understand (as every nuclear power does) that such weapons are the most effective deterrent to naked aggression from without.
It is that very point which drives the hegemonists crazy about Iran and leads them to conclude Iran must not be allowed such an effective deterrent. I mean, no rational analyst seriously thinks Iran is going to launch a nuclear warhead at Israel (itself a nuclear power and NPT violator) or any NATO country (all actual or defacto nuclear poiwers) because shortly afterward Iran would cease to exist.
Nor do they think Iran is loony or self -destructive enough to slip a warhead to Hezbollah or Hamas or (silliest of all) Al Qaeda.
Rather, the hegemonists want to ensure, militarily when necessary, unfettered Western access to the Middle East’s dwindling supply of hydrocarbons until such time as new energy sources are made practicable or the price of oil rises to the point of equivalence to other energy sources. That’s it. That’s why (Muslim, non-democratic) Egypt’s nuclear ambitions will be tolerated–no oil to speak of. And that’s why, so long as the hegemonists hold sway and oil is king, we will have significant numbers of troops in our ‘enduring’ bases in Iraq.
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Ayatollah Khamenei has spoken out in support of science and technology, but issued a fatwa saying that the production, storage or use of nuclear weapons was un-Islamic, a position that excommunicates anyone who engages in weapons production. His reasoning is that nuclear weapons by their nature will always kill the innocent as well as the guilty. It will take years of careful wording for that statement to be altered, although some in Iran are trying.
He also has spoken of the the reality that the oil won’t last forever and Iran needs an alternative.
These are not “nice” people, but they have their rules and stand by them, which is more than you can say for the current US administration.