Why have both the US and the UK have given Iran the materials it needs to go nuclear?

by Steve Watson

We are being constantly bombarded with propaganda over Iran and its intention to build a nuclear arsenal. We are told (contrary to intelligence reports) that they are just months away from doing so. And we have been told that they must be stopped.

What we are not being told is that both the US and the UK have supplied Iran with the materials and the know how in order that they may build the bomb.

With the news at the weekend of Iranian intentions to resume nuclear fuel research, despite international appeals not to do so, why is the EU surprised that Iran is forging ahead?

The history of how Iran’s path to nuclear proliferation began is a familiar story.

The 1953 CIA ouster of President Mossadegh, a leader who was conforming to westernized policy but made the mistake of asking to keep a small portion of his country’s oil revenue, was achieved by means of staged bombings and shootings which were blamed on the Iranian government in order to antagonize the population and enable the coup.

After installing the Shah Globalists like Henry Kissinger opened the door for Iran to develop sophisticated nuclear energy programs which laid the foundation for today’s crisis. Twenty three reactors were built with the help of American corporations like General Electric and Westinghouse.

In 1976, President Gerald Ford even authorized the Shah to buy and operate a plutonium-extracting and processing facility - a big step toward converting energy processing to weapons making.

After the revolution of 1979 the fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeni reversed westernized policy but maintained Iran’s nuclear interest albeit staggeringly before the end of the war with Iraq. After the war ended Iran was again free to pursue its ends leading us to the impending crisis we face today.

Add to the history the more recent revelations penned by New York Times reporter James risen in a new book that six years ago the CIA simply gave Iran the blueprints to build an effective nuclear bomb.

Risen explains that in what appeared to be a "rogue operation" code named "Merlin", a Russian nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, who had defected to the US years earlier, had been given nuclear blueprints and had then been sent to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organization created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology.

The Russian’s assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognize their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran.

Obviously the Russian agent was bemused and more than a little apprehensive about the entire operation so, according to Risen’s sources, a senior CIA official downplayed the operation telling the agent that it was just an intelligence-gathering effort, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them.

In truth, the CIA knew absolutely nothing about Iran’s nuclear know how due to an earlier espionage disaster whereby information concerning virtually all CIA operatives inside Iran was leaked to Iran. As a result many were arrested, the rest pulled out and many are still missing. Porter Goss admitted to the Bush administration in a White House briefing last spring that the CIA had no knowledge of how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.

The idea behind Merlin was to give the Iranians flawed nuclear blueprints to set back their weapons program and help the CIA monitor more closely the paths they took. However, the Russian agent did not know this and was kept in the dark.

Upon reviewing the blueprints he immediately noticed the flaw and decided to provide the Iranians with a note of his own pointing out the flaw. Of course he thought he was doing the right thing in order to carry out his mission successfully. He thought the flaw was so obvious that they would have spotted it anyway and possibly smelled a rat.

Risen also contends that operation "Merlin’ has been considered and possibly approved for use with other states such as North Korea.

Of course it is possible that operation Merlin was a double edged sword and has provided the rogue elements of the CIA, under NeoCon control, with the pretext they need to extend the war in the middle east into Iran.

With the blueprints in hand, the Iranian weapons program was apparently further bolstered by exports of radioactive material from the UK that experts believe could be used by the Islamic Republic as part of a nuclear weapons program.

The London Observer has reported that a truck carrying 1000kg of zirconium silicate from a British firm was stopped by customs officials in Bulgaria at the border with Turkey.

The Observer quoted an expert as saying that zirconium metal can be extracted from the substance, whose trade is usually tightly regulated, and used to prevent fuel rods corroding in nuclear reactors and as part of a nuclear warhead.

But the truck, which had traveled unchecked from Britain through Germany and Romania without being stopped, was allowed to continue its journey to Tehran after a two-month investigation found an export licence was not needed.

We have continually warned that the next target on the NeoCon checklist is Iran.

It seems almost inevitable now that the NeoCons will launch targeted military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Whether Israel goes alone or has US support seems beside the point.

However, former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted that he could consider a pre-emptive air strike against Iran’s nuclear installations if he were to be re-elected.

And with Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel. Netanyahu is renowned for being slick, tough talking and putting his money where his mouth is. With fundamentalist Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad firing back threats to wipe "Israel off the map", it’s not hard to see where that confrontation could lead.

Furthermore, we have previously exposed how members of The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) including Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz among many others called not only for a War against Iraq in 2000, they called for a follow up on Iran. These people are now in control of American foreign policy.

The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest. It calls for "the direct imposition of U.S. "forward bases" throughout Central Asia and the Middle East with Iran topping the list.

Regime change is foremost on PNAC minds with regards to Iran and usually what PNAC wants to happen, the government makes happen.

In addition to PNAC’s assertions we have been treated to The Pentagon’s "New Map", a hellish vision of endless war that will incorporate the "gap", the third world states, into the "core" of already globalized powers.

The war map begins with domination and assimilation of the middle east "rogue states".

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter has gone on record several times to suggest war with Iran is next on the agenda, indeed that it has already begun.

"President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran." Ritter has commented.

The London Guardian recently ran a piece suggesting the plans for a coming war were basically in the bag.

American Conservative magazine reported that Dick Cheney had given the authorization for a military strike on Iran immediately after the next terror attack in the United States.

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi echoed the same sentiments.

There is a long list of NeoCons in the media pressing the Iran issue. Newt Gingrich was the last to raise his ugly head, calling for regime change in Iran.

However, Recent events and news developments paint a clear picture of an establishment under intense heat and backed into a corner with no perceivable escape route. It is hard to see how an attack on Iran now could possibly be accepted by the world and the American people.

Therefore at no greater time since 9/11 have we faced such an imminent danger of a staged terror attack being carried out to reign in the seeds of dissent and again rally the sleeping masses behind the elite.

The Globalists are like heroin junkies, every time they carry out an attack the gas mileage obtained from it in terms of getting a free pass from the public on anything they wish to push through gets weaker and weaker.

Will there, as George Galloway has warned could happen, be a staged terrorist attack either in Israel or the United States that is blamed on Iran?

Scott Ritter has also hinted that the notion of a staged terror attack is a very real possibility along with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

As things stand it looks increasingly likely that the pull out from Iraq is underway. The puppet democracy has been installed and the globalists have pretty much drained the country’s resources, destroyed its infrastructure and demoralized its population beyond expectations.

The broadening of the war in the middle east is very very close at hand as the NeoCon machine knows it possibly only has a few years left to get the job done or at least further the agenda to the level it planned to when it was handed back the reigns of power in 2000.

So when they tell you Iran has WMD and must be stopped, you know why the US and the UK supplied the materials and the know how.

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/090106Iran.htm