– updated –
Clinton will also meet with Netanyahu.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, delving into Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking for the first time at an international donors conference for Gaza. …
Expect every pause, breath and nuance to be over analyzed this week.
Adm. Mullen says Iran has enough material for a bomb. But can they weaponize it?
To add, Secretary Gates disagrees.
Hoagland and Ambassador Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League. Mr. Hoagland also asks we give up Af-Pak for Med-Ind, but only “momentarily,” thank heavens.
“Regional security is not the business of Iran alone,” Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, said in Washington last week. “We need a regional nuclear-free zone, to deal with the known Israeli nuclear-weapons problem and the potential Iranian one.” Otherwise, “others in the region will pursue the same course.”
Jim Lobe has an interesting exchange between Elliott Abrams on a teleconference, regarding weapons smuggling and Hamas.
Will Syria get the Golan Heights back? Joshua Landis says no and explains why.
Kessler of the Post is stating the obvious for Secretary Clinton this coming week. But make sure you catch the last few paragraphs. Elliott Abrams has given up on a two state solution, opting for institutions that are to get everyone there, I guess. While Nathan J. Brown, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is looking for the road to an armistice between Israel and Hamas. Both sides agree to stop fighting, with nothing enforced by outside parties (aka U.N.), as they work to some sort of agreement in Egypt. It’s short of a peace treaty, which seems to be too pacifistic for everyone involved.
Adm. Mullen says Iran has enough material for a bomb. But can they weaponize it?
A better question, and the question the IAEA report seems to have left open according to that link, is whether they have the ability to refine that uranium to weapons grade. Until they do, they have enough material for a weapon in the same sense that someone who has ten acres of forest has enough material to build a house.
It’s really the same question.
Added a link re: Gates, Cujo359. All the reading I’m doing, I’d be in the Gates camp on this one:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19463.html
Based on what I’ve read, which I suspect is less than what you have, I agree with Gates, too. That was the reason for my “restatement” of the question. That’s a big hurdle, first because they need to have the tech, and second because they need to get the processing past the inspectors somehow. The inspectors are supposed to know where all that uranium is and how pure it is.
It’s awfully hard to prove something doesn’t exist, but that’s what Mullen and the people who I suspect are pushing this story are essentially playing on – that the IAEA can’t say categorically that there is no such processing going on. All they can really do is say that they haven’t found any.
Actually, I think it’s a big yawn.