Monday, March 10, 2003

[11:36 AM] What about Iran? I’ve written that here several time before—well before North Korea surpassed it signaling that it wouldn’t be the forgotten child in the Axis of Evil. This WP article reports that Iran’s uranium enrichment effort is coming right along, and they’re doing it legally, adhering to their NPT obligations for IAEA safeguards.

The article quotes Colin Powell

“Here we suddenly discover that Iran is much further along, with a far more robust nuclear weapons development program than anyone said it had,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “It shows you how a determined nation that has the intent to develop a nuclear weapon can keep that development process secret from inspectors and outsiders, if they really are determined to do it.”

Without seeing the show and hearing his tone, I can’t be certain how incredulous Powell actually sounds. But if he does sound that way, I can’t understand why. Isn’t this exactly the same strategy that Iraq, and North Korea pursued? If plutonium separation is inconvenient, go the uranium enrichment route. In fact if Iran is indeed intending to use enriched uranium for weapons and not power, their strategy would be very similar to Iraq’s initial strategy—stay within the confines of your NPT obligations and subvert fissile material under the noses of IAEA inspectors. Why does Colin Powell sound so surprised by this?

# posted 11:39 AM