Despite Obama's Bombast, Iran's Nuclear Plant is Legal »
Posted By hyperbola 2 months, 3 weeks ago in Political OpinionIt was very much a moment of high drama. Barack Obama, fresh from his history-making stint hosting the UN security council, took a break from his duties at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh to announce the existence of a secret, undeclared nuclear facility in Iran which was inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear programme, underscoring the president's conclusion that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow".
... 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..
...While this action is understandably vexing for the IAEA and those member states who are desirous of full transparency on the part of Iran, one cannot speak in absolute terms about Iran violating its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong.
...the IAEA has underscored, again and again, that it has a full accounting of Iran's nuclear material stockpile. There has been no diversion of nuclear material to the Qom plant (since it is under construction). The existence of the alleged enrichment plant at Qom in no way changes the nuclear material balance inside Iran today.
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.
...Never forget that sports odds makers were laying 2:1 odds that either Israel or the US would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities by March 2007. Since leaving office, former vice-president Dick Cheney has acknowledged that he was pushing heavily for a military attack against Iran during the time of the Bush administration. And the level of rhetoric coming from Israel concerning its plans to launch a pre-emptive military strike against Iran have been alarming.
While Obama may have sent conciliatory signals to Iran concerning the possibility of rapprochement in the aftermath of his election in November 2008, this was not the environment faced by Iran when it made the decision to withdraw from its commitment to declare any new nuclear facility under construction. The need to create a mechanism of economic survival in the face of the real threat of either US or Israeli military action is probably the most likely explanation behind the Qom facility. Iran's declaration of this facility to the IAEA, which predates Obama's announcement by several days, is probably a recognition on the part of Iran that this duplication of effort is no longer representative of sound policy on its part.
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hyperbola
Military brat (14th generation American) with unassuaged wanderlust. By age 11, schools in four states and three foreign countries (in 3 languages). Left home at ...
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Thinker222 months, 3 weeks ago
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If you believe that "possibly Iran IS just producing nuclear fuel for electrical generation" you'll have no problems to explain why it is also producing long range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles one of which is supposed to be tested today.
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Please consider that these missiles are virtually harmless without nuclear (or chemical or biological) warheads while costing about $3 million a piece. -
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hyperbola2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Everything you have been told about Iran is a Myth
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Everyone knows what a myth is, right? It’s just a fairytale; an unlikely, invented story featuring toga-clad heroes of the ancient past. So when Ahmadinejad and Akef talk of the “myth of the Holocaust” they are simply – as the BBC suggests in the report I linked to above – saying that the Holocaust never really happened, and can be written off as Holocaust deniers. Except that that’s not what a “myth” is....
Let me tell you what a “myth” really is.....
...So what exactly is the “myth of the Holocaust” that Akef and Ahmadinejad reject? Well, do you remember Wissam Tayem, the Palestinian man forced by Israeli soldiers to play his violin for them at a checkpoint in the Occupied Territories?..
That last line sums up precisely what Ahmadinejad and Akef mean when they say that Zionism has made a “myth of the Holocaust”. They mean that Zionism tells the story of the Holocaust with the purpose of justifying what it has done to Palestine and its inhabitants. The underlying truth that the myth is meant to convey is that Jewish suffering in Europe justified the establishment of a Jewish state in a land whose population was 1. not Jewish, but overwhelmingly Muslim and Christian and 2. not responsible for European anti-Semitism or the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad and Akef are saying that this myth is a fake; that it is not an explanation of an underlying truth, but an appropriation of the Holocaust in order to further a political agenda. When they deny the “myth of the Holocaust”, they are not talking about whether the historical events of the Holocaust really happened, they are denying that Zionism is entitled to do what it does to the Palestinians because of what Nazism and its collaborators did to European Jewry. In short, "the myth of the Holocaust" says that Shoah justifies Nakba, and Ahmadinejad and Akef are saying, “No, it doesn’t”....
This is not some obscure reading of Akef and Ahmadinejad’s “myth” comments: they have both made it clear that their questions about the Holocaust aren’t about the Jewish genocide in Europeper se, but specifically about why the Palestinians should be the ones to pay for it....
The same people who brought us the spectacular failure that is the Iraq war, would now like to try their luck in Iran... This time around, the U.S. needs a new excuse for invading a country that clearly is not going to invade us, and it’s really not too hard to see that the new excuse is going to focus in large part on the person of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Just look at the thrust of the stories about him that our news media have been feeding us over the last six months....
...That’s the new meme, to make you scared enough to support a war you wouldn't otherwise support. ...
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/09/28/everythi...
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Thinker222 months, 3 weeks ago
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"Despite Obama's Bombast, Iran's Nuclear Plant is Legal"
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It is similarly legal to purchase firearms in many countries and is also legal to say things like "these so-and-so should not be alive because of this and that".
Combine the two and you'll arrive to pretty valid reasons for the above mentioned "so-and-so" to fear for their lives...
By the very same token it may "legal" for Iran to build uranium enrichment facilities while its leaders declare that Israel will be "erased from the map". The "legality" of Iranian threats matters little for Israel as long as it feels threatened.-
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hyperbola2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Actually Amadinejad is absolutely right when he says that the myth that the Holocaust "justifies" massive zionist crimes against humanity in Palestine is neither justified nor acceptable. What is also unacceptable is the campaign of ZionCon war propaganda to "protect" zionist crimes against humanity with which our media is now lambasting Americans (yet again).
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Everything you have been told about Iran is a Myth
Everyone knows what a myth is, right? It’s just a fairytale; an unlikely, invented story featuring toga-clad heroes of the ancient past. So when Ahmadinejad and Akef talk of the “myth of the Holocaust” they are simply – as the BBC suggests in the report I linked to above – saying that the Holocaust never really happened, and can be written off as Holocaust deniers. Except that that’s not what a “myth” is. (And I must be getting old, because I actually remember the days when any reporter employed by the BBC would have known the meaning of the word, and made some effort to render it accurately).
Let me tell you what a “myth” really is.....
So what does it mean when Ahmadinejad and Akef refer to the “myth of the Holocaust”, as they both certainly did:...
"Some western governments, in particular the US, approve of the sacrilege on the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), while denial of the `Myth of Holocaust', based on which the Zionists have been exerting pressure upon other countries for the past 60 years and kill the innocent Palestinians, is considered as a crime," added the president. -- President: Real holocaust to be sought in Palestine, Iraq
They don't say the Holocaust didn't happen; they are suggesting something more complex than that. That last quote in particular suggests that Ahmadinejad is using the word “myth” in its correct, technical sense. .... Ahmadinejad is saying that Zionism tells the story of the Holocaust in exactly this way, i.e. as a vehicle to explain and justify what Zionists believe about themselves. When he “denies” the “myth” of the Holocaust, he is not denying the Holocaust, he’s not even discussing the Holocaust as a historical event at all. He is denying the validity of the use to which the story of the Holocaust is being put....
...So what exactly is the “myth of the Holocaust” that Akef and Ahmadinejad reject? Well, do you remember Wissam Tayem, the Palestinian man forced by Israeli soldiers to play his violin for them at a checkpoint in the Occupied Territories?.. -
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hyperbola2 months, 3 weeks ago
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That last line sums up precisely what Ahmadinejad and Akef mean when they say that Zionism has made a “myth of the Holocaust”. They mean that Zionism tells the story of the Holocaust with the purpose of justifying what it has done to Palestine and its inhabitants. The underlying truth that the myth is meant to convey is that Jewish suffering in Europe justified the establishment of a Jewish state in a land whose population was 1. not Jewish, but overwhelmingly Muslim and Christian and 2. not responsible for European anti-Semitism or the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad and Akef are saying that this myth is a fake; that it is not an explanation of an underlying truth, but an appropriation of the Holocaust in order to further a political agenda. When they deny the “myth of the Holocaust”, they are not talking about whether the historical events of the Holocaust really happened, they are denying that Zionism is entitled to do what it does to the Palestinians because of what Nazism and its collaborators did to European Jewry. In short, "the myth of the Holocaust" says that Shoah justifies Nakba, and Ahmadinejad and Akef are saying, “No, it doesn’t”....
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This is not some obscure reading of Akef and Ahmadinejad’s “myth” comments: they have both made it clear that their questions about the Holocaust aren’t about the Jewish genocide in Europeper se, but specifically about why the Palestinians should be the ones to pay for it. If you read the context in which Ahmedinejad said “they have made a myth of the Holocaust”, you find that the subject he is discussing is not whether the Holocaust took place, but rather “why the Palestinian nation should pay for the crimes the Europeans have committed” (which – if you think about it - kind of takes for granted already that those crimes really did happen)...
So, who really cares what a myth is, and what bearded foreigners half a world away have to say about it? Normally, this might just be an interesting academic discussion, but right now it actually matters that we try to understand what Ahmadinejad is really saying, because the Iranian government is currently the target of a disinformation campaign designed to soften up public opinion for regime change in that country. When we hear an inflammatory claim being pushed by our corporate media about Iran and its president - like for example, “Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust!!!” – we would do well to remember the sad performance of our news media in laying the foundation for war in 2003, and to ask ourselves whether each new revelation is real news, or manufactured “news” designed to mobilize public opinion for a new war. -
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hyperbola2 months, 3 weeks ago
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The same people who brought us the spectacular failure that is the Iraq war, would now like to try their luck in Iran... This time around, the U.S. needs a new excuse for invading a country that clearly is not going to invade us, and it’s really not too hard to see that the new excuse is going to focus in large part on the person of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Just look at the thrust of the stories about him that our news media have been feeding us over the last six months....
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...That’s the new meme, to make you scared enough to support a war you wouldn't otherwise support. Once again, our fears are being manipulated by people who want a war but haven't got a justification for starting one. Last time, they brought public opinion on board with scary stories about Iraq’s nonexistent nuclear weapons and Saddam's fictitious links to al Qaeda; this time around, it's Iran's nonexistent nuclear weapons and Ahmadinejad's spurious equivalence to Hitler.
And that’s why unravelling the meaning of Ahmadinejad’s "myth of the Holocaust" is not just an obscure academic exercise. Knowing that a propaganda offensive is underway to demonize Iran's president as the new Hitler so that we can justify an attack on his country, we need to think critically every time our mass media draws these parallels between Nazi Germany and present-day Iran and consider whether this is a legitimate equivalence or more manipulative scare-mongering to lay the foundation for a new war....
Knowing that this is what is really at stake, we should at least make the effort to determine whether the “Holocaust denier!” and other hitlerish epithets currently being hurled at Iran are based in fact, or are just the latest work of the same misinformers who – from the safety of their Washington thinktanks - repeatedly pimp for war in the Middle East, safe in the knowledge that it will never be their friends and relatives on the receiving end of the IEDs or the so-called smart bombs.
After more than three years in Iraq, when more than 2500 of our own troops and unknown thousands of Iraqis have been killed, Americans have finally become skeptical about why we invaded Iraq in the first place, and are wondering what exactly we are fighting for there. When it comes to the threatened attack on Iran, maybe this time we could do the critical thinking before we invade and sentence to death tens of thousands of our fellow human beings whose lives are as valuable in every respect as our own.
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beavith12 months, 3 weeks ago
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is Ritter being intentionally dense?
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the iranians have one nuclear power plant at Bushehr, built by the russians. the world is awash in nuclear fuel that can be provided by any number of countries at competitive prices.
that's ONE nuclear power plant.
they also have constructed a heavy water plant, whose product, heavy water, can only be used to make plutonium.
uranium atomic bombs are 5 to 10 times bigger than plutonium atomic bombs. Pu weapons are conveniently sized to fit on IRBM and ICBMs.
what Ritter seems to be saying, without saying it, is that the NPT is VERY klunkily written when it comes to weaponizing nuclear material. sure. the IAEA can account for the nuclear materials in question. up until the metal gets slapped into a waiting bomb. at that point, they declare themselves a 'nuclear weapons state' and the fait accompli is complete.
in the end, i'm not sure what Ritter is advocating. semantics?-
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hyperbola2 months, 3 weeks ago
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Misinformed again or propagating tribal propaganda again beavith. Heavy water is used also in production of medical isotopes and Iran has been producing these for decades.
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Medical isotope power struggle
The nuclear reactor that produces vital medical isotopes for Canada and the world was shut down for 27 days in late November largely because a legacy of mistrust and power struggles between the operator and the regulator turned a few communication gaffes into a political powder keg....
.... But the reactor's original DC power backup wasn't built to withstand fires, floods or earthquakes. That's why a new "qualified" emergency power supply was included in seven planned safety upgrades.
Two of the four heavy-water pumps that can run on both AC and DC, numbers 104 and 105, are even more important, constituting a final line of defence.....
Those two pumps are also critical to another safety upgrade called the New Emergency Core Cooling, which kicks in if all of the heavy water drains from NRU in what is known as a "loss of coolant accident."...
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/306604 -
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hyperbola2 months, 3 weeks ago
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To that we might add that the world is currently suffering from a severe shortage of medical isotopes (hospitals are having to go without) and we might actually be glad for Iranian supplies.
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SA boosts medical isotope production after Canadian reactor shutdown
South African producer of isotopes for the medical industry, NTP Radioisotopes, has increased its production by about 20%, following the shutdown of a large global producer in Canada in May, Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) CEO Dr Rob Adam confirmed....
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“Reactors serving the major isotope producers are over 45 years old on average and prone to increasing maintenance requirements,” said Adam....
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/sa-boosts...
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hyperbola2 months, 3 weeks ago
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You are no patriot sir. You also don't seem to know what American democracy is about. To think about how degenerate Aemrican democracy has become under the influence of zionist foreign agents in our government, politics and media, you might like to consider this statements from a member of the Reagan administration.
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More Israeli/US lies, deception about Iran
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/09/28/more-isr...
Who is breaking the rules? Iran or the United States? .... Iran is insisting that the US government abide by the non-proliferation treaty that the US originated and pushed and that Iran signed. But the US government, which is currently engaged in three wars of aggression and has occupying troops in a number of other countries, insists that Iran, which is invading and occupying no country, cannot be trusted with nuclear energy capability, because the capability might in the future lead to nuclear weapon capability, like Israel’s, India’s, and Pakistan’s--all non-signatories to the nuclear proliferation treaty, countries that, unlike Iran, have never submitted to IAEA inspections. Indeed, at this very moment the Israeli government is screaming and yelling “anti-semite” to the suggestion that Israel submit to IAEA inspections. Iran has submitted to the IAEA inspections for years.
In keeping with its obligations under the treaty, on September 21 Iran disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is constructing another nuclear facility. The British prime minister Gordon Brown confused Iran’s disclosure with “serial deception,” and declared, “We will not let this matter rest.”
What matter? Why does Gordon Brown think that Iran’s disclosure to the IAEA is a deception. Does the moronic UK prime minister mean that Iran is claiming to be constructing a plant but is not, and thus by claiming one is deceiving the world?
Not to be outdone in idiocy, out of Obama’s mouth jumped Orwellian doublespeak: “The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”
The incongruity blows the mind. Here is Obama, with troops engaged in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan demanding that a peaceful nation at war with no one demonstrate “its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”
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