DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN?

News Item: The Sunday Telegraph, a British newspaper, reports that Iran has signed a secret deal with Zimbabwe to mine its untapped uranium reserves. The agreement was secured last month, when a close aide to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe visited Tehran.

According to the deal, Iran will supply Zimbabwe oil in exchange for access to potentially huge deposits of uranium ore - which can be converted into basic fuel for nuclear power, or could also be enriched to make nuclear arms.

Isn't this the reason that we attacked Iraq? It sounds eerily similar to me.

In 2003 Seymour Hersch wrote about the lead up to the war in The New Yorker magazine;

"According to two of those present at the briefing, which was highly classified and took place in the committee’s secure hearing room, Tenet declared, as he had done before, that a shipment of high-strength aluminum tubes that was intercepted on its way to Iraq had been meant for the construction of centrifuges that could be used to produce enriched uranium. The suitability of the tubes for that purpose had been disputed, but this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy five hundred tons of uranium oxide from Niger, one of the world’s largest producers. The uranium, known as “yellow cake,” can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors; if processed differently, it can also be enriched to make weapons. Five tons can produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a bomb. (When the C.I.A. spokesman William Harlow was asked for comment, he denied that Tenet had briefed the senators on Niger.)".

This begs the question, what is different this time? Well for one thing, we now know that Iraq was only pretending to have nuclear weapons. In contrast, Iran makes no secret of its desire to become a nuclear state. They say that such technology will only be used for peaceful purposes but their consistent testing of missiles capable of carrying warheads with greater and greater range, their continued belligerence to the west and their stated desire to wipe Israel off the map makes that assertion hard to believe. In fact, it would be downright dangerous.

If this report is true, coupled with recent US and Israeli intelligence reports estimating that Iran will have the capability to build a bomb within 3 to 5 years, if not sooner, it is an ominous sign.

So the question is, when all else fails; sanctions, negotiations, threats etc., as I believe they will, will we be as willing to go to war with Iran over facts that we know to be true as we were to go to war with Iraq over assertions that, it turns out, we knew at the time were unreliable and probably untrue?

The time for talking is rapidly running out. It is only a matter of time.