NIE Reveals (Iranian Uranium Enrichment Facility) Qom Facility Followed 2007 Bush Threats

[kpete]

Source: IPS

POLITICS: NIE Reveals Qom Facility Followed 2007 Bush Threats
By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (IPS) - The Barack Obama administration claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran's decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear programme tells a different story.

The Iranian decision to withdraw from the earlier agreement with the IAEA was prompted, moreover, by the campaign of threats to Iran's nuclear facilities mounted by the George W. Bush administration in early 2007, as a reconstruction of the sequence of events shows.

A senior administration official who briefed reporters Sep. 25 said, "We know construction of the facility began even before the Iranians unilaterally said they did not feel bound by that IAEA obligation."

The U.S. intelligence assessment of the period, however, makes it clear that Iran did not begin construction on the Qom enrichment facility until long after its public change of policy on informing the IAEA.

Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48975

[question everything]

1. Why is this not an LBN worthy item? (nt)

[Igel]

2. Because it's Gareth Porter.

He has two annoying habits.

First, he assumes his conclusion and then values data wrt that conclusion. Hence Obama's wrong when he says something if it doesn't support his conclusion, and Teheran's right if it supports his conclusion.

Second, he tends to act as though omitted evidence doesn't exist, and that if something wasn't known about that's evidence of it's not having existed.

A third habit that I'm somewhat numbed to is his incessant raising and thrashing of straw men.

Take this case: Obama says that work on the installation began in 2007. The Iranians say that it began, putatively, in late 2008. And Obama's team says they only saw construction work in early 2009. Well, it's hard for all three statements to be true. Therefore they can't all be true.

The clincher for Porter? The Nov. '07 NIE doesn't know about the installation. Since it wasn't known, that's evidence for it's not existing. Now, I vaguely remember when my parents built their first house. They didn't start planning it--and doing actual work towards it--only after groundbreaking. Gee, so there was groundbreaking in March 1963, but they'd say that work went into it starting in August '62. But since no work was visible until 3/63, so planning and work on the house only started, I guess Porter would say, in 4/63. Go figure.

However, the analogy points to a way of having all three statements be true: Work started on the installation in early 2007, the appropriate Iranian group took possession of the site in late '08, and construction/reconstruction began in early '09. After all, it's unlikely that they started with the bulldozers and concrete trucks and only then asked the engineers, "So, what do you think we should be doing here?"

In other words, he nicely argues that something is impossible while the evidence he gives to demonstrate that it's impossible almost always says it's possible. He does this often. Nearly always, as far as I can tell. The problem is that he interprets key words in specific ways that they don't necessarily have. "Work", for instance, must be groundbreaking and construction. Perhaps he writes with a jackhammer, or perhaps he doesn't think he works on stories. Dunno. I suspect he thinks he works and just decides on a narrow definition here because it suits him.

Then there's the announcement and the attributed Iranian motivation. Iranians send a letter to the IAEA dated 9/21. The claim is that they did it because they found out the West knew about it. But the U.S. government (all of it?) when asked, "Why did the Iranians decide to reveal this facility at this time?" responded, "We do not know." They did not know. But does that mean they were lying when they made their claim? No. To know is to have evidence that you deem certain; they had suspicions and probabilities. That's knowledge of probabilities, but doesn't rise to the level of fact. So they could believe their claim and still say they didn't know. They probably had a good idea as to how the Iranians found out. After all, there was some ear-bending involving an Iranian ally in an attempt to garner support; the support did not come, but you'd think that Obama would make his best case. Part of his best case involved this new facility. A week or so later, there's a letter from Iran. It's a subtle slap at Bear, er, sorry, Medvedev.

Gareth finds the idea of saying that you don't know something that you think is true unthinkable; perhaps it's because far too often he confuses fact and belief himself to understand when somebody else makes a clear distinction. If there was a left-wing Fox news, I don't think even they would hire him.

[bananas]

3. This article also doesn't seem to be "news", just his own opinions

What happened on Oct 23? Nothing.
This is just his own opinions of older events.
So it's not "Latest Breaking News".

[question everything]

4. Thanks. Interesting. I admit that I've never heard of him

but it appeared that, at least yesterday, someone was taking a machete to LBN and removing threads by the dozens.