Is Iran Running a Bluff?

Did Robert Gibbs let the cat out of
the bag?

Last week, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told
the world that Iran, unable to get fuel rods from the
West for its U.S.-built reactor, which makes medical
isotopes, had begun to enrich its own uranium to 20
percent.

From his perch in the West Wing,
Gibbs scoffed:

"He (Ahmadinejad)
says many things, and many of them turn out to be
untrue. We do not believe they have the capability to
enrich to the degree to which they now say they are
enriching."

But wait a minute. If Iran does not "have the capability" to enrich to 20 percent for fuel rods,
how can Iran enrich to 90 percent for a bomb?

What was Gibbs implying?

Is he confirming reports that
Iran`s centrifuges are breaking down or have been
sabotaged? Is he saying that impurities, such as
molybdenum, in the feed stock of Iran`s centrifuges at

Natanz are damaging the centrifuges and
contaminating the uranium?

What explains Gibbs` confidence?
Perhaps this.

According to a

report last week by David Albright and Christina
Walrond of the Institute for Science and International
Security, "Iran`s
problems in its centrifuge programme are greater than
expected. … Iran is unlikely to deploy enough gas
centrifuges to make enriched uranium for commercial
nuclear power reactors (Iran`s stated nuclear goal) for
a long time, if ever, particularly if (U.N.) sanctions
remain in force." [Iran`s
Gas Centrifuge Program: Taking Stock,
 February 11,
2010]

Thus, ISIS is saying Iran cannot
make usable fuel for the nuclear power plant it is
building, and Gibbs is saying Iran lacks the capability
to make fuel rods for its research reactor.

Which suggests Iran`s vaunted
nuclear program is a busted flush.

ISIS insists, however, that Iran
may still be able to build a bomb. Yet, to do that, Iran
would have to divert nearly all of its low-enriched
uranium at Natanz, now under U.N. watch, to a new
cascade of centrifuges, enrich that to 90 percent, then
explode a nuclear device.

Should Iran do that, however, it
would have burned up all its bomb-grade uranium and lack
enough low-enriched uranium for a second test. And
Tehran would be facing a stunned and shaken Israel with
hundreds of nukes and an America with thousands, without
a single nuke of its own.

Is Iran running a bluff? And if
Gibbs and Albright are right, how long can Iran keep up
this pretense of rapid nuclear progress?

Which brings us to the declaration
by Ahmadinejad on the 31st anniversary of the Islamic
Revolution, which produced this headline in The New York
Times:


"Iran Boasts of
Capacity to Make Bomb Fuel."

Accurate as far as it went, this
headline was so incomplete as to mislead. For here is
what Ahmadinejad said in full:

"When we say that
we don`t build nuclear bombs, it means that we won`t do
so because we don`t believe in having it. … The
Iranian nation is brave enough that if one day we wanted
to build nuclear bombs, we would announce it publicly
without being afraid of you.

"Right now in
Natanz we have the capability to enrich to more than 20
percent and to more than 80 percent, but because we
don`t need to, we won`t do so."

On Friday, Ahmadinejad sounded like

Ronald Reagan:
"We believe that
not only the Middle East but the whole world should be
free of nuclear weapons, because we see such weapons as
inhumane."

Now, if as Albright suggests,
Tehran cannot produce fuel for nuclear power plants, and
if, as Gibbs suggests, Iran is not capable of enriching
to 20 percent for fuel for its research reactor, is
Ahmadinejad, in renouncing the bomb, making a virtue of
necessity?

After all, if you can`t build them,
denounce them as inhumane.

Last December, however, the
Times of London

reported it had a secret document, which
"intelligence
agencies" dated to early 2007, proving that Iran was
working on the final component of a
"neutron
initiator," the trigger for an atom bomb.

If true, this would leave egg all
over the faces of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies whose
December 2007 consensus was that Iran stopped seeking a
bomb in 2003.

The
Times credited
an "Asian
intelligence service" for having ably assisted with
its story.

U.S. intelligence, however, has not
confirmed the authenticity of the document, and Iran
calls it a transparent forgery. When former CIA man

Phil Giraldi sounded out ex-colleagues still in the
trade, they, too, called the
Times`
document a forgery.

Shades of Saddam seeking yellowcake
from Niger.

Are the folks who lied us into war
on Iraq, to strip it of weapons it did not have, now
trying to lie us into war on Iran, to strip it of
weapons it does not have?

Maybe the Senate should find out
before voting sanctions that will put us on the road to
such a war, which would fill up all the empty beds at
Walter Reed.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to
VDARE.COM readers; his book State
of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America, can
be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost
the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.