Evidence of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program still elusive

November 5, 2007

If you listen to White House officials, Iran’s nuclear-weapons program is already a reality. There’s no hesitation on the rhetoric — the program, top administration officials say, is an unfortunate reality that demands our immediate attention. As Dick Cheney recently put it, “Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

With this in mind, it’s probably worth taking a moment, now and again, to point out that there’s no conclusive evidence that such a program actually exists.

Despite President Bush’s claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger “World War III,” experts in and out of government say there’s no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat. While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush’s point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric.

“Iran is seeking a nuclear capability … that some people fear might lead to a nuclear-weapons capability,” Burns said in an interview Oct. 25 on PBS.

There is, of course, a fairly substantial difference between a challenge described as something “some people fear might” happen years from now, and a crisis worthy of the “World War III” label.

Indeed, one U.S. official told McClatchy, “I don’t think that anyone right today thinks they’re working on a bomb.”

Of course, we know that there are all kinds of people who believe the opposite, and have said so publicly. They include the Vice President, the staff of the Weekly Standard, and Rudy Giuliani and his entire foreign policy advisory team.

To be sure, this is not to say that Iran is harmless and should be left to its own devices, just that the recent rhetoric from the White House and the neocons has been misleading and hyperbolic. Those who prefer the bombing raids to begin immediately raise questions about a possibly dangerous Iran, but can’t back up their assertions.

“Many aspects of Iran’s past nuclear program and behavior make more sense if this program was set up for military rather than civilian purposes,” Pierre Goldschmidt, a former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director general, said in a speech Oct. 30 at Harvard University.

If conclusive proof exists, however, Bush hasn’t revealed it. Nor have four years of IAEA inspections.

“I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear-weapons program going on right now,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei asserted in an interview Oct. 31 with CNN.

Taking a step back, it’s worth noting that McClatchy has developed its sterling reputation precisely because of articles like this one, which consider the official claims, and then scrutinizes them. As Brendan Nyhan put it, “There’s a reason these guys got Iraq right and almost everyone else got it wrong.”

As for the U.S. policy, should we be skeptical of Iran’s claims? Of course. Should there be inspectors on the ground? Absolutely. But the talk about launching an imminent, pre-emptive attack is just crazy.

Should there be inspectors on the ground [in Iran]?

Yes, if the US and all other countries with nuclear weapons have inspectors on the ground to determine if they’re illegally proliferating them.

A more rational solution to this immediate mess would be for Israel to divest itself of its nuclear weapons as required by the NNPT so that Iran wouldn’t be faced with a nuclear threat by its hostile neighbor.

  • Maybe they’re just afraid that if Iran gets nuclear generators, it’s going to be able to turn a whole bunch more of its oil into profit from then on- they don’t want a stronger Iran that will be able to have more influence on world oil and more influence on the Middle East region, especially since they clearly won’t have gotten on Iran’s “good side” nearly early enough when such a development occurs. They want to have the strongest amount of influence on the region and on oil for themselves, which means that other interested players have to be relatively weak. Iran also walks right into all of this by having such a hostile rhetoric- it’s like how the con-man sees the mark as deserving the scam, by the mark’s being stupid.

  • If Iran had any specific target that was a real threat, everyone knows we would have hit it already. Israel even tried to hit some kind of a target (they thought was in) Syria before Israel or us or anyone else has tried to hit a target in Iran.

  • These three paragraphs contain more Iranian history than most American journalists will ever read:

    The defeat of Shah Sultan Hossein by Afghan rebels marked the start of the downfall of the Safavid era in 1722. One year later the last Safavid monarch lost his throne in 1735, Nader Shah successfully drove out the Afghan rebels from Isfahan and established the Afsharid dynasty. He then staged an incursion into India in 1738 securing the Peacock throne, Koh-i-Noor, and Darya-ye Noor among other royal treasures. His rule did not last long however, and he was assassinated in 1747.

    The Mashhad based Afshar dynasty was succeeded by the Zand dynasty in 1750, founded by Karim Khan, who established his capital at Shiraz. His rule brought a period of relative peace and renewed prosperity. The Afshar dynasty lasted three generations, until Aga Muhammad Khan executed Lotf Ali Khan (assisted by the young Zand king’s betrayal by his chancellor), and founded his new capital in Tehran, marking the dawn of the Qajar dynasty in 1794. The capable Qajar chancellor Amir Kabir established Iran’s first modern college system, among other modernizing reforms. Mohammad Khan Qajars successors however gradually transformed Iran into an arena for the rising colonial powers of Imperial Russia and the British Empire, which wielded great political influence in Tehran under the subsequent Qajarid kings. Yet in spite of The Great Game, Iran managed to maintain her sovereignty and was never colonized, unlike neighboring states in the region.

    Persia suffered several wars with Imperial Russia during the Qajar era, resulting in Persia losing almost half of its territories to Imperial Russia and the British Empire via the treaties of Gulistan, Turkmenchay, and Akhal. Repeated foreign intervention and a corrupt and weakened Qajar rule led to various protests, which by the end of the Qajar period resulted in Persia’s constitutional revolution establishing the nation’s first parliament in 1906, within a constitutional monarchy.

    Anything in there indicate aggressiveness or irrationality? Anything which makes Iran a threat to us comparable with, say, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Cold War Russia or China?

    We have either been at war or preparing for war sine 1941 (if you include the usually ignored invasions of Latin America, all through the 20th century). It’s the only thing we know how to do anymore, now that we’re exploiting cheaper labor overseas..

    What this country needs are a series of massive and thorough War Crimes and Profiteering hearings in our now-moribund Congress. It will never happen because the war profiteers profit from and control both parties.

    Iran is simply their next opportunity.

  • CB wrote: “Of course, we know that there are all kinds of people who believe the opposite, and have said so publicly. They include the Vice President, the staff of the Weekly Standard, and Rudy Giuliani and his entire foreign policy advisory team.”

    Well, I’d agree that they said so publicly, but I’m not necessarily convinced that they actually believe it. Just like Saddam’s phantom WMDs, Iran’s nukes are a convenient fiction which allows the Bushites to pursue their policy goals with less opposition.

  • Ed, you stopped before it gets interesting — you know, how iranians democratically elected mossaqdegh, but M wanted to nationalize the oil industry, so we helped get rid of him and put in the shah (the CIA’s maiden voyage, IIRC)

    oh, and that part where we gave saddam battlefield intel so he could gas iranians. amazing that they would hold a grudge.

  • It doesn’t matter what is actually the truth about Iran and nukes. We live in the era of the Cheney Doctrine where through the magic of plausible deniability we chose to bomb first and ask questions later.

  • Note that my theory in comments two and three jibes pretty well with my recent analysis on Iran in comments here (starting with comment #13 and then continuing in several comments after).

    In comment # 2, this sentence, They want to have the strongest amount of influence on the region and on oil for themselves, which means that other interested players have to be relatively weak, was supposed to mean that neocons/the White House want to have the strongest influence on the region and on oil they can, so they want other influencers like Iran to be weak. Just to be clear.

    I would also like to point out my theory about a lot of the press about the Syria attack being bullshit, which kind of interlocks with all of this. I’ve laid it out in comments on blogs 3 or 4 times. Unfortunately I haven’t made a blog post of my own out of it.

  • The article is fine in its assessment but where due to growing factors I make the following comment and where a global war in some highly powerful minds, may make perfect sense, as it always has done unfortunately. Your article is pertinent in its content for this (read further about my comments regarding Glen Seaborg and the dark figures who always linger in the background). I say this, as the greatest threat to humanity is the population explosion and where a major global war would solve this problem. Indeed, there is a minority of humans with considerable wealth and power who see the destruction of others as the savoir of themselves (and their vast wealth it has to be said also). The late Glenn Seaborg(Element 106 Seaborgium) our founding President personally appealed and implored President Truman not to drop the ‘bomb’ on occupied Japanese territory. The President though through his military advisers took no notice even though he discovered Plutonium and was head of the Plutonium plant on the Manhattan Project. But behind the scenes also at the time, there were dark figures who saw that after the fall of Japan, great wealth could also be secured. But basically again today, change-master politicians and governments in particular, are in the pocket of very rich and very powerful individuals/multinational companies, who seemingly do not look for peace but in many ways for wars and their own vested economic interests. Thinking that they can survive because they are on the strongest side and the reason why in many ways US$1.2 trillion per annum and growing, is spent on armaments now.

    Unfortunately therefore there are people who infiltrate governments at the very highest level, corrupt presidents (at the time these presidents do not realise this, only after) and inflict so much suffering on humankind for their own personal gains. It happens today and will have certainly have happened with Iraq. That is why I do not underestimate that Bush may indeed start a conflict with Iran. The reason, Bush like a lot of presidents that have gone before him, are lulled into a false sense of security and do what these advisers tell him. When you get three senior advisers telling you what to do, for their own personal interests in essence, presidents do it. This is the insane face of politics and where personal economic vested interests overrides the death of innocent people and children anywhere in the world. The West is no better here either ! They simply are not bothered and not even when it comes to children either.

    A sorry world, but where not until greed and corruption is eliminated these people will do their worst I have to say. Indeed, these faceless people should be tried for crimes against humanity as they are the greatest reasons why wars and human suffering actually happens. In this respect major wars at their initial base (and most probably continually) usually are all about economic power and personal vested economic interests. A sorry world again.

    But getting back to humankind’s greatest threat (even greater than that of even the warmongers it has to be said) is that of the ever-growing population problem and where I give a little evidence based facts that people may not be aware of.
    The population of the world (in absolute numbers) has only to increase year-on-year by a mere 0.9% for there to be 12 billion people by 2075. The current population growth (in absolute numbers) is 1.27% (most recent UN figures), some 18% above the percentage increase for 12 billion humans to exist in 2075. But looking at the present rate of human growth, there would be 15.6 billion human inhabitants living on planet Earth in 67-years time. But again, as growth rates are, in statistical terms (not the best accurate measure by any means), slightly declining year-on-year, let us assume that the growth rate is the average of the two, which is 1.18%, then we would still have 14.7 billion people to support. In every scenario it is something that the world’s resources could not possibly support considering rising standards of living throughout the world and where it is predicted that India alone will have over half-billion middle class citizens by 2025 (McKinsey, May 2007) on its present economic path. And a final point, what is happening with statistics is that they are being manipulated as usual. In this respect people say that population is declining statistically, but where in reality as we have a greater number each year for our base-line, the figures are really growing at the same rate as the year before, or close to that. It is a bit of a con job that governments in particular like to use so not to alarm their electorate.
    Therefore overall looking at our bleak future in a world with vastly dwindling resources by the decade, a third world war starting with Iran may very well be on the cards for humankind, and one where this time there will be no winners as there will be no one immune. In this respect if the ‘bomb’ does not get you the radioactive aftermath will.
    Dr David Hill
    World Innovation Foundation Charity
    Bern, Switzerland
    http://www.thewif.org.uk

  • Many of the claims in this McClatchy article about Iran’s nuclear program are incorrect – for example, the suggestion that since Iran has “vast petroleum resources” then their nuclear energy program is a cause for suspicion.

    Iran is fast becoming a net energy importer, and the US encouraged Iran’s nuclear program in the first place for that very reason. Read more at IranAffairs.com

  • In the wordes of Dick Cheney…”We know they have a nuclear program, we just haven’t found(manufactured) the evidence, or in Rumsfled’s words “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”….and people don’t stop and say, whaaaat?

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