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posted by martyb on Monday October 23 2017, @02:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the We-have-always-been-at-war-with-Eurasia dept.

Iran Doesn't Have a Nuclear Weapons Program. Why Do Media Keep Saying It Does?

When it comes to Iran, do basic facts matter? Evidently not, since dozens and dozens of journalists keep casually reporting that Iran has a "nuclear weapons program" when it does not—a problem FAIR has reported on over the years (e.g., 9/9/15). Let's take a look at some of the outlets spreading this falsehood in just the past five days:

Business Insider (10/13/17): "The deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aims to incentivize Iran to curb its nuclear weapons program by lifting crippling international economic sanctions."

New Yorker (10/16/17): "One afternoon in late September, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called a meeting of the six countries that came together in 2015 to limit Iran's nuclear weapons program."

Washington Post (10/16/17): "The administration is also considering changing or scrapping an international agreement regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program."

CNN (10/17/17): "In reopening the nuclear agreement, [Trump] risks having Iran advance its nuclear weapons program at a time when he confronts a far worse nuclear challenge from North Korea that he can't resolve."

The problem with all of these excerpts: There is no documentation that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 23 2017, @01:55PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 23 2017, @01:55PM (#586321) Journal

    Any vaguely wealthy country with a functioning military and intelligence service runs all kinds of programs on as many 'what if' scenarios you can think of, it is in the national interest to prepare and plan for things even if there is no imminent intent to commission an actual operation to build or use the equipment required for it.

    This goes beyond what-if. I found the 2011 IAEA report [isis-online.org] in question. Look through appendix C. We have stuff like

    Information made available to the Agency by a Member State, which the Agency has been able to examine directly, indicates that Iran made progress with experimentation aimed at the recovery of uranium from fluoride compounds (using lead oxide as a surrogate material to avoid the possibility of uncontrolled contamination occurring in the workplace).

    In addition, although now declared and currently under safeguards, a number of facilities dedicated to uranium enrichment (the Fuel Enrichment Plant and Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz and the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant near Qom) were covertly built by Iran and only declared once the Agency was made aware of their existence by sources other than Iran. This, taken together with the past efforts by Iran to conceal activities involving nuclear material, create more concern about the possible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran.

    It's worth noting as well that Iran was conducting uranium enrichment activities at Natanz as late as 2013 [nti.org]. And the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant [wikipedia.org] is buried inside a mountain. There's a lot of effort over the last decade by the Iranian military to protect its enriched uranium production, which wouldn't make sense for the oft claimed medical purposes (not to mention the volume of enriched uranium that would be produced).