Juan Cole on the Iran House Intelligence Report (and John Bolton)

(from juan cole at informed comment...)

let's start with bolton first cuz it's a keeper...

John Bolton is just an ill-tempered lawyer who has no special expertise in nuclear issues or in Iran, and aside from an ability to scare the bejesus out of young gophers who bring him coffee and to thunderously denounce on cue any world leader on whom he is sicced, he has no particular qualifications for his job.

ah... reading something like THAT is a particularly satisfying way to start a sunday morning... but, i digress...

[T]he Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy report on Iran ... slams US intelligence professionals for poor intelligence on Iran. The report demonstrates that these Republicans have poor intelligence . . . on Iran.

juan's obviously on a roll and he's not about to cut bolton or his toadie, fleitz, any slack...

It is being said that the staffer who headed the report is Frederick Fleitz, who was a special assistant to John Bolton when Bolton was undersecretary of state for proliferation issues. Fleitz was sent to the unemployment line when Condi wisely exiled Bolton to the United Nations, where there is a long history of ill-tempered despots who like to bang their shoes on the podium. So this report is the long arm of Bolton popping up in Congress. It is Neoconservative propaganda.

professor cole isn't given to making unsubstantiated allegations... he proceeds to completely knock the props out from under the neocon propaganda...

Bolton at one point was exercised about an imaginary Cuban biological weapons program, which even his own staffers wouldn't support him on, and I at one point he was alleging that Iranian mullahs were sneaking into Havana to help with it.

This congressional report is full of the same sort of wild fantasies.

On page 9, the report alleges that the 164 centrifuges in Natanz near Isfahan are "currently enriching uranium to weapons grade."

This is an outright lie. Enriching to weapons grade would require at least 80% enrichment. Iran claims . . . 2.5 per cent. See how that isn't the same thing? See how you can't blow up anything with 2.5 percent?

The claim is not only flat wrong, but it is misleading in another way. You need 16,000 centrifuges, hooked up so that they cascade, to make enough enriched uranium for a bomb in any realistic time fame, even if you know how to get the 80 percent! Iran has . . . 164. See how that isn't the same?

yes, i see... indeed, i see...

The only thing that the IAEA knows for sure is that Iran has a peaceful nuclear energy research program. Such a program is not the same as a weapons program, and it is perfectly legal under the Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran, unlike Israel, has actually signed.

[...]

Folks, we are being set up again.

god help us if we fall for the same lying shit the second time...

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