In a rhetorical flourish that recalls the best (or worst) of the Clinton Administration and the John Kerry campaign, Iran apparently has decided to stop their refinement of uranium into weapons precursors only after they've made enough of it to turn into weapons:

Iran is preparing large amounts of uranium for enrichment, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons, days before its promise to freeze all such activities takes effect, Western diplomats said on Friday.

"The Iranians are producing UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) like hell," a diplomat on the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters. "The machines are running." ...

On Sunday, Tehran promised France, Britain and Germany it would freeze its enrichment program in a bid to ease concerns that its nuclear plans are aimed at producing atomic weapons -- a charge it denies -- and to escape a referral to the U.N. Security Council when the IAEA meets on Nov. 25.

Diplomats said they had expected Iran to freeze the program as of last Sunday, the day the deal was reached.

Is anyone paying any attention at all to the Iranian mullahcracy's history? Anyone who thought that the Iranians meant what they said last Sunday, that they were committed to peaceful uses of nuclear power, has to have their head examined. Once again, the Iranians have manipulated the overly credulous Europeans into providing them a diplomatic window in which to pursue their nuclear-weapons ambitions. This window is pretty tight, which tells me that they're much closer to producing a weapon than is commonly thought.

It's may be too late for the UN Security Council to have any effect on Iran's production of the bomb. The EU-3 need to step aside and allow the UNSC to quickly demonstrate whether they'll act or not to stop them. If not, then it falls to Israel and the US, who are the two most likely targets of the nuclear weapons once produced.

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» You heard it here first: Iran already hedging nuclear agreement with Europe from Slowplay.com
Just yesterday, Slowplay.com ran an article decrying Europe's strategy for dealing with Iran by negotiating a hollow, no-consequences-for-a-breach pact with the extremist state: [Europe] secured a “commitment from Tehran to freeze its uranium en... [Read More]

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» Diplomats: Iran Is Readying Nuke Processes from Hyscience
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Tracked on November 19, 2004 2:29 PM