Israeli nukes threaten world security

By Jim Dean

A letter was sent to US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu by Clinton Bastin, lead consultant to the IAEA and their top expert in the area of nuclear weapons design and processes.

The letter outlines that the IAEA has been hijacked by elements unfamiliar with nuclear weapons that seem to be “tasked” with gross misrepresentations of science and physics in order to support the concept that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

Clinton has spent his life supporting safe nuclear energy, supporting international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and serving his country, initially in combat in World War II and in a lifetime of achievement at the US Department of Energy and working with a wide variety of organizations including the IAEA and president of the 900,000 member Nuclear Workers Union.

Bastin is also a retired Marine officer. Fortunately, for us all, he has been Veterans Today's top nuke consultant since I found him living right here in Atlanta with me.

My chemical engineering undergrad work was a bit dated, but he invested the time to take me through the evaluation steps, several times, until the light went on. Enriching uranium to bomb grade levels is a very complex process, but converting the material into a functioning weapons platform has another whole set of opportunities for blowing the place up.

After the Chernobyl disaster, nuclear workers worldwide banded together to create safety standards to avoid another such tragedy.

While we have some detractors who feel we are too close to Iran on this nuclear threat stuff, Clinton’s letter to Netanyahu, Obama, and IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano will prove to all that our position was based on hard Intel. We have known all along that Bibi was bluffing on the Iran bomb threat.

And while American mass media has rarely picked up Clinton's material, top Israeli military and Intelligence people have. These include such stalwarts as Meir Dagan, former head of their Mossad. The New York Times might have published some letter excerpts. Our appreciation for our own media took a nose dive when we saw them lying by omission by not giving Mr. Bastin's view national exposure. Such oversights, I assure you, do not happen by accident.

And as we go into the last weeks of the presidential campaigns here we can see that even a presidential contender with his Neocon commandos are also caught trying to ride the fake bomb threat into the Whitehouse, where they have already promised to pull the trigger, which will be an instant disaster for all the rest of us.

To launch a preemptive strike based on bogus Intel would be a war crime under the Nuremberg precedents, as it would truly be an offensive act, not really a defensive one.

But there is a double hoax in play here. We are sitting here with this totally bizarre situation where Israel, a rogue regime in terms of its huge weapons of mass destruction programs and stockpiles. The Israelis have completely ignored any international responsibility for their actions and yet have the gall to demand red lines of others.

I think it is time, people of the world, to issue Israel some red lines. And now is the perfect time. We have excerpts from Clinton's letter below, and we have General Shaul Horev, director of the Israeli Nuclear Energy Committee with his latest comment about any plans for discussing a nuclear-free Middle East soon:

"In order to realize this idea there is need for prior conditions and a complete reversal of the current trend in the area," Horev said. "This is an idea born in other areas and alien to the reality and political culture of the area. Nuclear demilitarization in the Middle East, according to the Israeli position, will be possible only after the establishment of peace and trust among the states of the area, as a result of a local initiative, not of external coercion."

But it gets worse. Horev goes back to the tradition 'victim well' with more threat hoaxes, the silly rhetoric against Iran, and this new one, that Assad would use the alleged chemical weapons against the rebels or give them to Hezbollah.

It is clear who the real threat is...Israel. And all those who support its never-ending victim parade, are actually guilty of aiding and abetting in a Nuremberg crime against humanity. If there is to be a pre-emptive strike against a dangerous aggressor, we need to re-evaluate who that really is, and act accordingly.

Clinton deserves to be heard. The world needs to know that such informed opinions have been kept out of the media because it would make us harder to manipulate with the nuclear Iran boogeyman. That in itself is part of an attack on the rest of us. It is way past time we gave them some of their own medicine, while we still can.

Following are excerpts of Clinton’s letter:
“Sure, Iran could divert a few tons of 3.5% or a ton of 20% enriched uranium hexaflouride gas for enrichment to 90+%. But what then? No one has ever made a nuclear weapon from gas. It must be converted to metal and fabricated into components which are then assembled with high explosives.”

“Israeli Consul-General for the South East United States Reda Mansour and I discussed these and related issues about nuclear technology in a March 2009 meeting. Earlier, I had provided information to him from experiences with nuclear weapons and knowledge of nuclear programs in other nations that there was no potential weapon threat from Iran's nuclear programs.”

“Soon after my meeting with Consul General Mansour, I sent information about lack of an Iranian nuclear weapon threat by e-mail to you and President Obama and discussed the issue with then IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

Dr. ElBaradei was aware that IAEA inspectors do not understand technology for designing and producing weapons but instead rely on long 'trigger' lists of items that could - but mostly do not - indicate work on weapons. He agreed with me that there was no weapon threat from Iran's fully safeguarded nuclear programs.”

“A major problem is that very few understand the complex chemical engineering technology used to produce nuclear materials and components for weapons.

Israel's weapons are plutonium-based, implosion-type. Israeli officials do not understand the technology for a uranium-based, gun-type nuclear weapon that Iran could hypothetically build.

During discussions with officials and staff of US national security agencies and others in Washington, DC, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria from 1972 to 1997, I never met anyone who understood the technology used for producing nuclear materials and nuclear components for weapons.

All chemical companies who managed and all government chemical engineers (such as myself) who directed programs for production of nuclear materials and components have left the US government, which has lost the ability to produce most nuclear materials and components for weapons and assess ability of other nations to do so.”

“Current IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano does not appreciate the limitations of inspectors.”