Good news from Iran:
The report, prepared for next week’s meeting of the 35-nation IAEA, also faulted Tehran for not cooperating with the agency’s attempts to investigate suspicious aspects of Iran’s nuclear program that have lead to fears it might be interested in developing nuclear arms.
And it said it could not confirm Iranian claims that its nuclear activities were exclusively nonmilitary unless Tehran increased its openness.
“The agency will remain unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran,” without additional cooperation by Tehran, said the report, by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
I say we invade now.
Mr Furious
Wait a few weeks, there’ll be a bunch of Republican Congressmen with some free time on their hands…
Perry Como
I hear there are good jobs for college Republicans in the new Iranian democracy.
Jay
Uh-oh. Iran you got some ‘splainin’ to do!
Break out the Provacatives! Do you think the Administration will use the word more or less to respond to this latest development? Or perhaps they’re out of provacatives after No Ko tested a nuke. Maybe Bush will break out the thesaurus and say it is Vexing. Or Galling. That’ll show them.
j
p.s. Mr. Cole, you dropped an “I.”
Third Eye Open
Operation: Silly Honkies In Tehran (O-SHIT)
SeesThroughIt
Clearly Clinton gave Iran a nuclear bomb in exchange for some sweet, sweet radical Islamic hummers.
ThymeZone
Few days of Shock and Awe, a few statues pulled down, and we’re done.
Time for the defeatists to step aside and let the military handle this one.
Zifnab
Now that Rumsfeld is retired from the Pentagon, he’ll make a great head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Stick a meddle on that beautiful bastard, scribble a few invasion plans on a napkin, and let’s get this party started.
craigie
We need some kind of strategery to get North Korea to invade Iran. Then we just sit back and roast some weenies. Hot dogs, I mean.
Though roasting weenies may come in handy as a “nontraditional interrogation” technique, I suppose.
Marie
Send in that inspector, what was his name, ummm, let me think . . . Scott Ritter! He must be running out of money by now. Maybe he can set up some sort of sanctions scheme.
Tsulagi
Then time to get back in that uniform! Don’t worry, Dobson will have your back getting the country Rapture Ready in your absence. You’ll be fully supported by the 101st Christian Keyboardists and Blogs for Jesus.
Marie
That’s hilarious. Asking them for an explanation? Gee, don’t they know you NEED this stuff if you’re going to blow up Israel . . .
srv
Given that the cia had assets on the Iraq UN inspection team, I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to plant and ‘find’ something now.
And what exactly do they mean by ‘highly enriched’? You can have tons of HEU laying around and that doesn’t mean it’s anywhere enriched enough for nukes.
From everything I’ve seen, the amount of weapons grade HEU found in Iran is less than zero.
Pb
Look, I found the original document:
Marie
LOL . . . yes, there’s plenty of plutonium laying around.
Marie
Well, look on the bright side, now that the Dems have power, I’m sure they’ll be able to reason with Iran. If not, well, then we don’t have to worry about finding a cure for cancer anymore, right?
srv
When they say ‘trace’, they mean micrograms or lower. You know how much plutonium we’ve expoerted to Japan in the last decade?
Fledermaus
Oh you’ll get an invasion – or at least some bomb dropping. I tend to think that Bush really, really wants to be the first president since Truman to drop the bomb. And Iran will be his choice – in his mind it’s how he’ll redeem his horrible legacy. Furthermore, he’s not going to go to Congress or the UN before hand, he’s going to do it all on his own and make a happy announcement after the dastardly deed is done.
Yes I do believe he is that foolish.
Jay
1. On the one hand, reducing the soldiers in Iraq to shadows on the ground (if we still have nukes that weak) would be a nice finish to all the other ways he’s screwed them over. “Complain about body armor will you? Heh heh!”
2. On the other hand, he’d be afraid Syria would scrape up the radioactive rubble and make dirty bombs.
3. On the third hand (since we’re talking about radiation) lobbing a nuke is not a one man operation, even if the voices tell The Decider it’s time to rev up the Apocalypse engines.
4. On the fourth hand (aaak! too many rotegens spoil the shirt) if he didn’t zap No Ko, he’s not going to zap Iran.
Oh yeah, it would piss off Saudi Arabia.
demimondian
I doubt that the CIA would plat plutonium — it’s fundamentally pointless to do so. OTOH, one of the by-products of running a reactor is (get this) *plutonium*! Seriously, who’d a thunk it, that a country with uranium reactors might have had a contamination event? Nah, couldn’t be!
That said, srv, HEU is not the 5% reactor grade stuff, it’s the 90% bomb grade stuff. There’s not much reason for having any, unless you’re planning on building a bomb. And there’s no reason to have pure plutonium metal unless you’re building a bomb or a breeder reactor. We have no reason to believe the latter, which kind of indicates the former, ne?
pie
We can’t let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud, even if that means making a few mushroom clouds of our own.
It’s a sign that the grown-ups are back in charge. Smart, strong government doesn’t flinch when it comes to the tough decisions like landing a fighter on an aircraft carrier under a “Mission Accomplished” banner… or pre-emptively turning hundreds of thousands of Iranian children into papery wisps of detritus blasted apart in the hellish inferno of a nuclear shockwave. That’s the kind of mandate the American people gave Bush. He has political capital, and he plans on spending it. If freedom for Iran and security for America mean that Tehran becomes an uninhabitable smoking crater for the next 2,000 years, well, nobody said freedom wasn’t messy.
Tell that to alternate-dimension Fledermaus, who pays the hellish consequences of George W. Bush’s NOT dropping a couple hundred nukes on Iran. THAT fellow will have a few choice words to share with you, I should imagine!
Plus, they draw really stupid, shitty cartoons. NOW can we nuke them?
Then we target those ingrates next. Freedom is on the march, baby!
srv
Not. HEU is loosely applied to anything over 20%. I’ll bet Darrells ranch that the IAEA is using the term very, very liberally.
As you note, plutonium is a by product of normal reactor operation. I believe the Iranians have known test reactor(s), and there’s no doubt they might have asked for some from Libya or Pakistan for research.
As far as a breeder goes, yes, if they want to develop plutonium-based weapons and not HEU ones, they would build a fast reactor. Perhaps they are pursuing both. Perhaps the entire Natanz facility is a jackalope for a hidden plutonium program.
Or perhaps somebody on the IAEA is on the payroll and dropping micrograms of HEU and Pu as needed to push desired Security Council aims.
demimondian
I’m having a hard time not cracking wise about thorium-foil hats. Instead, please explain to me why the Security Council would want the IAEA to find anything? It’s not like Russia and China and just cromping at the bit to get stuck with both Iran and Nork as nuclear powers.
(As to 20% being HEU…that’s an exceedingly loose usage, but, yes, I’ve heard it, so I’ll grant you that.)
srv
Perhaps better wording would be to “push the Security Council to those aims”. As in, someone with an agenda wants the Security Council to be put into a certain corner, not that they’re all engineering it together. But I don’t see it as completely unreasonable that the Security Council A-team might all be onboard at that level. If I were Germany, France, UK or Russia, I’d not be particularly enamored with Iran or concerned with the ‘truth’. China, to complicated to figure out.
It amazes me, that after the IRNC, Curveball, Cheney still insisting Atta went to Prague, yada, yada, that people don’t think that the guys holding all the strings would play games with the IAEA. Scott Ritter as much admitted ‘we’ had people working for us on UNSCOM – no doubt you think all those ex-mil/civilian DoD folks believe their first duty is to the UN and not someone else…
Sherard
Good one. So Iran’s nuclear ambitions are all a ruse, eh ?
It sure is reassuring to know that Iran with nuclear weapons is fodder for jokes and sarcasm. Even better that it can just be written off as some kooky conspiracy theory.
demimondian
Actually, Sherard, you’re fodder for jokes. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are dead serious — if they’re real. If you think about it, though, the fact that it’s people like you who claim that they’re “obvious”, and that it’s people like me (and srv, for all you’d like to paint him as a complete moonbat) who question them, tends to explain why…well, why you’re a joke.
WMDs, anyone? Motes/planks?
Jay
Right you are Ace, we’ll start digging bomb shelters and stocking up on MREs. Anything to keep us from realizing this Admin’s response to the bad guys getting nukes is the real fodder for jokes and sarcasm. Bush drew so many lines in the sand over North Korea’s nuclear program the beach looks like corduroy. And when No. Ko. tested a nuke? This Admin. sprang into action and…said it was provactive. About nine thousand times at the last count. Oo, er. Should it be any wonder that Iran is not concerned with sabre rattling from 1600 Penn. Ave? In fact, you could say we’re following the leaders with our lack of concern. Their reaction to an axii of evil testing a bomb has been rather low key, why should we race about screaming? Why should you? Do you hate America or something?
In addition, I doubt I’m the only one here who grew up under the threat of the USSR’s nuclear program. So please excuse the oldsters if after a few decades of worrying the entire planet would be given over to cockroaches and Kieth Richards, we don’t knot our pants over the thought of No. Ko. and Iran with a couple of half-arsed bombs. For everyone else (regardless of age) I suspect the snark in lieu of crying “Holy Shit” and diving into the nearest crevice stems from a strange quality called Bravery. It is a pity that this has become synonymous with Foolish in some circles.
srv
What Jay said.
Sure, just like you think everything the UN/IAEA does is wonderful, Mr. Kofi lover. After the “Axis of Evil” speech and a neocon FP, the clerics would be idiots to not be pursue nukes. It is clearly in ‘their’ best interests – NOW.
And it would be in the ‘best’ interests of certain parties to make sure people were as hysterical as possible about it.
You know why the CIA completley missed the collapse of the Soviet Union? You might look at who appointed all those Sovietologist and managers writing the NIE’s in the late 80’s and 1990.
I’ll give you a hint: he just got offered a job at the Pentagon.
pie
The only serious response is to nuke the entire country from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.