Prince of Persia
Bill updated his post called “Taking Iran” with a link to a Times of London report showing pictures of a two-page document supposedly culled from Iran’s nuclear scientists which, when translated, allegedly indicate Iranian “work” on nuclear triggers. What I make of it is that it is a memo proposing how their scientists would go about creating the infrastructure, transferring experimental materials, hiring physicists, etc., to accomplish the purpose of “Designing and performing experiments to detect pulsed neutrons obtained from pulse sources, for example, from NG (neutron generator) and PF (plasma focus) pulsed sources.” Another Times of London link says the letter was dated December 29, 2005 and was actually three pages long, although they only show what appears to be two and one-half, or perhaps the first page is a landscape-perspective full page. The Times of London had stated, though, that “Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007.” I don’t understand all I know about this, frankly. Everyone is correct, though, who says this “raises questions.”
Understandably, our intelligence analysts (having been burned by Bush-era foisting of forged Iraqi Mossad Czech Italian Nigerian just plain phony nukyaler documents) won’t speculate as to its authenticity. One wonders about the origins of this purportedly leaked super-secret Iranian official document. Let me think for a minute second about who could A) obtain it, B) benefit from it, and C) propagate it. Okay, I’m done thinking, I’ve got my guess. A fourth option to consider is that this might be another forgery. But that would just be crazy. Self-serving and ruthless. Never happen.
The New York Times wonders what it all means. Not ones to shy away from hawking hawkishness, perhaps theirs is a more balanced take than the article Bill provided.
Bill also commented that Iran failed to declare facilities, but they did declare Qom, whether coerced or not. Ahmadinejad and Iran’s foreign minister also separately declared openly their intention to build 10 or 15 more. Will they later be accused of “failing to declare” them if they start working on them now? And, again, Iran is within its rights to unilaterally withdraw from the NPT at any time and for any — or no — reason. So are we. So is Israel — oh, no, wait. Israel never signed it. Israel won’t declare its facilities or open them to international inspections, kind of like when they refused to allow international inspectors under Goldstone to visit sites or interview witnesses of alleged Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
Which brings up a point I made in commenting on Bill’s piece, which he dodged. What are we to make of the officially declared Dahiya doctrine, adopted by Israel in 2003? What sort of disproportionality can we expect should Israel attempt to show the 90% of Iranian green revolutionaries that they are accountable for their leaders’ actions?
In the face of a Western invasion (largely at the behest of Israel and its “intelligence” they “shared” with the U.S. and Britain) of Iraq for (as Tony Blair later put it rather bluntly) “regime change,” would it really be unreasonable for Iran to evaluate all options, whether it intended to pursue them or not? Especially when one reads pieces like Bill’s which advocate sanctioned assassinations, military bombing campaigns, missile strikes, and so forth?


