Quote Originally Posted by CGM View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post
It's all nonesense. Israel won't attack Iran with nukes and if they do conventionally attack them it'll only guarantee the Iranians build a bomb.

The whole thing is just sensationalised by an Israel-supporting western media. Iran aren't currently building a nuke and all the material they have to build one is under 24/7 inspector/camera surveillance by the IAEA, something that is never mentioned in the western media. If they did decide tobuild one it'd be big news and we'd have at least a year's notice*, and neither Russia or China would give a monkeys if we did bomb them.

*and even then they'd have an untested weapon with no missile to stick it on and fire it more than a couple of hundred miles. Building a decent long range missile is something they won't be able to do as long as they're under sanctions, so chill.
So you must have a more reliable source then?
If you read the final few paragraphs on page A48 of the New York Times they eventually get round to saying "but yesterday the IAEA head urged caution over the claims made yesterday by [US neocon loonies in America or some Israeli nutjob politician who the main article is all about] and pointed out that the IAEA have all Iran's nuclear activities under constant monitoring and don't think Iran are even trying to build a bomb." But the qualifiers from people who actually know what they're talking about never make it in the versions you get from hysterical journalists and cable news nuts, because it takes the scary away and doesn't get them ratings or headlines.

Here's the IAEA head :

SZ: In your report it says that Iran is gaining an ever greater mastery of uranium enrichment. Can the USA and Israel accept the fact that Iran is on the threshold of becoming a virtual nuclear power?
ELBARADEI: The question is, what can they do? What are the alternatives to direct negotiations? As long as we are monitoring their facilities, they cannot develop nuclear weapons. And they still do not have the ingredients to make a bomb overnight.


Transcript of Interview with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei




Here's an article from the Guardian, this is one of the less hysterical ones you get about Iran :


The UN's nuclear watchdog reported today that Iran had managed to enrich a metric tonne of low enriched uranium (LEU), which UN officials say is technically enough to build a nuclear weapon.


So you can turn that into a scary "Iran have enough uranium for a nuke! story easy and I'm sure if you check Fox News website on that date you'll find one. But this is 2% enriched uranium, good for fuel for a nuclear plant (like the Iranians are going to use it for) but nowhere near good enough for a bomb (99+%).


Later in the article :


"Do they have enough LEU to produce a 'significant quantity' of HEU [enough for a bomb]? Yes, if you count the U235 atoms then they do have a significant quantity of HEU," a senior official close to the IAEA said. "But it is theoretical and they would need to use their full capacity to do so. They are not there yet. If they were to build another clandestine facility, then that would be different."
The official added that: "The nuclear material has been under containment and surveillance at all times."


So the truth is they have enough low enriched stuff to power their nuclear power plant which comes online soon. They put an agreement on the table a while ago that would allow them to run nuclear power plants and have their entire nuke programme to be constantly monitored (as it is now) if America dropped sanctions on Iran, normalised relations etc. But it wasn't even acknowledged by the Americans.