Iran's nuclear program continues to move forward..without anything concrete being done about it.
The IAEA has issued another report on Iran's steady progress towards nuclear weapons, and this time it actually remarked on the obstruction and lack of transparency the agency received at the hands of the Islamic Republic.
Not that the IAE would actually go as far as to recommend doing anything about it.
The agency apparently based the new tone in its report partly on 18 intelligence documents submitted by the US, some of which came directly from materials contained in a laptop stolen from one of the heads of Iran’s nuclear program in Tehran in late 2006 by Iranian dissidents.
Even the nuclear watchdog’s director
The latest report describes Iran’s installation of new IR-2 and IR-3 centrifuges for enriching uranium at the Natanz site as “significant”. IAEA inspectors on a visit in April were denied access to the sites where the centrifuges are manufactured as “military” zones, since most of the nuclear sites are controlled by Iran's Revolutionary Guards corps.
As far as the inspectors were able to determine, the Iranians have processed almost 150 kilograms of enriched uranium since last December, twice the amount produced during the same time period 18 months ago.
And remember, this is just at the facilities the IAEA inspectors were allowed into.
Another important thing to remember is that Iran doesn't need ICBMs, nuclear submarines or even its military to deliver a nuclear attack on the US.All it takes is a suicide team of operatives - say, some Hezbollah supporters or al-Qaeda
wanna-bees - to sneak into the heart of a major US city over our undefended Southern borders to pull a strike off - while Iran maintains what's called in the trade 'plausible deniability'.
Iran, of course, promptly denounced the report, warning the IAEA that it may just decide to cease any cooperation with the agency.
Of course, given what we know about the regime and its goals, I can't see why that would be much of a loss.
We already know that Iran is working on perfecting nuclear weapons. The heavy water plant at Arak, which has no peace time applications proves this if nothing else does.
We also know ( or we should) that we're not dealing with rational actors here.
The big question that remains is the same one I've been asking since I began writing on this topic three years ago: what are we planning on doing about it?
1 comment:
Freedom Fighter writes: "Another important thing to remember is Iran doesn't need ICBMs, nuclear submarines or even its military to deliver a nuclear attack on the US. All it takes is a team of suicide operatives - say some Hezbollah supporters or Al-Qaeda wannabes to sneak into the US heart of a major US city over our undefended southern borders to pull a strike off - while Irean maintains what in the trade is called 'plausible deniability.'"
FF is spot on here, however, I would add why stop with a major US city why not attack four, five, or more major US cities with nuclear weapons. Millions and perhaps tens of millions would die. US officials should be worrying about how they are going to prevent them. Instead they have spent their time and energy obsessing over how to prevent an American attack on Iran that will not happen. In doing this, American officlals have committed a derelicton of the duties to American national defense.
As to what we plan to do about it, first American officials need to recognize Iran poses a threat to the US and that their is no way to appease the Iranians. So far very few of them realize this. Once the magnitude of the treat posed by Iran is realize, we can begin to formulate a strategy to deal with it.
First, there is very little we can do about it from an offensive perspective at this time, however, there are some common sense things that can be done. They are as follows: 1.) develop more of our own oil and gas reserves. 2.) Build more refineries. 3.) Secure our borders. 4.) Place a moratorium on immigration from Muslim countries. 5.) Closely monitor the mosques. 6.) Without the support of Russia Iran, Syria, and other Islamic terrorist supporting states would be much easier to deal with. Negotiate with Russia to find some way to get them to withdraw their support from these people.
Solution suggestions 1 and 2 should give us more leverage when negotiating with OPEC countries. Right now we have very little leverage in any negotiations. Solution suggestions 3, 4, and 5 would enhance our chances at preventing the coming Iranian attack. Solution suggestion 6 would help us to actually finally once and for all defeat the Islamic terrorists who pose an existential threat to our country.
Solutions 1 - 5 should have the support of the American. The most problematic is # 6. The media scrutiny on the Americans is always intense. As such, the US will have to honor any agreement it makes whether it wishes to or not. Russia does not face this type of media scrutiny and in additon to this has many allies in the media who are more than willing and able to assist them in violating any agreeements they sign make. The problem is how do we ensure Russia abides by any agreement they make.
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