Iraq Becomes Iran And It Feels Like 2002 All Over Again

Tas at Loaded Mouth says the Israelis' reported plan for a March strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is super-dumb.

This has to be the stupidest, most ignorant action I've ever heard of a modern day government taking. Where to start? Well, if you want to see an out of control insurgency in Iraq, bomb Iran! If you want to see other Middle Eastern countries going to war with Isreal, bomb Iran! If you want to risk a global conflict, since other nations outside of the Middle East are sure to get involved if the whole region is at war, bomb Iran! And, most importantly, if you want to see Iran nuke Tel Aviv... Bomb Iran!

And I agree with him - but I disagree with him on the method for getting to the conclusion. For one, I disagree that Iran is anywhere close to being nuclear armed. Its amazing to me that the American left has so blithely accpeted the right's agenda on this, given the way so many of them were led by the nose over Iraqi WMD.

Tas bases his conclusion on reports from "an exiled Iranian opposition group", widely reported in the media, that Iran has perhaps as many as 5,000 uranium enrichment centifuges and has hidden them in various locations in the desert - which if true would make it impossible to get them all and would invite eventual retaliation of the nuclear kind once the Iranians get their nukes built using the surviving centrifuges.

Tas ends with:

I hate to say it because I know the implications of this, but it will soon be time for the world to realize that the nuclear bomb has fallen into the wrong hands and there's nothing we can do about it. Unfortunately, I think it's pretty clear that Iran is the wrong hands, and there's nothing that an Israeli bombing run will do to dismantle their nuclear program.

And angering a country which is about to become a nuclear power is probably the stupidest, most asinine thing anybody can do. We need other solutions.

But it's by no means as clear as it could be that Iran is actually trying to produce nuclear weapons of its own. As recently as August, nuclear weapons physicist and former government advisor Dr. Gordon Prather stated bluntly that he thought the current IAEA reports were being spun by the Bush administration and others and that Iran had NO functional bomb development program. This month, although most Western media followed the rightwing lead that Iran could be months from producing a nuke, a more careful read of the reports reveals that ElBaradei at the IAEA still thinks (as he has since at least 2004) that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and hasn't yet begun even to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel. The Iranians themselves only say they will produce nuclear fuel at some stage in the future. They've even invited American firms to tender for contracts to build their nuclear power stations. That would let the US build a "Moscow Embassy" of a power plant, so why is it Bush has already nixed the idea?

Back in August, you may recall, the Washington Post ran a story on the latest US Intelligence Review which projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon. That's perfectly in accord with the IAEA's findings so far.

All, and I do mean all the contrary information which has been used to advance the neocon agenda to claim Iran is dangerously near becoming a nuclear power has come from non-official sources. And all of those sources turn out to be one source, the Mujahedeen Khalq terrorist group and its political wing the National Council of Resistance of Iran. These groups have been accused of torturing those who try to leave their organisation and have been the subject of heavy police scrutiny in France, where their leaders are based, where many have been arrested for plotting terror attacks. Yet the rightwing and the Bush administration keep trotting out their reports as evidence of Iranian WMD programs galore. It is rare to find that the evidence stacks up and one is strongly reminded of the activities of Chalabi's Iraqi group prior to the invasion of Iraq. Certainly they see themselves, like Chalabi's bunch, as a government in exile simply awaiting the liberation of their nation so that they can be welcomed home with rose petals.

Having said all that, Tas is still right. There would be nothing surer to put the Iranians on the path every rightwinger says they are already on than an Israeli attack on their nuclear facilities - especially since it would need American aquiesence to a transit of Iraqi airspace. The rest of the region would be up in arms at America as well as Israel and the Shia majority in Iraq would doubtless revolt en masse. Bear in mind, too, that the US Army War College thinks that Israel can't make a conventional strike and remember that, unlike Iran, Israel already is a nuclear power. Could Sharon be comtemplating using tactical nukes? That would definitely be a recipe for disaster in the region.

But for now, it feels like 2002 all over again as agenda-driven foreign terrorists and crooks connive with the Bush administration to trump up a causus belli and the American Left goes blithely along with the scam. Why? I have no idea.

P.S. For those who ask why Iran needs nuclear power when it has so much oil - consider that the reason might be that the extra oil saved could then be sold for foreign hard currency. If they just wanted nukes, then they could always buy them from the Pakistanis like the Saudis were alleged to be trying to do. That way they would have no nuclear program to give the game away.