Scott Ritter dismisses Iranian "nuclear threat"

In the months to come, as the Bushites increase their drum beat for a war with Iran, it's worth bearing in mind what Scott Ritter (one of the few who correctly assessed that Saddam had no WMD) says about the current assessment of the danger we face from a nuclear Iran.

Here, he's responding to a story in the LA Times regarding Iran's nuclear capability.

It's curious. It talks about a best case scenario for an Iranian nuclear progamme, but it just jumps through some identified technological hurdles as if they don't exist. Such as, can Iran produce a P2 centrifuge that functions? We don't know if Iran can do that yet.

Where are they going to get the Uranium Hexafluoride? They've got 100kgms provided by China, that's enough to do low level testing; but to actually run a cascade that enriches Uranium, Iran will have to use it's own indiginous supply of Uranium ore which are heavily contaminated with the element molybdenum.

Iran can't seperate molybdenum from it's uranium. So, if they run UF6 uranium hexafluoride through a cascade, they will destroy the cascade.

This is known. Everybody knows this.

So this is absurd in the extreme to talk about Iran suddenly representing a threat. We know Iran doesn't represent a threat. We know that Iran has no capability to enrich on the level that they've talked about. They are still very much at the beginning stages of this process.

And let me remind everybody that nothing that Iran is accused of doing is illegal.

They're permitted to do all of this under the non-proliferation treaty, which again represents the absurdity of this whole process where we are condemning Iran for doing that which is permitted under a treaty which it has signed and entered into enforce and has UN inspectors on the ground verifying Iranian compliance.

So?

(Shrugs shoulders.)

Of course none of this will stop the Bushites in their inexorable march to war, but there is reason to believe that the public - post Iraq - won't be as gullible as they were before that conflict.

As the blog, Once Upon a Time reports, they don't even have Christopher Hitchens on board for their Iranian misadventure. Yes, you read that right. Hitchens thinks it's a bad idea.

That's how whacko this plan is. Even genuine whackos are having second thoughts.

Click on title for Crooks and Liars video of Scott Ritter's interview.

Tags: Bush, Iran, nuclear capability, nuclear weapons, WMD, Ritter, Scott Ritter, UN, non-proliferation, Hawks,