Defiant Bush says Iran still poses a threat
In the light of the latest US NIE report into Iran I expected Bush's response to be shameless. He did not disappoint.Bush, at a hastily-organised White House press conference, said: "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
Once again Bush is concentrating on Iranian knowledge rather than Iranian intent. Quite how one is supposed to unlearn something once learned Bush did not elaborate upon.
Now, of course, one of the reasons Bush has managed to obtain sanctions in the past has been his insistence that Iran enriching uranium - which it is their right to do under the NNPT - is proof that the Iranians are attempting to build a nuclear bomb, an insistence which was not accompanied by any proof.Bush, questioned by a reporter who said he looked dispirited, said: "I feel ... pretty good about life," and claimed "nothing's changed" in relation to the danger posed by Iran. "What's to say they [the Iranians] couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons programme," the president said.
But his rhetoric was markedly less bellicose than in October, when he issued an apocalyptic warning about the crisis potentially leading to world war three.
He said his administration's intention was to continue to seek UN sanctions against Iran to force it to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, seen by the US as a step towards a nuclear weapons capability. In his one reference to military action, he refused to take that option off the table.
However, now that Bush's own NIE report has ruled this out, Bush will find it much harder to convince other nations to impose further sanctions on Tehran, as China quickly made obvious.
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Guangya Wang, saw the report as altering the international approach to Iran: "I think we all start from the presumption that now things have changed."The Israelis were quick to condemn the report:
Barak's claim flies in the face of what the NIE actually concluded, and was indicative of just how desperate the pro-war crowd are becoming. They have just lost their ace card; their insistence that Iran were pursuing a nuclear bomb, whilst providing no proof other than Iran's perfectly legal attempt to enrich uranium, has been fatally undermined.The Israeli Prime Minster, Ehud Olmert, who said the conclusions in the National Intelligence Estimate had already been discussed with Washington, echoed US officials by declaring: "It is vital to pursue efforts to prevent Iran from developing a capability like this." He added: "We will continue doing so along with our friends the United States."
The Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, went further, saying that Iran had probably restarted its nuclear programme. He told Army Radio: "It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear programme but as far as we know it has probably since revived it."
It's no wonder the neo-cons tried to keep this report shelved for the best part of a year, as it undermines their case to the point where most people must assume that war with Iran has been indefinitely postponed.
Certainly, Ahmadinejad appears to think so:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that a US report on Tehran's nuclear programme is a "great victory".He said in a televised speech that Iran would not retreat from its path towards a peaceful atomic programme.
Bush will now push for further sanctions at the UN but the chances of him getting them are almost nil, with China almost certain to employ her veto.
Indeed, Iran will now push to have existing sanctions against her lifted as they were all made under the presumption that the Iranians were pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
A jubilant Iranian leadership called yesterday for plans for new United Nations sanctions against the country to be dropped in the face of the US intelligence report confirming it had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme.Oh, to have been in Dick Cheney's office the day that NIE report was released...Existing sanctions had been rendered "illegal" and the report showed the Bush administration's warnings about Iran's intentions to be "baseless and unreliable", said Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini.
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12 comments:
Kel, did you hear the one about the United States Air Force "bungling" a nuke transport job a few months ago? Someone "forgot" to remove the warheads from the nukes when they flew them halfway across the United States inside a B-52. About 70 Air Force peons got fired over it, and the story blew away. If you haven't heard of that, email me and I'll see if I can find the MAINSTREAM news story about it that I read. If you have heard of it, or if you blogged about it, tell me (or all of us) what you know. I think it would stand in stark contrast to Iran's pathetic little nuclear program, and fuel the "crazy" conspiracy theorists. Fun! Cheers!
Will,
I read of that at the time although I don't think I actually blogged about it. It was one of those stories that simply had me shaking my head and confirmed my CND leanings that it would be better for all if we lived in a world free from ALL nuclear weapons. Not just potential Iranian ones!
I hear you. CND? What does it stand for? I'll wager "Control of Nuclear Devices" or something like that. I'm for it. Anybody wanna go hold a raiding party to dismantle them? Who's got the keys to the warehouse? Note to Jason: JUST KIDDING, PLEASE DON'T CALL THE HOMELAND SECURITY HOTLINE, I'VE GOT KIDS TO FEED.
Note to everybody else: Just kidding, I have no kids.
Will, it's the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. During the eighties people like myself spent a lot of our time at Greenham Common protesting over the fact that American cruise missiles were stationed on British soil with Reagan's hand on the nuclear trigger as opposed to our own Prime Ministers.
Having said that, I support the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty which states that no new countries should acquire nuclear weapons and that all existing nuclear nations should disarm.
Bush appears to want Iran to obey - despite the fact that they have no nuclear weapons programme - whilst he builds a new range of bunker busting nuclear weapons. It's hypocrisy on a mind bending scale.
Thanks for that, Kel. Yeah, how do you get someone to put down something they aren't carrying? And what should Iran do? Pretend to "stop" their (non-existent) nuclear problem in a gesture of submission? But that would of course make the Bushies and others say "Ah-ha! We KNEW it!" It's sick, it's psychological torture, and I commend the Iranian president for dishing out some of his own foul rhetoric in return.
It's simply the Bush regime trying to undo the situation they created when they invaded Iraq and effectively turned Iran into a regional superpower...
Succinctly put.
During the eighties people like myself spent a lot of our time at Greenham Common protesting over the fact that American cruise missiles were stationed on British soil with Reagan's hand on the nuclear trigger as opposed to our own Prime Ministers.
LOL, you were one of those whacko CND'ers?! Why am I not surprised. I used to get a kick out of them when I was stationed at RAF Bentwaters.
They'd see us ferrying fuel drop tanks between RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge and think they were nuclear missiles or something. I remember some of the other odd protesting types thinking that we had some kind of alien spaceship crash remnants buried at the twin bases (RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge) as a result of the so-called "Rendlesham incident".
You guys were always good for a laugh.
You guys were always good for a laugh.
Tell me, as someone who values American independence so much, would you accept British nuclear arms on American soil if you had no control over their use and they made you a target by another nuclear power?
If you have no idea why we protested at that and simply find it "good for a laugh" then you are actually saying that only Americans should be truly independent. Is that what you are saying?
would you accept British nuclear arms on American soil if you had no control over their use and they made you a target by another nuclear power?
You can't honestly believe that it was GLCMs that made you a target by the Soviet Bloc, can you? You were a target because you were a member of NATO and a threat to the USSR, not to mention you had a greater number of your own nukes.
Is that what you are saying?
Nope. It's your country and it is certainly your right to protest anything you want. While I certainly respected that right, that didn't change my opinion that for the most part CND was a bunch of naive nutters, with a fair number of them Communists to boot.
Just out of curiosity, how much time did CND spend protesting the Soviet embassy? You know, the ones who were actually aiming nukes at you?
You can't honestly believe that it was GLCMs that made you a target by the Soviet Bloc, can you?
Of course I do. They were the weapons of America and they were aimed at Russia. In any nuclear attack they would have made us a first target.
Just out of curiosity, how much time did CND spend protesting the Soviet embassy?
We protested outside it during each march. Indeed, during one march - when we were all called upon to lie down and play dead - found myself lying outside the Soviet Embassy next to the actress Julie Christie. One of life's odd moments....
And your comment implies that our protest was anti-American and not anti-Soviet. That's nonsense. We opposed the weapons, regardless of which country had them.
Sorry, I realise that you did not answer my question. Would you have welcomed British nuclear weapons on to American soil knowing that we could fire them and that you could not stop us from doing so?
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