AntiWar.com’s Jason Ditz has caught the Associated Press acting as stenographer (and even exaggerator) for the neo-con lobby for war with Iran, in a grossly exaggerated story entitled "Iran moves closer to nuke warhead capacity."
Ditz reported that the AP article “claims that Iran had informed the IAEA that it ‘will increase its ability to make nuclear warheads,’ an allegation which is not only unsupported by fact but even goes beyond the ample bellicose Western statements quoted in the piece.” Ditz explained that Iran had not made the decision to refine weapons-grade uranium, but only 20 percent enriched uranium (rather than the 90 percent enrichment needed for weapons) in an attempt to power a reactor that creates medical isotopes used in cancer and other medical treatments.
The AP removed the exaggerated story after Ditz’s report, apparently in reaction to the AntiWar.com exposé. “This morning,” Ditz reported February 9, the “Associated Press recalled the story without explanation and replaced it with another, much less inflammatory story written by a different author.”
The Iranian nuclear-enrichment announcement did not amount to a significant weapons threat. Ditz explains that “with Iran’s enrichment facilities under 24-hour IAEA surveillance, they will be able to confirm that neither Iran’s current 3.5 percent uranium or its speculative 20 percent uranium is diverted to anything but civilian purposes. The surveillance would also instantly confirm if Iran began enriching uranium beyond 20 percent, meaning the threat of Iran suddenly acquiring a nuclear weapon is entirely illusory.”
Many neo-cons in the United States and the West have been chomping at the bit to start a war against Iran, in addition to the ongoing U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen. Ditz suggests that “Western officials, and some writers at the Associated Press, however, see fit to look beyond the lack of concrete threats and instead rely on public fear of the unknown to make the case for escalating tensions beyond all reason, and bringing the West ever closer to a needless war with Iran.”
