The Iran Nuclear Game

Cheryl at Whirled View posted this on Saturday. Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk has also picked it up. Knowing very little about the technology of nuclear energy and nuclear weapon-making, I've waited a couple of days to see how this plays out. It's not playing out, it appears, but we can be confident with Cheryl and Jeffrey at work.

Here's what Cheryl has to say about the American media reporting on Iranian nuclear developments.

This morning The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe all put the same story, with the same headline, on their front pages.

The headline is

Defying UN, Iran Opens Nuclear Reactor.

The first paragraph, however, says

KHONDAB, Iran -- An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb.

Later in the article, we find

Iran has been a building a heavy water reactor near the plant for two years, but the reactor is not scheduled for completion until 2009.

...Here are the differences: the heavy water plant produces (distills, most likely) heavy water from regular water. Heavy water contains deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen that has more neutrons in its nucleus, which makes it more effective at slowing down reactor neutrons to produce a chain reaction. An enrichment plant raises the amount of uranium-235, the fissionable isotope of uranium, from its natural abundance of 0.7% to reactor grade (about 3%) or weapons grade (greater than 90%). A reactor brings the uranium and heavy water together to produce a controlled nuclear chain reaction, which can be used to produce power and plutonium, another weapons material. The heavy water plant has no radioactivity involved, the uranium in the enrichment process is slightly radioactive, and a reactor is very radioactive...

How much do these details matter? It matters whether the opening of a heavy water plant breaches the UN Security Council Resolution 1696. Turns out it might or might not. That link is to a news release (courtesy of Arms Control Wonk); the resolution itself seems to be inaccessible through the UN website. What the news release says is that the

Security Council...demanded that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development

which may or may not include heavy water plants. In any case, we need to know if the plant is operational (not clear), and, as noted in the AP story and quoted above, the reactor that would use the heavy water to produce plutonium from uranium will not be completed until 2009.

So they matter if they are being used in the frenzy of accusation against Iran, and they matter very much if the Bush administration is indeed following that same path they followed in justifying their attack on Iraq.

Notice anything similar to the Iraq Invasion preparation? I'm not saying the US will or can attack Iran. That would be such folly at this point that I suspect that even military would strongly resist a commanded invasion. At the very least, the main similarity is that the big media cannot tell an accurate story, that this has enormous consequences, and that the administration is certainly not going to disabuse them of their ignorance because the media provide the administration with a scapegoat for the administration's folly. Furthermore, to follow this administration anywhere at this point requires an ignorant and confused citizenry. The stupider the better. That's the only way the administration's actions make sense.