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 There's a scary, dangerous nuclear weapons threat from Iran?

Listen to Scott Horton on antiwar radio

www.antiwar.com/radio

From August 2010

Transcript

The Fellow panelist just said that the Iranians have admitted that they have a nuclear weapons program, and that they are making nuclear weapons. Well that couldn't be further from the truth.

They've denied that they're seeking nuclear weapons over and over again.

What they have is a civilian nuclear program, which is "Safeguarded" by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) under their Safeguards Agreement.

Any non-nuclear weapons state, such as Iran, which is a member of Non-Proliferation Treaty, must have a Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, which allows the IAEA inspectors to monitor their nuclear facilities and verify the "non-diversion" – as the IAEA has, in the case of the Iranians, more then a dozen times over the years, including just late last year – they have "continued to verify the non-diversion of any nuclear material to a military or other special purpose," so what they basically saying to you is "we have proved the negative" we have proved what they have not done, they have not diverted any of their nuclear material away. ...

No one is accusing the Iranians of producing plutonium or having any plutonium. They are being accused of enriching uranium, but they are enriching uranium to a measly 3.6 % industrial grade for use in their electricity program, and then beginning only a couple of weeks ago, when... after they accepted Obama's proposal, and he refused to accept their acceptance of it, they went ahead and began to enrich a very small amount of this uranium, to 20% uranium-235, which still is a far sight from weapons grade uranium, and it is to be used in their American-built medical isotope reactor in Tehran.

However, if you turn it to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News or any other of the rest of them – the FOX guys and David Shuster over at the liberal channel MSNBC, will all agree that there is "scary, dangerous nuclear weapons threat" from Iran.

And they just figure, you don't know about a Safeguards Agreement, you don' t know about the Non-Proliferation Treaty, you don't know the difference between 3.6% and 90% uranium 235 and therefore if you're afraid of getting nuked in your jammies in the middle of the night, you'll let them go ahead and have their war. ...

Last September Mark Hosenball reported in a "web-only exclusive" for Newsweek magazine that the CIA, and in fact the rest of the intelligence community, including the other 16 American intelligence that we know about, that they all agreed and put paper work on President Obama's desk – a new report – on his desk saying that they stand by their conclusion of November 2007 that the Iranians do not have a nuclear weapons program and they have not made the political decision to start one.

On February the 15th the director of national intelligence Dennis Blair and I forget the other gentleman's name, but he's the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and they both sat there sworn under oath before the U.S. Imperial Senate and said "We still stand by the conclusion of the unanimous National Intelligence Council, representatives of all 16 intelligence agencies, from November of 2007, and that is the Iranians have not made the decision to begin to make nuclear weapons."

And no, the ability to take a couple of hundred pounds of uranium enriched to 3.6% 235 and turning that into above 90%, 94% pure U-235 to make a weapon is not the same as flipping a light switch and taking one day, you're talking still about years and years. Plus you've got to have the metallurgists machine it into the actual pieces and then you actually would have to have the... I'm not so certain about the terminology. People quibble, they do quibble about, "What is a delivery vehicle? What's a warhead?"

A warhead is the bomb. The delivery is vehicle is what you put that in. Well, they don't have the delivery vehicles, and they don't have warheads, so I'm not sure how these things are supposed to hurt any of us.

It's just nonsense. ...

Another thing I would like to mention, or try to hit off of something that Mr. Erlich said in his talk there, is that a war with Iran would be a disaster. That's the way he put it.

The way I put it is that a war with Iran will mean the deaths of thousands of American soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan. Four thousand soldiers have died in the Iraq war in order to install the Iranians' puppets from the Dawa Party and the Mahdi Army, and the Supreme Islamic Council in power in Baghdad.

And both Abdul Aziz al-Hakim from the Supreme Islamic Council, who is now dead, but his son is in charge, and Moqtada al-Sadr, the big king-maker from the election a couple of weeks ago, have promised that they will go to war with the American occupation, with the United States.

These are the people who did not fight, these are the people who gained when America overthrew Saddam Hussein, and have waited this whole time. And they have said "if you bomb Iran you have to start the war with us all over again."

Not to mention the fact that our soldiers are right there within missile range. It's also perfectly within the capability of the Iranians to close the Straits of Hormuz at the gates of the Persian Gulf, and drive the cost of oil up over 200 dollars a barrel, which will probably destroy what's left of the global economy and the division of labor and global trade. ...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30534.htm