Neocons Claim Iran Can Build a Nuke in a Year
by Charles Coughlin
Before wading into the latest neocon propaganda cesspool, consider a recent article in the British press, which reports “Iran’s efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology. Iran’s uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes… (Iran announced plans to build 3,000 centrifuges) many experts are extremely doubtful that Iran has yet mastered the skills to install and run it. Instead, they argue, the ‘installation’ will more probably be about propaganda than reality… A key case in point is that Tehran originally procured the extremely high-quality bearings required for the centrifuges’ carbon-fibre ‘top rotors’ - spinning dishes within the machines - from foreign companies in Malaysia. With that source closed down two years ago, Iran is making the bearings itself with only limited success. It is the repeated failure of these crucial bearings, say some sources, that has been one of the programme’s biggest setbacks.”
So, according to a detailed article from the British press, Iran’s attempts just to make fuel for their reactors are in chaos. Their plan to build 3,000 centrifuges –just for fuel production– could take years. Despite this reality, the neocons are claiming that Iran already has 3,000 centrifuges and that they are just one year from building an A-bomb, which is the sort of colossal fabrication we have come to expect.
Remember when Colin Powell read that pack of lies about Iraq seeking Nigerian uranium to the United Nations? That little incident proved that the neocons weren’t above lying to the international community in their efforts to gin up a case for war. Remember that alleged “Italian” intelligence document that claimed Iraq was working on a nuclear program? That little incident proved the neocons were willing to forge phony documents in the name of foreign intelligence agencies to try to fool people. One news article reports “Two employees of the Niger embassy in Rome were responsible for the forgery of a notorious set of documents used to help justify the Iraq war, an official investigation has allegedly found. According to Nato sources, the investigation has evidence that Niger’s consul and its ambassador’s personal assistant faked a contract to show Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from the impoverished west African country. The documents, which emerged in 2002, were used in a US State Department fact sheet on Iraq’s weapons programme to build the case for war. They were denounced as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shortly before the 2003 invasion. The revelation spawned a series of conspiracy theories, most alleging that the British, Italians, or even Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, had had a hand in forging them to back the case for war.”
Why are these old neocon deceptions worth mentioning right now? Because the neocons are trying to lie us into war all over again. On the front page of the Los Angeles Times, the headline today read: “Iran’s nuclear effort in high gear, U.N. says.” The article claimed that “Tehran may be capable of a warhead in a year… the report by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Iran recently began installing the first of 3,000 gas centrifuges in a heavily fortified, underground chamber at its Natanz plant and that it planned to ‘bring them gradually into operation by May 2007.’ ” How does this UN bureaucrat know how many working centrifuges Iran has now or will acquire? The UN has no intelligence agencies and any information from American intelligence is extremely suspect thanks to neocon interference. So the Iranians are installing the “first of 3,000 centrifuges” in Natanz to enrich uranium. Does anyone think the Iranians would be foolish enough to let anyone know the location of the centrifuges given the recent repeated threats of war by the Israelis and the Bush regime?? The US Manhattan Project to build the first A-bomb used 50,000 centrifuges, some of the best scientists in the world, the resources of a superpower nation and five years of effort to make the first low-yield A-bomb.
Most serious estimates (assuming the Iranians are able to figure out the necessary physics) have said that Iran might be able to produce it’s first atomic bomb in ten years —assuming that they acquire a very large number of high-speed centrifuges right now. Given the fantastic amount of Zionist pressure being applied around the world, it’s doubtful if Iraq can even acquire enough centrifuges for energy production, let alone a bomb program.
The entire world has been put into a panic over the Iranian nuclear program thanks to Zionist controlled newspapers and news media. What they rarely mention is the fact that every nuclear program needs to do some enrichment of uranium to produce fuel for their nuclear reactors. The Zionist news media deliberately blurs the line between enrichment for nuclear fuel and enrichment for a nuclear weapons program to panic Joe Sixpack. There are dozens of nations around the world which have nuclear reactors, but no nuclear bomb programs. A few examples include the nations of Spain, Finland, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Romania and Brazil. The difference for Iran is that militant Zionists don’t want a Muslim nation that objects to the Israeli occupation of Palestine to have any kind of nuclear program –even if it’s only for peaceful energy production.
Iran has its own supply of uranium and it makes economic sense for them to develop this resource to produce electricity so they can sell more oil to the West. In contrast, Israel had no supply of uranium, but they chose to build nuclear reactors, refused to sign nuclear non-proliferation treaties and developed atomic bombs contrary to what the rest of the world wanted. While Israel got away with their rogue nuclear program, we are supposed to go to war with Iran even though there’s no believable evidence that they are even attempting to build a nuclear bomb.
Let’s assume Iran did sneak by all the inspectors and make a nuclear bomb in ten years time. Israel has 200 hydrogen bombs right now so it’s safe to say that Iran would not even be achieving “nuclear parity.” Instead, the Iranians would be achieving nuclear deterrence. Given Israel’s insane record of repeatedly invading and attacking their neighbors, it’s easy to see why Iran might want to make two or three nukes to discourage Israel from dropping ten or twenty H-bombs on them. If the US chose a course of neutrality in the Middle East, then there would be no reason whatsoever for us to care whether or not the Iranians developed an atomic bomb.