MartianNight
No bio...
User ID: 1244
MartianNight
18d ago
“One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon”
I find this type of claim infuriating, not just because I believe they're lying, but they don't even make an attempt to reconcile their claim with known facts, such as:
- Iran has stockpiled around 440 kg of 60% enriched uranium.
- It is extremely expensive to create such a stockpile (especially for a country with a developing economy like Iran).
- Highly enriched urinanium (HEU) is useless for power plants, which need enrichment around 3% to 5%
- Academic research, if it relies on HEU at all, certainly doesn't need large quantities of it.
- The only known use for a large stockpile of HEU is to create nuclear weapons.
So we know that creating a HEU stockpile is expensive, and that literally the only use for such a stockpile is to create a nuclear weapon. Then the obvious conclusion is: Iran created the stockpile with the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon. Why else would they do it?
I would like to know how Joe Kent explain this away. Why did Iran invest so much into building a uranium stockpile, if not to ultimately build a nuclear weapon?
The most charitable explanation I can come up with is that Iran hopes to use it as a bargaining chip: it will give up its stockpile in exchange for America lifting sanctions against Iran. Maybe that's even the preferred outcome, over actually going through with building a nuclear warhead. But it only works as a bargaining chip if Iran is willing to go through with the threat, so that means they cannot be committed to not creating a nuclear weapon.
So this begs the question, what is the real reason?
No it doesn't. You're jumping the gun by assuming Joe Kent is speaking the truth, when there is plenty reason to assume he's in fact lying. Nothing we know is inconsistent with the following statements:
- Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, as evidenced by their weapons grade uranium stockpiles.
- Joe Kent is lying for political reasons (which happens all the time).
- Stopping/delaying the development of nuclear weapons was one of the reasons for the Iran war.
The nukes might not be the only reason for the Iran war, or even the primary reason, but there is absolutely no reason to assume they weren't a reason for the war.
You realize he said Swiss, not Swedish?
Switzerland is not exactly famous for its financial transparency; rather the opposite, actually, though the reality is a lot more nuanced these days (truly anonymous secret Swiss bank accounts no longer exist).
More options
Context Copy link