The UN security council had given Iran 60 days to suspend enrichment of uranium; the deadline was today.
…the [International Atomic Energy Agency], in a report prepared by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, found that “Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities.”
Instead, the report detailed recent developments showing Teheran expanding its enrichment efforts – setting up nearly 1,000 uranium-spinning centrifuges in and above an underground bunker and bringing nearly 9 tons of the gaseous feedstock into the facility at Natanz in preparation for enrichment. It said Iranian officials had informed the UN agency that they would expand centrifuge installations to have close to 3,000 ready by May. — Jerusalem Post (AP)
Iran claims that they are only interested in atomic energy for peaceful purposes, but there is plenty of evidence that this is not the case.
Iran’s ultimate stated goal is running 54,000 centrifuges at the Natanz facility to churn out enriched uranium – enough for dozens of nuclear weapons a year, should Teheran choose to go that route.
Iran denies such plans, and says it wants to develop an enrichment program to generate power. It says its heavy water facilities at the central Iranian city of Arak – which will produce plutonium, another potential pathway to nuclear arms – were meant only to generate isotopes for medical research and other peaceful purposes.
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The agency began investigating Iran’s nuclear activities more than four years ago, after revelations of nearly 20 years of secret work that included plans to enrich uranium. Since then, IAEA experts have found worrying evidence including experiments with plutonium, unexplained traces of enriched uranium and a 15-page document showing how to mold uranium into the shape of nuclear warheads.
Thursday’s report said the agency continued to make no progress in clearing up these and other issues.
It’s been suggested that more severe sanctions, if the UN can find the will to impose them, may deter Iran from going nuclear. However, if we understand Iran’s foreign policy goals to be, at the least, to dominate the region, then they have a great incentive to proceed despite the hardship of sanctions (which will probably be mitigated to some extent by her supporters in the UN, Russia and China).
Hillary Clinton was savaged yesterday by Amy Goodman for saying
We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. And in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table.
Keep in mind that Iran is the nation that held American hostages for more than a year, and since then has killed hundreds of Americans by means of her proxy, Hezbollah, and whose rhetoric repeatedly refers to the US as “The Great Satan”. This is the nation that makes a fetish of antisemitism and Holocaust denial and whose president has promised several times that he will destroy Israel.
A nuclear Iran would shift the worldwide balance of power sharply in favor of a nation that represents expansionist Islamic fundamentalism, at a time when Europe is in danger of being Islamified. An anti-American nuclear Iran would dominate the region which contains most of the world’s known oil reserves. Is Clinton so unreasonable?
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