The Obama Administration’s “dual track” approach on Iran has taken an odd new turn today, as the White House and the US State Department are now presenting completely different official stories regarding America’s position on Iran’s enrichment program.
After nearly a solid week of railing against the supposed “threat” posed by Iran’s move to enrich uranium to 20 percent, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US “do not believe they have the capability” to enrich the uranium to the 20 percent level, as President Ahmadinejad claimed earlier today.
Iran has been enriching uranium at 3.5 percent, the level needed for its power generation program. On Tuesday they announced that they were beginning to enrich uranium at 20 percent, the level needed for their medical reactor. The IAEA indicated yesterday that Iran has converted a small percentage of its enrichment program to the 20 percent level.
Since the announcement, US officials have insisted that they needed to make haste with new sanctions against Iran, claiming that the 20 percent enrichment (though itself legal and innocuous) could have been a step toward the capability to enrich uranium above 90 percent, or weapons grade.
It is therefore surprising that the administration, at the same time as the State Department continues to make allegations about Iran having designs on a weapons program, would cast doubt on their ability to even enrich to 20 percent.
The official line then seems to be that Iran is lying about its ability to produce 20 percent uranium for civilian purposes, proving that they are liars. Yet if the claim is true it would also mean Iran doesn’t have the ability to produce weapons grade uranium either, meaning that Iran’s nuclear program couldn’t even hypothetically pose any threat or have anything but the most modest civilian intentions, as Iran has claimed all along.
This dichotomy will be lost on the sheep in america, and by tomorrow, it will be back to business as usual, once those at the ministry of truth have purged this tidbit from the official record.
Logic and truth have nothing to do with the US government's policy towards Iran. The US government has only one consistent policy towards Iran and that is war. If logic and truth get in the way of this war policy then logic and truth be damned.
The US government is now attempting to implement phase two of its war policy towards Iran, the implementation of starvation sanctions against the innocent men, women and children of Iran with the approval of the UN Security Counsel. Phase one was the farcical attempt to reach a peaceful agreement with Iran concerning its civilian nuclear energy program. Phase three will be the holy grail of American Foriegn policy, war with Iran. If you just remember the goal of American foriegn policy towards Iran is war, then all the lies and logical inconsistencies of the US government's claims against Iran make perfect sense.
Iran has every right to do what it is doing. They are following the guidelines laid down by the IAEA and they are doing so within the confines of the NPT they signed. The IAEA inspectors are there watching their progress which is legal.
Seems like Israel is the real trouble maker by wanting to bonb Iran.
Remember how up in arms Bill Moyers was over media complicity in the march to war with Iraq? Why is he shutting his face about media complicity at an even more egregious level for an even more egregiously fallacious march to war against Iran?
Huh? Run that by me again? Let me see. Iran hjas no ability to enrich uranium to 20 percent needed for medical isotopes. If I get it correctly, Iran has ONLY the ability to enrich it to 5% needed for production of nuclear power plant fuel.
So, that means that Iran has even less ability to enrich uranium to 95%, that is needed for nuclear weapon.
So, WHY ARE WE WAISING ALL THIS TIME ON IRAN? Why all the noise, sanctions, meetings, conferences, summits…. UN meetings, Security Council…
I feel that these people are just playing a joke on us. All the meetings, fun places, dinners, fancy drinks….
And I thought that we have an economic crisis, and people are suffereing……What a fool.
now the White bloody House realizes that it does not have the capability to attack Iran the Threat is being down played. i wonder if Israel will organize another Terror Attack in the USA. to sway Public Opinion.
if you're paying attention, then realize the US Gov just told you (again) that Iran does not and can not have the ability to make a nuclear bomb.
To build a bomb, they'd have to 'enrich' to 95%. If they can't do 20%, then they sure as heck can't do 95%.
Ignore anything else you hear about Iran having a bomb, because now the political side has just agreed with what the IAEA and the intel side were saying all along.
Iran can not build their own nuclear bomb. Please remember that and teach others.
To Guest …. they were playing a joke on us. But the price wasn't just a few conferences and fancy drinks. The cost is billions and billions of our tax payer dollars wasted.
— The hysteria over Iran is used to make sure the bloated Pentagon budgets sail through without cuts.
— the hysteria over Iran is used to spend billions on star wars.
— the hysteria over Iran is used to spend billions more on 'intelligence'
— the hysteria over Iran is used to justify ridiculous pork to 'homeland security' as we train and equip Wyoming to defend itself against these WMDs.
— and of course, this hysteria is used in every election season to make sure that someone who wouldn't just give away all of these billions of our tax payer dollars can't possibly get elected. Would you possibly trust such a radical in the face of this immediate threat of disaster that we face from Iran?
If only it were just a bill for fancy drinks. <sigh>