Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Bracing for the Iran Nuclear Report: Will 'Military Action' Rhetoric Develop its Own Momentum?



By Tony Karon

"If the proverbial "drumbeat" for war with Iran has grown more insistent in recent weeks, it's about to turn into something akin to the opening bars of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man". That's because the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected, in a report on Iran's nuclear program due for release early this week, to suggest that the Islamic Republic's nuclear program may include a "possible military dimension", giving Tehran the means -- possibly with the help of foreign scientists -- to relatively quickly build nuclear weapons should it choose to do so.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog is expected to publish some evidence -- long ago shared among key international players -- suggesting that Iran may have in recent years conducted theoretical work on warhead design, and experiments on high-explosive triggering systems that don't appear to have any purpose outside of nuclear weapons development.......

It has, of course, become par for the course over the past five years for Israel and its allies to imply that war is imminent whenever the international community's schedule turns to Iran. With Obama Administration officials, speaking anonymously, hyping the IAEA report as a "gotcha" moment that will leave little doubt of Iran's intentions, the saber-rattling fits a familiar pattern of seeking to scare reluctant international players into adopting tougher sanctions on Iran as the lesser evil necessary if only to restrain Israel from launching a war that could set the Middle East ablaze......"

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