generalspeaking

Saturday, August 24, 2013

The Innocence of Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

The transparency of the Islamic Republic of Iran's agenda on its nuclear file seems obvious enough. Satellite tracking has revealed just what has been suspected. The IAEA has few illusions with respect to Iran's plans for its nuclear future. That it has no intention whatever of acceding to the demands of the United Nations and its creature oversight body, the IAEA is abundantly clear.

Iran has succeeded in flippantly thumbing its nose at all overtures for concessions on its nuclear program. A nuclear program which is of huge concern for its future activities in the region and further afield, given the theocracy's erratic and hostile attitude to its neighbours and the West. It has been prepared to earnestly offer promises it knows the IAEA and the international community want to hear.

With no intention of honouring them. For this is among the many types of deceits which Islam permits. When it is assumed that to practise them represents an aid toward reaching an honourable Islamic purpose. So to the enemy you offer a truce, or a settlement agreement, and as time goes on and the immediacy of the 'emergency' stretches further back into the past and a more relaxed and trusting atmosphere prevails, one gets on with the business at hand, covertly.

These covert advances have been so numerous they're laughable. Despite which the international community continues to wring its hands with frustration, enter into new Security Council debates that are utterly fruitless, exact new levels of sanctions which are readily subverted, to the private glee of Ira's Ayatollahs and the Republican Guard whose nuclear program the issue really is, and life goes on as far as the Republic's expectations and advances are concerned.

The Institute for Science & International Security has four photographs taken by satellite company DigitalGlobe & GeoEye showing ongoing asphalting of the Parchin complex. That's the military complex where IAEA first suspected then became convinced that both conventional and atomic weapons components were being tested. A large reinforced concrete above-ground bunker-type building had appeared and there seemed to be detectable traces of enriched uranium.

The International Atomic Energy Agency became quite convinced that to have been a locale for the testing of explosive triggers for a nuclear blast. Tehran insisted continually that Parchin represented a completely conventional military area. Nothing mysterious about it whatever. No links to any kind of nuclear tests. The skilled enquiries by the IAEA negotiators were completely futile.

As for the asphalting covering the ground around the military installations, simply road work and regular maintenance. The IAEA feels otherwise; that the activity results from efforts to seal any tell-tale symptoms of work on a nuclear weapons program. Soil samples would quite simply be unattainable with the area covered with asphalt.

Beyond that there is the ongoing dismantling of Parchin infrastructure that appears quite strange in purpose -- other than to hide evidence the IAEA is interested in but to which their inspectors will not be granted access. Satellite images taken earlier have shown that dismantling of buildings, the wholesale hosing down of the area has taken place, ostensibly to wash any evidence away.

The photographs "clearly document activities at the Parchin site that are completely unrelated to any road-building activity", according to the Institute for Science & International Security. No big surprise there. What is surprising, however, is the continued insistence of the U.S. intelligence officials that their 2007 intelligence assessment holding that Iran halted its comprehensive work on development nuclear arms in 2003 remains effective.

The red line in Syria may have disappeared without the reaction promised and it seems obvious enough that the United States has no wish to engage in any further confrontation with any more Islamic states: "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil". Britain, France, Germany, Israel and other allies feel that nuclear-centric activities have continued long past that date, to the very present. A view supported by the IAEA.