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Iran talks get results

Marc39 said:
I don't need to consult human rights organizations. There is a sizeable Iranian Jewish community in the US who did not move here for the weather.
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The weather here is variable, just as it in in Iran, but I think I get your point. Are you part of that community?
 
So if this is Obama's "Chamberlain" moment, does this mean its tough-guy Krauthammer's "Churchill" moment??
 
Praktik said:
So if this is Obama's "Chamberlain" moment, does this mean its tough-guy Krauthammer's "Churchill" moment??
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Krauthammer is not a member of the government, in case you hadn't noticed. Never has been. (And thank goodness for that.)

You might want to try an analogy that fits. I expect there are a few dozen choices, to include whatever grizzled conservative (McCain??) you might wish to plug in for the grizzled conservative Churchill (Cheney? Lott?)


ETA: restored "conservative" for Winny, not sure how it dropped out, and I went and looked for something, that I found.

Churchill to Chamberlain in re appeasement: "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war." As we already have two wars ... I don't think the parallels are going to work. :p

DR
 
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Whiplash said:
wow Peephole, you start out with spin and distortion, and whip out the race card faster than I've ever seen in any discussion that didn't include Obama.

Bra VO.
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There's no reason to assume the leadership of Iran is any more irrational than a Mao or a Stalin. The last months in which they desperately clinged to power tells all you need to know about their priorities.

So yeah, it's basically little more than "those crazy muslims want to suicide kill us alll."
gtc said:
You may be able to remember a disputed election earlier this year that suggested that the majority of Persians believe their leaders to be acting irrationally.
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Please link to that poll.
gtc said:
That doesn't invalidate what he wrote.
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There are some religious leaders in Iran in favour of nuclear weapons, but the guys in charge reject it.

How does this translate in that they're "religious fanatics who are seeking a nuclear bomb?"
WildCat said:
Report Says Iran Has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb

Yep, results!
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Ah yes, the New York Times, always the place to go when you want credible information on WMD's.

Until they can produce something better than rumours and innuendo, I'll rely on other sources:
According to the Sunday New York Times, a secret International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report says that Iran has "sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable" atom bomb.

US National Security Adviser James Jones, however, disputed the IAEA's findings. Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" if Iran has the data to make a nuclear bomb, he said: "No, we stand by the reports that we've put out."

Two years ago, the US released a report suggesting that Iran has stopped work on its nuclear-weapons program in 2003. The Times emphasizes that other countries, including Britain and France, have begun to have doubts about this conclusion.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1004/p02s04-usfp.html
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Sporanox said:
Most likely, they will not start inspecting until the Iranians have moved incriminating evidence out - and that's if they actually get in by the two-week deadline.
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Lol, it's Iraq all over again. Sure, no one can find any WMD's, but that's just because they're hiding it!
UnrepentantSinner said:
Iran is a rogue nation that is a state sponsor of terrorism. Spare me the moral equivalency.
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Good thing no nuclear power has ever committed or supported terrorists.

Iran getting nuclear weapons won't be the end of the world and bombing them sure as hell won't stop them from sponsoring terrorism.
 
Really? The New York Times had sources on this story?

That's right, I forgot that Judith Miller and Michael Gorden their pieces were nothing more than unsourced editorials. :rolleyes:

Here's the real story:
...

The story is based on an internal IAEA report, the so-called "classified annex" we've been hearing about for months. The Institute for Science and International Security obtained the relevant excerpts from the IAEA report and posted them online (pdf).

These are the main conclusions of the excerpted sections of the IAEA report:
  1. Iran has "sufficient information" to produce an implosion-type nuclear weapon, a more sophisticated kind of bomb (and thus more difficult to produce);
  2. Iran has done extensive research, like testing high-voltage detonators and firing text explosives;
  3. Iran has a "high explosives industry" capable of producing the elements of a nuclear weapon.
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If these points are true, they suggest Iran has a much more developed nuclear weapons programs than previously thought. But are they true? There's reason to be skeptical.

The IAEA's "classified annex" is based on information from a laptop obtained by Olli Heinonen, the IAEA's deputy director general for safeguards. Skeptics call this the "Laptop of Death" and liken it to the faulty WMD intelligence that helped lead the U.S. into the Iraq war.

Why the skepticism? For one thing, there are questions about the laptop's provenance. The IAEA says it came from an Iranian agent working for German intelligence, according to the ISIS report.
... was smuggled out of Iran by the wife of an Iranian who was recruited by German intelligence. Iranian authorities had discovered his activities, and one of his last acts before arrest was the passing of the records to his wife. Intelligence officials told ISIS that they assume he is dead. His wife fled to Turkey and turned the electronic media over to U.S. authorities.
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Wild story. It sounds like a movie script: A brave Iranian spy's last act, his wife's furtive flight across the Turkish border.

It also sounds bogus. Gareth Porter reported last year that, according to German intelligence, the laptop actually came from the Mujahideen e-Khalq, an Iranian dissident group which is officially classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Not exactly an objective source -- sort of like getting information about Iraqi WMDs from Ahmad Chalabi. Remember how well that worked out?

Other problems with the laptop: Julian Borger reported in 2007 that everything on the laptop is in English. That makes sense for technical details, since English is sort of the lingua franca of science. But as one official put it to Borger, "at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi."

...

Indeed, the laptop has been a source of dissent within the IAEA. Heinonen thinks it's the real deal. But IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei does not. This is from Sanger and Broad's story:
Last month, the agency issued an unusual statement cautioning it "has no concrete proof" that Iran ever sought to make nuclear arms, much less to perfect a warhead. On Saturday in India, Dr. ElBaradei was quoted as saying that "a major question" about the authenticity of the evidence kept his agency from "making any judgment at all" on whether Iran had ever sought to design a nuclear warhead.
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In other words, the entire IAEA "classified annex" is speculation based on information of very dubious origin, and senior officials at the IAEA think it is bogus. Once again, Sanger and Broad should have included that context in their story. They didn't; instead, Heinonen's report is presented as fact. (Noticing a pattern?) They're either being sloppy or mendacious.

...

http://www.themajlis.org/2009/10/04/questionable-intelligence
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...

Broad and Sanger, both of whom worked closely with infamous Iraq WMD shill Judith Miller, have here a story that is 100% recycled news. Only a few weeks ago, Associated Press was talking about leaks concerning a "secret annex" that the IAEA refused to publish. The IAEA were quick to push back, saying "With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons program in Iran."

Unresolved questions about Iran's possible weaponization activities date those activities back to 2003, no later, and rely entirely upon documents from the so-called Laptop of Death, which came into U.S. custody by dubious routes and which the Iranian government has stated categorically is a total fraud. Others have questioned the authenticity of the data the laptop contains too, wondering why all that usually-compartmentalized secret information might be on a mobile item like a laptop and asking hard questions about the laptop's electronic data trails which strongly suggest some agency put various disaparate elements together into a cohesive whole, adding made-up elements as needed, at some point after 2003. The favorite candidates for that agency are the terrorist MeK anti-Iran group, Mossad or the CIA, either singly or in some combination.

What Broad and Sanger fail to bring to their readers' attention is that the secret report isn't really a report at all. It's simply a list of the many allegations contained in the so-called Laptop of Death and other documents since brought to the IAEA's attention with likewise doubtful provenance.

Broad and Sanger bury the real story about these documents. They quote previous official IAEA reports on Iran as saying:
“the information contained in that documentation appears to have been derived from multiple sources over different periods of time, appears to be generally consistent, and is sufficiently comprehensive and detailed that it needs to be addressed by Iran with a view to removing the doubts”
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But then utterly misrepresent the meaning of that by saying that IAEA staff "staff concluded that the evidence of Iran’s alleged military activity was probably genuine". It's quite the reverse. In the language of the atom watchdog's official reports, "appears" is a word used to denote something over which there is considerable doubt.

...

This is entirely in keeping with other statements on the subject by the IAEA director general. He has also said:
If this information is real, there is a high probability that nuclear weaponization activities have taken place. But I should underline 'if' three times.'
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and:
“It’s alleged (studies), the whole question is about accuracy, whether this is real — that is the $64,000 question. That is where we are stuck, we have a limited ability to authenticate.”
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Crucially, and always unmentioned in reports by Broad and Sanger, the IAEA have never been allowed to keep copies of the documentation upon which the "secret annex" is built so that they can attempt to determine authenticity. IAEA officials confirmed to Gareth Porter on his recent trip to Vienna that they've been shown the originals once, and since then have had to rely upon sanitised copies provided by the intelligence agencies which produced them. Nor has Iran been provided with enough data on the contents of the Laptop and other allegations to be able to offer definitive rebuttals.

...

Describing the unrealeased IAEA report as "the IAEA's findings" is woefully incorrect. What Jones has denied is the hype around the "secret annex" - as typified by the Man-Judys of the NYT. The IAEA itself says the annex proves nothing as they cannot vouch for, indeed positively doubt, the authenticity of any of the allegations behind it.

http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/10/the-manjudys-of-the-ny-times-1.html
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Peephole said:
Really? The New York Times had sources on this story?

That's right, I forgot that Judith Miller and Michael Gorden their pieces were nothing more than unsourced editorials. :rolleyes:

Here's the real story:
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I know Peephole, you've made it abundantly clear that you will be in denial until either Iran admits it is developing nukes or there's a seismic reading from Iran unrelated to any geologic activity.

But surely you must know it's not just the NYT reporting this?

Associated Press

Telegraph

Guardian

Jerusalem Post

Fort Worth Star-Telegram


But hey, you have a blogger who uses 9/11 truth sites as his source that the info all comes from a single laptop... :rolleyes:
 
WildCat said:
I know Peephole, you've made it abundantly clear that you will be in denial until either Iran admits it is developing nukes or there's a seismic reading from Iran unrelated to any geologic activity.
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Yes, how dare I ask for evidence to support accusations. We should just take people on their word, this worked out really well in 2003.
WildCat;5176063But surely you must know it's not just the NYT reporting this? [URL="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j9EVzzCsT-QwKFtWDzgF6ZLue6BgD9APF6000" said:
Associated Press[/url]

Telegraph

Guardian

Jerusalem Post

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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These are mostly reprints of the one Associated Press article reporting on the same report. No one is denying this report exists, just that it's higly questionable and dated.

This is what the IAEA says on the matter:

The U.N. nuclear agency has no proof that Iran has or once had a covert atomic bomb program, it said on Thursday, dismissing a report that it had concluded Iran was on its way to producing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reaffirmed IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's September 9 comment that allegations the agency was sitting on evidence of Iranian bomb work were "politically motivated and baseless."

 "With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons program in Iran," an IAEA statement said.

The IAEA received information from a variety of sources that might be relevant to verifying that a state was not hiding nuclear bomb research or development, it said.

All information on Iran that the IAEA had vetted has already been shared with its 35-nation Board of Governors in reports by ElBaradei.

Diplomats close to the IAEA have told Reuters it has no "smoking gun" evidence of Iran currently trying to apply nuclear technology to its ballistic missile program. Two diplomats repeated that position after Thursday's media report.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE58G60W20090917
WildCat said:
But hey, you have a blogger who uses 9/11 truth sites as his source that the info all comes from a single laptop... :rolleyes:
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There's tons of links here referring to the laptop, just because one of the links goes out to Raw Story (which I guess you're referring to?) doesn't make it not true, no matter how badly you want it to.
 
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Peephole said:
Yes, how dare I ask for evidence to support accusations. We should just take people on their word, this worked out really well in 2003.
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What evidence would you accept?

This is what the IAEA says on the matter (who the AP didn't bother to contact)
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So unless Iran admits to it you will claim there is no proof, correct?

There's tons of links here referring to the laptop, just because one of the links goes out to Raw Story (which I guess you're referring to?) doesn't make it not true, no matter how badly you want it to.
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I question his research if he's using Raw Story as a source. And the objections to it rerally belong in the "conspiracy Theories section, claims that the Mossad or the CIA faked it, that such info wouldn't be on a laptop (even though there have been many such instances of CIA laptops with sensitive info getting lost or stolen), and other speculation.

But hey, Iran denies it and I guess if you can't trust the leaders of a religious doomsday cult to tell you the truth who can you trust?
 
Some more threats:
The Obama administration is working on a substantial sanctions package against Iran in case current diplomatic efforts to curb its nuclear program fail, top officials told Congress on Tuesday.

Under Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Levy, who developed some of the existing financial sanctions against Iran under the Bush administration, said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that the "comprehensive" plan would target "key vulnerabilities and fissures" in Iran to show Tehran that it would face "serious costs" for thwarting international demands.

"It takes into account that no single sanction is a 'silver bullet'; we will need to impose measures simultaneously in many different forms in order to be effective," Levy said.
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Biscuit said:
Now I would have to say you are being pessimistic. Its a start and one that I welcome and proud to see happening. Do I think its problem solved and everyone can hug? No, there is a lot of very hard work ahead and probably some set backs. Like I said earlier, "walk softly and carry a big stick."
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Uh...right. Are you mistaking me for somebody else? :confused:

Peephole said:
Lol, it's Iraq all over again. Sure, no one can find any WMD's, but that's just because they're hiding it!
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This is your whole response? That's pathetic.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/10/AR2009101002295_pf.html

WPost said:
Iran four months ago discreetly contacted the United Nations-affiliated agency for nuclear energy to outline a worrisome situation: A research reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes that detect and treat the diseases of about 10,000 patients a week will run out of fuel by the end of 2010. Iran also had a request: Can you help us find a country that will sell us new fuel?

On the face of it, Iran's query was a plaintive plea from a country under deep suspicion over its nuclear ambitions. But it also carried an unstated threat: If no country was willing to sell a stash of medium-enriched uranium to Iran, Tehran could say it had no choice but to produce the nuclear fuel itself -- in effect putting it one step closer to obtaining weapons-grade fuel.

The research reactor uses uranium enriched to 19.75 percent -- a huge boost from the 3.5 percent enriched uranium created by Iran.

[...] after the Iranian revolution in 1979, the United States refused to provide any more fuel; Iran insists that the United States still owes millions of dollars for fuel that was not delivered. In 1987, with the assistance of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran reached an agreement with Argentina to convert the reactor core to use nearly 20 percent enriched uranium; in 1993, about 50 pounds of the fuel was shipped from Argentina to Iran.

Now the Argentine-supplied fuel is running low.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jG7bnyWWJfgaYD-JwcqmImlpRujwD9B8ER780

Ali Shirzadian, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told The Associated Press Saturday that Iran will proceed to enrich its uranium to the higher level of about 20 percent needed for the Tehran reactor if no deal is reached in talks on Oct. 19 in Vienna.

[...] Shirzadian said Iran prefers to buy the fuel from the world market, saying that would be cheaper than producing it at home.
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Biscuit said:
Uh...no. I quoted you didn't I? Did someone else write what I quoted the other day for you?:confused:
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Then why the condescending attitude and the allusion to previous positions of mine on Iran, even though I pretty much just started posting here?
 
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