Courtesy of
Hang the Bankers:
Breathless predictions that the Islamic Republic will soon be at the brink of nuclear capability, or – worse – acquire an actual nuclear bomb, are not new.
For more than quarter of a century Western officials have claimed repeatedly that Iran is close to joining the nuclear club. Such a result is always declared “unacceptable” and a possible reason for military action, with “all options on the table” to prevent upsetting the Mideast strategic balance dominated by the US and Israel.
And yet, those predictions have time and again come and gone. This chronicle of past predictions lends historical perspective to today’s rhetoric about Iran.
The post then goes on to list the earliest predictions. Beginning is 1979:
Fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon predates Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, when the pro-West Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was deep in negotiations with the US, France and West Germany, on a nuclear-energy spending spree that was to yield 20 reactors.
Late 1970s: US receives intelligence that the Shah had “set up a clandestine nuclear weapons development program.”
1979: Shah ousted in the Iranian revolution, ushering in the Islamic Republic. After the overthrow of the Shah, the US stopped supplying highly enriched uranium (HEU) to Iran. The revolutionary government guided by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned nuclear weapons and energy, and for a time stopped all projects.
1984: Soon after West German engineers visit the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor, Jane’s Defence Weekly quotes West German intelligence sources saying that Iran’s production of a bomb “is entering its final stages.” US Senator Alan Cranston claims Iran is seven years away from making a weapon.
"Iran is seven years from making a weapon." You know that exact same sentence has been uttered over
, and over, and over again throughout the last thirty or so years. Usually by the far Right Wing (Though not always), and so far it has been complete bullshit.
You know the interesting thing about the timing of this article is that I had just been thinking that this newest incident with Netanyahu saying that Iran is "almost at the brink" of being able to build a nuclear weapon, and his statement that they needed to be stopped, seemed very familiar to me, and wondered just how long this had been going on.
Well now we know, it has been going on for over 33 years, and that seems almost as ridiculous as the Fundamentalist Christians who keep claiming that Armageddon is just around the corner and that Jesus is about to make his big entrance.
In fact it seems that those two things are somewhat connected in the minds of the American people, since war in the Middle East is a necessary component to the stories written about in the book of Revelations, and perhaps that is why they are so anxious to believe these predictions of doom and gloom are real.
What do you think? Is it our base superstitions that are at fault for the vilification of Iran? Or is it due to perhaps the manipulation by a certain group of investors that need this region to remain on simmer in order to keep gas prices high, and justify the constant creation of bigger and more expensive military equipment? Or, perhaps a combination of the two?
