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Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru (Post 2814544)

Critics of Iran have implied that their civilian nuclear program is a cover for their intention to build nuclear arms.

Critics have been saying this for years and years, but have yet to present a single shred of evidence. It's painfully obvious we're seeing (in slow-motion) the same runup to war with Iran we had with Iraq. WMDs and al Qaeda links, which turned out to be outright lies, have morphed into nuclear weapons. Guess what? Based on all available evidence, including the IAEA, Iran does not have nuclear weapons nor is pursuing them.

If someone wants to convince the world otherwise, they can show us evidence. This whole "repeating a lie until it becomes true" thing is a very obvious ploy to fool fools.

will -

Here's a shred:

VIDEO: Iran's Nuclear Trigger

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel (Post 2814619)

If someone wants to convince the world otherwise, they can show us evidence. This whole "repeating a lie until it becomes true" thing is a very obvious ploy to fool fools.

The sad thing is it works. Ask Colin Powell.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2814635)

Here's a shred:

VIDEO: Iran's Nuclear Trigger

Have a look at this:
Nuclear Memo in Persian Puzzles Spy Agencies - NYTime.com

In particular:

Quote:

The Institute for Science and International Security, a group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in a report Monday that it “urges caution and further assessment” of the document, in particular to confirm its date. “The document does not mention nuclear weapons,” the report noted, “and we have seen no evidence of an Iranian decision to build them.”

The Times of London claimed that the document showed that Iran “is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.” It made public the document in its original Persian as well as an English translation, starting a groundswell of global news coverage and expert reaction.

“It’s very troubling — if real,” said Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals.

Richard M. Barlow, an expert on nuclear proliferation and a former C.I.A. analyst, said he found the document seemingly genuine. “If it’s a forgery,” he said, “it’s very good.”

Claims and evidence of Iranian interest in neutron initiators go back two decades, to the earliest days of Iran’s suspected work on nuclear arms. In Vienna, international inspectors have filed many reports about how Iran began experiments in the late 1980s on generating neutrons with polonium-210 — a form of the metallic element that is highly radioactive.

Has there been any followup on this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2814635)

will -

Here's a shred:

VIDEO: Iran's Nuclear Trigger

Here's what happened after the document was fact-checked:

Quote:

U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

source

The document is a fake and has been known to be so for quite a while now. I wonder why a Murdoch news source would post such an inflammatory, controversial piece of information without first verifying it? Could it be because Murdoch-owned news outlets are trying to create a narrative instead of simply deliver the news? Did I just ask a question with a clear accusation in it, but framed it as a question so as to make it seem as if I'm asking the audience's opinion instead of what I'm actually doing, which is informing said opinions? Who else do we know that does that? Could it be Fox News? Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a little girl in 1990?

So, still, all we need is a shred of (reliable and/or verifiable) evidence. Just a shred. That's all I've ever asked for

Welp, here we are. Iran is loading 3-5% enriched uranium into its first nuclear reactor with the help of Russia and the permission of the IAEA, demonstrating that they were not lying about pursuing nuclear power. Will this finally put to rest the baseless accusations about nuclear weapons? It's hard to say. The publication of President Obama's birth certificate should have silenced the Birther movement, the revelation that President Obama's father was an atheist should have silenced the critics that insist the president is Muslim by birth, and the complete lack of WMDs in Iraq should have ended the argument for going to war...

Quote:

Fears May Be Overblown as Iran Reactor Comes Online

Despite the media hysteria over a supposed drumbeat for war with Iran, the White House is not unduly worried by the news that Russia will, on Saturday, begin loading enriched uranium into Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor. While former Bush Ambassador to the UN and Fox News favorite John Bolton breathlessly warned Monday that Israel has just five days within which to bomb the reactor — after which an air strike would risk killing many thousands of civilians from a radiation leak — the Obama Administration has been more sanguine on the Bushehr news.

To Administration critics, the move to bring Iran's atomic energy plant online makes clear that Iran is not nearly as isolated by sanctions as Washington would like. But that misses the point, since Bushehr is actually exempt from those sanctions because it represents no nuclear weapons threat. And the Administration is moving to tamp down the hysteria being fomented by the likes of Bolton, reportedly making clear to the Israelis that the minimum time frame Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon, after declaring their intent by kicking out inspectors, is one year — plenty of time in which to take dramatic action.

Instead of prompting confrontation, the move to bring Bushehr online will be used by the Administration to argue that it demonstrates Western readiness to accept a Iranian nuclear energy program without uranium enrichment. The uranium that will power the Bushehr reactor is imported from Russia, while the reactor's spent fuel — from which Iran could hypothetically extract plutonium if it had the technology to do so, and if it weren't under the scrutiny of IAEA inspectors — will be removed from Iran by the Russians. And the fact that Bushehr will produce electricity with Russian-supplied uranium, says White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, "underscores that Iran does not need its own enrichment capability if its intentions, as it states, are for a peaceful nuclear program."

In other words, the U.S. believes that Iran's determination to enrich its own uranium calls into question its stated motives; like other Western powers, Washington fears that the enrichment activities, some of them initially conducted in secret, could service a clandestine bomb program. But that's not how the Iranians see it. For them, the fact that Russia says it will finally fuel the reactor after some 14 years of dragging its feet on the project is only proof that, as Mohammad Ahmadian, head of Iran's Nuclear Power Plants Production and Development Company, indelicately put it, "Western countries cannot be trusted." Tehran believes the Russians used Bushehr for political leverage to press Iran to comply with Western demands, and see the project as an object lesson in why they can't allow their nuclear program to be dependent for reactor fuel on the kindness of strangers.

Source (Time Magazine)