"Nothing Serious"

Reuters has a very important article today chipping away at the war-mongering narrative that grips the beltway common wisdom. The headline should be trumped from all rooftops in D.C.: "IAEA found nothing serious at Iran site"

U.N. inspectors found "nothing to be worried about" in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday.

Mohamed ElBaradei also told the New York Times that he was examining possible compromises to unblock a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and three major powers that has foundered over Iranian objections.

The nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to Western fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity.

Note the phrasing of that third paragraph as well; "three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it." That does not support the strange assumption that Iran revealed the Qom facility only after it became aware Western spies detected it.

And while Reuters reporter Mark Heinrich does outline the reasons for Western suspicion of the Qom facility, he also provides the common-sense counter for that suspicion. Iran explains the worrisome aspects of the new facility as "a fallback for its nuclear program in case its larger Natanz enrichment plant were bombed by a foe like Israel." Remember the non-stop saber-rattling towards Iran for most of this decade from nuclear-superpower and nuclear-armed Israel, and the thirty years of distrust built up between our country and Iran, and ask yourself if Tehran has been behaving in the least bit irrational.