Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Shocker!

The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said on Monday he would pursue an investigation into intelligence reports that say Iran secretly studied how to make atom bombs.

Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said the intelligence was fake and said an IAEA report on February 22 showed Iran had answered all outstanding questions and certified its nuclear intentions were wholly peaceful.

IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei disputed this, saying that while improved Iranian transparency had settled some doubts about its activities, intelligence suggesting Tehran sought to “weaponize” nuclear materials remained a pressing issue.

“Iran continues to maintain that these alleged weaponization studies are related to conventional weapons only or fabricated. However a full-fledged examination of this issue has yet to take place,” he said in a speech opening an IAEA governors meeting.

Western concerns grew last week after an IAEA presentation to diplomats of diagrams, slides and video pointing to links in Iran between projects to process uranium, test high explosives and modify a missile cone for a nuclear payload.

But I thought the new NIE told the world that Iran was being a good dog?

We all know what the NIE was, as Bolton said, its nothing more then “politics disguised as intelligence” in which the anti-Bush crusaders tried to influence policy.

And it did, as far as the US is concerned. But it appears we are working behind the scenes more then ever to get these Europeans to understand that Iran has no intention of “peaceful” nuclear technology. They are looking to weaponize it….and the treasure trove of information smuggled out of Iran on a laptop laid it all out at their feet:

Last Monday, the chief United Nations nuclear inspector gathered ambassadors and experts from dozens of nations in a boardroom high above the Danube in Vienna and laid out a trove of evidence that he said raised new questions about whether Iran had tried to design an atom bomb.

For more than two hours, representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency were riveted by documents, sketches and even a video that appeared to have come from Iran’s own military laboratories. The inspector said they showed work “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon,” according to notes taken by diplomats.

The presentation caught no one’s attention more than the Iranian representatives in the room, who deny Iran is developing atomic weapons. As they whipped out cellphone cameras to photograph the screen, Iran’s ambassador, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, nearly shouting, called the evidence baseless fabrications, the diplomats said, and warned that the agency was going down “a very dangerous road.”

Suddenly, the confrontation with Iran had reignited.

But the LA Times acknowledges that the political policy piece disguised as intelligence did in fact influence policy since no one is threatening military action:

France’s ambassador, François-Xavier Deniau, said questions raised by the Vienna meeting had opened a “new chapter” in the West’s effort to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear arms, according to participants.

This confrontation is different from the long-running American-led campaign. Gone are the veiled threats of military action from the White House. The wind largely went out of that effort in December, when American intelligence officials surprised Western allies — and angered Bush administration hawks — with a report saying Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Which means in the long run what will happen is the same dance that happened with Saddam. Iran will give an inch and take back a foot until the day comes that they announce they have a nuke.

The IAEA is a joke:

The IAEA is useless. It failed to stop Saddam from pursuing nuclear weapons, and in 1981 the Israelis had to strike the Osirik reactor facility to prevent him from becoming a nuclear power with the world’s 4th largest military as well. From 1981-1991, the IAEA effectively did nothing to stop Saddam’s nuclear ambitions. After Operation Desert Storm, the IAEA was on the verge of declaring that Saddam’s nuclear program had been destroyed in the war, but the defection of regime leaders revealed that Saddam had successfully hidden his program and even built a bomb (which only lacked enriched weapons grade uranium to be complete). Many of the facilities were subsequently destroyed, but in the summer of 2002 satellite imagery showed that buildings at Saddam’s nuclear facilities had been rebuilt. Inspectors went back into Iraq in late 2002, and in just a few weeks were ready to declare that Saddam’s nuclear facilities were destroyed. They failed to point out that literally hundreds of tons of partially enriched, highly dangerous uranium remained. After the invasion, former weapons inspectors found that Saddam had in fact successfully hidden key components and designs needed to restart his nuclear program, and he himself confessed that he had every intention of restarting his program once inspections were completely collapsed or removed.

This entity also failed to detect the Pakistani nuclear program, the Indian nuclear program, the AQ Khan nuclear black market network, the Libyan nuclear program, the Syrian nuclear program, and the North Korean nuclear program. It failed to stop any of those programs. It also failed to detect or stop the Iranian nuclear program (peaceful or belligerent, it went undetected by the IAEA).

So I ask, what relevance does this group have given the history of seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and doing nothing against evil (though it has been consistent in chastising those who take action against nuclear programs run by rogue, terrorist-supporting, dictatorial regimes)?

Which gives us little hope they will stop Iran. As Scott said above, the IAEA is adept at seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and doing nothing against evil and I shudder to think what the consequences of the NIE and the inaction by the IAEA will be once they have that nuke.

also:

USS Cole off Lebanon is a Declaration of War

A senior Lebanese Shia cleric has said that the new US move to deploy a US warship off the Lebanese coast amounts to a declaration of war. Seyyed Mohammed Hossein Fadlallah said, “The deployment of the USS Cole to the area is no less than a declaration of war and a new attempt to break the resistance and anti-American groups in the region.”

No doubt, Democrats will claim that Bush is sabre rattling, and that if he had just left the USS Cole farther out in the Med, then anti-American Islamic groups wouldn’t be anti-American (ignoring that fact that they already were anti-American). And if there is combat, the blame will be on the presence of a US ship in international waters rather than on those who actually do the killing (anti-American Islamic holy warriors).

LINK to story