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Iran's Military Nuclear Program Lasted Longer Than We Thought (thebulletin.org)
Lasrick writes: Two articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists analyze the IAEA's December 2nd report (PDF) on the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program. Ariane Tabatabai goes into what the report did (and did not) reveal: "According to U.S. intelligence, Iran ceased its nuclear-weapon-related activities in 2003 and did not subsequently make a political decision to resume them. The IAEA report unsurprisingly indicates that Tehran did have a “coordinated” nuclear weapon development program until 2003. Iran further engaged in some activities after 2003 but these were not coordinated, according to the report." Harvard's Martin Malin summarizes key takeaways from the process: "[T]he report points out that, unfortunately, Iran has taken steps that make it more difficult for the country to put the past behind it."
They are a better ally than Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
People are still dumb enough to believe Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program?
Payback is a bitch. The USA stopped Democracy in the Middle East.
You know, as I see the USA's real-politics (realpolitik) explode in our faces, our Middle East presence all for oil and nothing but for oil explode in our faces, I just have to wonder, wasn't there any hint of empathy when these policies were enacted?
None. Jimmy Carter in 1980 expressed the Carter Doctrine and every President since then used it.
I'm in Georgia and if it weren't for the SS - Secret Service - I'd give ex-President Jimmy Carter my piece of mind - I'd say mean and nasty things to him. But I don't want to be arrested or killed for using my rights.
It's all about Oil. And Im not getting a benefit from it.
Which means that the scientists report to a guy in regular clothes instead of a military uniform.
I would trust there's an intelligence agency that's highly functional with the "real data", and tends to have very successful executions.
The same people that did Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There's better eyes and ears than ours (as far as that threat is concerned).
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I don't think that statement correctly refers to any country in the world, but to the extent that you had intended it to be understood to refer to the United Statesâ"then yes, I'll trust that country's intentions over those of Iran twenty-eight days a week and eight hundred times on Sunday. Enjoy your god-awful world view, most kind sir/madam.
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
Attempting to indict the United States of intentionally killing schoolchildren in foreign countries
Strawman much?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
...Iraq had WMD and the US had to invade them.
...the NSA did not collect any information on Americans.
...the Paris terrorists were using crypto to avoid surveilance, only thanks to Snowden. (even though they also said that in 2001, and Bin Laden, they were using crypto to avoid surveilance)
That's why I only believe US intelligence when the information was stolen.
And who now thinks they've abandoned all capability before there's a non-aggression pact with the USG (which does not invade countries with nuclear capability)? It's not that history is predictable so much as humans respond to incentives.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Any up and coming country that is honestly interested in nuclear power as a way to shed commitment to fossil fuels would be researching Thorium based reactors instead. But this removes the path to fissionable materials used to make bombs... Kinda make their statements rather questionable at the least.
Then you are a fool with no knowledge of history. The US lives for war, they have been at war for almost the entire time they existed.
No. Children are collateral damage.
That's at least how it is for civilized countries. For countries that engage in and support terrorism, killing children is the objective. It's not just a mistake that doesn't serve the mission goals.
Although "children" can certainly be combatants. The idea that they can't ever be combatants is just vanity of pampered rich Westerners that can't relate to conditions in the rest of the world.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
For anyone interested in this topic there's a great book by investigative journalist Gareth Porter that details the whole saga: Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare
It should be pointed out that the evidence which both the US intelligence estimate and the IAEA rely on to determine that there was an Iranian nuclear weapons program prior to 2003 is the so-called "laptop documents" which are fairly clearly forged but for which there are political reasons to ignore that fact.
These forged documents had been used as the basis for a number of inspections by the IAEA of Iranian military facilities. The IAEA's inspections never found any evidence to substantiate the forged documents. Iran permitted such inspections even though they went above and beyond what Iran was required to permit under its NPT agreement. However given that these sorts of inspections were used by the US used to gather detailed targeting data on Iraqi facilities for the Gulf War Iran chose not to allow even more non-required inspections. That's the sole basis of the IAEA's 'concern' and the reason they keep bringing these forged documents up even though they've not been substantiated at all.
As part of the recent nuclear talks Iran insisted that these forged documents be put to rest and not brought up again in the future, which is what this report is supposed to be about.
The linked article by Ariane Tabatabai makes it sound like Iran has now admitted the existence of a nuclear weapons program, but this is false. Instead what Tabatabai is doing is essentially repeating the same cycle of making accusations on the basis of these forged documents and using the previous unsubstantiated accusations as the only 'substantiation'. For example Tabatabai writes:
The IAEA report unsurprisingly indicates that Tehran did have a “coordinated” nuclear weapon development program until 2003.
The report in fact says:
Information available to the Agency prior to November 2011 (i.e., the forged "laptop documents") indicated that Iran had arranged, via a number of different and evolving management structures, for activities to be undertaken in support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear programme. According to this information, the organisational structures covered most of the areas of activity relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The information indicated that activities commenced in the late 1980s within Departments of the Physics Research Centre (PHRC) and later, under the leadership of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, became focused in the early 2000s within projects in the AMAD Plan, allegedly managed through the ‘Orchid Office’. Information indicated that activities under the AMAD Plan were brought to a halt in late 2003 and that the work was fully recorded, equipment and work places were either cleaned or disposed of so that there would be little to identify the sensitive nature of the work that had been undertaken. Eventually, according to the information, a new organization known as the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research29 was established by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and based at the Mojdeh Site near Malek Ashtar University in Tehran.
The report goes on describing Iran's response:
In Iran’s submission of 15 August 2015 under the Road-map, Iran provided the Agency with information concerning a number of organisations described in the 2011 Annex (i.e., the forged "laptop documents") and on their relation and functions. In this regard, Iran, inter alia, denied the existence of a coordinated programme aimed at the development of a nuclear explosive device, and specifically denied the existence of the AMAD Plan and the ‘Orchid Office’ as elements of such a programme.
As far as I can tell the documents Iran submitted don't
Muslim terrorists do intentionally attack schools, you idiot.
You should move there. I'm sure they love western defectors. Make sure to send your family photos of the first public execution of a homosexual that you are forced to attend.
You are dumb. Just shut up.
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
Has Iran really finally given up on building a nuclear bomb (with which to attack Israel), or have they just moved it to some cave somewhere nobody has found yet,
The way I've heard it said: "If Iran doesn't have a secret nuclear facility, it will be the first time in decades."
That doesn't mean we should invade them, just be aware of the facts.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Oh look, some butthurt Jihadist sympathizer with moderation points to burn modded me down and labeled me a 'troll', I'm SO hurt, someone get me an ambulance!
Know the real reason they're allowing Iran to sign a treaty? It's called 'giving them enough rope to hang themselves': If they abide by the terms of the treaty, then great, everybody wins, and the average Iranian citizen has time to fix the leadership problems in their own country; if they don't abide by the treaty, then we can throw up our hands and say 'Well, we tried! We gave them a chance! But they just couldn't play it straight!' and then we do things the Hard Way, and nobody will blame us.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
you only have to look at recent history to see who the violent aggressive greedy money grabbers are, and it ain't Iran.
Well, my first thought was China invading the Marshall Islands to attempt to claim their neighbors' natural gas fields, but then I remembered Russia stealing Crimea and soon a quarter of Ukraine.
Iran falls far behind in the money-grabbing category, mostly due to a lack of ability. They certainly have opportunity; contrast the investment and technological progress that Saudi Arabia has made with their oil money, to the vast Iranian cities of mud-block apartments and tens of thousands of dead from even a moderate earthquake.
I don't know what post you're butthurt about, but your mod-whine sure sounds troll-y to me. He hurt you bad enough for you to cry in front of your friends, so you should at least give him that much credit.
BTW, what you describe is not a "enough rope to hang themselves" situation, even though you label it as such. Lacking in your scenario is anything equivalent to a rope, or accidentally hanging themselves. If they abide by the agreement... then that is quite simply abiding the agreement. And if they don't, it means war with the US and allies; which is exactly what we were immediately facing if the treaty was not successfully negotiated. So it is nothing at all like an "enough rope" situation, it is a straightforwards, "if they actually do it they'll avoid the war" situation. Which is, interestingly, what it was generally billed as.
I'm not 'butthurt' about anything, I'm mocking someone else.
I don't completely agree with you, obviously; of course there is the ostenisble, 'public' reason for the treaty; it's us extending an olive branch. I speak of the behind-the-scenes motivation, which is exactly as I stated: We give them a chance to abide by it and give up, permanently, the path they were set on (nuking Israel and who knows who else), and they get to re-join the rest of the world. They just use it as a way to buy time to complete the development of a viable weapon and we catch them at it? Then nobody else in the world, or at least nobody that matters, will say a single word when we proceed to bomb them back into the stone age. Hell, a number of our own allies will probably join us in that, if that point is reached. Personally I'd just as well that Iran has had enough and is going to play this straight; there's been more than everyone's fair share of war for one generation.
If you don't agree with my opinion on the matter, then that's your prerogative; but mind you, that's all what you, I, or anyone else has to offer here: an opinion. We're not world leaders, we're not expert political analysts, we're not even identifying ourselves by our legal names; we're just random people on the Internet, and nothing said here decides anything about anything.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Oh and by the way? You got a real funny idea what a troll is. A troll isn't someone who dares to post what they really think, a troll is someone who shitposts just to get a reaction out of people. Just because you or someone else doesn't LIKE my opinion doesn't make ME a troll, it makes me someone whose opinion differs. Please learn the difference, and don't bother me again.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Then nobody else in the world, or at least nobody that matters, will say a single word when we proceed to bomb them back into the stone age.
Except Russia. They matter, sadly.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
You need to be a little less obvious. You have a dog in this fight. Why don't you tell everyone what it is? Your varnished 'truths' are getting stale.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
OK, my wording was a little unclear, but it's still true that the US has spent most of its history not involved in foreign conflicts. Let's go through a few of these...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Not a foreign conflict.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Not a foreign conflict.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Arguably not a foreign conflict, but we'll grant it for the sake of argument. One ship was involved, and the total duration was a few weeks.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This one is open to interpretation. In one sense, the United States was not involved in the Second Opium War. It was not allied with either side, and took no action in the conflict apart from one battle where one US ship was involved. The only other thing that happened was that a US ship was shelled, possibly by accident, and the US retaliated. This was quickly followed by a neutrality treaty. The amount of time where the US was involved in actual fighting adds up to less than two weeks (if my arithmetic is correct).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (1871)
Once again, arguably not a foreign conflict. Total duration: one month.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Arguably not a foreign conflict. The Phillippines was basically an American colony before and after the war.
I didn't go through all of them, but I think you can see where I'm going with this. But the central point is that if you add up the duration of all of these conflicts, it's a very small proportion of the history of the United States from 1783 to 1917.
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So where do you think I've got this wrong? Perhaps the problem is simply that you are living up to your handle?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Liberals are easy to manipulate, they're foolish and eager to stroke their own ego's. Their arrogance will be their downfall.
The Soviets even had a term for them: "Useful Idiots".
Fact is in the entire time since the formation of the US you have been at war with somebody for all but 16 years.
They are all foreign wars when you attack another country.
That's it asshole, play the man not the ball.