Informed Speculation

Enrichment, yes, and soon – a bomb, maybe a little time left:

Iran could be as little as six months away from being able to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, having mastered the technology since last August, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned in an interview published today. However, Mohamed ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general, stressed that Iran was still years away from developing a nuclear weapon.

“The intelligence, the British intelligence, the American intelligence, is saying that Iran is still years, five to 10 years, away from developing a weapon,” he told the Financial Times in an interview on the eve of Wednesday’s deadline for Tehran to suspend its enrichment work. But Mr ElBaradei said he expected Iran to ignore the deadline.

Funny how he mentions American and British intelligence as authorities – I assumed from all the comments by my left-leaning readers that everyone knows the Bush Administration is cooking up intelligence to attack Iran just as it did Iraq…or could it be, as I’ve often stated, that the entire world thought Saddam Hussein had WMD stockpiles, mistaken though that belief turned out to be?

But I digress…yes, Iran will ignore tomorrow’s deadline – and no, the UN will not take any worthwhile action in response.  Russia will make sure of that…