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ASIA TIMES


June 13, 2011


[Re False bells on Iran's nuclear program and War talk still in the air, June 9] These two informative articles seem to be like the two sides of the same coin, revolving round and round, reflecting on the same topic Iran's nuclear program, but with a different twist.


Iran's announcement that it plans to triple its capacity to enrich uranium to the 20% level has once again started the uninformed speculation, the hand wringing, teeth gnashing and alarmist statements about that program. When you cut through the white noise and the gibberish that passes for informed "expert" statements, you know as before it is nonsense. The facts are: a year ago and again in February and April of this year, Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it will enrich uranium to 20% in order to provide fuel for its research reactor that produces medical isotopes.


For several years now, Iran has been trying to buy from the West the fuel plates at the 20% enrichment level necessary to power its research reactor to no avail. Does Iran have a nuclear program? Of course it does. Is it a nuclear weapons program? It is not. There is not one scintilla of evidence pointing to a diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program. The IAEA has confirmed this year-after-year as did Lt General James Clapper, the United States director of National Intelligence, in recent public testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The chair of the committee, Senator Levin of Michigan, asked the General about his statement that Iran had not decided to re-start its nuclear weapons work "Is that correct?" The General said "Yes." The Senator said "Okay, but what is the level of confidence that you have?... Is that a high level?" The General said, "Yes, it is."


Furthermore, contrary to what the current head of the IAEA is saying to placate his patrons, it is worth repeating what Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the IAEA said last week, as reported in your article. ElBaradei said,"during my time at the agency we haven't seen a shred of evidence that Iran has been weaponizing, in terms of building nuclear weapons facilities and using enriched materials."


The question is, who benefits from the continuous drumbeat of inflammatory statements that either misrepresent or are totally false? And how does it serve America's national security interest in the region to have the US and Iran at each other's throat?

Fariborz S Fatemi

United States (Jun 13, '11)