Another Biscuit for the Dogs of War

There he goes again.

Recent meetings in Kazakhstan (see previous blog) kept hopes alive for a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear question. But once again, right on schedule, comes George Jahn of the Associated Press Vienna bureau with a tainted morsel designed to stoke the appetites of the war dogs.

His dispatch begins:

VIENNA (AP) — Technicians upgrading Iran's main uranium enrichment facility have tripled their installations of high-tech machines that could be used in a nuclear weapons program to more than 600 in the last three months, diplomats said Wednesday.

They say the machines are not yet producing enriched uranium and some may be only partially installed. Still the move is the latest sign that 10 years of diplomatic efforts have failed to persuade Tehran to curb its uranium enrichment. Instead, Iran continues to increase its capacities.

The installations also suggest that Iran possesses both the technology to mass-produce centrifuges that can enrich much faster than its present machines and the ability to evade international sanctions meant to keep it from getting materials it needs to do so.

As usual, Jahn does not name sources, writes in code and weasle-words and makes unsupportable statements as truth.

Just after helpful negotiatons between the G5+1 group and Iran in April of 2012, and with hopes high for more progress in Moscow the following June, Jahn breathlessly reported he had been given a sketch by "diplomats" that "proved" Iran was advancing rapidly with  nuclear weapons development. It purported to show "an explosives containment chamber of the type needed for nuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran has conducted." I found a similar drawing on the site of a firm that sells bomb-containment devices to law enforcement. Responsible scientists denounced Jahn's drawing as a hoax.

Last November, with the G5+1 talks slated to resume in six weeks, Jahn dropped another Israeli propaganda bomb. The Associated Press he wrote, had obtained a graph alleged to be part of an Iranian computer simulation of a nuclear explosion. Experts promptly  pointed out that the graph of the relationship between energy and power shown in the AP story contained absurdly large errors that not even a junior high school physics student would make, let alone a nuclear scientist. Former senior IAEA inspector Robert Kelley, said “It’s clear the graph has nothing to do with a nuclear bomb.”

One of the sources for today's article by Jahn was an Israeli diplomat.  Another was said to be from a neutral country.  Jahn's article refers to only one lame attempt at verification of anything he was told, a telephone call to an International Atomic Agency official that was not returned.

The machines he's so excited about in his lede paragraph, which "could be" used in work in pursuit of a weapon, also "could be" used in peaceful nuclear research, especially for medical purposes. It was The United States "Atoms for Peace" program that gave Iran nuclear technology decades ago, and the Islamic republic became a Middle East leader in medical treatment facilities.  Now that the western embargo has tightened, Iran has been developing its own resources for nuclear research.  Neutral observers following the Iran situation have known for months that Iran intended to install up to 1,000 of the "high tech machines" Jahn mentions.  Why should it be news, then, that the number is now up to 600?

Because it will get the pot boiling all over again about Netanyahu's "red line"  and when the U.S. will be "forced" to join Israel in military action against Iran. The American Endless War Machine must be fueled, and Israel is itching to use a few of its own 300 too 400 nuclear weapons.