Unjust Enrichment

Iran claims that it is being unjustly referred to the UN Security Council. Too bad. So sad.

"The people of Iran will not accept coercion and unjust decisions by international organizations," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by Iranian television during a visit to Iran's western province of Lorestan. "Enemies cannot force the Iranian people to relinquish their rights."

"The era of bullying and brutality is over," he added.

Actually, Iran knows that the UN can do very little to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program from progressing.

And then there's a troubling report that indicates that Iran was making plutonium far earlier than anyone had considered possible. Via Captains Quarters, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports the following:

In concurrence with growing diplomatic tension over Iran's nuclear program, on Thursday it emerged that intelligence services in the West are convinced that Iran is taking covert means to develop nuclear weapons, in addition to the nuclear program under the partial supervision of the IAEA. Russian intelligence is believed to agree with this assessment.
According to the IAEA interim report from late February, a document was found that alludes to Iranian attempts to create the components of an atomic bomb. ...

The Iranians admitted about three years ago to separating small quantities of plutonium, which is clearly associated with atomic arms development. (The materials needed to build an atomic bomb can be acquired either by enriching uranium or by producing plutonium.)

Inspectors who examined the plutonium concluded, judging from the amounts found, that the Iranians must have started creating the plutonium in the mid-1990s and not three years ago.

Iran was busy developing the technology needed to make nuclear weapons for what looks like at least a decade, and no one was taking the threat seriously. Not the IAEA. Not the US. Not the UN. No one.

Now, we're seeing the windfall of that inattention.

The fact that plutonium was being separated at that earlier date means that assumptions about Iran's weapons making capabilities have to be revised. Instead of suggesting that it might be another 3-10 years before they have the capability to make nuclear weapons, they may already be on the threshold of having nuclear weapons.

And for all this, the IAEA got a Nobel Prize last year for its work on stopping nuclear proliferation.