January 20, 2004

Iran Said to Renege on Nuclear Promises

Western diplomats and nuclear experts voiced growing concern Tuesday that Iran has reneged on its promise to fully suspend uranium enrichment - a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Worries over Tehran's nuclear intentions coincided with decreased concern among nuclear watchdogs about Libya's nuclear ambitions. Tripoli volunteered last month to give up chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or weapons programs.

Disarmament teams are in Libya to start dismantling the country's weapons of mass destruction, and diplomats say the North African country apparently was sincere in its vow to disarm.

The most recent developments threaten, therefore, to put Iran at center stage at the next top-level meeting of the International Atomic Energy agency in March.

Tehran announced it had suspended uranium enrichment late last year as it sought to blunt international concern it was running a secret weapons program and to defang U.S. attempts to gain U.N. Security Council involvement.

Now, diplomats told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, even key European nations who negotiated the deal with Tehran[Betcha $5 this was Britain.--Jen] have started to question Iran's commitment because it appears to be using semantics - the meaning of the word suspend - to keep some of its nuclear enrichment program operational.

The IAEA last fall asked Iran to stop "enrichment-related activities." But while Tehran has stopped introducing uranium into enrichment equipment, it continues to make and assemble that equipment - centrifuges used to spin uranium into low grade fuel for peaceful use or high-grade material, for weapons.

If the Iranian program becomes central at the March IAEA meeting, the issue could pit Washington against France, Germany and Britain, which secured Iran's suspension pledge last summer in exchange for a promise to ease restrictions on technology exports to Tehran.
[IOW, the Iranian mullahs got a deal from the weasels that was almost identical to the one Kim Jung-Il did from the Leftist Clintoon Administration in 1994: We "promise" to stop making nukes in exchange for you selling us the tech and the equipment to do so. Pathetic on the part of the EU, as usual.--Jen]
[...]
"Right from the beginning, everybody asked, 'what is suspension,' but the Europeans and Iranians never defined it," he said.

Typical EU do-nothing, appeasement diplomacy.
They're trying to head off GWB at the pass, but it's not going to work.
We're going to end up at the UNSC confronting Iran (if we're lucky and they don't nuke someone first), exactly the way we did Saddam Hussein and as we're doing now with the NorKs.
A nuclear Iran is a big problem and until they prove themselves innocent, I'm assuming that they're guilty of proliferation.
And France and Russia helped them get there, too, which is why they're so "anxious" to negotiate a Chamberlain-like "agreement" with the mullahs before they can be called to account by a U.S. and President Bush-led UN.
Contrary to what the Dem candidates for president say or don't say about the "war," which they confine to Iraq, the GWOIT [Global War on Islamist Terror] is far from over and wouldn't be over be a long shot even if the US-led Coalition cravenly and wrongly pulled out of the Iraq theatre.
In fact, pulling out of Iraq would be a Black Hawk down writ large.
It would be the worst thing the U.S. could ever do!
Not only would the terrorists come back at us with everything they've got, but once a President Dean or Clark (God forbid) refused to continue the WOT and we lost all of our intell, Special Forces operations and military-backed operations in the problem areas, we'd become helpless to fight Islamofascist terrorism as a whole new group of jihadi killers will arise in the Middle East in the power vaccuum we leave behind us there.