Is Iran close to having nukes? Are they the new Soviets? Is it time for Peacenik to start looking for an old bomb shelter on Kijiji? You may think so if you've been taken in by the media's hype and half-truths regarding the current state of Iran's nuclear energy program and the apparent "discovery" of the Qom nuclear plant. But punditman says not so fast, doomers.
First, get the facts. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter knows a thing or two about inspections regimes, their legal rigamarole and the politics that can accompany them. He saw the lies coming out of the US and Britain before the Iraq War was launched under false pretenses, and he sees what is happening now with regard to Iran. Says Ritter, "Simply put, Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama's announcement concerning the Qom facility." For instance, how many people reading this post know that Iran declared the Qom nuclear facility to the IAEA several days before Obama's announcement last week?
Punditman says forget the corporate media. They distort, deceive, dumb-down and deflect. Read Scott Ritter instead. Wait, the Guardian is corporate...Well, read on anyway...
Iran's secret nuclear plant will spark a new round of IAEA inspections and lead to a period of even greater transparency
Obama, backed by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, threatened tough sanctions against Iran if it did not fully comply with its obligations concerning the international monitoring of its nuclear programme, which at the present time is being defined by the US, Britain and France as requiring an immediate suspension of all nuclear-enrichment activity.
The facility in question, said to be located on a secret Iranian military installation outside of the holy city of Qom and capable of housing up to 3,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium, had been monitored by the intelligence services of the US and other nations for some time. But it wasn't until Monday that the IAEA found out about its existence, based not on any intelligence "scoop" provided by the US, but rather Iran's own voluntary declaration. Iran's actions forced the hand of the US, leading to Obama's hurried press conference Friday morning.
Beware politically motivated hype. While on the surface, Obama's dramatic intervention seemed sound, the devil is always in the details. The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA.
