Iran - Nuclear Material Intercepted

While Iran continues to claim its nuclear program is for peaceful means, intercepted material in the last 9 months proves otherwise.

May 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and its allies in a program to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction prevented Iran from obtaining material for its nuclear weapons program within the past nine months, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

``The trans-shipment of material and equipment bound for ballistic missile programs in countries of concern, including Iran'' was blocked as was the transfer of ``equipment used to produce propellant'' to a ``ballistic missile program in another region'' of the world, Rice said.

All of which raises more questions than it answers. For example, which allies, which "countries of concern" and in which other region?

Rice doesn't give away many details.

Rice gave no details but said that the U.S. and 10 of its partners in the initiative have cooperated on 11 successful interdiction efforts over the past nine months. Iran was the only nation interdicted that she cited by name.

Meanwhile the EU3 and the UN are looking ineffective as usual.

``Our policy is to prevent them from having the capacity to develop enriched uranium to the point where they're able to make a nuclear weapon,'' Bush said at a news conference. ``Therefore we're working with the EU-3 to hopefully convince the Iranians to abandon their pursuits of such a program,'' Bush added referring to France, Germany and the U.K.

Setback

Efforts to curb nuclear proliferation worldwide suffered a setback last week when a United Nations review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended in failure, with no new agreement on how to block nuclear programs in either Iran or North Korea.

Which is why more and more countries are following the United States lead and ignoring the UN.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said the Proliferation Security Initiative ``makes intelligence actionable.''

``Through PSI, intelligence can be coupled to government actions in whatever way is judged to be maximally effective by the responsible authorities,'' Negroponte said in remarks at the anniversary ceremony. Ambassadors from Singapore, Denmark and Japan, all participants in the initiative, also described PSI as an important part of the global effort to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Still, the clock is ticking or is that a nuclear bomb in Iran I hear.
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