Sonni Efron, and opinion writer for the LA Times, has an amusingly misleading piece published recently in which she presses for the approval for the sale of US nuclear reactors to the United Arab Emirates by suggesting that the deal could become some sort of model for Iran's (and the rest of the world's) nuclear program since the UAE has also agreed to import all of its nuclear fuel supplies from the United States, and further insists that Iran's refusal of a similar deal would be proof that Iran wants nukes:
To eliminate the risk of nuclear diversion, Abu Dhabi has decided to "forgo the fuel cycle" -- it will buy its reactor fuel from abroad and return the spent fuel for reprocessing, instead of enriching its own. During European-led negotiations with Iran, Russia offered Iran a similar deal. Tehran refused, insisting on its own enrichment technology. That has only reinforced suspicions of its motives.
This is of course total bullshit.
For one thing, the comparison between Iran and UAE is false. The tiny oil- and gas-rich state of the UAE has less of a population than a suburb of Tehran and is run by a collection of Arab royal kleptocrats who have been propped up by the US for the last 60 or so years. It doesn't face the same strategic nor economic and population pressures that Iran has to face and which requires an independent source of fuel. Also, the UAE doesn't have the necessary resources to enrich its own fuel even if it wanted to do so. Also, whatever the UAE is doing is the UAE's business and is not done under threat of attacks and bombardments. Etc etc. Simply put, Iran is not the UAE.
But what's really galling is how Sonni equates enrichment programs with nuclear bombmaking. Tell me, Sonni, are Argentina and Brazil, who have recently developed the same nuclear enrichment technology as Iran's with less IAEA inspections, also "suspicious"?
You see Sonni, the world already has a way of eliminating the risk of nuclear diversion -- and it does NOT consist of allowing your country to become solely reliant on Russia or the US for nuclear fuel. Rather, it consists of the IAEA and the NPT, and more than 6 years of inspections by the IAEA have proven time and again that Iran is in full compliance with the NPT.
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