Word: uranium
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...conclusion drawn by some--that this means Iran has abandoned its nuclear ambitions--is not just wrong but also contradicted by the NIE itself. Suspension does not mean abandonment. The program can be restarted at any time. The fact that huge amounts are still being spent on uranium enrichment and missile development--the other essentials for a nuclear-weapons program--while the weaponization part remains dormant is overwhelming evidence of a country that wants to go nuclear but is being restrained by international pressure...
Moreover, the critics seem not to have noticed when uranium enrichment and weaponization were halted: fall 2003--before the rise of the Iraqi insurgency and while the shock and awe of the U.S.'s three-week conquest of Baghdad was still reverberating throughout the Middle East, scaring WMD pursuers, like Gaddafi's Libya, into giving up their nuclear programs altogether. Timing suggests that the American military option exercised in Iraq contributed to Iran's suspension of weaponization...
...with a "moderate" degree of certainty that Iran had stopped its nuclear-weapons program, but the information wasn't very conclusive. That finding would have put the U.S. in the same camp as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - deeply concerned about the Iranian efforts to enrich uranium but skeptical about the regime's efforts to fashion that uranium into a bomb...
...intricacies of nuclear proliferation can get very complicated very quickly, but under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nations have the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes but they must do it in a transparent manner, under international supervision. Iran was, and is, a matter of real concern to the IAEA because it had been caught hiding part of its enrichment program - and because it was widely believed that Iran had a secret bomb-building program (which indeed it had, as of 2003). Even after the new intelligence assessment, Iran's uranium-enrichment program remains troubling to the international...
...This document shows that we're not rushing to war. We're not out to get you,'" said Kenneth Pollack, a National Security Council staff member during the Clinton Administration and author of The Persian Puzzle. "'But we - and the rest of the world - are very concerned about your uranium-enrichment program, and so let's sit down and talk about...