gtalum wrote:Iran 'has no bomb-grade uranium'Iran has no weapons-grade uranium, US military officials have said in an attempt to clarify recent statements from Washington and Israel.
National Intelligence director Dennis Blair told US senators that Tehran had only low-enriched uranium, which would need processing to be used for weapons.
He said Iran had "not yet made that decision" to convert it.
Mr Blair also said al-Qaeda was weaker now than a year ago thanks to sustained pressure on militant bases in Pakistan.
MORE
Oopsie.
What is the "oopsie" for? People on the other side of the political spectrum from me were certain intelligence agencies would modify the interpretation of the intelligence to fit the desires of the politicians, and they may not have been wrong. The previous administration may have over-estimated Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities (may have, Hussein had over a year to move or hide them), but other nations, even countries like Germany and France that didn't support action against Hussein thought he had a more advanced WMD capacity than he actually had. Since the previous president made the decision about a year ago to kick the can down the road and hope the problems fixes itself, and nobody in the world now except the likely first target of an Iranian attack, Israel, wants to cause a war in the Persian Gulf that would inflate oil prices and damage already struggling economies, announcements from intelligence agencies that Iran is far from being nuclear capable isn't completely surprising.
India is not surprising, they have some pretty advanced technology and some very well educated scientists, but if Pakistan can build nuclear weapons, even crude ones, anyone can. Iran has one thing, oil money, Pakistan doesn't have, and may have purchased a nice head start from the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, AQ Khan. Iran, North Korea, and Syria may all be working together towards the goal of not just manufacturing a bomb, but designing and building one that can be mated to a ballistic missile.
BTW, Pakistan's nuclear test took most of the world's security agencies by surprise.
Nobody but the Iranians (maybe the Israelis, they have the most to lose and the reputation for having the best human intelligence of any nation) really knows how close Iran is to having a bomb.
However, Iran has the world's second largest reserves of natural gas. Natural gas is difficult to export, but perfect for generating electricity in easily built gas powered turbine power plants. Kind of a smell test, or Occam's Razor kind of thing, but for a nation with no real need for nuclear generated electricity to go through so much trouble diplomatically, would seem to suggest that the real reason for their nuclear program is to develop atomic weapons.
