So NOW The French Are On Board

After years of prevaricating, fence-sitting, and discombobulating the diplomatic community (yay, I’ve always wanted to use that verb) the French have finally decided on a course of action (the one we’ve been on for years) and said that the Iranians have a nuclear weapons program. And, not only them but the Russians and Chinese are finally coming down on the Western side.

“No civilian nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program. So it is a clandestine Iranian military nuclear program,” Douste-Blazy told France 2 television.

“The international community has sent a very firm message by saying to the Iranians: ‘Come back to reason. Suspend all nuclear activity and the enrichment of uranium and the conversion of uranium,”’ he added.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani not taking kindly to the French stance said:

“I suggest Mr. Douste-Blazy to use diplomatic tone and avoid increasing the tension (over Iran’s nuclear program) by making such comments. His motivation for making such comments is unclear to us. But adopting a logical stance towards Iran’s nuclear activity, better serves the interest of the region.”

Iran has ratcheted up the gears again, and starting enriching uranium to obtain U-235 (the fissile uranium isotope). They are using centrifuges to do this, but they are thinking large-scale, and the Iranian deputy Secretary of the Supreme National Council has indicated they are aiming to have somewhere around 60,000 centrifuges. That will produce a large quantity of U-235 a year.

As a by-product of this whole process, it should be noted that they will be left with huge quantities of U-238, a useless material since it cannot be used in power plants or nuclear weapons. BUT, it can be used in depleted uranium munitions (like the Western powers use it for) or for radiation shielding (yes, that’s right).

It does make me wonder WHERE they’re getting all their uranium. I mean seriously, if we wanted to stop them, why not ban countries from selling them uranium in the first place? The list is interesting, and many countries mining uranium, are near to Iran… It would be easyt to convince Canada or Australia to stop, since they agree with our view on the Iranian nuclear program, but Asian and muslim nations? Not so easy.

Of course, Iran is playing more games with the world. After how many years of diplomatic talks with Britain, France, and Germany, Iran is saying this:

“We are ready to engage in dialogue with the members of the European Union to reach a solution, but they are not going to talk to us in the language of threats,” he told France Inter.

And as Random Numbers comments, that’s Iranian talk for “just wait until we get these nuclear weapons ready…”

I’m not going to pretend I know the reasons behind Iran’s decision to pursue peaceful nuclear energy (*cough* excuse me while I nearly choke on my coffee), since they sit on top of one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas fields. But it DOES look suspicious that they would pursue one source of energy which is costly, dangerous and volatile and at the same time, CAN produce weapons. Oil cannot. Natural gas cannot.

The National Institute for Truth and Freedom (blog) puts it:

Iran says they are not trying to build a bomb, because they have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That seems to be the basis of their entire argument. Despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency has announced that Iran possesses a document that shows how to form nuclear material into warheads, the best Iran can come up with is a variation on “Nuh-Uh.”

How true. Just because they sign a bit of paper means nothing. Remember people, Hitler signed a non-agression pact with Stalin, then two years later 3 million of his troops invaded in a surprise attack…

I’ll sign off with Ali Larijani‘s comments that provoke the most distrust in me:

“We are a responsible country, it is Western propaganda that keeps on saying that Iran is seeking a bomb, but it is not true.”

Cross-posted at Balanced News Blog and The English Guy.