Pastor John Wright

It is Holy Week, but I have to alert readers to continued distortion of news material in the US press -- or at least inform you of contradictory reports. Given the distortions of material that led to selling the Iraq War, similar material is now being sown. I don't know all the data, but poll today suggests that 64% of Americans support an air attack on Iran to prevent their "development of nuclear weapons." Previous comments from the week before suggest that the Bush regime is strongly considering using nuclear weapons in the attack. God forgive us all.

But today a report is making it out to the news through the State Department. If one reads closely, one sees how the state department spins in an alarmist manner -- and how the press mindlessly repeats the State Department line -- by extracting in a distorting way what the Iranian press conference actually said. The US news report makes it sound like the nuclear centrifuges are already built -- and thus gets the 16 day number; in fact, the Al-jazeera report, quoting from the press conference, makes it clear that the centrifuge facility is not built, but will be completed in a year -- a little more than 16 days. And rather than 50,000 centrifuges, they state publicly 3000 -- not reported in the real press conference.

It seems like the press just doesn't get it. The news then becomes massive alarmist headlines in the drudgereport.com. The Bush administration again is trying to successfully scare the US citizenship, perhaps to take the headlines away from the distortions of the controversy concerning the smearing of the truth from Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame and build a consensus based on "spin" like they did in Iraq. After I first wrote this post, I did discover that the NY Times actually has done some real reporting and has an excellent article on the real dynamics. It does not, however, address the State department's panic raising spinning.

In the extended entry is an except from this account, and then a little different account from Al-Jazeera. Finally, I want to add a piece from Dr. Juan Cole, an excellent commentator who is a Near Eastern Modern Historian, a professor at the University of Michigan.

Al-jazeera's Report:

"Iran’s Vice-President and atomic energy chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said that the recent developments “pave the way for enrichment on an industrial scale", adding that Iran was “determined” to complete work within three years on a heavy water reactor in Arak.

Iran’s deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi also said that 3,000 centrifuges would be installed at the Natanz pilot plant within the next year."

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US State Department's Report:

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.

Iran will move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow."

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Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran "going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they "cascade."
The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb.

The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods.

What is really going on here is a ratcheting war of rhetoric. The Iranian hard liners are down to a popularity rating in Iran of about 15%. They are using their challenge to the Bush administration over their perfectly legal civilian nuclear energy research program as a way of enhancing their nationalist credentials in Iran.

Likewise, Bush is trying to shore up his base, which is desperately unhappy with the Iraq situation, by rattling sabres at Iran. Bush's poll numbers are so low, often in the mid-30s, that he must have lost part of his base to produce this result. Iran is a great deus ex machina for Bush. Rally around the flag yet again.

If this international game of chicken goes wrong, then the whole Middle East and much of Western Europe could go up in flames. The real threat here is not unconventional war, which Iran cannot fight for the foreseeable future. It is the spread of Iraq-style instability to more countries in the region.

Bush and Ahmadinejad could be working together toward the Perfect Storm.

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