Did Iran ever have a nuclear weapons program?
A recent interview with Gordon Prather, a former nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, has raised an interesting possibility concerning the newest NIE report. According to National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, the NIE report suggests that Iran put aside its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Prather thinks it is more likely that a special motivation by the Bush administration was behind this report. Prather claims no special inside knowledge, but supports his contention with numerous facts that converge into a believable story: first, our information about Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program came from a “stolen laptop” from an Iranian engineer in 2001 that reportedly described a plan for nuclear bomb making in a secret facility. Prather has always maintained that the plan described in the laptop (which was in English and suspect for that reason) described a new effort to enrich uranium through a process that was more primitive than those of the nuclear plant facilities that were already under construction. Furthermore, he argues that the details provided in the plan make it seem preposterous in terms of serious bomb-making. Second, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has had full access to Iran’s nuclear sites and documentation that goes back decades. The IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei will come out with a final report soon about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Prather believes that the NIE report is an effort to save face for the Bush administration because ElBaradei’s report is very likely to point out that the “laptop” secret bomb-making plan was a farce, that Iran never had such a plan and that it more likely represents a fabricated effort on the part of the Bush administration to put pressure on Iran to do something irrational, like abandoning the nuclear proliferation treaty (which they would have to do if they intended to make a bomb) which they signed, so that the neocons could then claim non-compliance against the Iranians and invade the country. Of course ElBaradei won’t say those things directly, as he is after all, serving with the approval of the U.S. in his current United Nations capacity.
ElBaradei has long been a target of the Bush administration and John Bolton who claims that the IAEA is involved in a coverup of Iran’s nuclear weapons development activity. But, according to Prather, the rubber may soon hit the road with the IAEA report, so it should be interesting to see if there is any evidence at all that Iran ever had a nuclear or, as Bush says “nukular” program, ever. My preliminary vote is no, but it is an interesting issue about which some resolution may soon be at hand, at least for the rationalists who would like to really know what Iran’s activities have been all about. The Bush administration has been imploding for some time now, but they seem to have no problem further escalating their fabricated stories, as no one ever calls them on it. I am always astonished to listen to the American press reporters discuss this issue. None of them ever refer to the IAEA report and I seriously doubt if any of them, other than a very select few, ever read it. You can read Prather’s columns on antiwar.com, where you can get very educated on what it actually takes to create a bomb….it is not nearly as easy as the Bush administration and the neocons would have you believe. You can also learn how John Ashcroft, through his arrest and pursuit of American Padilla, saved the U.S. from a terrorist atomic weapon explosion, as Padilla’s plan for uranium enrichment was to concentrate it by swinging crude uranium in a bucket around his head. Why no one else ever thought of this I will never know.
Print This Post