"We suddenly discover that Iran is much further along, with a far more robust nuclear weapons development program than anyone said it had," Powell asserted in a CNN interview aired March 13. "It shows you how a determined nation that has the intent to develop a nuclear weapon can keep that development process secret."

Claiming that Iran was "within two years" of having nuclear weapons, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA agent, wrote in the March 13 New York Times that Iran would use the weapons to "aggressively try to influence Iraq’s political system, which will hardly be set in stone two years from now."

Gerecht continued, "Iran’s leaders are much less worried about what happens in Iraq than about the Bush administration’s Axis of Evil doctrine. There has been nonstop discussion about whether the Islamic Republic will be ‘next on the list.’" Bush has declared Iran to be one of the countries targeted as part of Washington’s "axis of evil." Iraq and north Korea are two other points on that axis.

The New York Times editors joined the chorus. "Iran’s deception is similar to those previously carried out by North Korea, and by Iraq before the Persian Gulf War," said a Times editorial in the March 14 edition. "All countries, especially members of the United Nations Security Council, should insist that Tehran immediately agree to the I.A.E.A.’s [International Atomic Energy Agency] strengthened safeguard system, which was created in the late 1990’s for just this kind of situation."

These "strengthened safeguards" are a set of amendments to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty allowing United Nations snoops to "inspect" any site in a country they claim may be conducting work related to nuclear weapons development.  
 
U.S. economic war on Iran
These latest provocations against Iran began with a February visit to Tehran by International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed El Baradei. El Baradei announced that he had discovered Iran was building a facility in secret to enrich uranium, a component of nuclear weapons, at a nuclear power plant Iran has been building near the city of Natanz.

Iranian government officials defend their country’s right to develop its nuclear power industry and explain that this confrontation is set up by Washington, a result of its aggressive efforts to cut off trade to Iran.

"If the United States did not follow this policy of simply trying to deny Iran access to nuclear technology for any purpose," said Javad Zarif, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, "I don’t think you would have all these scenarios that we are confronting."

Others in Iran have pointed to the hypocrisy of Washington’s edict that Iran does not have the right to construct nuclear weapons.

"The Americans say, in order to preserve the peace for my children, I should have nuclear weapons and you shouldn’t have them," said Amir Mohebian, an editor of the Iranian newspaper Resalat.

"I hope we get our atomic weapons," said Shirzad Bozorghner, editor of the English-language daily Iran News. " If Israel has it, we should have it."

Israel is the only nation in the Mideast with nuclear weapons, part of the Zionist regime’s massive U.S.-built military arsenal. Tel Aviv firmly backs Washington’s provocations against Iran and has added its own threats to the chorus. An Israeli government official was quoted in Time magazine saying the nuclear facility was "a huge concern" to Tel Aviv. He said Israel will not take the "Osirak option" off the table. Osirak refers to the nuclear power plant that Paris helped build in the city of Tuwaitah in Iraq. The Israeli air force destroyed the plant in an unprovoked bombing assault in 1981 to prevent Baghdad from developing its own nuclear industry.  
 
 
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