Salmiya

Does Professor Muhammad Sahimi really challenge assumptions about Iran's nuclear program? The Real News Network aired a revealing statement by this Professor of the University of Southern California, a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists . "Iran wants to put itself in a position such that if an international crisis arises and there is an external threat to the national security of Iran, Iran can be in a position to make a nuclear weapon in an emergency as a deterrent against a foreign threat. Otherwise, Iran has no intention whatsoever of making a nuclear weapon, because Iranian leaders are fully aware that if they cross the line and somehow they make nuclear weapon, that will start a very bad nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which will ultimately will not be in Iran's benefit or in any body's benefit in that region." This is clearly something else than what Iran actually claims.

In his recent report to the Board of Governors , the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei states (under item 56) that Iran has expressed its readiness to implement the provisions of the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the modified text of its Subsidiary Arrangements General Part, Code 3.1, “if the nuclear file is returned from the Security Council to the IAEA”. It is an unprecedented opportunity for the UN Security Council to de-escalate this sensitive standoff, as CASMII states : “Nuclear inspections by the IAEA have proven to be the best and only non-violent safeguard against nuclear weapons proliferation. No country in the world has been able to develop nuclear weapons while its programme has been under the inspections of the IAEA. In the case of Iraq, nearly the entire weapons program was exposed and neutralized in the 1990s through a rigorous inspection process.” It’s high time now to take the cha...

The National Intelligence Estimate which has considerably relieved the strain on Iran’s nuclear program was not entirely new. While IAEO Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in October 2007 that there is no evidence that Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons, largely confirming NIE, Seymour Hersh reported already one year ago about clandestine results of the C.I.A. activities which were perceived in the White House with hostility. He wrote in The New Yorker on November 27, 2006 (!): “The Administration’s planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to co...

This week’s published summary of the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate has considerably lowered apprehensions of new military actions in the Middle East. The American President is now personally addressing North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-il for some further nuclear clarifications. Anyway, G.W. Bush's last year in office might become more boring than had been suspected so far.