Why is he still harping on this? It should be obvious, by now, that he can’t sell a(nother) war or even a limited airstrike based on such a vague, distant threat. What’s the point?
Hell, he’s had to have gotten regular updates about this as the assorted intelligence agencies were preparing the NIE. It’s not like they could have just put all this together last week. So he’s almost certainly known for awhile that Iran wasn’t trying to develop nuclear weapons, yet he and Dick were saber-rattling as if that was the case.
While they may have parsed their words carefully in their speeches to avoid an outright lie, Bush and Dick were certainly doing their best to give the American people an impression of Iranian nuclear danger that they knew to be diametrically opposed to the truth.
Is it too late to impeach? Having these bozos running the country is, in a very real sense, dangerous. In 412 days, 23 hours, and 9 minutes, we’re all going to heave a huge sigh of relief - we hope - that they didn’t start any wars or bomb any countries during the tag-end of their Presidency.
He could still sell a war based on a false-flag operation. But hopefully this new information makes that much less likely. And it certainly reinforces the fact that the Bush administration regularly lies about matters of national security in order to push its own radical agenda.
The problem is that even if their weapons development program is on hold, with a sufficient amount of highly-enriched uranium (HEU), they can produce nuclear weapons shortly after a decision is made to do so. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or complex engineering, to build a gun-assembly weapon using HEU, once you have a sufficient quantity of HEU. There is a huge difference in the enrichment levels needed for reactor fuel and nuclear weapons applications. IMHO, the production of large quantities of HEU is strong evidence of an intent to build nuclear weapons.
Well, it was a news conference, and he was asked about it. From your cite:
Emphasis added.
Look, I don’t agree that Iran poses any serious threat, directly, to the US. But it’s certainly not an exaggeration to say that they are a threat to stability in the M.E.
You need to do some enrichment to create power plant fuel. HIGH enrichment is required to create weapons grade material, and it is much more difficult and expensive. Blending down HEU and burning it in power plants is one way to dispose of weapons grade Uranium.
Once you have enriched Uranium a bit, though, you can use it in a reactor and produce Plutonium, which is an easier but slower path (IMO) to a weapon than HEU. A significant number of non-weapons states burn Plutonium for power generation, because it is much more economical than enriched Uranium. There is no such thing as non-weapons grade plutonium.
Free and unfettered access for international inspectors (IAEA or EURATOM) inspectors is probably the best way to assure that a state with a nuclear power program is not diverting material for a weapons program. IMO accounting is the most important aspect of this. (note that we have here an engineer praising the bean counters!)
Only for special applications like nuclear powered submarines. A normal nuclear power plant uses fuel that has been enriched to 3-4% U235. Weapons grade uranium is enriched to 90% or higher U235. There is no legitimate reason to produce HEU for a civilian nuclear power plant. It’s a huge waste of money and resources.
OK, so where is the proof that they have enriched uranium to that level of purity? Granting that such a level of purity can only be intended for weaponry wouldn’t seem to answer the question, we would then need to prove that they have done so, since proving someone* intends * to do something is daunting, to say the least.
No matter how hard I squint, I can’t puzzle out the claim that the “knowledge” of how to make nuclear weapons makes Iran dangerous. How would we eliminate such a danger? Wouldn’t we have to kill every Iranian clever enough to Google “how to make a nuclear weapon”?
Bush/Cheney are undeterred in their quest to destroy another country before the end of the term. They will lower the bar as far as it takes. Evidence be damned, those guys are dangerous. They “know” things.
You don’t have to “eliminate” it, but you might want to try and control it. You want to make sure they continue to cooperate with UN inspectors, for one thing.
Myself, I’m somewhat ambivalent about Iran getting Nukes. I’d rather they didn’t have them, but I’m much more concerned with Pakistan than Iran. Iran could actually be a US ally. Not like Britain or even France, but more so than Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
A war with Iran would have gas prices at ungodly highs during the next election, so if Dubya cares anything about his party having a snowballs chance at winning, he’ll have to back off.
And according to the Harvard prof in the movie With Honors, the President can declare war for 30 days without anyones approval- is this correct?
I hope so, but there’s so much bad blood on both sides, and it would be problematic to have Iran and Israel as allies at the same time. (Our ally SA has anti-Israeli positions too, of course, but they haven’t been really loud about it for a long time.)