By Steve Hynd
You're not going to see this in the mainstream U.S. media, which is currently partying like it's 2002 and they know an attack on a Middle-East nation is forthcoming.
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are at Iran�s nuclear facility in Natanz today checking the startup of production of highly-enriched uranium.
Iran says it has begun enriching uranium to 20 percent in 164 centrifuges, a laboratory rather than industrial scale of output for, it claims, research purposes in its reactor in Tehran.
Got that? 164 centrifuges, and the product will be under IAEA seal so it can't be diverted for weapons use without the balloon going up.
So can the many war-hypers in the Obama administration, Congress, neocon rags and the mainstream media now please STFU?
Steve, I don't want a war with Iran either, but the way to avoid war is not to distort what Iran is doing.
ReplyDeleteMost of the "separative work" toward highly enriched uranium is in the enrichment to 3.5% that Iran has already done. Enriching further, to 19.75%, just below the "highly enriched" 20% threshold, will help Iran to learn some of what it needs to know for further enrichment.
The fact that relatively few centrifuges are necessary for this project simply points to the fact that most of the separative work is done, and, in fact, supports those who pointed out that the size of the Fordow plant suggested that it was intended as a finishing plant for the last enrichments to weapons grade.
You may take each individual step and say, "This is innocuous taken by itself." And, legalistically, each individual step may be allowed. But the sum total of what Iran is doing, and the fact that we keep learning each piece against Iran's preferences to keep them under wraps, makes the program as a whole look very suspicious.
Iran may "only" want a program that can produce weapons quickly, or it may want the full production. The problem is that these two cannot be distinguished from each other in terms of the technologies needed. So we have only Iran's words, which have not been fully truthful in the past.
As long as the IAEA inspectors are there, it is likely that Iran is in compliance. (At the inspected facilities, anyway.) But we've seen in North Korea that it is very easy to throw the inspectors out and go on to the weapon stage.
Hi Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to distort anything. I understand what's involved in further enrichment - and if I didn't the Arms Control Wonk has the "see Spot run" explanation today.
But the Western media are universally leaving out the facts that the IAEA are there and that this is a batch cycling operation rather than all centrifuges running full blast.
As to intentions to actually kick the IAEA out and move to a weapon-for-real...well, the U.S. intelligence community continues to insist that's unlikely, given the "cost-benefit" calculations Iran appears to be making. I worry, however, that such calculations could change if the Clinton hawks and neocons rattle the war drums too hard.
Regards, Steve