Iran's Missile Tests and the IAEA; More Questions Than Answers
Unfortunately, this inept, deliberately myopic administration hasn't a clue as to what is really going on with Iran.
For example, Iran test fired long and medium range missiles near the Straits of Hormuz on Wednesday as reported by McClatchy newspapers.
"Iran test-fired nine long- and medium-range missiles Wednesday during war games that officials said aimed to show the country can retaliate against any U.S. and Israeli attack, state television reported.
"Gen. Hossein Salami, the air force commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, said the exercise would "demonstrate our resolve and might against enemies who in recent weeks have threatened Iran with harsh language," the TV report said.
"Wednesday's war games were being conducted at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which about 40 percent of the world's oil passes. Iran has threatened to shut down traffic in the strait if attacked.
"The report showed footage of at least three missiles firing simultaneously, and said the barrage included a new version of the Shahab-3 missile, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead.
"That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan within striking distance."
And Gareth Porter has this at Asia Times: "A 15-page paper on the process requirements for casting and machining of uranium metal into hemispherical forms - said to useful only for making the core of a nuclear weapon - has been raised by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in recent months as evidence of an alleged Iranian intention to build nuclear weapons.
"Two days later, the deputy director and head of the Safeguards Department of the IAEA, Olli Heinonen, was quoted by an anonymous diplomatic source in an Agence France-Presse report as telling a closed-door briefing of IAEA member-states in Vienna that Iran's possession of the document was "alarming"."But the IAEA has long had information supporting the Iranian claim that it never asked for the document and has never used it since Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan network added it to a centrifuge purchase without any prior discussion. In fact, an IAEA report last November appeared to clear Iran from suspicion on the issue.
"The revival of that issue in 2008 appears to reflect political pressure on the IAEA from the United States and its allies.
"Iranian officials explained that the document had been provided by the Khan network supplier when Iran purchased centrifuge blueprints at a meeting in Dubai in 1987 but insisted that Iran had not asked for it.
"Had the document triggered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons project, it obviously would not have been left in files related to the centrifuge and enrichment plans for the IAEA to find. Far from Iran seeking to hide the document as incriminating, its atomic energy officials had apparently simply filed it away and forgotten it.
"Contrary to IAEA claims that it needs more information to clarify the significance of the uranium metal document, moreover, the agency's November 15, 2007, report said the issue had been resolved to its satisfaction.
"The timing of the IAEA's decision in early 2008 to highlight the uranium metal document, after having previously indicated that it was resolved, suggests that it was the result of new political pressures on the agency. The new IAEA hard line on the issue came after Iran had provided new information that resolved the entire list of issues about the history of its nuclear program on which the IAEA had been raising doubts since 2003."
So what's going on? Is Iran just rattling its defensive sabers? What's the actual payload of those missiles?
One thing for certain, given the Iraq debacle and other terrible polices of this administration, the Bush regime doesn't have the facts about Iran and is marching to its own self-absorbed, ignorant or delusional drummer. Like the boy who cried wolf, this administration can never be believed or trusted.
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