The Story that Wasn't

As reported in The Washington Post today, Iran does not possess bomb-grade uranium and has not been working to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapons program. These are the findings of a panel of scientists from the US, France, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia who "met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency." Perhaps the panel's most pivotal conclusion was that traces of bomb-grade uranium found 2 years ago in Iran came from contaminated equipment purchased from Pakistan and not from an Iran-based nuclear weapons program.

'"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions,' said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity."

I wonder if we'll accept the findings of the IAEA this time around. We chose to ignore them before the Iraq war and we all know how that turned out.

Prior to this report, "U.S. officials, eager to move the Iran issue to the U.N. Security Council -- which has the authority to impose sanctions -- have begun a new round of briefings for allies designed to convince them that Iran's real intention is to use its energy program as a cover for bomb building. The briefings will focus on the White House's belief that a country with as much oil as Iran would not need an energy program on the scale it is planning, according to two officials."

Do you think this will change our attitude/position towards Iran? More importantly, does our reasoning that Iran must be after nuclear weapons because they have so much oil they wouldn't need nuclear power seem a little thin to anyone else? As the kings of unnecessary over-consumption, big houses, big cars, big everything; we're the last people to be pointing fingers and claiming another country doesn't "need" something because they already have enough. Maybe Iran is simply planning for a time when its oil supply will have run out/be insufficient to meet its energy demands. What a novel concept.