Israel Matzav

Iran buying uranium from Zimbabwe

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad traveled to Zimbabwe last week, and apparently concluded a deal with that country's thuggish President, Robert Mugabe, under which Iran would trade oil for something it wants even more. Uranium.

This isn't all bad news, reports Ryan Mauro at Pajamas Media. The fact that Iran is seeking to buy uranium from Zimbabwe shows that it is short on uncontaminated uranium, and gives credibility to claims that it may be another year before an unimpeded Iran is able to develop nuclear weapons. Mauro reviews some of the efforts Iran has undertaken to obtain uranium, and its continuing problems with nuclear scientists being killed or defecting, and observes that it is apparent that Iran is having problems with enriching enough uranium to make an atomic weapon. Most intriguing, he posits some of the efforts that have been undertaken to sabotage Iran's nuclear program:

There are other reasons that the Iranian nuclear program has slowed down besides the need for more uranium. The use of the black market to provide the Iranians with faulty equipment is only the beginning of the covert efforts. Israel’s Mossad is suspected of being behind the deaths of numerous nuclear scientists. Israel has also used cyber warfare, possibly including the insertion of viruses into computer systems or even remotely causing explosions. When Iran executed a man it believe acted as an Israeli spy in providing them communications equipment that had been tampered with, it said he had “led to the defeat of the project with irreversible damage.”

Read the whole thing.

I doubt that all the ways that Israel has sabotaged the Iran nuclear program will ever come out. In fact, I hope they don't.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:32 AM