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Edited on Sat Jan-06-07 09:05 PM by Jcrowley
Below is from William Clark off a pdf file. I do not know how to link pdf files so if it need be deleted let me know. there are old ads of The Shah with his picture and in big letters "Guess Who's Building Nuclear Power Plants" next to his image followed by a short tale of Iran building nukes. At the bottom it says "Nuclear energy. Today's answer." This ad was put out by the US Energy Department. I'd copy and paste it but I don't know how of pdf files.
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Under the NPT, all Iran is required to do is allow inspections of its nuclear facilities to ensure that no weapons-grade nuclear material is being produced. Any further demands expressed by the US and the UK via the UN are related to geopolitics and are not surprisingly, being rejected by Iran. Just as is the case with Iraq, the US and UK military-industrial-petroleum-banking conglomerate have economic and strategic interests at stake and are attempting to manipulate the UN Security Council in an effort to pursue an agenda that is mostly hidden from the American and British people, and from other UN members. Despite the ongoing obfuscation, the three important issues to consider concerning this largely manufactured “crisis” are as follows: 1) Despite three years of inspections by the IAEA, no factual evidence that Iran is developing a clandestine nuclear weapons program has ever been uncovered. In addition, a classified CIA assessment from 2006 described by reporter Seymour Hersh also found “no conclusive evidence...of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program.” <60> 2) According to the NPT, Iran and any other signatory nation has an “unalienable right” to nuclear technology, including the enrichment process. In 2003 two small uranium samples were found by the IAEA that were enriched to 36 percent (these samples are well above the 4 to 5 percent purity needed for nuclear power, but far below the 90 percent purity required for nuclear weapons). <61> Following this discovery and subsequent investigation period, Iran agreed to suspend enrichment and to the voluntary aspects of the Additional Protocol. After it was determined that the enriched uranium samples found in Iran originated from a discarded Pakistani-sourced centrifuge, Iran considered the IAEA investigation complete and re-started its small enrichment program. Iran remains in compliance with the NPT, despite US media reporting to the contrary. 3) Even if Iran sought to build nuclear bombs, and a clandestine weapons project was initiated in secrecy, the consensus of the US intelligence agencies as outlined in the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate is that Iran could not make enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) fissile material for a bomb until the middle of the next decade (2015). <62> This is likely due to the fact that Iran’s uranium ore is contaminated with molybdenum, a heavy metal that must be removed for HEU production, lest the molybdenum will crash the uranium enrichment cascades. <63> Reportedly only a few advanced nuclear powers, such as the US, Russia, and China have the infrastructure to undertake this process.
Of course another fact missing from the debate over Tehran’s long-standing desire to develop nuclear energy is that Iranian oil production peaked in 1974. In fact, in August 1974 the late Shah of Iran envisioned a time when the world’s oil supply would run out, and declared: “Petroleum is a noble material, much too valuable to burn...We envision producing as soon as possible, 23,000 megawatts of electricity using nuclear plants.” <65> (see U.S. nuclear energy advertisement from the mid-1970s). Realizing that Iran’s oil supply was finite and that maintaining the standard of living of its people would require the construction of nuclear power plants, the Shah asked Washington if US companies could assist Iran in building 20 nuclear power plants by the year 2000. Ironically, a couple of young men in the Ford administration, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, formally approved Iran’s plans — including full domestic enrichment of Iran’s large uranium ore deposits. Thus, Iran’s nuclear program began 30 years ago under the autocratic dictatorship of the Shah, which had the full blessing of the Ford administration.
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