Watch out folks -- Malawi has announced that it is going nuclear, much to the amusement of some:
I never told anyone for fear of spreading panic, but I have always suspected those Malawians of being up to no good ... One minute we are admiring the way these people live — stable government, fabulous climate, great ganja — and the next we’re blinded by a giant fireball and our clothes have melted into our bodies.
Those of us who still had functioning mouths would turn to each other and say, “Malawi? Who would have thought it?” Yes. Well. It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?
Of course Malawi is simply mining raw uranium rather than enriching it, but for fun's sake lets apply the same standard of speculation to their program as applied to Iran: After all, raw Malawian uranium may be secretly converted into yellow cake and then secretly enriched at secret "well dispersed and hidden" nuclear enrichment sites whose existence the IAEA has not been able to dispprove, and no doubt Malawi currently has enough uranium to build at least one nuclear weapon, etc. etc... so that in the end, it is technically true that Malawi (just as Iran, or Surinam, or my uncle's neighbor) "could be" secretly making nukes or at least "keeping open the option" of doing so at some indefinite point in the future...right? Right? LOL!
I suspect that even the Malawians will eventually want to export a value-added product, and there are already jitters that Malawi may follow Iran,
The Malawi President already openly supported Iranian's nuclear program when he met the Iranian President at the United Nations summit in New York recently.
Which should come as no surprise since the Nigerians have already concluded a nuclear cooperation project with Iran too, and Iran seems to be leading the developing world's bid for nuclear power generation just at the same time that the US, Canada, Turkey, Argentina and Brazil and many other countries either have, are now developing or are expanding their own nuclear programs, making all of them theoretically capable of making nukes (as long as you rhetorically equate enrichment with bomb-making.)
IN fact, in addition to Iran, many other countries are lining up to enrich uranium:
Almost all the new and prospective entrants in the enrichment business appear anxious to establish their credentials as having existing technology in place.
Driving this process, in part, is the perception that all countries will soon be divided into uranium enrichment "haves" (suppliers) and "have-nots" (customers) under various proposals to establish multinational nuclear fuel centers and fuel-supply arrangements.
So the double standard over the drama created over Iran's enrichment is quite apparent by now,
So the U.S. pushes for a deal with India, who already has weapons, and supports Israel, who is hiding their’s, but fights to deny Iran the right to make its own fuel. It’s is also interesting to note that the countries pushing for sanctions, The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, are all on the above list of countries already producing enriched uranium on a commercial level.
Yes, it is quite "interesting" that the countries pushing for sanctions on Iran are producers of enriched uranium, isn't it?
Do you suppose it is a coincidence?
According to a 2004 analysis by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies:
"Many NPT state parties, particularly those from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), have already stated their opposition to President Bush’s proposals to restrict enrichment. In their view, precluding states from developing enrichment and reprocessing capabilities contradicts an important tenet of the NPT-that is, the deal made by the nuclear weapon states (NWS) to the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). Article IV of the NPT states that NNWS have the inalienable right to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, a right intended to provide an incentive for NNWS to give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Bush proposals, however, introduce another element into the nonproliferation regime by segmenting countries into those that can engage in enrichment and reprocessing and those that cannot. Since most states with fuel cycle capabilities are from the developed world, it is clear that the target group of the proposal is the developing world."
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