New Documents Show Iran Still Working on Nukes

[Steve Gardner]

An interesting article appeared on another site today, together with a comment from the person who posted it.

The extract they selected was this:

New documents shown at a dramatic closed-door briefing to diplomats in Vienna by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief nuclear inspector, Olli Heinonen, provided new evidence that Iran continues to work on developing a nuclear warhead for its long-range ballistic missiles, despite a recent report to the contrary from the U.S. intelligence community. (source: Newsmax)

Their comment was:

I knew it all along and so did some others here while tons of people here were crying and whining that Israel and the United States were making it all up to start another war. Well here you go. Read it and weep. We are all now in more danger than ever thanks to the whiny liberals who have made it just about impossible for our president to stop this threat now. One can only hope Bush has the guts to bomb Iran's nuclear sites of the map. (source: ATS forum)

Which to my surprise, was well-received by some.

But not by me. Here's the response I posted.

This article is being presented as something it's not, in my view. Aside from the obvious questions about where these documents really came from, paragraphs three and four help put all this hyperbole into some context.

The documents, whose contents were described to Newsmax by persons present at the closed-door briefing on Feb. 25, included an internal Iranian government PowerPoint report detailing progress on a missile re-entry vehicle from July 9, 2003 through Jan. 14, 2004.

The progress report on the re-entry vehicle, known as Project P111, contradicts the latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, released in December, which concluded that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons work in the fall of 2003

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So this article is basically trying to whip everyone into a frenzy because of a couple of months discrepancy between when the programme was said to have been shut down and date cited on the documents - Jan 14th.

All of which helps to further distort and already horribly warped argument.

Why are we are so arrogant as to assume we have the right to determine what technology other countries can and cannot develop? Why do we consider it our right to have access to a technology yet deny others that same right?

As far as I'm concerned, Iran has every right to pursue any technological advance it feels is necessary, including that necessary to defend itself from the globe-trotting, megalomaniacal Western coalition of the galactically stupid who seek to disguise their relentless theft of oil under the banner of the phoney, self-induced War on Terror.

In fact, Ahmadinejad would be remiss if he stood idly by and allowed the occupation and mass-murder of the civilians of a neighbouring country to pass by without at least considering the fact that he really ought to think of a way of deterring these maniacs from doing the same to his country.

How people can come on here and talk about the non-existent threat posed by Iran when we have gone and killed tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in an unprovoked, illegitimate invasion of an already sanction-crippled nation is a mystery to me.

We are the aggressors folks. By any sensible definition you care to come up with, we are the 'terrorists'.