Iran's Nuclear Hi-Jinks

Sean, at Everything I Know is Wrong, comments on the sudden enlightenment of the IAEA. Apparently their "Confidence in Iran's Nuclear Program has Eroded" according to VOA.

Sean's response:
Eroded? Eroded from where; how can you go down from the bottom?

While I agree that the IAEA should have had zero confidence in Iran, that wasn't the way it was. During the campaign, Senator Kerry tried to make it seem like Iran was a big threat, but he seemed to be proposing a continuance of the same tired policies - but with the additional added plan to offer them nuclear fuel.

So now, as Sean says:

Mohamed Elbaradei, head of the IAEA and author of that fake memo about the ammo dump that caused so much kerfuffle toward the end of the 2004 presidential campaign, is complaining that Iran (shock of shocks) isn't living up to it's promise to freeze uranium its enrichment program.

Apparently ElBaradei thinks "that Iran's confidence deficit needs to be restored through more cooperation and transparency."

Again though, how can there be more transparency when there hasn't really been any? The only thing transparent about Iran is that they have been transparently violating all of their agreements, as seen here in the VOA article:

But [ElBaradei] said Iran has informed the IAEA it wants to continue to use around 20 centrifuge components for research and that this request was under consideration.

The request has annoyed European powers, who recently struck a deal under which Tehran would fully freeze uranium enrichment activities in exchange for nuclear technology.

ElBaradei continues to be useless [and perhaps crazy] for even considering this request. Europe is just as crazy for thinking that Iran would ever fully freeze their own uranium. Moreover, both Kerry and Europe are outrageously ridiculous for thinking it's better to stop Iran's nuclear research by giving them the nuclear fuel and technology, both of which would amount to a multi-year jump forward in the precise research they wished to stop!

The VOA article also said that the US thinks Iran is working on its Nuke program in secret, but Iran denies this.
Sean's dead-on reaction:

And it's a plausible denial, too: "Secret" would hardly be the word I'd choose to describe their nuclear ambitions. When will the UN start acting like it knows that Iran can't be trusted as far as they could throw Tehran?

The UN has to start acting that way, as well as the IAEA and the rest of Europe. I think the US is sort of acting like Iran can't be trusted, but counting on the rest of the world to apply the pressure. Though I must say that I don't think that offers of nuclear technology are doing much to "apply" said "pressure."

Lastly, I called these movements by Iran "Hi-jinks" because it seemed to capture the ridiculous nature of this entire debacle. Iran acts obviously with its nuclear program and the rest of the world acts like Iran isn't being obvious. It's as if their saying "If we pretend that Iran is doing it secretly, we won't have to do anything about it because we can pretend we don't know for sure and thus don't have to take action."

These are Nuclear Weapons we are dealing with people! Wake up and remember the Cold War. Tolerance of other countries' so-called "secrets" has its limits and I'd say nuclear technology is one of them.