Two Non Causus Belli

By Cernig

The IAEA, after inspections, has reported that Iran now has a total of 1,312 centrifuges at Natanz in eight cascades, according to the BBC:

The confidential three-paragraph letter was written by the director general of the IAEA, Olli Heinonen.

It confirmed the findings of a team of IAEA inspectors who conducted a routine "design information verification" mission to Natanz in the past week.

Those inspectors were informed that Iran was now operating 1,312 centrifuges at Natanz, the letter said.

An undefined quantity of uranium gas was being fed into the centrifuges, the letter added.

The disclosure of the inspectors' findings comes after the head of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, downplayed Iran's claim that it was beginning industrial-scale production.

Speaking in Saudi Arabia last week, Mr ElBaradei said Iran would need thousands of centrifuges, but had only hundreds operating at present.

He also said that Iran would not be able to produce the highly enriched uranium needed for a nuclear bomb as long as it remained under the supervision of IAEA inspectors.

I freely admit that 1,300 is a couple of hundred more than the number I expected to hear - even if it is far short of the 3,000 announced by Iran and hyperventilated over by the war-hyping extreme right. I would also point out that key sentence that an "undefined quantity of uranium gas" was being fed into the centrifuges. As Jeffery Lewis and others have noted, Iran's consumption of feedstock gas has been about 20% of what it would be if all its centrifuges were working flat out. That strongly suggests a major problem either with the gas itself or with crashing cascades and means any worse-case estimates on weapon production are out by that same factor.

So there's still plenty of time to let the IAEA and the diplomats do their jobs - as SecDef Gates has said.

Next up - General Peter Pace, thoroughly leashed by the Iran hawks in the administration after he derailled their last attempt at creating a causus belli out of guesses, propoganda and meagre evidence obtained through torture, is now being circumspect about his words as he tells reporters that Iranian weapons have been found in Afghanistan.

U.S. forces recently intercepted Iranian-made weapons intended for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the Pentagon's top general said Tuesday, suggesting wider Iranian war involvement in the region.

It appeared to be the first publicly disclosed instance of Iranian arms entering Afghanistan, although it was not immediately clear whether the weapons came directly from Iran or were shipped through a third party.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that unlike in Iraq, where U.S. officials say they are certain that arms are being supplied to insurgents by Iran's secretive Quds Force, the Iranian link in Afghanistan is murky.

"It is not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible, but we have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran," Pace told a group of reporters over breakfast.

He said the weapons, including mortars and C-4 plastic explosives, were intercepted in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan within the past month. He did not describe the quantity of intercepted materials or say whether it was the first time American forces had found Iranian-made arms in that country.

You have to almost admire FOX News audacity. If you want to be "fair and balanced" on a bit of news like this, the last thing you do is ask the MeK and a noted neocon to be the only "experts" consulted for your report - but that's exactly what they did.

Remember that it was Pace who poured cold water on the administration's Baghdad briefing by saying it didn't prove the Iranian leadership was involved - which led directly to the current spin of "what's worse, that they know or that they don't know?" - and that Iran's weaponry, like every other nation's including America's, has turned up in places they were never directly sold to.

It's another non causus belli, and without credible, tangible proof will continue to be so.