Reply #30: At present, we still seem to have the luxury of determining the facts before we form opinions [View All]

[struggle4progress]

Is Iran in violation of the NPT? AFAIK, they are not. Is Iran building or planning to build nuclear weapons? AFAIK, there is no evidence that they are. They say they are not. The IAEA last year said there was no evidence that they were; these findings were disputed by France and USA, two states which (in apparent violation of the NPT) themselves continue to stockpile nuclear weapons:

IAEA findings on Iran dismissed
Tuesday, 30 October 2007, 09:52 GMT
France and the US have dismissed a finding by the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog Mohammed ElBaradei that there is no evidence of Iran building a bomb ... The US said Iran's efforts to enrich uranium, rather than import it more cheaply, indicated that it really wanted nuclear weapons. Mr ElBaradei said on Sunday that Tehran was years away from developing a bomb. Iran denies it is seeking to build nuclear weapons and says it wants only civilian nuclear energy ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7068478.stm

The claim that Iran is really enriching for weapons purposes should also raise a broader question, whether any nuclear power production is consistent with long-term global non-proliferation goals. It's possible, for example, to view the nuclear power industry as the result of a 1950s US public relations effort to paste a consumer-friendly "Atoms for Peace" face onto Cold War weapons-related uranium enrichment programs. On that view, one should ask why Iran is singled out for special attention: any enrichment program (not merely Iran's) should be regarded as suspect and should be subject to international inspections. Since BushCo has been, from the very start, an enemy of international agreements such as the NPT (sending John Bolton to undermine NPT talks a few years ago) and has regularly proposed the development of new US nuclear weapons, current US policy may simply be intended to further weaken the existing NPT by forcing Iran to jump through extra hoops. And given the lies that started the Iraq war, it is also plausible that BushCo accusations about Iran were first produced in hopes of broadening the Iraq war to neighboring countries

Whether Iran plans to build nuclear weapons or not, there seems to be no emergency and no need for overheated huff-n-puff: we should seek the over-arching issues and attempt to deal with them without hypocrisy