Caution on the Bush scam over Iran

This was an important news article from the last week about the drive by at least portions of the Bush administration for a near-term military attack on Iran: Calm Is Urged in Iran Debate by Jeffrey Fleishman and Alissa J. Rubin Los Angeles Times 03/31/06.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, is telling everyone involved to cool it in the hysteria over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program:

"There is no military solution to this situation," said ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning director-general of the IAEA. "It's inconceivable. The only durable solution is a negotiated solution."

Russia and China, as well as several countries in the Middle East, have voiced concern that the U.S. and EU are pursuing tactics with Iran similar to those used in relation to Iraq a few years ago — creating a sense of crisis that makes it easier to make the case for military action.

ElBaradei said the international community should act only on concrete information. He warned against a repetition of the 2003 experience with Iraq, when IAEA inspectors did not find signs of an active nuclear arms program but were ignored by the United States, which proceeded to use unsubstantiated intelligence to make the case for war. Since then, the IAEA has been proved right that Saddam Hussein did not possess any of the alleged weaponry.

"I work on facts," ElBaradei said in his remarks reported by Reuters news agency. "We fortunately were proven right in Iraq, we were the only ones that said at the time that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons, and I hope this time people will listen to us." (my emphasis)

I hope so, too.

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