By Cyrus Safdari | Iran Affairs | November 9, 2013
As you know I’m no fan of the New York Times
when it comes their Iran coverage. The entire newspaper staff there has blood on their hands, as far as I’m concerned, and in an ideal world they should be on trial for deliberately promoting the nonsense that led to the Iraq invasion, never mind the terrible “journalists” like Michael Gordon, the human dictaphone, who work there.
But just to point out that nothing has changed, I refer you to the latest example of crap posing as news by, who else, than Michael Gordon (and Mark Lander.) I could poke holes in this story all day but the best bit is about the Arak heavy water reactor.
They mention that this reactor, once operational, will produce plutonium which can theoretically be made into a bomb, and then they casually proceed to refer to “Iran’s plutonium production program” as if this is some sort of deliberate move by Iran to make plutonium
But plutonium is created in practically any nuclear reactor’s fuel rods, because of the laws of physics which apply equally to Iran as anywhere else. Aside from the fact that the reactor will be under constant IAEA safeguards, the irradiated reactor rods are extremely radioactive and so there is no way that this plutonium can be used for anything without it going through a very complex chain of reactions called “reprocessing” and furthermore, while the Shah was absolutely insistent that Iran retain a reprocessing capability, the Islamic Republic has no reprocessing facility and according to the IAEA itself, has shown no interest in it. In fact, Iran has repeatedly offered to fore-go reprocessing (the reactor rods from Iran’s Bushehr reactor are sent back to Russia for reprocessing.)
Of course, the NY Times could not be bothered to mention ANY of that instead Gordon and Landis made up a “plutonium production program” in Iran.