2009-01-11 NYTimes Story: Iran Close To Nuclear Bomb

2009-01-11 Daniel Neun Radio Utopie \translations\translations/German\potential US attack on Iran\New York Times http://www.radio-utopie.de/2009/01/11/NYTimes-Story-Iran-vor-Atombombe NYTimes-Story: Iran vor Atombombe NYTimes Story: Iran Close To Nuclear Bomb human translation by Robat, with editing by Woozle; machine translations: Google The terrible plot takes its course. Just now it has become public, that the US has conducted massive weapon shipments to Israel through German participation before the beginning of the Gaza War, and that subsequently GBU-39 'bunker busters' have been used by Israel on the Gaza Strip. According to the Reuters news agency there will be another massive shipment of weapons from the US in the next days via the same German company. And immediately the New York Times publishes a story which claims the exact opposite, namely that the Bush administration supposedly refused to ship 'bunker busters' to Israel in 2008. Furthermore, the article turns all statements made by US-Intelligence services in 2007 upside down, and proclaims, that Iran is close to having a nuclear bomb. Mere hours before the article appeared, the German joke of an SPD chancellor candidate and Foreign Minister Frank Steinmeier was sitting in Cairo and declared that German 'experts' would now help Cairo/Egypt with effectively checking/controlling the difficult border to the Gaza Strip." Apparently meant as a distraction from this interesting message, Steinmeier voiced concern, that Iran  could become 'the great winner from the Gaza conflict', and that he perceives that as a "dangerous development".

The NYTimes Story
The article by David E. Sanger published this night in the New York Times is titled: "US refuses to support Israeli airstrike on Iranian nuclear facility". In this article, which looks promising for becoming heavily quoted in the coming days and weeks, several stories are built upon each other and are forming a bigger, round story, but let's take one thing at a time...

Story No. 1
"According to leading American and Foreign officials", President Bush supposedly refused the shipment of special 'bunker busters' - bombs which explode underground, designed especially for destroying subterranean facilities - to Israel. These had been requested by the 'Israelis', or rather the Olmert administration, in order to singlehandedly attack Iran.

Commentary
If we assume, that these bunker busters are equipped with conventional warheads, it would be in complete contrast to what the militaries of Washington and Jerusalem have been preaching for years, namely, that Iran's subterranean facilities cannot be cracked with conventional warheads. Because with that argument Israel's government and military have been demanding a nuclear attack on Iran for years now. By the way, Seymour Hersh wrote on this topic in The Iran Plans on April 17th 2006, that the Pentagon (then under Rumsfeld) had offered the staff of the Bush/Cheney administration the explicit use of nuclear weapons, specifically nuclear bunker busters type B61-11, against the Iranian Natanz (natans) plant. If we now assume that the bunker busters mentioned in the Times story are nuclear weapons, it could be the B61-11 type. According to Hersh, high ranked militaries were opposing a nuclear attack on Iran back then. Thereupon, according to Hersh, the 'Defense Science Board', an adivsory committee employed by Rumsfeld, promised the production of a new type of B61 nuclear bombs with bigger explosive force and less fallout released after deployment. And as luck would have had it: The National Nuclear Security Administration (which, amusingly enough, is part of the Ministry of Energy) proudly proclaimed two days ago the return of the modified new versions of the B61 nuclear bomb, including bunker buster version 61 mod 11 to the active arsenal of the US military, as the end point of an eight-year project. On November 5th last year, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had publicly announced new nuclear tests and the development of new nuclear weapons such as 'mini-nukes' for deployment on the battlefield. These could also come to use as projectiles or aircraft bombs to annihilate subterranean targets, such as subterranean operations which produce nuclear weapons. A well-staged threat. Two days ago it became public that a German company had massively delivered US weaponry to Israel on December 15th - 2.6 million kilograms of explosive materials in total. Then on December 29, Jerusalem Post reported that Israel's military had been using GBU 39 bunker busters (conventional warheads) in its bombarding of the Gaza Strip. This non-nuclear type of bunker busters was also mentioned in 2007 as a potential weapon for attacking Iran. And according to Reuters, there will soon be another shipment of US-weaponry via the same German transporting and shipping company. The contents of this shipment are bound to arrive in the next days and had been ordered on December 31st according to the shipping documents. Which means that if the bunker busters mentioned in the NYTimes story really are nukes, then it may be theoretically possible (though not very probable), that the Bush administration really refused the shipment of these weapons to Israel. But if those are bunker busters with conventional warheads, then the story is a bold lie. Even Congress approved the selling of 1000 GBU-39 to Israel in September 2008. Just as a reminder: Israel's government/military has used phosphorus bombs, cluster bombs and uranium bullets in the Gaza Strip. And in the meantime nobody except Israel's military is doubting that these weapons have been being used.

Story No. 2
Israel's government suppsedly has tried to acquire fly-over-rights for Iraq in order to attack Iran on its own. This was supposedly not granted by the US.

Commentary
This story is being told and told again in regular intervals. But to me such stories are rubbish like 'I can barely hold back my companion'. Israel's military may suffer from an obtrusive overestimation of its abilities, but it really lacks the capabilities to land a single bomb into Iran's nuclear laboratories. For the Iranians have guarded their facilities with a whole lineup of anti-air weaponry, among them tor missile systems. And furthermore, Israel's military dislikes to attack on its own and always wishes for someone else to do the job for them. Unless of course there is a completely defenseless area, crowded with civilians, which can be bombed back into the stone age. This they just barely manage to do on their own.

Story No. 3
The Bush administration has really sent covert commandos to Iran to sabotage the 'nuclear infrastructure', instead of shipping bunker busters (nuclear or not) to Israel in 2008.

Commentary
This story is so old hat; you can't even pull a rabbit from this hat anymore. In 'The Iran Plans', Seymour Hersh wrote about such plans/doings/attempts of the Bush administration already in 2006. In Preparing The Battlefield on July 29th 2008 the New Yorker's investigative journalist furthermore reported details of the White House's covert wars against Iran and Pakistan, even past the Pentagon and field commanders. The constant rehashing of secretly-secret-top-secret operations which somehow make it into the New York Times serve the apparent purpose to be reposted/copied worldwide, but without a comment. In the process, this serves to suggestively imply that Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program running. But of course without a hint of an actual proof. But who needs something old-fashioned like that nowadays anyway? You simply call anyone who is talking rubbish (such as the press for example) a medium. Sounds much more trustworthy now, doesn't it?

Story No. 4
Officials of the Ministry of Defense under Robert Gates supposedly have painfully convinced George Bush that an open attack would not stop Iran's 'nuclear efforts'.

Commentary
Uh-oh, there it is again: Iran's nuclear weapon's programme. The whole rubbish surrounding it only serves as a diversion.

Story No. 5
Although last year international inspectors (apparently the IAEA) have found 3,800 centrifuges for uranium enrichment (for civil uses), US-Intelligence officials now 'estimate' that Iran possesses 4,000 - 5,000 centrifuges. Those will be enough to produce every eight months enough uranium for a nuclear bomb. A 'leading intelligence official' on the other hand is being quoted that it will be 'improbable' to be able to 'still stop' the Iranians from constructing a nuclear bomb.

Commentary
Hwoaaheeheeheeeeeheeehee. 2006 it was written in 'The Iran Plans', that in Natans alone "there is a subterranean area which has room for 50,000 centrifuges... this number of centrifuges could deliver enough enriched uranium for 20 nuclear warheads a year." This is nothing but the mightbe-couldbe-wouldbe-possibly-potentially. And soon this will have been printed and in every citizen's robber-pistol postil to be chanted as a mantra. (Translator note: robber-pistol/RÃ¤uberpistole is an idiom for overexaggeration of facts, similar to telling a "yarn".)

Story No. 6
'Others' in the Bush administration supposedly disagreed with this estimation, for (pay attention) 'the Israelis' supposedly would have attacked Iran quite a while ago, if they didn't believe that the American efforts (sabotage of the Iranian 'nuclear weapons programme') had been effective.

Story No. 7
Mr. Obama now will have to decide whether he wants to continue the program begun by Mr. Bush (the sabotaging of the 'Iranian nuclear weapons program').

Commentary
Mr. Citizen, aren't you also agreeing to the notion, that Mr. West needs to be protected from Mr. Islamist-Fundamentalist-Terrorist-Extremist, simply by starting another war of aggression?

Story No. 8
Doing so would make Mr. Obama appear as weak.

Commentary
Understand, you soft target?

Story No. 9
The entire National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007, the report of all US Intelligence according to which Iran had stopped a suspected nuclear weapons programme in 2003, is suppsedly not wrong, but instead completely different. It was supposedly the 'decisive conclusions' in the document which seemed obvious for the assertion of the report, but those were supposedly only the conclusions and facts which were publicly released. There are supposedly still 140 pages of classified material, in which it is supposedly stated that there was a 'suspicion' that Iran would be having 10 or 15 'nuclear-related facilities' which have never been accessible to the inspectors. And in those facilities Iran suppsedly enriches uranium, and builds weapons or centrigfuges.

Commentary
Maybe all of life is just an illusion. Let me think about that.

Story No. 10
An interesting story. Here the author of this NY-Times article, David E. Sanger, claims without either source or literal quotation that Robert Gates of all people supposedly had said that the NIE-report badly presented the evidence and 'under emphasized' Iran's enrichment activities, while overemphasizing the shutdown of a weapons programme which can easily be reactivated. This is immediately followed by a quote of Gates from an interview in which he stated, that he had never ever seen a NIE which affects US diplomacy, for the people supposedly have concluded, that the military option was off the table now.

Commentary
It was not necessarily so, that Gates had been extruded by the Baker Commission in November 2006 to become Rumsfeld's successor and to act as a stirrer in front of the Bush-Cheney Administration. His job was rather to guard the 'cult' in the White House. It is also improbable, that former CIA-man Gates would talk like that about a NIE because he knows exactly how they are made, especially the NIE 2007. Nonetheless, the job of this Pentagon boss is that of an executive gang-leader of school-yard louts, whom all 6 billion children have to be afraid of if he doesn't like them. Threats and war are part of the business. A business which a US Minister of Defense has to do in accordance to the interests of both his empire and his Caesar who had been elected under dubious circumstances. It also gets mentioned right away, that Mr. Olmert in Israel appears to be highly disappointed because the Bush-government did not deal with the Iran problem during its reign. This speaks for itself. Nonetheless the article (though a little unwillingly) mentions, that a spokesperson of Gates stated, that a military strike against Iran's facilities would be 'nothing we nor anyone else should pursue at the moment.'

Story no. 11
In Switzerland, an engineer of the nuclear black-market network of Pakistani Abdul Qadeer Khan has suppsedly 'turned over' and with his help, erroneous nuclear technology was supposedly sent to Iran. Subsequently several centrifuges in Iran supposedly exploded and Iran spoke of sabotage.

Comment
In the article Operation Merlin on April 6th 2008 we reported excessively about the incident. The Swiss engineer is most apparently Urs Tinner. Except that in 2005, New York Times reporter James Risen came to the conclusion in his explosive publication "State Of War" that the US had indeed sent Iran nuclear weapons' in the year 2000. And those plans were so obviously erroneous that they were easily to correct. The goal of it all was to put a toothpick in the hand of the far too inferior Persian school boy for the purpose of justifiably and morally correctly murdering him with your bread knife. The moment when 70 million Iranians would indeed possess mere parts of a functioning nuclear weapon, these 70 million Iranians would get attacked by nuclear weapons, which is as sure as eggs is...ahh forget it.

Story no. 12
An until now 'lesser known Iranian professor named Mohsen Fakrizadeh' is supposedly 'deeply involved in ambitions to develop a nuclear warhead for Iran'. This is supposedly mentioned in 'classified parts of US-intelligence reports'. A few lines further in the article, it is mentioned that in the classified part of NIE 2007, Mr. Fakrizadeh has been identified as 'manager of projects 110 and 111. According to the presentation of the head of the IAEA, those were the names of two attempts of the Iranians to build a nuclear warhead for a missile.

Commentary
A derivation of the argumentation building on the newly re-interpreted NIE 2007 and another attempt to create a new threat with a new name from nothingness. And David Sanger mentions also that the IAEA admitted, that the evidence for the existence of these programs/projects was murky.

Story no. 13
A document which would hint at the existence of 'Mr. Fakrizadeh's projects' (which until just then didn't exist) was supposedly shown last year(?!) in 'Chronology of a missile's launch' during a meeting of IAEA-workers in Vienna. Near the end you supposedly could see a warhead detonating 650 yards above the ground, which approximately equals the altitude of the Hiroshima bomb upon detonation. According to the NIE2007, as it says now, the projects 110 and 111 (which have never existed) may have been discontinued, but there is a 'fear among intelligence organizations' that in the case of the reactivation of these projects, they will be completely in the dark about it.

Commentary and Conclusion
Bullshit. Next try, guys.

A tale of Iran's nuclear ambitions, spun by the New York Times, is methodically unraveled.   