“Iran’s president wants to shed the nation’s secrecy and forge ahead openly with developing nuclear weapons but is opposed by the clerical leadership, which is worried about international reaction to such a move, says an intelligence assessment shared with The Associated Press.

“That view, from a nation with traditionally reliable intelligence from the region, cannot be confirmed and contrasts with assessments by other countries that view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as relatively moderate on the nuclear issue compared to the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

So the vast majority of Western intelligence agencies agree that Ahmadinejad is “relatively moderate” on the issue, and one dissents. On what basis exists this discrepancy? Jahn never says.

If Ahmadinejad’s supposed ambitions are opposed by the religious leadership, who have the real say in the matter, then what’s so headliney about that anyway?

Are we to understand that Jahn’s source(s) swore him to secrecy regarding not just their names, but the name of the country which they presumably work for and produced this “intelligence”? Could it be that they anticipate readers may not agree with Jahn’s assessment their assertions about Iranian nuclear capabilities have been “traditionally reliable”?

The piece continues:

“Ahmadinejad is pushing ‘to shake free of the restraints Iran has imposed upon itself, and openly push forward to create a nuclear bomb,’ says the assessment. But Khamenei, whose word is final on nuclear and other issues, ‘wants to progress using secret channels, due to concern about a severe response from the West,’ says the report.”

Jahn provides no evidence that Ahmadinejad is pushing for anything, and nothing in the article even acknowledges the fact that the unanimous opinion of all 17 American intelligence agencies [.pdf] is that the Iranians are not pursuing nuclear weapons openly or in secret. Renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh tells this writer that the rest of the West agrees. But in AP Land, inconvenient facts are omitted rather than confronted head on.

The new head of the IAEA is quoted complaining that Iran has made it “difficult for us to draw a conclusion [Iran's nuclear program] is exclusively for peaceful purposes.” But that, as our dear retired Dr. Prather would put it, is “none of the IAEA’s beeswax.” Their mandate under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Safeguards Agreement with Iran is the monitoring of Iran’s nuclear material, accounting for its quantity and quality on a regular basis and verifying its non-diversion to military purposes. Their further mandates from the UN Security Council to completely prove a negative, ask endless questions based on forgeries and inspect non-nuclear facilities are rightly considered illegitimate by the Iranians.

The rest of the article elaborates on the theme that that the “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Khamenei, is the one with the power to decide and that he is the more “cautious” and “circumspect” about the prospect of starting a nuclear weapons program and perhaps stoking a regional arms race than his already-willing-to-deal presidential frontman.

George Jahn’s new Iran piece in the Associated Press, despite its emotional headline and anonymous scare quotes, actually makes a strong case that neither Iran’s president, nor its head-Ayatollah are interested in obtaining nuclear weapons.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. …They show that Arab opinion …—holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second major threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent. With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority, in fact, 57 percent, say that …it would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. …
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When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here, Clinton and the media, have drawn. There’s also a minor problem. That’s the major problem. The minor problem is that we don’t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what was selected from the range of what they say. So there’s a filtering process. We don’t know how much it distorts the information. But there’s no question that what is a radical distortion is—or not even a distortion, a reflection of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population doesn’t matter, even if it’s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy. This shows up elsewhere…. –Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal “Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership”

One correction: After this conference, I learned from Syed Saleem Shahzad that the Jundallah that the CIA and JSOC use against Iran is different from the Jundallah that KSM used to be the leader of. However, they are both radical Salafi civilian-bombing terrorists, so same difference.

At 8:16 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the world got a glimpse of its own mortality. At that moment, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a fireball that sent waves of searing heat, then a deafening concussion, across the landscape. Three days later, a second bomb hit Nagasaki. … [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower said in 1963 "It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

… Besides the Manhattan Project’s internal momentum was an external motive. Its leaders had to justify the $2 billion ($26 billion in today’s dollars) expense to Congress and the public… Byrnes…warned Roosevelt that political scandal would follow if it [the atomic bomb] was not used. … "How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research [after the war] if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?" …the U.S. had produced two types of bombs–one using uranium, the other plutonium. Whenever anyone suggested that the moment the bomb was dropped the war would be over, [bureaucrat] Groves countered, "Not until we drop two bombs on Japan." As [historian] Goldberg explains… "One bomb justified Oak Ridge, the second justified Hanford." Hiroshima was hit with the uranium bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy"; the plutonium bomb, "Fat Man," was used against Nagasaki.

From Why We Dropped The Bomb By William Lanouette, CIVILIZATION, The Magazine of the Library of Congress, January/February 1995

It’s hard for Americans who identify with the U.S. Government to accept the idea that that organization could have engaged in such horrendous acts – twice in three days – without pristine motives.

Here’s what Vietnam era U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara – who was part of Gen. Curtis LeMay’s command when the bombs were dropped – thought about it:

McNamara: "He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals."

It seems things haven’t changed much, doesn’t it?

… Besides the Manhattan Project’s internal momentum was an external motive. Its leaders had to justify the $2 billion ($26 billion in today’s dollars) expense to Congress and the public… Byrnes…warned Roosevelt that political scandal would follow if it [the atomic bomb] was not used. … "How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research [after the war] if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?" …the U.S. had produced two types of bombs–one using uranium, the other plutonium. Whenever anyone suggested that the moment the bomb was dropped the war would be over, [bureaucrat] Groves countered, "Not until we drop two bombs on Japan." As [historian] Goldberg explains… "One bomb justified Oak Ridge, the second justified Hanford." Hiroshima was hit with the uranium bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy"; the plutonium bomb, "Fat Man," was used against Nagasaki.

From Why We Dropped The Bomb By William Lanouette, CIVILIZATION, The Magazine of the Library of Congress, January/February 1995

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ADDENDUM (After 32 comments):

It’s hard for Americans who identify with the U.S. Government to accept the idea that that organization could have engaged in such horrendous acts — twice in three days — without pristine motives.

Here’s what Vietnam era U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara — who was part of Gen. Curtis LeMay’s command when the bombs were dropped — thought about it:

McNamara: “He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.”

How was Harry’s decision any different than Kim’s? After all, as David Kramer recently noted, if Truman executed 144,000 Japanese civilians by firing squad, his actions would have been described as a mass murderer — which is just what Kim would be branded as.

Time to come clean about this whitewashed travesty.

See also: Nagasaki Mayor Says, ‘Thanks for Putting Us On the Map’
Jon Stewart: Wimp, Wuss, Moral Coward

Why is this quote so striking? Because Morris implicitly admits that the Israeli government has nuclear weapons, even though that government has never so admitted. In 1986, Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, revealed that fact and for his troubles, was kidnapped by the Israeli government, tried for treason in secret, and forced to spend 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement. His treason? Revealing Israel’s nuclear weapons program. It’s true that he violated a non-disclosure agreement, but that’s not treason. Presumably the treason is that he revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program, with the non-disclosure agreement being irrelevant.

Guess what? In last Friday’s New York Times, Benny Morris revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program. So shouldn’t he be charged with treason too?