Moonwhim:
Nuclear Standoff by American Foreign Policy Project
Iranian Lobyists! See RISE OF THE IRAN LOBBY
http://bonfiresblog.wordpress.com/tag/american-foreign-policy-project/
.Claim: Iran is messianic, undeterrable and will bring about a nuclear holocaust if it ever gets nuclear weapons.
Response:
No one outside Iran wants to see Iran armed with a nuclear weapon, but this apocalyptic scenario is based on no behavioral evidence whatsoever. The recent history of Iran makes crystal clear that national self-preservation and regional influence - not some quest for martyrdom in the service of Islam - is Iran's main foreign policy goal. For example:
In the 1990s, Iran chose a closer relationship with Russia over support for rebellious Chechen Muslims.
In order to bypass the West’s sanctions on Nuclear Technology so they could build the ‘bomd’.
Iran actively supported and helped to finance the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
That’s because the Taliban and their harsh treatment of Afghanistan's Shi'a minority and then in 1998 they seized the Iranian consulate in Mazari Sharif and executed Iranian diplomats.
Iran is training insurgents across the border and are supplying them with small arms, heavy weapons and IEDs which are then used to kill American soldiers.Iran has ceased its efforts to export the Islamic revolution to other Persian Gulf states, in favor of developing good relations with the governments of those states.
The Qods Force alone provides substantial material support to the Taliban, Shiite militants in Iraq, Lebanese Hizbullah, Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Iran has made it government policy with the backing of the military and paramilitary groups to export the Revolution to “Apostate” Arab States. Iran accused the Sunni Gulf states of being “illegal regimes” that were established through the intervention of “arrogant Western imperialism.”See:IRAN'S “SECOND” ISLAMIC REVOLUTIONhttp://www.jcpa.org/text/iran_page_44-61.pdfDuring the Iran-Iraq War, Iran took the pragmatic step of developing secret ties and trading arms with Israel, even as Iran and Israel denounced each other in public.
Israel also has an industrial military complex. 
Israel: Manbar Reveals More Weapons Deals with IranThe Risk Report
Volume 2 Number 4 (July-August 1996)
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper "Ha'aretz," prominent Israeli businessman Nahum Manbar disclosed recently that from 1988-1992 he sold large quantities of weapons and military equipment to Iran, via his Polish-owned companies. According to Manbar, the weapons, including modern Russian tanks and fire-control systems, were sold with the knowledge of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Manbar's confession comes on the heels of an article published in the Risk Report (Vol. 1, Issue 5, June 1995) which detailed Manbar's sale of anti-biological and anti-chemical warfare protective suits to Iran and the resulting imposition of sanctions by the U.S. State Department. U.S. government sources also told the Risk Report that Manbar provided material support to Iran's chemical and biological weapon program.
http://www.wisconsinproject.org/countri ... -iran.html
Claim: Iran has declared its intention to develop nuclear weapons.1
Response: In fact, Iran has consistently denied that it seeks nuclear weapons and its leaders have even declared such weapons to be "against Islam" (an unnecessary and curious thing for mullahs to say about a weapon they plan someday to unveil). Iran may or may not be seeking nuclear weapons in fact, but it is patently false to claim that they have declared an intention to do so.
Footnotes
1. This argument is heard almost exclusively from neo-con ideologues such as Liz Cheney who have shown little regard to the facts over the years: "I think that the only responsible position as a nation that we can take is, they actually want what they say they want, which is they want a nuclear weapon." CSIS, "Assessing U.S. Policy Towards Iran," Remarks by Elizabeth Cheney, June 26, 2008. [back]
As illustrated in my above post no serious expert, unless in he is on the Iranian payroll like American Foreign Policy Project, Press TV, RT, or naïve like Ron Paul, belives that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons. Why go to the expense of refining nuclear fuel over the required 5%? BECAUSE they want nuclear weapons!Claim:
Iran is developing a ballistic missile capability, which makes no sense unless Iran plans to mount nuclear warheads on them.
Response:
Even though they are currently inaccurate, ballistic missiles are valued in Iran both as war-fighting tools and deterrents to attack even when armed with purely conventional warheads. The U.S. intelligence community judges that Iran is currently focusing on further developing ballistic missiles which can target other countries in the region, rather than outside of it. Such missiles make strategic sense for conventional warheads as well as non-conventional ones. As experts at the U.S. Air Force-funded Rand Corporation recently observed: "Based on their experience in the Iran-Iraq War—during which exchanges of ballistic missiles caused modest destruction yet had great impact on civilian morale—Iranian leaders appear convinced that ballistic missiles are the most reliable means for attacking deep targets, and that they would have psychological effects disproportionate to their destructive power."1
Iran Commander: We Have Intercontinental Ballistic MissilesReza Khalili
Iran has the technological ability to target any point on the planet with an intercontinental ballistic missile should it choose to, according to Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, who is the director of the Iranian air and space industries.
A recent editorial in the Iranian Keyhan newspaper, the mouthpiece of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reports on Iran's ballistic missile technology with a headline
"Iran Now Exports Ballistic Missiles." In the report the general brags about Iran's military might and its ability to simultaneously launch 14 or more rockets with extreme precision. He says that the export of ballistic missiles and the progress in Iran's space program are signs that Iran has achieved the highest levels of military and technological excellence.
Despite international sanctions, the general boasts:
"Today, I proudly announce that an Islamic Iran is not only capable of exporting industrial and defense products but also technology and defense technology as well."
Military experts and analysts who cover Iranian military and defense issues have acknowledged that Iran does in fact have the strongest ballistic missile program in the Middle East and that the low costs of the missiles has in fact taken the ballistic missile market out of the West's hands, the editorial says.
The newspaper cites recent testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee by the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess.
"Iran's progress in building ballistic missiles is noticeable, and with the launch of satellites to space it became clear that Iran has succeeded in building intercontinental ballistic missiles," the general testified, according to the paper. The successful launch of the Rasad satellite to space drew the attention of observers and foreign counterparts, the general reportedly testified.
The Safir missile is capable of transporting a satellite into space and indeed a ballistic missile that can reach beyond the earth's gravity into orbit. The missile has twice been vertically shot over the earth's atmosphere, the editorial says, "but if one day Iran decides that this missile should be shot parallel to the earth's orbit, the missile will actually be transformed into an intercontinental ballistic missile (that) has the capability to destroy targets in other continents."
"In other words," the editorial concludes,
"the fact that Iran currently possesses technology that can put satellites into orbit means that Iran has also obtained intercontinental ballistic missiles with solid fuel capabilities and that at any moment, this technology can be put to military use." Iranian officials recently announced that they have successfully developed the necessary technology to build and launch satellites designed to travel in an orbit 21,750 miles above the earth's equator -- and that, in the next few months, they will launch another rocket into space, this time carrying a monkey with a payload of 330 kilograms..
According to Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, a nuclear weapons expert who has served in the CIA,
"Historically, if a nation could put a large payload (hundreds of kilograms) into orbit, that has been treated as a milestone signifying that they have a military ICBM capability. We appear to have changed this rule for Iran's space program. If Western analysts today applied the same standards to Iran that we have applied to the USSR and China in the past, we would conclude that Iran already has an ICBM capability. "It seems that the Obama administration is unwilling to acknowledge this, perhaps not seeing it in its best interest, alluding that it still has time to negotiate," says Pry, who has also served with the EMP Commission and is now president of EMPact America.
The radicals ruling Iran have now passed a major threshold in both their nuclear and missile programs. Barring any military action, which seems unlikely, there is no stopping them. We only have ourselves to blame as it is now certain that the Jihadists in Tehran will have nuclear bombs with the delivery system to target any country on the planet. Though the West relies on the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, it will find how wrong this policy is with Iran.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/iran_commander_we_have_intercontinental_ballistic_missiles.html
See also:Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities(2004)http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=iran%20ballistic%20missile%20capability&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffpc.state.gov%2Fdocuments%2Forganization%2F39332.pdf&ei=GDf_Tt6vG46gsQKHqNGfAQ&usg=AFQjCNEs1uqsDLqA_ch195bt1bMvVDT_2AFootnotes
1. Rand Corp., Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East (Rand Corporation, 2009), p. 80 [back]
Claim: Iran is insisting on enriching uranium, with no economic justification. That proves Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Response: No, it doesn’t. Iran is building nuclear reactors, which cost a fortune to build but are worthless without fuel. And there is no ironclad way to guarantee a fuel supply if the fuel in question is not located in Iran. Iran recalls that after the Revolution the chief enrichment consortium, Eurodif of France, refused to deliver one gram of fuel to Iran, even though Iran owned 10 percent of the company.1
More to the point, perhaps, all kinds of governments pursue programs for political purposes that lack clear, ex-ante, cost-benefit rationale. Conservatives have complained about this tendency in our own government for decades. In Iran, enrichment has become for Iranians a matter of national entitlement and a source of pride in technological advancement not unlike our own moon landing—supported by reformers and hardliners alike. Five years of Bush Administration ultimatums and Western pressure have made enrichment an ongoing emblem of Iran’s independence and refusal to be cowed. Commercial unprofitability is beside the point.
Many of the people who “just know” that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon are the same people who “just knew” that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program in 2003. They were wrong. The U.S. intelligence community, which has looked at this issue closely, finds Iran’s intentions on nuclear weapons to be unclear, and possibly not yet determined.
Footnotes
1. Slavin, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies (2007), p. 36. [back]
Iranian Lobbyists Propaganda. IAEA says they have tested the devise to implode nuclear material and that they have refined it up to 20% so far which is 400% higher than needed for nuclear power. Only a fool would believe otherwise.
What’s New in the U.N. Nuclear Report? November 8, 2011 | 9:04pm.
Michael Adler
•What is new in the latest report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency about Iran’s controversial nuclear program?
The report takes the U.N. nuclear watchdog's accounting of Iran's nuclear program to a whole new level. It is the first time the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has provided so many details as well as a coherent narrative of how Iran has allegedly done work on learning how to make an atomic bomb.
Among key findings are:
•Iran has continued weaponization work since 2003, despite the U.S. intelligence estimate that Tehran stopped such research at that time
•Iran had a secret project to make enriched uranium
•Iran has designs for how to make the type of uranium metal needed for a bomb. It had also done dry runs, not including nuclear material, on how to make this metal
•Iran may have more advanced plans on how to put a bomb together than previously believed
•Iran had foreign help in working on the detonators needed for an implosion-type nuclear device
•Iran did computer simulations to see if it could make an implosion bomb work. It based this on high-explosive tests using tungsten, a non-nuclear material
•Iran has changed the names and places of organizations doing weapons work in order to avoid detection. But many of the staff members remain the same, including the director of Iran's nuclear weaponization effort, Mohsen Fakhrizadah.
http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2011/nov/08/what%E2%80%99s-new-un-nuclear-report
Claim:
Iran pursued covert R&D project on uranium conversion and enrichment that went on for years and was exposed only by an Iranian dissident group in August 2002. Iran then concealed and lied about its nuclear work to the IAEA.
Response:
It is certainly true that Iran initially concealed its program and later lied about it, suggesting that Iran was at least considering pursuing nuclear weapons at one point. It appears to be keeping that option open still. However, since the program was revealed in 2002, Iran is operating in a different environment of very close international scrutiny, making the risks of making a definitive move towards nuclear weapons far more difficult and risky for Iran.
Still, there are significant measures that could be put in place to make international scrutiny tighter and deterrence greater. The task now is to get in place a system of safeguards and surveillance that is so searching and comprehensive that Iran itself detemines that it will not be able to complete a weapons program without being detected early and stopped, thereby persuading Iran that it should satisfy itself with a peaceful nuclear program.
It bears mention that Iran has offered to accept very searching safeguards and surveillance in the context of a comprehensive agreement that respects its basic right to enrich for peaceful use. In fact, it suspended enrichment, accepted enhanced safeguards, and cooperated with the IAEA much more fully during the time (Oct. 2003-May 2005) that it thought there might be the prospect of such an agreement coming to fruition.
The IAEA Director General explains that the Annex is not a secret but rather a working draft not yet sufficiently vetted for publication. Its conclusions are drawn mainly from documents the agency has had in its possession since 2005 , but they serve as a reminder that knowledge of how to make at least a crude nuclear device is widely available . . .
Claim: IAEA has repeatedly declared that it cannot conclude that "there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran."
Response: Making this finding requires proving a negative and the IAEA has set a very high bar for doing so. The Lawyer’s Committee on Nuclear Policy reported in 2006 that the IAEA applies the same “unable to conclude” status to every country that had not accepted the Additional Protocol at that time, and to 40 nations that have accepted it.
This does not mean that Iran's conduct is no more worrisome than the conduct of other countries. It clearly is much more worrisome. The point is simply that lack of proof of innocence is not the same thing as proof of guilt, and a lack of an IAEA declaration of "no undeclared nuclear materials or activities" is not terribly probative in an of itself. The IAEA has declared, repeatedly, that it has found no evidence of Iranian diversion of nuclear material for illicit purposes.
Iran has never stopped it’s nuclear weapons research program and has played the UN like the Keystone Cops they are:Iran Whitewashing Nuclear Test Sitehttp://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149961Iran's Nuclear Programhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/nuclear_program/index.htmlClaim: Iran has forfeited its right to enrich uranium for any purpose.
Response: This is a popular misconception.1 Like other countries, Iran is entitled under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and that right has long been understood to encompass enrichment under safeguards.1 Nothing in the NPT or Iran's Safeguards Agreement supports the notion that a country is barred from enriching uranium if it has ever pursued a weapons program, even one halted years ago.
If Iran is willing to honor its legal responsibilities under its Safeguards Agreement and the NPT, there is no principled basis for denying Iran right’s to enrich or demanding that Iran permanently cede that right.
Footnotes
1. See, e.g., Remarks by Sec. of State Hilary Clinton on Meet the Press, July 26, 2009 ("You [Iran] have a right to pursue the peaceful use of civil nuclear power. You do not have a right to obtain a nuclear weapon. You do not have the right to have the full enrichment and reprocessing cycle under your control.") [back]
Why enrich it above the 5% necessary to 20%+?Claim: Allowing Iran to enrich uranium will set off a nuclear enrichment and arms race in the Middle East.
Response: Iran’s nuclear program predates the Iranian Revolution. Over decades of history, enrichment has become a national industry in Iran and a symbol of independence. None of these circumstances apply to other nations in the region, and there is no commercial incentive to pursue enrichment. In fact, other states in the region have proposed enrichment via multinational consortium. This would both defuse the Iran crisis and set a new standard for a multilateral fuel cycle that would benefit the global nonproliferation regime. If the concern is that Iran’s enriching will cause other nations in the region to want a weapon, we fail to see how allowing Iran to enrich uranium under full safeguards will somehow spark a nuclear arms race when Israel’s bomb has not done so. Israel is far more hated and feared throughout the region than Iran.
No one was worried about a peaceful Iran who was allied with the West getting nuclear power plants. It’s the Fanatical Islamic Twelvers of Iran who want to reshape the Middle East into their mold that worries the West AND the Sunni Arabs in the region.Claim: If Iran is allowed to accumulate a stockpile of enriched uranium at Natanz, they can seize it at any time and turn it into a bomb. Allowing Iran to enrich at Natanz will let Iran proliferate right under our nose.
Response: Not true. All the material produced at Natanz is low-enriched uranium that is unsuitable for weapons use. It is under IAEA seal and surveillance. And it is all fully accounted for. Any effort to seize or divert this material would be quickly detected and would provoke an international outcry with a very high likelihood of a forceful response, from Israel if not others.
Moreover, converting this low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade form would takes weeks if not months of further enriching, so there would be plenty of time to organize that response. Under these circumstances, a completely clandestine route would seem far more attractive to Iran than any breakout involving safeguarded facilities. Stopping enrichment at Natanz will do nothing to address the clandestine risk, and may well increase it by driving enrichment underground. Iran itself seems to realize the risk of using Natanz for a weaons program. That is likely why it constructed the Qom facility.
More propaganda! Again I repeat that only 5% of enriched uranium is needed to fuel a power plant. 20% CAN be used in a crude weapon but Iran is refining above that.
Iran Produces More 20% Pure Uraniumhttp://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150420Claim: Diplomacy has been tried. Iran won't negotiate in good faith on its nuclear program, unless we either impose or credibly threaten it with really tough econonomic sanctions.
Response:
Actually, diplomacy with the United States has not been tried. It is sanctions that have been tried and failed. For five years until nearly the end of its term, the Bush Administration refused to talk to Iran at all about nuclear issues -- because Iran would not comply with U.S. demands that it first suspend all enrichment. This strategy merely squandered time: while the U.S. sat silent, Iran continued to enrich.
It is true that the Europeans talked to Iran, and they didn’t make much progress. But this is hardly surprising. Without the United States – the world’s sole superpower and Iran’s chief nemesis – at the table, why should Iran give its best offer to Britain, France and Germany? They would just pocket Iran’s concession, which would become the starting point for later talks with the United States. more
Real diplomacy on this issue has not been tried, not by the United States, until Fall 2009. What has been tried is sanctions, and everyone agrees they have failed to achieve our objectives. They may well have set us back by galvanizing Iranian resistance. More of the same is not going to produce different results, and escalating the confrontation with a campaign for "crippling sanctions" will not only fail but backfire.
Footnotes
1. Following is the relevant text of the P5+1 offer to Iran as conveyed on June 16, 2008, largely reiterating a 2006 offer: “. . . the elements below [including support for light-water reactors, fuel supply guarantees and other incentives] are proposed as topics for negotiations between [the P5+1 countries and Iran], as long as Iran verifiably suspends its enrichment related and reprocessing activities . . .” (emphasis supplied). On any fair reading, this is not a specific offer so much as an outline for a negotiated settlement, discussion of which could not start until Iran had first met the Bush Administration’s precondition for talks: Iran must first suspend all enrichment immediately. This for Iran was a poison pill, whether intended as such or not.
This would all end if Iran cooperates fully with the IAEA and discontinue its refinement process beyond 5%.http://americanforeignpolicy.org/iran-k ... %A0%C2%A0
The award you get is the “Most Myths in One Post Award”. (Its a joke BTW, don't get all out of joint) 
