I heard the relevant quote on NPR when I was out today, but the link to the story on the CBS site wasn’t obvious, so here is the USA Today version of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitting that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

He falls back on a variation of the Hedgemony’s ‘weapons of mass destruction program related activities’, i.e. Iran is doing things that could be used in a nuclear weapons program in the future. He doesn’t say what those things are, perhaps it is physics courses or mathematics, but the fact that the possibility exists is enough to impose all kinds of sanctions on Iran.

I have no idea what Iran is supposed to do, because Saddam did everything required of him to prove that he didn’t have any WMDs, but he got attacked anyway.

Let’s be clear that Iran is following the rules and has the right to do what it is doing. The US did nothing about Israel, Pakistan, or India when they developed nuclear weapons, and the less said about the mess the Shrubbery created in North Korea when he reneged on the agreement put in place to stop their nuclear weapons program the better.

Iran has absolutely no reason to believe anything the West says. The West has broken agreements with Iran on multiple occasions, so promises of a supply of fuel rods from outside of Iran are not going to be accepted. The West, and especially the US, has no credibility anymore.

Iran has a right under international law to control the passage of shipping through its coastal waters, and portions of the Strait of Hormuz goes through Iranian waters.

Iran is not violating any rules, but at the insistence of Israel, the US is seeking to punish them.