In an interview June 7 with the Real News Network, Wilkerson said, “Iran has already gained the regional power that these resolutions seek to prevent, leaving diplomatic engagement the only way to proceed.”
“Demographically, militarily, every way you want to measure hegemony, Iran is the dominant power in the Persian Gulf,” he said. “Therefore we’ve got to come to recognize that, we’ve got to deal with that and hope we can shape that to a responsible role in the gulf and the region, and ultimately in the world. The only way you do that is through diplomacy."
Ong, the Iran policy analyst, said that one of the troubling aspects of Ackerman’s resolution is that it “cherry-picked” the findings of the November 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and the International Atomic Energy Agency to make the case that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
The resolution states as fact that “the IAEA has confirmed such illicit covert nuclear activities as the importation of uranium hexafluoride, construction of a uranium enrichment facility, experimentation with plutonium, importation of centrifuge technology, construction of centrifuges, and importation of designs to convert highly enriched uranium gas into metal and shape it into the core of a nuclear weapon; Iran continues to expand the number of centrifuges at its enrichment facility, as made evident by its announced intention to begin installation of 6,000 advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium, in defiance of binding United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding Iran suspend enrichment activities; The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iran was secretly working on the design and manufacture of a nuclear warhead until at least 2003, but that Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon as soon as late 2009.”
The NIE concluded that Iran had abandoned its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003, a fact not mentioned in Ackerman’s resolution.
Moreover, Ackerman’s resolution does not cite of a key finding in the NIE, which said “Some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might - if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible - prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.
The resolution also ignores the findings of IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei, who has consistently said there is no evidence to support claims that Iran is diverting nuclear materials for a weapons program.
H. Con. Res. 362 fails to reflect a key finding of the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which concluded that
IAEA Report Not Reviewed
Scott Ritter, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector in Iraq, has been highly critical of how Congress has characterized an IAEA report issued in May on Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which AIPAC and the Bush administration held up that as smoking-gun evidence that Iran is a grave threat to the United States and Israel.
Ritter said lawmakers have not thoroughly reviewed the report’s findings.
“We have a situation where the IAEA has published several technical reports all of which state there is no evidence Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. None. Zero,” Ritter said in an interview. “Information has been provided to the IAEA by member nations, intelligence information. Now the IAEA has to be very circumspect when it says this but we all know that it’s basically intelligence provided to the agency by the United States of America, a nation openly hostile to Iran, a nation that has a track record of fabricating, exaggerating, and misrepresenting intelligence data. The data that’s been provided to the IAEA has derived from a laptop computer which even the IAEA claims is of questionable providence.”
Ritter said that because the United States has such a dominating role in the United Nations Security Council and in the Board of Governors the IAEA couldn’t ignore the information it receives from the United States about Iran.
“The IAEA can’t go to Iran with information that isn’t serious. So they say it’s serious and it needs to be investigated. So they go to Iran and the Iranians say, correctly so, ‘this is bullshit.’ You’re basically serving as a front to the CIA. The CIA is asking intelligence based questions about issues that are not relevant to the safeguards agreement, which, by the way, is the legally binding mandate that gives the IAEA the authority to do its work in Iran. You have to read the small print.
“The IAEA acknowledges that what it’s asking Iran to answer has nothing to do with its mandate of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is related to Security Council resolutions calling for the suspension of uranium and an investigation into a nuclear weapons program but the bottom line is what the IAEA has said is that Iran has not been forthcoming and Iran is saying it’s not their job to answer the CIA’s questions. So the IAEA reports that Iran is not being forthcoming on these issues and now it’s unnamed diplomats, i.e. American and British diplomats, who say they are very concerned because Iran’s refusal to cooperate only reinforces their concern that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
"This is purely CIA instigated tripe. When we get down to the nuts and bolts of the technical question of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and whether or not there’s any infrastructure in Iran that supports a nuclear weapons program and the IAEA technical find says there is none,” Ritter said.
Jason Leopold is editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org, and the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
Can any be so blind as not to see what would happen to oil prices, and the price of gasoline, when IRAN gets fed up with sanctions, and more sanctions? Oh yeah, that's all we need.
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Pat Herrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 166 comments)
on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 10:35:55 AM
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