Interesting Stuff

What the crap is this!? Here are some of today’s headlines:

• Voice of America: US Military Chief: Iran Has Enough Material to Make Nuclear Bomb
• L.A. Times: Iran has the materials to make a nuclear bomb, top U.S. official says
• FOX News: Top Defense Officials: Iran Has Fissile Material for Nuke, but No Bomb Yet
• Wall Street Journal: Iran Amasses Enough Fissile Material for Bomb, Officials Say
• AFP: Iran has enough material to make nuclear bomb: US admiral
• New York Times: U.S. Says Iran Has Enough Material for Nuclear Bomb
• ABC: Iran has fuel to make nuclear bomb: US official
• The Guardian: US fears that Iran has capability to build a nuclear bomb

If you just glanced at today’s headlines, would you think Iran was building a nuke and was likely to have it very soon? I certainly would. It’s only after you read the articles that you find out the actual “story” is that Iran theoretically has enough uranium atoms to make a bomb but would first need to enrich them to become weapons grade, and they won’t have the technical capability to do that for years to come. What the articles don’t even mention is that the uranium is part of Iran’s civilian power program, it’s purified enough to be used in a nuclear power plant but not a bomb, Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under which it is given the inalienable right to civilian nuclear power but pledges not to pursue nuclear weapons, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has signed off on the whole program.

What kind of bullshit is this!? This is not newsworthy and will only confuse people more about Iran. It’s like saying that by living near the beach, I’ve amassed enough silicon to build my own computer from scratch (something I’ve thought would be cool to do for years: I want to start with raw materials and make a 2-function calculator or something). Except that when you get down to it, I’d still need to purify and dope the silicon, create transistors and then connect thousands of them in the right order to get anything close to the results I want. So, while it’s technically true that I’ve got access to enough silicon, I’m actually still years away from results (and not actively working on it in the first place). It’s a non-issue.

It really irks me that the press picks up on this drivel while ignoring things like, say, the terrorist building a dirty bomb on US soil, which seems far more interesting, relevant, imminent, and dangerous (original source on page 11 of this leaked FBI document). Bruce Schneier suggests that this isn’t pressworthy because the terrorist wasn’t Muslim. Hooray, anti-Muslim bias in the media!

To be fair, I’ve found three articles on Iran today whose headlines don’t seem overly misleading: Reuters’ Iran “not close” to nuclear weapon: Gates, Politico’s Gates and Mullen disagree on Iran (which at least mentions that not everyone in government thinks Iran is getting a nuke tomorrow, though it does sow the seeds of doubt), and the Tehran Times’ IAEA officials: All materials at Natanz under control (though honestly, no one is going to believe the Tehran Times if it’s the minority dissenting voice about Iranian operations).

and people wonder why I get so frustrated with the media.

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency released an independent report stating that Iran was not, in fact, developing nuclear weapons. This report corroborates almost everything Iran has said about its nuclear programme since 2003. However, the US is claiming that the report is wrong, and Iran is developing nuclear weapons, even though I haven’t seen a shred of evidence for it. Iran is now engaging in talks with the IAEA about their nuclear facilities at Isfahan, and everyone seems to hope that Iran will stop its nuclear programme. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, every country, including Iran, has a right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (see Article IV). And yet, no one seems to want them to do this.

I could understand this anxiety if Iran had recently been trying to be an aggressive, dangerous country, but try as I might, I can’t seem to dig up anything that bad on them. Certainly, they’re not a shining utopia. But still, they don’t seem that bad. When the current government came to power in 1979, they took a bunch of Americans hostage for a year, but that was because the United States was initiating a covert CIA project called Operation Ajax to stop that same revolution and keep the Shah in power. I’d say this is mean, but justifiable. When another country is having a revolution, don’t go sticking your nose in their business, or else you might get in trouble. For several years after that, Irani gunboats shot at US warships, partly because the US was violating their waterspace (is that a word?). In response, we shot down their civilian aircraft (though we later apologized). Again, this isn’t particularly great, but I can understand why Iran might want to shoot at the ships in their waters, especially after Iran Air flight 655. During the 1980’s, Iran was an ally, albeit an unpopular one, in the Iran/Contra scandal (they don’t like Israel and had some Israeli hostages, but the US was the country doing all the illegal things). Again, they were an ally in the Gulf War.

I honestly can’t find anything particularly aggressive or bad that Iran has done since the current government came to power. The only thing I don’t like is that they seem to hate Israel, but even that is justifiable (after all, Israel can be considered an unjust occupation of a Palestinian state). Why are the US and EU so distrustful of Iran that they are trying, against all evidence, to keep Iran from exercising what everyone acknowledges is an inalienable right to peaceful nuclear power? Any insight is welcome.