–updated–
Talk about an end of the week news dump of news dumps. Another inheritance marker from the Republicans.
This secret enrichment happened under George W. Bush’s nose, while he and his team were too busy ostracizing Iran into an “axis of evil”, instead of trying to actually engage them. Not that this would have changed the outcome, but let’s be clear that the Republican idea of sitting Iran in the world corner sure as hell didn’t work.
Pres. Obama is about to speak at the G20, directly confronting the news that surfaced last night that Iran has built a covert nuclear facility where it has enriched uranium, which the Iranians broke to the IAEA via a letter.
President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will accuse Iran Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years, according to senior administration officials.
The revelation, which the three leaders will make before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit here, appears bound to add urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambitions to build a nuclear weapons capacity. Mr. Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, will demand that Iran allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran. [...]
Reuters is also reporting on the Iran revelations:
“The agency also understands from Iran that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility,” he said.
It’s not in the category of weaponization, but the dance music has started in Netanyahu‘s hotel room.
And when all this is done someone needs to explain to me why Mark I Never Met a Union I Wouldn’t Bust Penn was doing pontificating about Iran on “Morning Joe”? Someone at MSNBC has obviously lost their mind.
..I actually think that this public revelation makes war less rather than more likely. The timing of the announcement, immediately following the consultations at the UN and the G-20 and just before the Geneva meetings, makes it seem extremely likely that the Obama administration has been waiting for just the right moment to play this card. Now they have. It strengthens the P5+1 bargaining position ahead of October 1, changes Iranian calculations, and lays the foundations for a more serious kind of engagement. So now let’s see how it changes the game.
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