We've been saying this for a while. If Iran, or any other country with enough money wants to go nuclear, they can. All they need to do is buy the nuclear material and technology. They don't even have to go to a rogue state like Korea, thought they could. Look at this news. They buy it from a super power-- from Russia, though it could probably, just as easily have been from France or any other number of nuclear countries... except Israel and the US.
As it turns out, Iran is getting nuclear fuel from Russia, as the LA Times reports,
After years of delay, Russia announced Monday that it had delivered its first shipment of nuclear fuel to a reactor in southern Iran, a move Washington had long tried to delay to pressure Tehran not to pursue its own enrichment program.
Delivery of the nuclear fuel rods will ensure that the $1-billion power plant being built by Russia's state-owned Atomstroyexport in the port city of Bushehr will be up and running by next year, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, chief of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told state television.He cast Russia's decision as evidence that Iran had convinced other countries that it was pursuing nuclear power only for peaceful purposes.
The Iranians could get parts for nuclear bombs from N. Korea, from Pakistan, from intermediary third party countries that do business with these or other nuclear powers, possibly even getting their hands on US technology. Hell, we know at least one case where the US airforce left a batch of nukes just lying around. Or they can get the yard sale/thrift shop versions-- the ones in circulation from the former Russian Republics.
Bottom line-- building a nuclear technology is absolutely a pathetic reason for pounding on the drums of war like Cheney and Bush have been doing.
Who knows. While I've basically seen Condi Rice as a worthless, unproductive performer, maybe history will give her credit for keeping the Cheney toilet from overflowing.
