Iran appears to be on the verge of nuclear capability

Sure, not difficult to build... but there is no evidence that they are building one. If they DO build one, then they won't last long.

 

Photographs? What photographs? As I said in my last post - evidence IS of consequence to me, as to most people. If there are photos proving that a bomb is being made, then I'm all ears. I'm sure Israel will be too. This would be the definitive excuse we've been looking for. If there are just photos of a missile, or of a heavy water plant, then it's all hearsay and no proof there is a bomb made or being made.

 

These are all the countries that have Uranium enrichment capabilities. Why is Iran being targeted?
1957: Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Holy See, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Monaco, Morocco, Myanmar, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Socialist Federal Rep. of Yugoslavia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Viet Nam
1958: Belgium, Ecuador, Finland, Iran, Luxembourg, Mexico, Philippines, Sudan
1959: Iraq
1960: Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Senegal
1961: Lebanon, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo
1962: Liberia, Saudi Arabia
1963: Algeria, Bolivia, Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, Syria, Uruguay
1964: Cameroon, Gabon, Kuwait, Nigeria
1965: Costa Rica, Cyprus, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar
1966: Jordan, Panama
1967: Sierra Leone, Singapore, Uganda
1968: Liechtenstein
1969: Malaysia, Niger, Zambia
1970: Ireland
1972: Bangladesh
1973: Mongolia
1974: Mauritius
1976: Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Tanzania
1977: Nicaragua
1983: Namibia
1984: China
1986: Zimbabwe
1992: Estonia, Slovenia
1993: Armenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia
1994: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Marshall Islands, Uzbekistan, Yemen
1995: Bosnia and Herzegovina
1996: Georgia
1997: Latvia, Malta, Moldova
1998: Burkina Faso
1999: Angola, Benin
2000: Tajikistan
2001: Azerbaijan, Central African Republic, Serbia
2002: Eritrea, Botswana
2003: Honduras, Seychelles, Kyrgyzstan
2004: Mauritania
2005: Chad
2006: Belize, Malawi, Montenegro, Mozambique
2007: Cabo Verde*
2008: Nepal, Palau
2009: Bahrain, Burundi, Cambodia, Congo, Lesotho, Oman
2011: Lao People's Democratic Republic, Tonga*
2012: Dominica, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, San Marino*, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago
2013: San Marino, Swaziland
2014: Bahamas, Brunei Darussalam, Comoros*, Djibouti*, Guyana*, Vanuatu*

Total Membership: 162 (As of February 2014)

 

You are talking about ability and we are talking about will, Iran has the will to destroy Israel its obvious enough, Israel gains nothing by destroying Iran execpt compleate expulsion from the International communitty, we have the ability today and they will have it tomorrow - so its about will not ability.

- - - Updated - - -

I think some ppl get nervous by an a nuclear arm race in the ME, can't imagine why......

 

It seems odd to me that no one is concerned that Israel refuses to be a monitored member of the IAEA while Iran has been a member since the 1950's and allows 24/7 survellance. I just dont understand why Israel is exempt from all monitoring while Iran is demonized for 30% and below enrichment for energy and medical purposes. Doesnt make sense to me.

 

Because Iran got the secrets of Nuke from the agreements it signed just a decade or more ago - knowledge that wouldnt be available to it otherwise - so ppl expect them to stand to those agreements.

Israel got it in the 50's while the NPT didnt exist till 1968.

 

I dont think there are "secrets" of Irans nuclear capabilities and have even been bought from GE through China.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dg...-export-nuclear-technology-to-iran-via-china/
As far a weapons they're enrichment hasnt exceeded 30% (monitor proven)and 90% is needed to create weapons.
Israel has been continuously encouraged to join the NPT and has so far refused. It is illogical to think Israels acquisition of nuclear weapons ended in the 1950's.

 

Pat Buchanan (a TRUE conservative) says all this pro war hysteria is just bunk:




http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2015/01/26/the-persians-are-coming/



The Persians Are Coming!



by Patrick J. Buchanan, January 27, 2015

“The Iranians are on the march,” warned John McCain Sunday.

“Iran is building a new Persian Empire,” echoed Col. Ralph Peters.

So alarmed is Speaker Boehner, he invited Bibi Netanyahu to come and challenge U.S. policy toward Iran from the same podium where the president delivered his State of the Union address.

Bibi will make the case for new US sanctions on Iran; sanctions that Obama has said he will veto as they would sabotage talks on Iran’s nuclear program and potentially put us on the road to war.

Why are Bibi’s insights needed?

Because, says Sen. Robert Menendez, the outgoing chairman of foreign relations, White House statements sound like “talking points from Tehran.” This beloved poodle of AIPAC is always a strong contender for best in show.

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence … a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

So warned our first and greatest president in his Farewell Address.

But this column is not about how Washington would weep at what has become of this Republic, nor a polemic against the corruption of a capital where the currency is campaign cash and national policy is the commodity bought and sold.

The issue is whether Iran represents a threat to our security worth risking a war. For that is where many, including Bibi, want us to go.

Last week’s panic was triggered by the ouster of the pro-American Yemeni President by Houthi rebels. Suddenly, we heard wails that Iran has now captured four Arab capitals – Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa.

“Death to America, death to Israel,” is a slogan of the Houthis who are a Shia minority in Sunni Yemen. But who do the Houthis view as their mortal foes?

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP. Our enemy, too.

The crown jewel of the new “Persian Empire” is said to be Iraq. So how did the Iranian imperialists manage to acquire it?

George Bush sent an army up to Baghdad, ousted Iran’s greatest enemy, Saddam, disbanded his army, smashed his state, and brought to power a Shia majority with religious and historic bonds to Iran.

A masterstroke of Bismarckian brilliance. And both parties voted in Congress to authorize it. Mission Accomplished! – as they say in Tehran.

As for Damascus, Iran is but backing the Alawite Shia regime of Bashar Assad, whose father, Hafez Assad, was Bush I’s ally in Desert Storm.

As for Beirut, Hezbollah arose as a resistance movement when Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982. Yitzhak Rabin would come to regret the consequences: “We let the Shia genie out of the bottle.”

Looking over the chaos that is the Middle East today, we see failed states in Libya, Yemen and Syria, with Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps next.

A strategic disaster, largely of our own making. But if al-Qaeda and ISIS are our real enemies now, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad and the Houthis are all de facto allies, fighting on the same side with us.

Alarmists may see a new Persian Empire threatening all mankind.

A closer look reveals a Shia minority in a Sunni-dominated world where Shia are despised heretics. And of all the terrorist organizations we have the most reason to fear and hate – al-Qaida, Islamic State, Ansar al-Sharia, Boko Haram – none is Shia, all are Sunni.

What about Iran’s drive to build a nuclear bomb?

Well, Israel has 100-300 atom bombs. America has thousands. Iran’s Muslim neighbor Pakistan has scores. And Iran? She has no bomb.

Iran has never tested a nuclear device. She has never produced weapons-grade uranium. Her Fordow underground plant now has IAEA inspectors and its 20-percent-enriched uranium is all being diluted. Construction of the heavy-water reactor at Arak has been halted. Half of Iran’s centrifuges are not operating. There are International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and cameras blanketing Iran’s program.

The US intelligence community has twice said Iran has no nuclear bomb program. And the most recent finding, 2011, has never been reversed by the Director of National Intelligence.

And just how credible a foreign leader has Boehner invited to undercut his own president’s credibility?

This is the same Bibi who told the Jewish community of Los Angeles in 2006, “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany … racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.” Bibi even had the war plans:

“Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iran’s tour of destruction, but at [Tehran’s] planned production rate of 25 nuclear bombs a year, [the arsenal] will be directed against ‘the big Satan,’ the US”

Twenty-five Iranian nuclear bombs a year! What bullhockey it all was.

Boehner seem to have concluded that new sanctions on Iran, even if it aborts negotiations and brings on a war with Iran, will be rewarded by the electorate in 2016.

Perhaps. But if this is where the GOP is heading, we’ll be getting off here.





The treasonous pro war hysterics have been telling us for years that Iran is bout to strike the West and create World War III but we are still waiting for evidence of this ridiculous and treasonous claim.

 

You know? The game. Information warfare - Propaganda. Imperialism. Washington's beef with Iran is that the revolution in 79 toppled a U.S. puppet regime which damaged it's "credibility" within U.S. dependencies elsewhere. More significantly, Iran's regional influence threatens Washington's central "red line" - the Saudi monarchy. U.S. hegemony in the Middle East was based on 2 pillars. Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Iranian pillar collapsed in 1979.

 

The Zionists (and neocons) are just the latest re-brandings of the Bolsheviks and Trotskyites. I believe it was Churchill who referred to them as "international Jews".

 

Your comment has nothing to do with the thread topic.

You are also engaging in classic example of anti Semitism, i.e., posing your comment as criticism of Zionism but then going on to make a statement that insults Jews.

Your comment is also illogical and repeats a recycled stereotype that Jews are Bolshevics and Trotskyites.

You know you better explain that to the other anti Israelis on this board who refer to Jews and Israelis and Zionists as Nazis.

Get together and decide which one it is.

Then sit yourself down and explain how someone who is a Marxist and rejects the concept of being a Jew would be a Zionist.

Say now what would you like to be called...a democrat, a socialist, a Nazi, a communist, maybe a genius? Can you go a thread or post without saying something that stereotypes and hates with labels?

No of course not.

.

 

You are mixing different things here and it's this kind of confusion that I find particularly annoying.

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set...warnings-since-1979/Earliest-warnings-1979-84

Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979.
Breathless predictions that the Islamic Republic will soon be at the brink of nuclear capability, or – worse – acquire an actual nuclear bomb, are not new.
For more than quarter of a century Western officials have claimed repeatedly that Iran is close to joining the nuclear club. Such a result is always declared "unacceptable" and a possible reason for military action, with "all options on the table" to prevent upsetting the Mideast strategic balance dominated by the US and Israel.
And yet, those predictions have time and again come and gone. This chronicle of past predictions lends historical perspective to today’s rhetoric about Iran.

 

Take it up with Churchill. I ain't interested in your little annoyance.

 

Puhleeze, go ahead and tell me that Judaism has nothing to do with Bolshevism, Zionism, or Trotskyism. It'd be like telling me Catholics have nothing to do with the Knights of Columbus or Baptists have nothing to do with the KKK.

 

I'd just prefer the US stay out of the region. I don't see our continued relationship as being beneficial if we can end our petrodollar dependency.

To be fair, I don't like our relationship with Israel either. I'd rather we just distance ourselves from both the Arabs and the Israelis.

Perhaps, but Shiites aren't exactly well treated in a lot of Sunni-majority countries either.

And when Saddam ran Iraq, he was very oppressive to Shiites.

The schism that has existed between the Sunnis and Shiites predates Western intervention, and it appears that it isn't going to end anytime soon. Until it does, however, the whole region will have to deal with periodic turmoil.

 

So you don't see a benefit in supporting a conventional state against ISIS?

Iran has the potential to end ISIS without much effort or expense on our part. I think that's a very good thing.

 

That's because they're Sunni- majority countries. Wouldn't you (hypothetically speaking) be more enraged at non-Americans persecuting Americans in America than the same happening elsewhere?

 

I guess that's where Americans differ. Most of us don't consider someone "non-American" if they differ in religion or ethnicity. If a racial minority was oppressing the racial majority here, that would obviously be bad, but it would be no worse than the majority oppressing a minority.

 

Islam is as much a religion as it is political. The two are fused. In that sense, the religious views of Shiites translates into a political society that is different from one where the Sunni view dominates. We are talking about a whole way of life here.

 

Fair enough, but again, the Western view of things is that oppression in either direction is equally as bad.

Minority rights are essential to living in a free society.

 

Oppression is wrong, no argument here.

But the minorities in the West are still Western. It wouldn't make sense for non-Americans to enjoy the same rights Americans do.

 

Perhaps, but consider this... In the West, we try to make the system set up to protect the rights of minorities.

If Islamic societies don't extend the same rights to their minorities, that doesn't speak well for their compassion or ethics.

 

Yes, Islamic societies are currently crap. I guess I went a bit too theoretical...

 

With the Islamic World being as big as it is, some governments are better than others, but I think certain Western concepts will catch on over time. Indonesia is closer to being Western than many of its peers. It's a democratic country with more freedoms than say, Saudi Arabia.

Turkey is more Western than most as well, although I think Erdogan has erased some of their progress.