An Inside Look At Iran's Nuclear Program

NotBornYesterday writes "On April 8, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his country's secretive nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz for a photo op. What came out of this visit is a series of photos which have caused a fair amount of interest among western scientists. Shown in the photos are not only some of the inner workings of the plant and current generation of enrichment centrifuges, but also key components to newer generations of more effective centrifuges. Analysts are 'intrigued' not only by the technical revelations in the pictures, but also because Iran's Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar accompanied Ahmadinejad through the facility."

Comments

Re:Here the propaganda machine starts again

[djmurdoch]

Without the USA, the world would starve. You are aware of the volume of US food exports, aren't you? According to this article from 2004, 2005 was expected to be the first year when the US did not have a net agricultural surplus, i.e. it imported as much as it exported.

Without the USA, international charity would collapse. The USA is the most charitable nation on earth? I believe it's true that Americans give more of their income to charity than other countries do, but much of that stays within the USA. In terms of foreign aid, the USA is quite far down the list.

Without the USA, the United Nations would close up shop almost immediately. Who do you think funds MOST of the UN activities? No single country. The USA funds about 25% of the UN budget.

I don't think your other claims can be tested against data.

Re:Why doesn't Iran openly admit to weapons progra

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If Saddam had had nukes, he still would have got booted out of Kuwait, but he would have been safe from invasion.

No, Kuwait would have gotten nuked, after which there would be nobody left (Kuwait is really small, barely larger than Israel, with only a single city).

And there would have been no alternative to giving it to Iraq. After all, there would be maybe 10000 Kuwaiti's left world-wide.

What would have stopped Saddam from nuking them ? The common decency and conscience that mass-murdering thieves tend to exhibit in times of stress ?

Use them as deterrence? Push their will on the rest of the region, which is cowering in terror under the nuclear shadow?

Actually the region has seen a LOT of wars where the agressors KNOWINGLY attacked, even when they knew the attack would destroy them.

Take the Iraq-Iran war for example. Iraq saw Iran fall back over a mountain range, and tried to pursue. Less than a month after that the Iraqi army was in shambles, supply lines cut, barely capable of policing normal streets in territory on their own side of the border.

Are you saying Saddam didn't know that would happen ? He pushed the attack when he could have easily stopped in a quasi invulnerable position, which would have provided an ideal starting point for the next attack in 10 years.

Yet he attacked ... and lost massively. (Iran lost massively too, because they kept sending in untrained children against buried-in posities. Iran lost about 500.000 of it's children that way, that is the main reason islam is so terribly unpopular in Iran nowadays)

But attacking, knowing full well that retaliation might come is not a rare event in the middle east.

Egypt's attacks against Israel. Hezbollah-Israel, Israel's independance war, Jordan versus Britain, Pakistan versus India (and even worse : Pakistan versus East-Pakistan/Bangladesh) ... all are wars that the attacker could in no way hope to win ...

And this is a tradition that goes back tens of centuries. When the muslims decided to attack the crusader states, they knew it would mean they'd fall to the mongols, that over 35 million people would starve (because there are letters, preserved by the libraries of Byzantium, that literally say this would happen). The muslims attacked, "won", got massacred by the mongols, and of the remaining muslims, at least 30 million starved, but not after killing the entire city that the sultan inhabited, including the sultan himself.

So let's be careful with "they won't attack if they can't reasonably win" ideas.

You make the stupid mistake to think that the Iranian government is there to defend it's people. It's not. It's there only to conquer, and to enforce islam (just read their constitution). Same with Saddam's government. It wasn't there for Iraqi's to prosper, it was there for Saddam to prosper. It attacked because of Saddam's pride.