On September 9th, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki gave Iran's proposals for new negotiations to the six nation group's ambassadors. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, an Iranian envoy to the IAEA, stated to reporters that, ''Regarding Iran's nuclear issue, if there are any questions or ambiguities, we are well prepared to remove ambiguities in the context of the IAEA.''
In an earlier critical statement to the IAEA board, Soltanieh said it "should be recalled that the agency has been faced with continuous false and forged allegations" by the U.S.
He also stated, "I remind that the international community is carefully monitoring the attitude and conducts of the new U.S. administration. The world is observing curiously whether or not this administration follows the same trend and policy as the Bush administration, pursuing hostile political confrontation, using fabricated baseless allegations ..."He did not have to remind anyone that the U.S. used the elimination of non-existent WMDs to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Apparently as a result of past embarrassment to the U.S. intelligence community, according to the New York Times, the latest intelligence reports state that Iran has chosen not to take the critical last steps to make a nuclear weapon. This is consistent with past intelligence reports that Iran halted attempts to design a nuke back in 2003. This was the view of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIA) given to President Bush in 2007. That NIA was allegedly based on information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from Iran's military computer networks. But because this latest ??intelligence ? claims Iran has enough nuclear fuel to create a weapon if it chose to do so at some point, it strengthens the hand of those who advocate military action against Iran.
Aside from hawks within the U.S. government, this included the Israelis. Various officials within the Israeli government have wanted to ??take out ? Iran's nuclear capability for quite some time.Because they see Iran as an ??existential threat ? to Israel, they have stated that if the U.S. does not deal with the problem, they will.This is not an idle threat: Israeli forces have struck alleged nuclear targets in Iraq and Syria before. The attack against Iraq occurred in 1981, but the one against Syria occurred in 2007.
According to the Times article, Israel claims that there is evidence that the Iranians ??resumed ? the effort to design a nuclear weapon in 2005. They claim Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei ordered this, but the Israelis can not produce a copy of this alleged order. A senior Israeli intelligence official told the Times, ??We're all looking at the same set of facts. We are interpreting them quite differently than the White House does. ?
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