Iran “Vigorously” Pursued Program To Produce Wmd
American Daily
By Gary Fitleberg on 11/18/03
America considers the “axis of evil” nations to include Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
America has long believed that Iran has pursued a dangerous and destructive path, policy and program to produce weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. suspicions were true as documentary evidence now shows very clearly. Iran’s nuclear development program is currently the focus of an investigation and the scrutiny of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The U.N. watchdog agency has noted that there are significant gaps in its initial report although Iran was to make complete disclosure before a October 31st deadline. The agency can make recommendations to the U.N. Security Council which can issue sanctions if there are any apparent violations
Iran "vigorously" pursued programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and sought help from Russia, China, North Korea and Europe, according to a recent CIA report.
"The United States remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program," according to a semi-annual unclassified report to Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction.
"Iran sought technology that can support fissile material production for a nuclear weapons program," said the report, covering the period Jan. 1 to June 30.
Satellite imagery showed Iran was burying a uranium centrifuge enrichment facility at Natanz, a town about 160 km south of Tehran, probably to hide it in case of military attack, the CIA report said.
Iran says its uranium enrichment program is only for the peaceful generation of electricity and not for atomic weapons. Earlier this week, it said it had handed over to the UN nuclear watchdog drawings of equipment to help prove that.
The CIA said it was concerned about uranium centrifuges discovered at Natanz capable of enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons.
Iran was believed to be pursuing nuclear fuel from both uranium and plutonium, the report said. A heavy water research reactor pursued by Iran "could produce plutonium for nuclear weapons," it said.
The report had only one paragraph on Iraq, noting that the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein occurred during that period. "A large-scale effort is currently underway to find the answers to the many outstanding questions about Iraq's WMD and delivery systems," it said. Many analysts believe that the circumstances will be discovered eventually. The answer may lie in interviews with captured Iraqi officials and scientists. Some believe the weapons components were smuggled out of Iraq prior to attack most likely through Syria’s porous border.
Critics have suggested the White House may have exaggerated the threat Iraq posed due to weapons of mass destruction, used to justify the war, because no such weapons had been found.
The report also briefly discussed North Korea's nuclear ambitions. In late February, Pyongyang restarted its five-megawatt nuclear reactor, which could produce spent fuel rods containing plutonium.
In April, North Korea told U.S. officials that it had nuclear weapons and signaled its intent to reprocess the spent fuel for more. "We continued to monitor and assess North Korea's nuclear weapons efforts," the CIA said.
Syria has a nuclear research center at Dayr Al Hajar and broader access to foreign expertise provides opportunities to expand capabilities, "and we are looking at Syrian nuclear intentions with growing concern," the report said.
The threat of terrorists using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials "remained high" during the first half of 2003, the CIA report said. But terror groups would probably continue to favor conventional tactics like bombings and shootings, it said.
Documents and equipment recovered from Al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan showed that Osama bin Laden had "a more sophisticated unconventional weapons research program than was previously known," the report said.
Al Qaeda also had ambitions to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, it said. Also it was possible that Al Qaeda or "other terrorist groups" might try to launch conventional attacks against the chemical or nuclear industrial infrastructure of the United States to cause panic and economic disruption.
China has over the past several years taken steps to improve on nonproliferation, "but the proliferation behavior of Chinese companies remains of great concern," the report said.
While China in 1997 agreed to end nuclear cooperation with Iran, the CIA said it remained concerned that some interactions continued.
The report also said the possibility of contacts between Chinese entities and entities associated with Pakistan's nuclear weapons program could not be ruled out.
One certainly can believe that Iran is only pursuing a peaceful program of nuclear development but the documentary evidence and facts point in the opposite direction. Iran’s purchase of enriched uranium on the “black market” is a telltale sign that its nuclear program was not for peaceful purposes to build weapons of mass destruction.
Iran is headed on the same dangerous, defiant, destructive and dishonest path as Iraq and might face the same fate eventually. In the international “War On Terrorism” Iran may be the very next target!!!
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Gary is a Political Analyst specializing in International Relations with emphasis on Middle East affairs. His articles have been published in numerous publications including La Prensa (Managua, Nicaragua equivalent to the L.A. Times), Pakistan Today, The Kashmir Telegraph, The Iranian and many more.
Copyright © 2002-2003 Gary Fitleberg.
http://www.americandaily.com/item/3520Is anyone actually hearing what Bush is saying?
Christian Science Monitor- online
By John Hughes
November 19, 2003
SALT LAKE CITY - It's a pity that 99 percent of the protesters against President Bush during his British visit this week will not have read his democracy speech of a couple of weeks ago to the National Endowment for Democracy. (I'm fairly confident about that percentage, because not even 99 percent of his own compatriots have read it).
It offered remarkable insight into Mr. Bush's thinking about freedom for the world's still unfree, and contained significant clues about the new direction he will take in advancing freedom for them during his presidential tenure.
You can protest against the manner in which Bush has gone about bringing freedom to Iraq. That is a legitimate issue for debate. You can rail, with European hauteur, against the style of an American president who wears cowboy boots with his tuxedo and bestows folksy nicknames on foreign leaders.
But nobody, after reading that democracy speech, can doubt the man's passion for bringing at least some form of democracy to those parts of the world where people are still denied it.
Some will dismiss this as simplistic and naive. That, of course, was what some Europeans thought of Ronald Reagan's Palace of Westminster speech in 1982, when he told a British audience that a turning point in history had arrived - that Soviet communism had failed because it did not respect its own people, their creativity, and their rights.
The British protesters against Bush already enjoy stable democracy. Nevertheless their prime minister, Tony Blair, has paid a high political price for voicing the same ambitions as Bush for the world's oppressed. But nobody who listened to his speech at London's Guildhall a few nights ago (a speech 99 percent of Americans never heard, unless they happened to be watching C-SPAN late at night) could question Blair's commitment to the pursuit of liberty for others that his countrymen already celebrate.
In his speech calling for a new "forward strategy" in US foreign policy, Bush pledged to put American power "at the service of principle." But this was no bellicose threat of military action against every nation that tramples human rights.
The postwar problems in Iraq must surely have been sobering to the White House and to the American public alike. The president targeted Cuba and Burma (Myanmar) and North Korea and Zimbabwe as "outposts of oppression," but his particular frustration was reserved for the lands of the Middle East, whose lack of freedom, he said, had been "excused and accommodated," for 60 years by Western nations.
Thus persuasion, and the encouragement of the "leaders of new democracies," who will one day emerge "from prison cells and from exile," seems to be at the heart of the new policy.
Particularly interesting were his remarks about Iran. Though US intelligence about Iraq's nuclear planning may have been flaky, there isn't much doubt that Iran has had nuclear ambitions and tried to cover them up. Despite recent Iranian promises of openness to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), designed to forestall sanctions, Iran's potential nuclear capability remains considerable.
Yet Bush made no threat of a US invasion of Iran in his speech, rather suggesting that reform and change should come from within: "The regime in Iran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people, or lose its last claim to legitimacy."
A few days before, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had assured US senators that regime change in Iran is not US policy. But, said Mr. Armitage, the US would be "very forthright in our views about transparency and governance and human rights."
Experts I've talked to suggest that Iran is not currently in a prerevolutionary mode. Offending newspapers and dissidents feel the brunt of the regime's apparatus of repression. But recent student demonstrations have abated. And while there is substantial discontent (12 to 15 percent of the population "officially" unemployed, but actually perhaps nearer 20 percent), the public seems leery of violent upheaval, instead hoping for peaceful evolution through constitutional means.
Against this background at home, the Iranian regime seems willing to engage in dialogue with the US, while taking pragmatic steps to stave off confrontation with the IAEA, and the European Union, both of which took a tough stand on disclosure and inspection of Iran's nuclear facilities.
While the awesome might of the American military remains evident, the George Bush the British are seeing this week is embarked on a new "forward strategy" that involves far less militancy.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1119/p09s01-coop.html