Israel says Iran is accelerating nuclear quest [View all]

[bananas]

Source: Washington Post

Saying the United States and the world are being misled by a false face into thinking that Iran has a more moderate leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday charged that Iran is not only continuing its nuclear program but has accelerated its quest to build a bomb in the weeks since voters there elected Hassan Rouhani president.

Calling Rouhani “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers at a meeting here that he is aware that some have placed their hopes in the new Iranian president. But the Israeli leader warned: “He knows how to exploit this, and yesterday he called for more talks. Of course he wants more talks. He wants to talk and talk and talk. And while everybody is busy talking to him, he’ll be busy enriching uranium. The centrifuges will keep on spinning.”

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Israel’s leadership has declared Iran’s uranium-enrichment program an “existential threat,” and Netanyahu has sought assurances from the Obama administration that it would confront Iran, militarily if necessary.

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The Israeli intelligence minister said Tehran should hear from the United States and the international community that it has only two choices — voluntarily shutter its uranium enrichment program or “see it destroyed with brute force,” which he envisioned as “a few hours of airstrikes, no more.”

Steinitz shrugged at the possible consequences and said he could envision Iran firing “several hundred missiles” at Israel in retaliation, producing “very limited damage because we can intercept many of them.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-says-iran-is-accelerating-nuclear-quest/2013/08/07/c3f67b5e-ff96-11e2-8294-0ee5075b840d_story.html

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"The most important environmental liability of
nuclear fission is neither the routine nor accidental emissions
of radioactivity, but the deliberate misuse of nuclear facilities
and materials for acts of terrorism and war."
- John Holdren, Assessing Environmental Risks of Energy

"No sound strategic energy planning would prioritize nuclear energy in a country like Iran"
- a joint report by the Federation of American Scientists and the Carnegie Endowment for Peace

"To preserve the nuclear option for the future requires overcoming the four
challenges described above—costs, safety, proliferation, and wastes. These
challenges will escalate if a significant number of new nuclear generating
plants are built in a growing number of countries. The effort to overcome
these challenges, however, is justified only if nuclear power can potentially
contribute significantly to reducing global warming, which entails major
expansion of nuclear power."
- MIT, The Future of Nuclear Power

None of those four challenges have been overcome,
and it's becoming increasingly obvious there won't be a major expansion of nuclear power.
Therefore, there's no justification to preserve the nuclear option for the future.
It's time to start phasing it out globally.

Nuclear energy has declined to only 10% of global electricity from it's peak of 17% in 1993.
Iran thinks it's moving forward, but it''s moving backwards.
And it may cause a war doing it.

They should stop throwing good money after bad,
they should shut down their centrifuges,
they should shut down Bushehr before it melts down.