The NY Times reports -- with typical hype and misleading innuendo -- that Iran has supposedly "under reported" the amount of enrichment uranium it had on hand. The term "under reported" is not in the IAEA report, and is of course used deliberately to suggest that Iran was misleading the IAEA by producing more enriched uranium than it was declaring (and the IAEA inspectors are portrayed as bumbling fools.) This is another case of the NY Times putting its own words in the mouths of the IAEA, and naturally the NY Times article also goes on to give credence to innuendo about "clandestine" enrichment facilities, etc. too. The NY Times then concludes that this supposed "under reporting" by Iran is reason for Obama to reconsider any opening to Iran...
And, just to make sure we're all adequately scared, the NY Times trots out Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, who (as usual) assures us that "Its worse than we thought" -- the same Gary Milhollin who had previously declared the IAEA weapons inspectors in Iraq to be "timid" and "irrelevant" for their supposed "failure" to find those WMDS in Iraq.
So, are you properly scared yet?
Because only if you read past about, oh, 15 paragraphs of bullshit scaremongering do you get to reason why the amount of enriched uranium was more than previously thought:
The United Nations’ officials explained the discrepancy as resulting from Iran’s estimates versus careful measurement. They called the inconsistency reasonable for a new enrichment plant.
Got that? Iran had previously provided an ESTIMATE of its enriched uranium, which was found not to match the CAREFUL MEASUREMENTS by the IAEA inspectors ... and the inconsistency was REASONABLE for a new enrichment plant.
[Update: here's what the IAEA report actually said:
The Agency has finalized its assessment of the results of the physical inventory verification (PIV) carried out at FEP on 24–26 November 2008, and has concluded that the physical inventory as declared by Iran was consistent with the results of the PIV, within the measurement uncertainties normally associated with enrichment plants of a similar throughput.]
Now are you just as scared as before? I bet not, unless you read the other 15 paragraphs of innuendo and scaremongering that follows that sentence in the NY Times article.
Well, that doesn't stop the right-wing nutters from running with the story and trying to hype it up some more anyway. Despite the fact that even the NY Times article makes a clear distinction between the low-enriched uranium Iran has produced (and which cannot be used to make nukes) versus highly-enriched uranium which is used in nukes, Michael Rubin of the National Review simply declares that Iran has supposedly acquired "weapons grade" Highly-enriched uranium...which is not what the IAEA nor what the Financial Times article cited by Rubin said at all.
But heck, why let inconvenient facts get in the way of a good bit of scaremongering? This is all part of the obfuscation game in which perfectly legal, IAEA monitored nuclear programs are equated to having nuclear weapons "capacities", and in which low-enriched uranium is equated to bomb-making.
So, Iran supposedly has enough uranium which, if enriched further, could be used to make a bomb. Well, guess what: Malawi has enough natural uranium, which if enriched, could be used to make a bomb too. I think it was Putin who said that if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather.
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