The only problem with Iran’s nuclear enrichment attempts could come if there is a prospect that Iran is lying when it says they are for nuclear energy. Here’s the problem: there is not merely a prospect, but a virtual certainty, that they are lying. It’s not that Iran is not building any nuclear power stations (it is, and the first goes into energy production very soon).

Not only has Iran been constantly obstructive to the IAEA (which has never stopped civil nuclear power projects), IAEA inspectors found documents in Iranian nuclear research facilities that try to solve the problem of fashioning Uranium into a sphere, a problem which never occurs in nuclear power plants but must be solved in order to make a working bomb.

Firstly, in my initial comment I merely pointed out that Gordon Brown’s Freudian slip, for such I think it was, was not in my opinion all that significant, as when the UK government diplomatically refers to Iran’s “nuclear programme” what they really mean is what they believe there to be a “nuclear weapons programme”, and so I don’t believe that Gordon Brown actually saying what his government actually thinks is in itself all that significant. I wasn’t trying to endorse the UK government’s position, this was just my world weary way of saying that nothing has changed with this statement.

In my second comment in responding to Justin I merely presented evidence to show that the NIE report was not to my mind an exoneration of the Iranian position as it has often been painted, and then reiterated my initial point. That is all. I could have made my life easier by just nodding along, but it’s not in my nature.

I don’t have any evidence to show that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme, but that’s fine, because I am alleging no such thing. Suspicious? Yes; while the IAEA still has a job to do, while they report questions unanswered, while Iran is not 100% compliant and transparent and until the IAEA give Iran a clean bill of health. While I may admire others’ touching faith in the word of the Iranian government I personally don’t know how you cannot be to some degree suspicious; lack of evidence does not mean lack of suspicions. And I am, in general, something of a cynic, which in practice means I tend not to take at face value the pronouncements of religious and/or political leaders, be they from the UK, US, Iran or anywhere else. That is just my way but others are entitled to their credulity, it bothers me not.

End of message.

I’m too stupid to notice that a comment authors name appears before the comment, not after.

When I’ve returned from wiping egg off my face perhaps Quinn could address the point?

That’s interesting, given that neither the U.S. spooks nor the IAEA have found any evidence of such a weapons program.

Especially so, given Ayatollah Khamenei’s decree forbidding the production, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons and Ayatollah Kashani saying the same thing.

Perhaps Justin can explain why he thinks the words of the Supreme Leader and an Ayatollah actually count for nothing in a theocracy, and spell out the basis for his numerous “legitimate suspicions”?

Quinn’s latest blog post… Physical Graffiti

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program;”

But

“We judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years (because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in the Estimate, however, DOE and the NIC assess with only moderate confidence that the halt in those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program.)”

And

“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”

So I think that the NIC report is a less ringing endorsement than is often assumed, and I think legitimate suspicions abound. But that doesn’t affect my intended point; that while Brown meant to say “nuclear programme”, he always meant to mean “nuclear weapons programme”.