http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103106988909&s=107098&e=0017AOg4EQ1zmXXatEmG7KMp1247xh0iklnPRDoXY3Nx7xJFxX7DLD1Y5jAHVDnw1rJN3txAbiFwtyTk9kuwck9EO-XvtuSdBnGo9dSd6RNJyVVsCmvj6O7nw==

His paragraphs were replete with dependent clauses, virtually all of them beginning with “if.”

Blair repeated verbatim the 2007 judgment that Iran is “keeping the option open to develop nuclear weapons,” and repeated the intelligence community’s agnosticism on the $64 question: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

Here we go again. A report issued Thursday by the new Director General of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, has injected new adrenalin into those arguing that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.
The usual suspects are hyping—and distorting—thin-gruel language in the report to “prove” that Iran is hard at work on a nuclear weapon. The New York Times’ David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, for example, highlighted a sentence about “alleged activities related to nuclear explosives,” which Amano says he wants to discuss with Iran.
Amano’s report said:
“Addressing these issues is important for clarifying the Agency’s concerns about these activities and those described above, which seem to have continued beyond 2004.”

Sanger and Broad play up the “beyond 2004” language as “contradicting the American intelligence assessment…that concluded that work on a bomb was suspended at the end of 2003.” Other media have picked that up and run with it, apparently without bothering to read the IAEA report itself.

The Times article is, at best, disingenuous in claiming:

“The report cited new evidence, much of it collected in recent weeks, that appeared to paint a picture of a concerted drive in Iran toward a weapons capability.”
As far as I can tell, the “new evidence” consists of the “same-old, same-old” allegations and inferences already reported in the open press—material that failed to convince the Director of Intelligence, Dennis Blair, to depart from previous assessments during his Congressional testimony on February 2. Rather, he adhered closely to the unanimous conclusions of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of Nov. 2007.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24828.htm

New Grist for Hype on Iran

By Ray McGovern

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-EpWwUT9Og&feature=related

Interesting comments by Scott Ritter who was a chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1-/12778-clintons-final-offer-to-iran-one-more-bundle-of-crippling-sanctions-one-more-t-list.html

In addition, the nuclear powers have never made any serious efforts to dismantle their nuclear weapons as the NPT requires.

The whole NPT reeks of hypocrisy, something that the US invokes when it suits its purposes and ignores when it doesn’t. And because the great powers choose not to take the NPT seriously, using it only to play big power games, they are putting the whole world at greater risk

As Kooshy says, the Iranian nuclear case was an education for the rest of the world. Now the whole world will have to deal with the blowback.

Basically the US was holding the Iranian regime hostage to the needs of its Tehran Research Reactor. Do as we demand, the US was saying, or your medical reactor will shut down.

To my knowledge, the issue was never presented this way in the Western media. But other nations are sure to take note of these strong arm tactics.

Success of nuclear non-proliferation depended on both inspections and guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel. The US’ TRR gambit has made it painfully obvious that supply of nuclear fuel is not guaranteed–it depends on the attitude of the West toward a regime.

Not wishing to have their fuel supply held hostage by the West, many are likely to develop contingency plans and more robust nuclear processing capabilities.

1. Realize that the current government of Iran is not going anywhere any time soon.

2. Realize that the post-election protests/green movement, while courageous and admirable, have had the downside of putting the hopes for engagement with Iran seriously off course. And that serious corrective effort will be necessary to avoid repeating the mistakes of his predecessor Mr. Bush.

3. Understand that using the “bully pulpit” to support the cause of freedom everywhere may be a good thing, but that openly alligning the US with the green movement would be crippling to their cause, much in the same way our embrace of the “moderates” after the Shah was ousted assured the failure of the moderates. So a tightrope must be walked here and Obama should not give in to pressure from Republicans.

4. Take a step back and realize how far away Iran really is from producing a nuke.

5. Utilize back channels for preliminary discussions while looking for an opportunity to openly negotiate a limited “win win” situation that can be built upon. Realize we are not going to solve the nuke issue with Iran all in one swoop. There is not enough trust between us, for example, for Iran to ship 100% of its fissable materials outside of Iran in one shipment. Look for smaller scale agreements that can be reached between our countries that can be used to build trust. In other words, take “baby steps”.

6. Realize that there are forces at work in the US and Israel that are cleverly and deceptively seeking to arrange a war with Iran. One example: http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2009/06/03/report-ties-dubious-iran-nuclear-docs-to-israel/ Keep your wits about you, remember what you stand for, and don’t give up.

1.) Explain to the American people that Iran is no threat to the United States unless we or Israel attack it first, and then it would be a serious threat to U.S. access to energy and would likely stage terrorist operations in the continental United States. [The last thanks to 30-years of federal immigration policies that leave us without knowledge of who is in the country or what they are capable of doing.]

2.) Publicly state that there will be no U.S. surprise attack on Iran, and no U.S. attack at all on Iran unless the president asks for a formal declaration of war and the Congress votes its approval in a constitutional manner.

3.) Call in Israel’s ambassador to the United States and tell him that we understand that Israel believes Iran is a threat to its survival, and that we agree that Israel has every right to defend itself. If Israel believes it must go to war with Iran, then so be it. But also tell the ambassador that if Israel attacks Iran, the U.S. administration will declare U.S. neutrality in the war and immediately cut off military and financial support to all combatants in the war.

4.) Speak to the American people and tell them to expect to be brutally propagandized by U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters through AIPAC, their ubiquitous media shills, and the men and women they own in the U.S. Congress and federal bureaucracy. Urge Americans to ignore this effort by U.S. Israel-Firsters to get them to send their soldier-children to fight in a religious war in which the U.S. has no genuine national interest at stake, and in which U.S. participation would further bankrupt the country, require the reintroduction of conscription, and put America at war with all of the Muslim world — Shia and Sunni — for the foreseeable future.

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