In 2019, when IAEA inspectors discovered “trace” amounts of uranium at undeclared sites in Iran, it’s unlikely anyone would’ve expected this to remain such an ongoing, contentious issue after so many efforts to deal with it.
After so many other efforts to explain this away, Iran provided a number of documents which they said explained everything. The IAEA has responded by faulting Iran for not explaining everything, though not elaborating on what the documents were short on. This basically resets the situation.
The US and others are pressuring the IAEA to do something, and something clearly doesn’t mean to resolve the issue. The US and France are also pushing the IAEA to “rebuke” Iran for not answering the questions that they tried to answer last month.
Iran accused nations of using the report as a political tool, and promised to respond to “unconstructive actions” by the IAEA at the meeting.
This once again underscores the status quo, where the IAEA has to insist the matter is unresolved or risk a backlash from the West, and the Iranians say, not unfairly, that there’s no point in engaging further on the issue since nothing they do will be allowed to matter.
A clear case of Iranian failure to prove (F2P). Where have we heard this before? We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud of yellowcake and aluminum tubes. If Iran isn’t working on a bomb it should be.
Agree, Ted!
Few things would make me happier than a balance of military power in the Middle East.
Now, someone please state the number of violations of UN mandates of the Iranian government versus that of IsraHell’s.
(Hint: you couldn’t count the latter in 10,000 characters.)
The nuclear balance of power is like an ongoing trapeze act on the deck of a rolling ship. I think the best we can realistically hope for is a least catastrophic fall.
In other words when Iran comes close enough, an Israeli first strike will be needed.
It is time for that Ultimatum…!