Iran Claims Progress on Uranium Enrichment

Current nuclear policy is utterly incoherent. The obvious fact is that Iran (like India) has every motivation to pursue both nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry. Here we have the "UN security council," all of whom are nuclear powers, acting all shocked and offended that Iran might want to become a nuclear power too. In both the sense of energy and weaponry. It's fucking ridiculous. And we might end up in yet another ridiculous war over it.

A small break for Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

In a new report bound to cause shivers among the Washington hawks applauding the White House's anti-Iran escalations, the United Nations' atomic agency has confirmed "significant progress" in Iran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since May.

Throwing cold water on the hot furnace brewing yet another war in the volatile region, the report by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei raises hope that the Iran nuclear crisis may be resolved one step



at a time, unless the United States and Israel somehow manage to derail the process, just as happened with Iraq five years ago.

Lest we forget, the current White House rhetoric on Iran bears strong resemblance to that used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; it was based on public deception as well as complete disregard for the findings of UN weapons inspectors, who after some 400 inspections of every conceivable site in Iraq had not found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Little wonder some members of the US Congress, such as Democrat Peter Welch, have drawn comparison between the two cases. "I don't trust the president on Iran. He's demonstrated a willingness to play it fast and loose when he was justifying Iraq. So I don't have confidence in what the president said , and I don't have confidence in his judgment," Welch said in an interview after President George W Bush's latest salvo against Iran.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II01Ak02.html

My recollection is that the IAEA turned out to be right about Iraq, and BushCo turned out to be lying.

I think it's reasonable to assume that Iran is motivated to obtain both nuclear electricity and nuclear weaponry. I just think that calling that a "crisis" is a framing tactic used by the warmongers in the White House. I question the premise.