Iran This Time

Though Bush's intentions regarding Iran are unknown as yet, what's clear is that he's not getting a pass this time, thanks to the deceptions about Iraq. Several cable news shows have been all over this, and David Sanger in the New York Times writes of the denials from the White House but adds: To many in Washington, especially Mr. Bush’s Democratic critics, the new approach to Iran has all the hallmarks of an administration once again spoiling for a fight.

Iran's role in Iraq, and especially the supplying of weapons (which some report as unproven) are what the Bushites are talking about now, but the Big Fear behind it all is the prospect of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Israel has been particularly insistent on this, saying that the usual estimate of a decade before Iran has that capability is wrong, and they'll have them much sooner.

In the midst of all this ginned-up angst about nuclear capabilities, comes a report in the Guardian that says:

Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.

Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.
Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved.

Some Iranians are themselves working this deception, these sources say, for instance by telling the International Atomic Energy Commission that it plans to install a cascade of 3,000 high speed centrifuges critical to making nuclear material, when it is in fact nowhere near capable of doing so. So as the Bushites play with fire, they have odd partners.

While this evaluation of Iran is only one point of view, it's worth noting the sources, and also the other knowledgeable reporting that the political situation in Iran is not as solid--nor as solidly behind the idea of nuclear weapons-- as the Bushites maintain. What's important here is to find out the facts, and not go crazy again over a Big Fear fit either promoted by the calculating or by the unsophisticated, who aren't equipped to evaluate the information they receive. I suspect there are a lot of both in this White House.