“IAEA says foreign expertise has brought Iran to threshold of nuclear capability
“Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.
“Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added…”
Cassi Creek:
This failure in intelligence collection along with the high probability that Congress’ failure to carry out their Constitutional role in our government will result in the military budget being trimmed with a Rome plow and chainsaws; comes at a critical moment in the world’s history.
We’ve long feared that former Soviet bomb makers would find that they could do better financially if they offered their design and manufacturing skills to 3rd world nations that see nuclear weaponry as the admission ticket to world power status. China will sell nearly anything for political power; North Korea will sell everything for hard currency, fuel, and food. Pakistan, if approached in the name of Allah, will most likely join the jihad at some level. Now, our fears are made reality; Iran bought a Russian designer.
The official word from the UN’s watchdog, the IAEA, changed its position about the long-running Iranian Atomic energy program. Rather than accepting the official Iranian position, that their program is for energy production only, the IAEA now advises that the Iranian program is developing a nuclear bomb. What was the final telling point? If one disregards the gaseous diffusion centrifuges, the secrecy and siting of the main Atomic energy facilities inside the main Quds Forces compounds, the participation of the Ansar-ol-Mahdi Corps, tasked with acquiring and using WMDs and supplying such to the Quds Forces, the secret, underground, hardened research and development plans, a willingness to beggar the country to acquire hardware and fissile materials, and the continued promises to destroy Israel and the U.S., then I guess one can continue to believe that Iran is only lusting after a nuclear powered electrical grid.
As for me, I subscribe to the thought line that Iran is still pissed about their long-ago land and naval battle losses to Greece and other western powers. The modern day rulers of Iran not only want to rebuild the Caliphate, with the center of Islam in Iran; they also want to rebuild the ancient Persian Empire with Teheran as the hub city.
While I have no desire to become embroiled in another teavangelist-sanctioned religious war/Crusade, neither do I desire to allow the current religious fanatics and their civilian toadies who control Iran to arm their selves with nuclear warheads. They already possess the hardware to reach Israel with an IRBM. They are some distance and time from possessing the bigger and better missiles needed to reach our soil. However, there are many ways to deliver nuclear warhead that don’t require the expertise of former Nazi and Soviet missile designers. We missed our chance to effectively end the Iranian’s access to missiles and warheads by wasting our time and our troops playing cowboys and Arabs in the Iraqi desert. Instead of feeding the Bush/Cheney/theocons’ egos by mounting an invasion to look for WMD’s that never existed, we should have targeted the Iranian R&D complexes, their hardened hangers, cruise and anti-ship missiles, and any other functional hardware that would allow them to wage modern war. Now the cost of stopping their nuclear program is going to be far more painful and the collateral damage we cause will make us pariahs in much of the world for decades.
Dental appointment this morning. Walked out with one less tooth than I carried in. It did not leave me willingly.
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