Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday that Iran has pulled back its nuclear ambitions by allocating its medium-enriched uranium for civilian purposes earlier this year, but insisted on keeping the threat of military action on the table.
Barak was reiterating official Israeli statements from earlier this month which acknowledged the IAEA’s recent findings that Iran on several recent occasions has used the 20 percent enriched uranium – the highest it has and the portion of the program which most riled hawks in the West – to manufacture fuel rods for research for cancer treatment.
This use is exactly the use that Iran has stated its 20 percent enriched uranium is for, as opposed to what war-mongers in Israel and the United States claimed it was for, a creeping nuclear weapons program.
Senior Israeli officials said the IAEA’s findings matched with their own intelligence and Iran’s progress towards nuclear weapons was set back by “eight to ten months.” This amount of time is considerable especially when one takes into account the US intelligence consensus which says that Iran had already been up to four years away from having a deliverable nuclear weapon from that point that the decision to develop one was made, which has not happened yet.
Barak offered some elementary analysis: “There could be at least three explanations. One is the public discourse about a possible Israeli or American operation deterred them from trying to come closer,” he said.
“It could probably be a diplomatic gambit that they have launched in order to avoid this issue culminating before the American election, just to gain some time. It could be a way of telling the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) ‘oh we comply with our commitments.”
However Israeli leaders want to spin it, the fact is that even they now admit that an imminent threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is nonexistent.
Israel significantly dialed back its war propaganda on Iran in the last couple months. Not only did they seem to lose the diplomatic game with the Obama administration to try and pressure for an American-backed strike, but Israeli elections are coming up and even hawks like Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have to quiet their war mongering to appeal to an Israeli population that overwhelmingly opposes a preventive strike on Iran.
Israel has no government, just a collection of moral degenerates who try to justify the illegal occupation and settlement enterprise. The Israeli electorate chose world condemnation and isolation when they elected Netanyahu and Lieberman, and that's what they got. This is a dangerous combination. Israel will be isolated further from the rest of the world.
He's right. The only problem is that he's a little late. Iran shut down its nuclear weapons research 9 years ago according to the IAEA and US intel. Nice of him to finally notice. Maybe now he won't kill thousands of people with his ignorance??
"There could be three explanations." How about this: they have been telling the truth all this time. They don't want a bomb. Heaven forbid Barak should mention that possibility. If he did, what reason then for all this fuss? What reason for the threats, the sanctions, and the probable deaths of thousands of Iranians for lack of basic medical supplies?
"How about that. We were wrong all along. Killed all those scientists, and all those kids with leukemia for nothing. How about that."
Barak is conceding defeat on getting U.S. co-operation in an attack on Iran. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own. Pointing out that Iran has done what it said it would do, use the MEU to make fuel rods for its medical isotope reactor, is just a lame way of trying to save face.
And of course their dialing back the war rhetoric- which drives up gas prices every time Bibi or Lieberman opens their mouth- has absolutely nothing to do with the US Presidential election next month. Noooo, just a coincidence, I'm sure.
New York and North New Jersey is in great need of federal money. The population of that area has many dual citizens. The smart people of Israel will cool it to get billions of federal money to rebuild. I do not want to take from those who have suffered big loses in the storm. I am just stating those with the middle east connection know how to get a buck out of congress. They are sending 25 F35 jet fighters at $115,000,000 each and I believe that money would be better used rebuilding our nation. The Dual citizens are free to leave. Those with only our nation are stuck here.
They shouldn't be free to leave. They should be thrown out.
This man is a lier as he was before, nothing changed with Israel and its apartheid regime and nothing will change. The iranian have said that all along that they don't, that they are not and that they are not going to use the nuclear technology to make any bomb out of it, unlike those EU and others that possessing the piles of atomic bombs, what would they do when mother nature starts repaying countries whom are doing harm all over this world, is their any safety in this pile of bombs, like Japan and their nuclear plant….?
Israel has never deserved, or earned a penny of American tax payer monies. It is a disgrace to prop up this failed state who knowingly uses American money to build illegal settlements in Palestine. Firsters should be deported, and forced to live in Israel without any American support. Americans need the assistance, especially after the disaster that recently happened on the East Coast.
Any sixth-grader presenting a social studies report would be asked, as well, Was there any pressing NEED for the medical research usage of the enriched uranium? Knowing that they've been denied import of such stuff, it would seem at least a logically relevant question to answer, whatever the answer would be. Unless they are not really human. Just muslims.
This is very obvious to me, the cowards realized their butts will be handed back to them if they attacked Iran so they revert to this old news. Simple.
Oh, I was kind of hoping what a real-life Wile E. Coyote ACME-brand bomb would look like. Nuttyahoo only showed us a diagram because the real bomb is being assembled in a basement at Mossad headquarters.