What happens after all the fear mongering that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons bunker turns out to be bunk?

U.N. inspectors found "nothing to be worried about" in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday.

Mohamed ElBaradei also told the New York Times that he was examining possible compromises to unblock a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and three major powers that has foundered over Iranian objections.

The nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to Western fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity.

ElBaradei was quoted in a New York Times interview as saying his inspectors' initial findings at the fortified site beneath a desert mountain near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom were "nothing to be worried about."

"The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things," ElBaradei, alluding to Tehran's references to the site as a fallback for its nuclear program in case its larger Natanz enrichment plant were bombed by a foe like Israel.

"It's a hole in a mountain," he said.

But, let's not let you get too comfortable about Iran...GuardianUK's Julian Borger comes up with a new scare:

The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Ooooh...booga booga booga! Two things that glare out for me: one, Borger cites the IAEA unpublished report without one single quotation. Two, Borger claims the "two point implosion" is "officially secret" in the US and UK, but how secret can it be when it has its own Wikipedia page?

The media really does think you're dumb and can't figure out teh Google.

September 28, 2009 News Corp

Heather: McCain makes three GOP senators now openly calling for regime change in Iran.

September 14, 2009 C-SPAN

On CBS's Face the Nation, John McCain is asked how the United States should react if North Korea refuses to allow the United States' Navy to board their vessel with a suspicious cargo. Bob Schieffer failed to ask McCain to address what he'd recommend doing if North Korean troops started pouring into South Korea in retaliation, if the United States followed the Senator's advice.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Point well taken.

Let’s talk about North Korea. What do you think the North Koreans are up to here? I mean, it seems like every time we make an overture to North Korea, nothing happens. It seems to get worse. Now we have, we’re told, a North Korean vessel with a suspicious cargo headed out. A U.S. ship, the USS John McCain , which is named for your father and your grandfather, is on patrol to intercept that ship, apparently. But what happens? The U.N. resolution says that they may try to stop that ship and ask permission to come aboard. What happens if they don’t give permission?

MCCAIN: Well, that’s the $64 question here, Bob. What happens if the ship doesn’t give them permission to board? And any ship, North Korean ship that has missiles or equipment or nuclear technology on board probably isn’t going to give that permission. And I might add that in recent testimony last week before Congress, our leaders testified that there is North Korean and Iranian cooperation on nuclear weapons and proliferation.

MCCAIN: So the Security Council measure is a half measure. It’s inadequate because right now apparently that ship may be going into a port at Myanmar, or if it went to any other unfriendly nation, then the course of action to be taken is to quote report it to the Security Council.

SCHIEFFER: Should we report it anyway?

MCCAIN: If we have hard evidence that that ship is carrying technology equipment missiles that are in gross violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions, I think we should board it. It’s going to contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations that pose a direct threat to the United States.

Now I would like for the United States to go back to the Security Council. But most of all, I’d like for China to step in and do what is in China’s interest not to have a nuclear armed aggressive Korea and a Japan which it will have to feel it will have to be nuclear armed and other nations in the region. It is in China’s interest -- China is the country that really has the influence and finally, as you know, there seems to be some transition of power which is always a very, very dangerous time where regimes of this sort are concerned.

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("Nothing serious . . . .really . . .honest!)

Around four in the morning on March 28, 1979, a series of events would eventually turn into one of the biggest Nuclear Power Plant disasters in U.S. History. Initial reports indicated nothing much had gone wrong. In fact, as the situation slowly came to light, officials still vehemently denied anything was other than routine. Attempts at spin and passing the accident off as "nothing to be concerned about" hid the reality that this was much more serious than previously thought.

For example, this exchange from a Spokesman for Metropolitan Edison:

"The plant is in a safe condition. The radiation levels at the site boundary are really only a tenth of the general emergency level where we usually get concerned. We do have our crews out. We're monitoring for airborne contamination. The amount we've fond is minimal. Very small traces of radioactivity has been released from the plant"

The tune would change dramatically by the next day.

John Amato:

Gordon Skene has a great series up on Newstalgia covering the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster. I love history and Gordon has been doing a "bang up" job so far.
If you want to hear more news reports, here are Parts II, III, and IV of the series.

Spencer Ackerman* has the details of Clinton's comments on Iran at her confirmation hearing yesterday. She repeated the line that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, just as Obama has done. The 2007 NIE saying exactly the opposite seems to have passed from the villagers' memory without a whimper, so "all options" are still on the table. And she very definitely didn't, even given multiple opportunities, say that the Obama administration will despatch and envoy to Iran in its first year. Although since the frontrunner for that job is rumored to be neocon-enabler Dennis Ross, I'm not sure whether to be thankful about that.

Hugely disappointing, as was Kerry's agreement talk of "big sticks". No wonder the Iranians call her "Madame AIPAC". With Obama seemingly giving more than just lip service to the anti-Iran pro-AIPAC lobby, the next Israeli leader won't even have to worry about calling up the American president to give his SecState her marching orders.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

[media=7096 showimage] (H/t David E) The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, when finally released after months of the Bush administration trying to get it changed without success, said that "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Since then every major Western media outlet and political leader, especially including Barack Obama, has done their level best to ignore that finding - well, after the wingnuts got over crowing about how it proved Bush's invasion of Iraq was a good thing, at least - yet there's not a shred of real evidence for doing so.

Much of the narrative which allows the consensus view of the entire US intelligence community to be ignorable centers around the infamous "laptop of death" and around statements last year at a private briefing by the IAEA's Oli Heinonen. However, the documents contained upon the laptop are of questionable provenance, probably at least in part forged by their provider - the MeK terrorist group - and in any case refer to programs from before 2003. Heinonen’s briefing likewise referred to programs from before 2003 - as it would, since it was based on those laptop documents, given to the IAEA by George Schulte so that Hoinonen would brief members and Schulte could then leak his notes of that briefing to the media establishing a stage of plausiblity between him and the information. However, the information given at that briefing was public knowledge even in 2005, something not even mentioned by David "Judy in Drag" Sanger at the NYT when he recycled his 2005 report on the laptop's information for his widely cited 2008 report on the briefing. By this weekend, Sanger had entirely dismissed the NIE and was willing to bend the IAEA's findings and briefings all out of shape in service of the narrative. David Sanger may be the finest stenographer for his "unofficially official" sources at the White House in the history of journalism.

The IAEA's assessment to date is in full agreement with the NIE: that there "is no evidence that the weapons program continued after 2004" but you'd be forgiven if you hadn't realized that, as much reporting on the subject has deliberately played games with tense. Given that's there's no evidence that Iran has a current nuclear weapons program, warmongers have been reduced to arguing that there's no proof positive that it doesn't. The inability to prove a negative, to prove "evidence of absence" was what got us into Iraq too, so they hope it serves again.

Unfortunately, Obama's recent statements would indicate that it will serve again. On Sunday he told George Stephanoupolis that "they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race".

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December 29, 2008 News Corp

Did anyone think that the people who managed to slant US analysis so badly that it was sure there were WMDs in Iraq would give up easily on agitating for their next war of choice, Iran? In their last months with free run of the corridors of power, the necons and Cheneyites are doing their best to torpedo Obama's diplomatic route for Iran, something Democratic hawks and AIPACers are only too happy to aid them in.

For over a year now, their aim has been to create "strategic ambiguity" - deliberately muddying the waters about Israeli and American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with the West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn't play ball. D.C. hawks have gotten on board to such an extent that it is already an accepted fact among the Very Serious Person set that Obama's idea of negotiation without preconditions will get exactly one shot, will fail, and then the bombs will begin to fall.

There's more of the same in Haaretz this Thursday, reporting a planted story that Obama will extend the U.S. nuclear umbrella to Israel, which has plenty of nukes itself. The story is sourced to a single someone "close to the new administration". Whether that source is someone like Dennis Ross, Susan Rice or Tony Lake - all of whom have been cozy with the "real men go to Tehran" faction recently - or actually outside Obama's nascent administration looking in, even perhaps a part of the Bush team's transition liason, is unclear. Haaretz might even be the target of deliberate disinformation or making the story up out of whole cloth in a way that can't be proven. But one of those Real Men, Jim Geraghty, is beside himself with glee that the idea was first put out there by another Manly Man, Charles Krauthammer, back in April.

When he proposed it, liberals declared this idea was evidence that Krauthammer is insane. When Hillary Clinton echoed the proposal, Keith Olbermann said it was "far further to the right than John McCain. This may be far further to the right than the Bush administration policy about the Middle East, which you didn't think was physically possible." Rachel Maddow said it was "hard to imagine a conception of American interests broad enough to make this a prudent promise to make to the world, particularly to this volatile part of the world."

Hear that, netroots? From Krauthammer's column to Obama administration policy. Glad you put all that effort into beating McCain, huh?

The proposal is, of course, insane and idiotic, as Haaretz notes even some in the Bush administration admit.

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A year ago this month, armed raiders broke into the Pelindaba nuclear research facility in South Africa, where that nation stores its weapons-grade nuclear material, in circumstances that strongly suggest inside knowledge and even insider complicity in the raid. They shot an employee in the chest and made a clean escape from the supposedly high security facility, and still know one knows who they were and there aren't even any worthwhile leads to tracking them down.

Tonight, 60 Minutes talks to Anton Gerber, the shot employee, who only deepens the mystery.

The raiders had detailled knowledge of the security and layout of the plant.

They had breached and shut off a 10,000-volt barbed-wire fence and eluded security cameras and guards at one of the country’s most secure facilities.

As the attackers approached the door, Gerber called security and said they were under attack. "It shouldn't have taken more than three minutes to get there," says Gerber. He says it took 24 minutes to respond to his call. Gerber has filed suit against the Pelindaba facility for damages. Another fact he finds suspicious is that the police never questioned him until 60 Minutes began investigating the story. "It is strange," Gerber tells Pelley.

Theories have included a raid by terrorists, criminals and some kind of highly organised "lover's triangle" revenge attack on Gerber himself. But there have been no arrests, no suspects named, no clues. And what the 60 Minutes piece doesn't reveal is that the raiders almost got what they came for. The NYT, last year, reported:

when four gunmen burst into the room. Mr. Gerber pushed his fiancée under a desk. The attackers shot him in the chest, grabbed a computer and fled, but abandoned their booty as they came under assault by guards.

At no point did the raiders attempt to seize nuclear material - but that computer seems to have been important to their plans. They went right to it, grabbed it and ran. Perhaps it contained details of how South Africa built its nuclear weapons, perhaps incriminating details of their suspected partners in that bomb-building project.

But whatever the real motives and real identities of the raiders, Pelindaba underscored the harsh reality that in facilities across the globe nuclear material is secured, but not all that strongly. Plants in the former Soviet Union, in Pakistan and in South America are judged as especially vulnerable, and could hand a non-state actor - a terrorist group - the knowledge and materials for bomb making. It's a threat that the Nunn-Lugar Act of 1991 and the subsequent Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, focused on the former Soviet states, has tried to address even as the Bush administration has tried to underfund it and to use it as a bargaining piece in posturing over Georgia. It's a subject we know is close to Barrack Obama's heart, as he's seen for himself how loose the security at such facilities can be.

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The IAEA has produced its latest report on Iran and there are few surprises therein, certainly no "smoking gun".

"To date, the results of the environmental samples taken at FEP and PFEP2, and the operating records for FEP3, indicate that the plants have been operating as declared (i.e. less than 5.0% U-235 enrichment). Since March 2007, twenty unannounced inspections have been conducted at FEP"...."The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran."

Most importantly, the IAEA guarantees that all known activities are under Agency seal and surveillance, and cannot be used to produce a weapon without Agency knowledge.

That doesn't stop the New York Times publishing a wonderful bit of hyperventilation involving (as is usual) the fine journalism of David "Judy Miller In Drag" Sanger and Bill Broad.

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country’s main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium

But the really important part, underplayed by that lede and the headline "Iran Said to Have Nuclear Fuel for One Weapon", is that there's no sign of a "breakout"- kicking out the inspectors, breaking seals and switching of cameras - which would be a dead giveaway. It would take months thereafter (about half the time it took to enrich the stuff to LEU) to enrich that LEU to weapons grade, and that's to say nothing of actually building a bomb with it afterwards. A minimum timeframe is in the order of a year and a half, in which the West could decide what to do next.

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Add Mohammed el-Baradei to the list of those welcoming Obama's statements that he'd talk to Iran.

"If there is a direct dialogue between the United States and Iran, I think Iran will be more forthcoming with the agency," IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said.

"(A) political opening will also convince Iran to work with us to solve remaining technical issues," he told a news conference in Prague after meeting Czech Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

"That political component of the (Iran) issue requires in my view a direct dialogue with Iran and that's why I am very encouraged by President-elect Obama's statement that he is ready to engage Iran in a direct dialogue without preconditions.

El-Baradei, who was one of those that said plainly that Iraq had no extant WMD and was thanked for being right by a Bush administration push to replace him, also underlined that, to date, there is no proof Iran is seeking nuclear weapons either.

We are able to verify all their declared activities, we are able to verify their enrichment programme, which is a good thing. But we are still not able to move forward on clarifying some of the outstanding issues related to alleged studies that could have some linkage to a possible military dimension."

Iran says its nuclear plans are to make electricity so it can export more oil and gas.

"There is a lot of concern about Iran, not today but about Iran in future... whether once they develop the technology, what are they going to use it for, whether they will go for nuclear weapons," said ElBaradei.

"That is the concern shared by the Security Council." [Emphaisis Mine - C]

There's a lot in that snippet to unpack.

First of all, there's the unequivocal statement that everything the IAEA has so far checked has come up clean - a civilian program only and one that cannot now be re-directed to military uses without IAEA foreknowledge...

That warning period would be at least six months and possibly a whole year long, so why is anyone still talking about keeping military options on the table? Saber rattling is counter-productive in such a circumstance - there's plenty of time to put talk of such options back in process if Iran ever makes a move to re-enrich to bomb-grade but for now there is no such program.

Secondly - the "alleged" studies el-Baradei refers to are all from 2003 and earlier, from a time when US intelligence says Iran did have a nuke program, in a very early stage, which has since been shut down. Notice all those conditionals?

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    I've some bad news for progressives - Iran isn't going to stop enriching uranium to reactor fuel standards. Both Iran's UN Envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh and Foreign Minister Mottaki have now said earlier reports that Iran would consider a halt to domestic enrichment if a "legally-binding instrument for assurance of supply" was available were based upon a misunderstanding. Talking to Iran's FARS news agency, Soltanieh said he had only talked about how, in the past, other nations broke their promises to supply Iran with enriched uranium. He said he rejects "whatever is reflected otherwise."

That's a blow to progressives who had hoped that exactly such an incentive could be used in diplomatic negotiations by an Obama administration, but isn't at all surprising. As Soltanieh pointed out, America and France both reneged on promises to supply Iran with nuclear fuel in the past. Russia, too, has temporarily suspended then restarted fuel supplies recently, playing the by now familiar game of great power energy politics and reminding Iran of just how dependent it is on Russian largess at the UNSC.

If George W. Bush were president of Iran, he certainly wouldn't suspend enrichment for any reason. Neither would John McCain or Barack Obama. All have backed the concept of domestic energy independence from the whims of other nations, from vagaries of resource availability and from intentional use of energy resources as leverage over America's actions. Why should Iran be any different?

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    Most folks missed it, because the vote came just before the bailout bill, but on Wednesday the US Senate voted 86-13 to approve the India 123 bill, giving India access to US nuclear know-how and materials for the first time since India conducted a nuclear weapons test three decades ago. Both presidential candidates voted for the bill and the House had already passed it 298 to 117. The roll call for the Senate vote shows that Boxer, Byrd, Feingold, Leahy and Sanders were among the few "Nay" votes.

Arms control experts aren't at all happy with the deal:

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, blasted the deal as a "nonproliferation disaster." India, along with Pakistan and Israel, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. India conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, despite international outrage, and continues to produce fissile material. Kimball said the deal "does not bring India into the nonproliferation mainstream" because it "creates a country-specific exemption from core nonproliferation standards that the United States has spent decades to establish."

But Bush is:

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    John McCain's plan to build 45 new nuclear reactors could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions in defaulted loan guarantees.

The Republican presidential nominee wants the plants built in time to help the U.S. meet a 29 percent increase in electricity demand by 2030. Industry estimates put their cost at $7 billion each ... Investment bankers, citing the industry's cost overruns in the 1980s, say they won't finance its long-sought ``nuclear renaissance'' without federal backing.

``Loan guarantees get reactors built, simply put,'' said Kevin Book, senior vice president and energy specialist at the Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. investment banking firm in Arlington, Virginia.

... Taxpayers are on the hook only if borrowers default. A 2003 Congressional Budget Office report said the default rate on nuclear construction debts might be as high as 50 percent, in part because of the projects' high costs.

``The nuclear industry has been aggressively going after taxpayer-backed loan guarantees because nuclear technology cannot stand on its own two feet in the marketplace,'' said Allison Fisher, an energy policy analyst for the nonprofit consumer group Public Citizen in Washington.

Indeed, rising construction costs hit nuclear plants doubly hard because of safety considerations - which means a new nuke plant costs two to four times as much per kilowatt generated as any other kind of power. And with a total build cost at current prices of around $315 billion, defaults rates of 50% and more would involve taxpayers in yet more corporate giveaways and deficit spending. The potential costs in this plan alone outrun all the savings McCain says he can make by cutting earmark spending. The only way to make it viable is for consumers to pay up to four times more for their power.

Isn't it about time John McCain came clean about the pitfalls of his nuclear energy plan and explained why, if simply getting away from using oil is his priority, he won't turn up for Senate votes on tax credits for renewable energy generation?