For all the recent uproar over Iran’s nuclear program, little attention has been paid to the fact that the country which first provided Tehran with nuclear equipment was the United States.

In 1967, under the “Atoms for Peace” program launched by President Eisenhower, the US sold the Shah of Iran’s government a 5-megawatt, light-water type research reactor. This small dome-shaped structure, located in the Tehran suburbs, was the foundation of Iran’s nuclear program. It remains at the center of the controversy over Iranian intentions, even today. (full article…)

Not all are persuaded. Glenn Greenwald, an author and a left-leaning blogger for the online magazine Salon, called the parallels with the charges that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction in 2002 “substantial and disturbing.”

“The administration is making inflammatory claims about another country’s W.M.D. program and intentions without providing any evidence,” he said.

Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University, said that ever since 1992, American officials had claimed that Iran was just a few years away from a nuclear bomb. Like Saddam Hussein, the clerical government in Iran is “despised,” he said, leading to worst-case assumptions.

“In 2002, it seemed utterly naïve to believe Saddam didn’t have a program,” Mr. Sick said. Now, the notion that Iran is not racing to build a bomb is similarly excluded from serious discussion, he said. (full article…)

Iran’s not in violation of anything. Iran is in compliance and the IAEA has stated this. The IAEA has said that the fact that Iran was in compliance with the old code 3.1 subsidiary agreement – the old safeguards agreements – means that you can’t find them to be in noncompliance with this new set of arrangements. The key here isn’t the technicality of the legal documents. It’s about the diversion of nuclear material and the IAEA has a 100% accounting for the totality of Iran’s nuclear material. So even if Iran produces this new facility – which by the way is not in operation and won’t be in operation for over a year – though nuclear material has been diverted, there still is a full material balance and the IAEA is in complete control of the situation. Iran is not in violation; this is not a reason to panic. This is much ado about nothing. But again, we come back to the original premise: this is about political hype. (full article…)

Arab states in the United Nations nuclear assembly on Friday won narrow approval of a resolution urging Israel to put all its atomic sites under the world body’s inspection and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel deplored the measure for singling it out while many of its neighbors remained hostile to its existence, and said it would not cooperate with it. (full article…)

Yeah, poor Israel has been singled out—even though not one of its neighbors has nuclear capabilities. Even if we count Iran, they are at least part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and cooperate with the IAEA. Poor Israel, being singled out like this…

In January 2007, the country’s ruler, King Abdullah II, announced his intention to develop a peaceful nuclear program, a plan that has US backing. (more…)

Der Spiegal: Professor Noam Chomsky, cathedrals of capitalism have collapsed, the conservative government is spending its final weeks in office with nationalization plans. How does that make you feel?

Noam Chomsky: The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable, its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

DS: What exactly did you anticipate?

NC: In the financial industry, as in other industries, there are risks that are left out of the calculation. If you sell me a car, we have perhaps made a good bargain for ourselves. But there are effects of this transaction on others, which we do not take into account. There is more pollution, the price of gas goes up, there is more congestion. Those are the external costs of our transaction. In the case of financial institutions, they are huge.

DS: But isn’t it the task of a bank to take risks?

NC: Yes, but if it is well managed, like Goldman Sachs, it will cover its own risks and absorb its own losses. But no financial institution can manage systemic risks.
(more…)

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history’s trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: “American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan).” It is the word “uninhabited” that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defence in London produced this epic lie: “There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation.” (more…)

In the chronology of the Bush administration’s record of manipulation and willful distortion of evidence, the apparent revelation – revealed in a recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate – that Iran ceased its nuclear program in 2003 promises to usher in a renewed phase of White House propaganda. While the cautious pundits and news anchors of the television media may predict this new information to initiate a sea-change in Washington’s antagonistic posturing, I am more skeptical. This administration will somehow find a way to interpret the development as “proof” of their wolf-crying.

Leaving aside the obvious outrage we should express at the government’s failure to rely on solid evidence and the colossally ignorant manner in which Bush threatened to launch WWIII based on shoddy intelligence, it would be prudent to review the case Washington has made against Iran thus far… (more…)