A Blast From the Past, and Maybe the Future

Does this news story bring back memories, or what? Iran is arranging to buy yellowcake in Africa:

A leaked intelligence report suggests Iran will be awarded with exclusive access to Zimbabwe’s uranium in return for providing the country with fuel.
The report – compiled by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog – said Iran’s Foreign and Co-operative Ministers had visited Zimbabwe to strike a deal, and sent engineers to assess uranium deposits. …
Uranium ore, or yellow cake, can be converted to a uranium gas which is then processed into nuclear fuel or enriched to make nuclear weapons. …
Zimbabwe’s uranium stocks consist of an estimated 455,000 tons at Kanyemba, north of Harare. One metallurgist with knowledge of the deposit said it would take two to three years of development before it produced uranium and it would be exhausted in about five years.

Iran, of course, takes the long view. That report should be read in tandem with the Jerusalem Post’s story titled “New Evidence of Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions.” I don’t believe I had previously heard about the new National Intelligence Estimate to which the Post refers:

On March 1, the Pentagon announced it was sending the USS Monterey – a vessel equipped with the sophisticated Aegis radar system, capable of protecting Europe from a potential Iranian nuclear missile strike – to the Mediterranean. …
Its deployment comes one week after the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a notably outspoken report on Iran’s nuclear activities and lack of cooperation with inspectors operating under the UN Security Council’s mandate.
Issued on February 25, the report appears to agree, at least in part, with the conclusions of a new US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, about which members of Congress and their staff were briefed a week earlier.
Together, the reports paint a picture of Iran persisting in its controversial nuclear activities despite international concern, although the US report suggests that sanctions and sabotage have slowed the program.
The latest NIE reportedly revises the conclusions of a controversial 2007 NIE on Iran, which argued that the regime had halted its clandestine work on a nuclear weapons program.

Well, sure. A Democrat is now in the White House, which changes the politics of what the intelligence community says about Iran.
You really should read the entire article as it relates to the IAEA report, which sets out in some detail how Iran is proceeding on various fronts and thumbing its nose at the IAEA. This struck me as especially notable:

Under a section titled “Possible Military Dimensions,” the IAEA report refers to “new information recently received” as well as concerns “about the possible existence in Iran… of activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”
This disturbing conclusion reinforces previous evidence that Iran is working hard to design a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on top of a missile less than three feet in diameter. It also suggests that Iran intends to design an implosion-type device, which is more challenging than the gun-type design used in the Hiroshima bomb and later developed by apartheid-era South Africa.

What we need now is for every liberal in America to explain why it is impossible for a tyrannical Middle Eastern regime that is bitterly hostile to the United States and the West to get yellowcake from Africa.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses