Ritter's Rant 088: «Грибовидные облака» — против раскручивания иранской ядерной угрозы

Ritter’s Rant 088: Mushroom Clouds

Источник: https://scottritter.substack.com/p/ritters-rant-088-mushroom-clouds

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ritter's Rant. Today we're going to be talking about mushroom clouds. Yep, we're talking about nuclear weapons. You guys remember back in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, I think it was in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice said, we don't want the smoking gun. She was referring to the proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. and she was instilling fear in people, the fear of an Iraqi nuclear weapon that justified the United States carrying out a war of aggression against Iraq, void of any authority under international law or even domestic law. She was fear mongering in the worst way. It turned out, of course, that Iraq not only didn't have a nuclear weapons program, they didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. And the facts made that clear. But, you know, one of the problems is people are you know prone to accepting statements from erstwhile experts or politicians and breathing life into them as if because somebody of stature says it it must be true ignoring that there might be political motivations behind the words that people might be deliberately seeking to manipulate fear into action that otherwise wouldn't be endorseable today we Look at Iran and, you know, the United States and Israel, of course, carried out their 37 day war of aggression against Iran.

There is a uh tentative ceasefire in place as both sides uh you know work toward hopefully what will be a uh negotiated solution to you know this crisis but one of the key sticking points of course is Iran's nuclear program now let's just make it clear that there is no evidence at all that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program that Iran ever had a nuclear weapons program that Iran desires to have a nuclear bomb we know this in any number of ways first and foremost and perhaps most importantly it's because the Iranian government says they don't want one and over time their words have played out you know there are a lot of people out there that think they can speak on behalf of the Iranian government and talk about the absolute necessity of a nuclear bomb in the hands of the Iranian government to aggression against it. Well, gosh, that didn't work. But Iran won the war. I mean, let's not forget that the 37 day war ended not because Iran was suing for a ceasefire because the United States was begging for a ceasefire because their war objectives had not been met.

Iran defeated two nuclear-powered states, Israel and the United States, without having to resort to the threat of nuclear weapons. They defeated them through sheer will and of course a very deadly ballistic missile program, conventionally armed, that was able to overcome the combined military prowess of both Israel and the United States. doesn't want nuclear weapons this was made very clear last September when I met with the Iranian president the Iranian foreign minister and I asked the question I said you know how are you going to deter potential acts of aggression by the United States in Israel if you don't have nuclear weapons and they said our ballistic missiles will speak for us that we have no desire for nuclear weapons we don't want them we don't need them and we believe that our possession of nuclear weapons would make us weaker not stronger Those words have turned out to be prophetic because had Iran actually pursued a nuclear weapons program, the illegitimacy of American and Israeli actions today would not be manifested.

As we speak right now, there is no doubt that both Israel and the United States violated international law in attacking Iran. There was no justification whatsoever for these attacks, especially when it comes to Iran's nuclear weapons program, which does not exist. But now we have Donald Trump trying to negotiate his way out of this mess that he's made. And he needs to be seen as a man who has accomplished something of significance, something worthy of the expense and the sacrifice that the United States has made in going to war against Iran, something that makes the world forget that there's a global economic crisis brought on by, you know, Energy shortages created are directly attributable to American actions against Iran. So Trump is seeking to spin this war as a conflict against the Iranian nuclear bomb. They can never have one, he says. They never wanted one, Donnie. They will never have one.

They will never try to get one, Donnie. But that doesn't matter. Now he has to get the Iranians to play along as if somehow they're guilty. They're not guilty of anything. Iran has shown an incredible willingness to work with the United States and the international community to alleviate the concerns of the United States and indirectly Israel. about the potential for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. This is why on February 26, two days before the United States and Israel carried out their day of infamy, their surprise attack against Iran, the Omani foreign minister who was brokering a negotiation between The United States was flying to Washington DC with an agreement in hand that would have permanently closed the door for any possibility of Iran to move forward towards a nuclear weapon should they have ever made the decision and again I need to remind people Iran doesn't seek one doesn't want one isn't moving in that direction at all but to appease the international community to appease the United States um the Iranians had agreed to very stringent measures uh this could have been the deal that Donald Trump was always looking for he said that he would through from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action because he wanted there was a bad deal and he wanted a better deal well Donnie you got a better deal it was right there um but you didn't take it instead you use the negotiations as a front to carry out a surprise attack which is one of the reasons why the Iranians are having a hard time trusting you today about negotiating on anything alone their nuclear program but now that Donald Trump has created this political opportunity what I mean by that is he has politicized a non-event he's politicized the potential of an Iranian nuclear weapon we see a lot of people suddenly jumping on this bandwagon.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ostensibly a credible journalistic scientific journal, has published an article written by Henry Sokolski. Henry Sokolski is a former nonproliferation political appointee who served in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush a while back. He's not an expert on anything. you know got a degree a bachelor's degree in political science and he's a political appointee which means he's loyal to the policies of the president who appointed him but he doesn't really know much about nuclear weapons about nuclear technology about what it takes to actually do the things he's accusing Iran of having the potential to do you see normally when we speak about a path to an uranium bomb we speak about the uranium path because this is the one of the greatest controversy Iran's uranium enrichment program This is why Donald Trump is focused so much effort on, you know, gaining access to and control of the 400 plus kilograms of 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock that goes into Iran's centrifuge cascade programs that would be used to enrich it up to 90% if Iran indeed wanted the weapon, which they don't.

Sokolovsky says we're looking at the wrong thing, that... What we should be looking at is plutonium. Now, that's amazing because, you know, in the entire time that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the international community has been focused on Iran's potential as a nuclear weapons producing state, the plutonium path has not been on anybody's mind. I mean, people have talked about it peripherally, but people aren't saying, wow, we're really worried about a plutonium weapon coming out of Iran. That's not been the case. The focus has been singularly on uranium because that's where Iran had put the focus of its efforts. So what is Sokolsky talking about? Well, you see, the Russians have helped complete a nuclear reactor of Bushir, which uses 3.75% enriched uranium as to make fuel to power the plant. I think the reactor got fueled up in 2010. Now, your fuel becomes depleted you swap out the fuel rods put new ones in the old fuel rods go into cooling ponds where they have to sit for 36 months to cool down to the point where they could be they could be handled and under the agreement with the JCPOA the fuel rods were supposed to be taken out to Russia for reprocessing for dismantling for disposal but because the JCPOA is no longer in effect There has been a pause in this.

These fuel rods are in Iran today in the cooling ponds. Fully accountable. Everybody knows they're there. None are missing. But now Sikowsky is saying that hidden inside these spent fuel rods is over 2,100 kilograms of plutonium, 239, which can be used to make a nuclear weapon. And he's saying this is the real potential, that Iran is literally weeks away from having 200 plutonium bombs. Well, my goodness, we don't want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud, now do we? Well, that wasn't a viable argument back in 2002, and it's not a viable argument today. The fact of the matter is, while Iran has shown an ability under laboratory conditions using glove box technologies to Reprocess plutonium. They've not done it on any significant scale, nor have they shown any desire to do so. Those spent rods are where they're at in the ponds, fully accountable. Iran hasn't built the significant and infrastructure necessary to do the reprocessing that would be required to extract the plutonium.

I mean, this is just simply a hypothetical, not founded in anything that people have alluded to the Iraq nuclear reactor. It's a heavy What is heavy water? It's a drudium oxide. Basically, drudium is a heavier form of hydrogen. H2O is water. D2O is heavy water. And heavy water is a good neutron moderator. What does that mean? It means that you can make a reactor that doesn't require enriched uranium. Amazing. It uses natural uranium to generate the reactions. But the thing is, it also produces you know low-grade plutonium not weapons-grade plutonium low-grade plutonium Iraq or Iran when talking about the Iraq reactors agreed to its full monitoring and has said that the fuel rods that are used there will be taken outside of Iran for reprocessing that Iran has no desire to have plutonium whatsoever he solved but not in the mind of Henry Sokolski and the other non-nuclear specialists who are seeking to make political hay out of this current crisis.

You know, but other people now are picking up on a statement made by Ibrahim Razay. Ibrahim Razay is an Iranian parliamentarian. He sits on certain committees inside the Majlis or Iranian parliament, and he has come out and made a politically motivated statement. He says, if Iran is attacked, Iran could consider enriching to 90%. That's something that will be discussed in parliament. This has now been picked up in social media and elsewhere as Iran threatens, Iran threatens to enrich to 90%, which of course is the percentage necessary to make a nuclear weapon. But Iran has made no such threat. Ibrahim Razi does not speak for Iran. He doesn't even speak for the parliament. He speaks for a committee and he speaks hypothetically about what Iran could do if maybe somebody wanted to consider it. But the parliament does not have any decision-making authority over Iran's nuclear program, none whatsoever.

The entire parliament can come out and vote that Iran will enrich to 90%. and it doesn't move the needle at all because they're not players in the equation. The national security infrastructure that makes these decisions has already spoken. The president has made it clear no desire whatsoever to have a nuclear weapon. And the supreme leader has continued the fatwas or religious edicts of his deceased father, which said Iran can't have a nuclear weapon because to possess one would be in violation of Islamic norms, values, etc. It's against Islam to possess a nuclear weapon, in other words. And yet people are picking up on today. Today the social media world is ablaze with Iran's threat to produce 90% enriched uranium. No such threats exist. The bottom line is that we have a lot of people who are pushing for war. without recognizing the consequences of this war. I mean, again, there's a reason why Donald Trump pursued a ceasefire.

We ran out of weapons and Iran was choking off the global energy supply. We don't have any more weapons, but Iran is continuing to choke off. So there's an absolute need to create the conditions for conflict termination. but the neoconservatives and the warmongers it's the last thing they want they want to fight literally to the last whatever Israeli American Iranian they don't care war is the only concept they know even Robert Kagan who recently published an article in The Atlantic, which is a transatlantic pro-NATO, pro-war journal. You know, he was critical. He said checkmate Iran. But his solution to the obvious fact that Iran won the war, seek peace? No. More war. Bigger war. But how do you justify a bigger war? You need a bigger threat. And now we come back to the ongoing statements made about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program or desires to possess a weapon. they don't have a nuclear weapons program they have no desire to possess a nuclear weapons program and anybody suggesting otherwise is dealing in a fact-free world a fantasy infused reality that seeks only war only terror only chaos only death only destruction we're supposed to be better than that we're supposed to be humans we're supposed to care for one another we're supposed to be seeking peaceful outcomes I've written and uh and discussed this I'm a new grandfather I have a wonderful beautiful granddaughter Marceline Salome McDowell she just opened her eyes I want her to be able to have those eyes open to see the world to see the world in all its glory and all of its wonder to see a world where peace is the coin of the realm not war we the people of the United States and the world have to be smarter than the warmongers who are trying to infuse our minds with fear Fear is generated from ignorance.

We need to educate ourselves about the reality of what is going on in Iran regarding its nuclear program and the fact that nothing in Iran equates to a desire to possess nuclear weapons or the capability to produce them. This is the truth, and the truth will set us free if we're only smart enough and wise enough to embrace it. That's been my rant. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know.

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ ═══ Транскрипция видео ═══ ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

═══ Транскрипция видео 1 ═══

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ritter's Rant. Today we're going to be talking about mushroom clouds. Yep, we're talking about nuclear weapons. You guys remember back in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, I think it was in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice said, we don't want the smoking gun. She was referring to the proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. And she was instilling fear in people, the fear of an Iraqi nuclear weapon that justified the United States carrying out a war of aggression against Iraq, void of any authority under international law or even domestic law. She was fear-mongering in the worst way. It turned out, of course, that Iraq not only didn't have a nuclear weapons program, they didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. And the facts made that clear. But, you know, one of the problems is people are, you know, prone to accepting statements from erstwhile experts or politicians and breathing life into them as if because somebody of stature says it, it must be true. Ignoring that there might be political motivations behind the words that people might be deliberately seeking to manipulate fear into action that otherwise wouldn't be endorseable. Today, we look at Iran and, you know, the United States and Israel, of course, carried out their 37-day war of aggression against Iran. There is a tentative ceasefire in place as both sides, you know, work toward hopefully what will be a negotiated solution to, you know, this crisis. But one of the key sticking points, of course, is Iran's nuclear program. Let's just make it clear that there is no evidence at all that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, that Iran ever had a nuclear weapons program, that Iran desires to have a nuclear bomb. We know this in any number of ways. First and foremost, and perhaps most importantly, it's because the Iranian government says they don't want one. And over time, their words have played out.

You know, there are a lot of people out there that think they can speak on behalf of the Iranian government and talk about the absolute necessity of a nuclear bomb in the hands of the Iranian government to deter aggression against it. Well, gosh, that didn't work. But Iran won the war. I mean, let's not forget that, that the 37-day war ended not because Iran was suing for a ceasefire, but because the United States was begging for a ceasefire, because their war objectives had not been met. Iran defeated two nuclear-powered states, Israel and the United States, without having to resort to the threat of nuclear weapons. They defeated them through sheer will and, of course, a very deadly ballistic missile program conventionally armed that was able to overcome the combined military prowess of both Israel and the United States. Iran doesn't want nuclear weapons. This was made very clear last September when I met with the Iranian president, the Iranian foreign minister, and I asked the question, I said, you know, how are you going to deter potential acts of aggression by the United States and Israel if you don't have nuclear weapons? And they said our ballistic missiles will speak for us, that we have no desire for nuclear weapons. We don't want them. We don't need them. And we believe that our possession of nuclear weapons would make us weaker, not stronger. Those words have turned out to be prophetic, because had Iran actually pursued a nuclear weapons program, the illegitimacy of American and Israeli actions today would not be, you know, manifested. You know, as we speak right now, there is no doubt that both Israel and the United States violated international law in attacking Iran. There was no justification whatsoever for these attacks, especially when it comes to Iran's nuclear weapons program, which does not exist. But now we have Donald Trump trying to negotiate his way out of this mess that he's made, and he needs to be seen as a man who has accomplished something of significance, something worthy of the expense and the sacrifice that the United States has made in going to war against Iran, something that makes the world forget that there's a global economic crisis brought on by, you know, energy shortages created are directly attributable to American actions against Iran. So Trump is seeking to spin this war as a conflict against the Iranian nuclear bomb. They can never have one, he says. They never wanted one, Donnie. They will never have one. They will never try to get one, Donnie. But that doesn't matter. Now he has to get the Iranians to play along as if somehow they're guilty. They're not guilty of anything. Iran has shown an incredible willingness to work with the United States and the international community to alleviate the concerns of the United States and indirectly Israel about the potential for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. This is why on February 26, two days before the United States and Israel carried out their day of infamy, their surprise attack against Iran, the Omani foreign minister who was brokering a negotiation between Iran and the United States was flying to Washington, D.C. with an agreement in hand that would have permanently closed the door for any possibility of Iran to move forward towards a nuclear weapon should they have ever made the decision. And again, I need to remind people, Iran doesn't seek one, doesn't want one, isn't moving in that direction at all. But to appease the international community, to appease the United States, the Iranians had agreed to very stringent measures.

This could have been the deal that Donald Trump was always looking for. He said that he withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action because he wanted, there was a bad deal and he wanted a better deal. Well, Donny, you got a better deal. It was right there. But you didn't take it. Instead, you used the negotiations as a front to carry out a surprise attack, which is one of the reasons why the Iranians are having a hard time trusting you today about negotiating on anything, other than their nuclear program. But now that Donald Trump has created this political opportunity, what I mean by that is he has politicized a non-event. He's politicized the potential of an Iranian nuclear weapon. We see a lot of people suddenly jumping on this bandwagon. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ostensibly a credible journalistic scientific journal, has published an article written by Henry Sokolsky. Henry Sokolsky is a former non-proliferation, you know, political appointee who served in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush a while back. He's not an expert on anything. He got a degree, a bachelor's degree in political science, and he's a political appointee, which means he's loyal to the policies of the president who appointed him. But he doesn't really know much about nuclear weapons, about nuclear technology, about what it takes to actually do the things he's accusing Iran of having the potential to do. You see, normally when we speak about a path to an uranium bomb, we speak about the uranium path, because this is the one of the greatest controversy, Iran's uranium enrichment program. This is why Donald Trump is focused so much effort on, you know, gaining access to and control of the 400 plus kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock that goes into Iran's centrifuge cascade programs that would be used to enrich it up to 90 percent. And if Iran indeed wanted the weapon, which they don't, Sikorsky says we're looking at the wrong thing, that what we should be looking at is plutonium. Now, that's amazing because, you know, in the entire time that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the international community has been focused on Iran's potential as a nuclear weapons producing state, the plutonium path has not been on anybody's mind. I mean, I mean, people have talked about it peripherally, but people aren't saying a lot. We're really worried about a plutonium weapon coming out of Iran. That's not been the case.

The focus has been singularly on uranium because that's where Iran had put the focus of its efforts. You know, so what is Sikorsky talking about? Well, you see, the Russians have helped complete a nuclear reactor of Bushir, which uses 3.75 percent enriched uranium as to make fuel to power the plant. I think the reactor got fueled up in 2010. Now, you know, fuel becomes depleted. You swap out the fuel rods, put new ones in. The old fuel rods go into cooling ponds where they have to sit for 36 months to cool down to the point where they could be they could be handled. And under the agreement with the JCPOA, the fuel rods were supposed to be taken out to Russia for reprocessing, for dismantling, for disposal. But because the JCPOA is no longer in effect, there has been a pause in this. These fuel rods are in Iran today in the cooling ponds, fully accountable. Everybody knows they're there. None are missing. But now Sikorsky saying that hidden inside these these spent fuel rods is over two thousand one hundred kilograms of plutonium. Two thirty nine, which can be used to make a nuclear weapon. And he's saying this is the real potential that Iran is literally weeks away from having two hundred plutonium bombs. Well, my goodness, we don't want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud now, do we? Well, that wasn't a viable argument back in 2002. And it's not a viable argument today that the fact of the matter is, while Iran has shown an ability under laboratory conditions, using glove box, you know, technologies to reprocess plutonium, they've not done it on any significant scale, nor have they shown any desire to do so. Those spent rods are where they're at in the ponds, fully accountable. Iran hasn't built the significant infrastructure necessary to do the reprocessing that would be required to extract the plutonium. I mean, this is just simply a hypothetical, not founded in anything that people have alluded to, the Iraq nuclear reactor. It's a heavy water reactor. What is heavy water? It's a drudium oxide. Basically, drudium is a heavier form of hydrogen.

H2O is water. D2O is heavy water. And heavy water is a good neutron moderator. What does that mean? It means that you can make a reactor that doesn't require enriched uranium. Ah, amazing. It uses natural uranium to generate the reactions. But the thing is, it also produces, you know, low-grade plutonium, not weapons-grade plutonium, low-grade plutonium. And Iran, when talking about the Iraq reactor, has agreed to its full monitoring and has said that the fuel rods that are used there will be taken outside of Iran for reprocessing, that Iran has no desire to have plutonium whatsoever. They solved, but not in the mind of Henry Sikorsky and the other non-nuclear specialists who are seeking to make political hay out of, you know, this current crisis. You know, but other people now are picking up on a statement made by Ibrahim Razay. Ibrahim Razay is an Iranian parliamentarian. He sits on certain committees inside the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, and he has come out and made a politically motivated statement. He says, if Iran is attacked, Iran could consider enriching to 90%.

That's something that will be discussed in parliament. This has now been picked up in social media and elsewhere as Iran threatens, Iran threatens to enrich to 90%, which, of course, is the percentage necessary to make a nuclear weapon. But Iran has made no such threat. Ibrahim Razay does not speak for Iran. He doesn't even speak for the parliament. He speaks for a committee, and he speaks hypothetically about what Iran could do if maybe somebody wanted to consider it. But the parliament does not have any decision-making authority over Iran's nuclear program, none whatsoever. The entire parliament can come out and vote that Iran will enrich to 90%, and it doesn't move the needle at all because they're not players in the equation. The national security infrastructure that makes these decisions has already spoken. The president has made it clear, no desire whatsoever to have a nuclear weapon, and the supreme leader has continued the fatwas or religious edicts of his deceased father, which said Iran can't have a nuclear weapon because to possess one would be in violation of Islamic norms, values, etc. It's against Islam to possess a nuclear weapon, in other words. And yet people are picking up on today. Today, the social media world is ablaze with Iran's threat to produce 90% enriched uranium. No such threats exist. The bottom line is that we have a lot of people who are pushing for war without recognizing the consequences of this war. I mean, again, there's a reason why Donald Trump pursued a ceasefire. We ran out of weapons, and Iran was choking off the global energy supply. We don't have any more weapons, but Iran is continuing to choke off. So there's an absolute need to create the conditions for conflict termination. But the neoconservatives and the warmongers, that's the last thing they want. They want to fight literally to the last whatever, Israeli, American, Iranian. They don't care. War is the only concept they know.

Even Robert Kagan, who recently published an article in the Atlantic, which is a transatlantic pro-NATO, pro-war journal, you know, he was critical. He said, checkmate Iran. But his solution to the obvious fact that Iran won the war? Seek peace? No. More war. Bigger war. But how do you justify a bigger war? You need a bigger threat. And now we come back to the ongoing statements made about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program or desires to possess a weapon. They don't have a nuclear weapons program. They have no desire to possess a nuclear weapons program. And anybody suggesting otherwise is dealing in a fact-free world, a fantasy-infused reality that seeks only war, only terror, only chaos, only death, only destruction. We're supposed to be better than that. We're supposed to be humans. We're supposed to care for one another. We're supposed to be seeking peaceful outcomes. I've written and discussed this. I'm a new grandfather. I have a wonderful, beautiful granddaughter, Marceline Salome McDowell. She just opened her eyes. I want her to be able to have those eyes open, to see the world, to see the world in all its glory and all of its wonder, to see a world where peace is the coin of the realm, not war. We, the people of the United States and the world, have to be smarter than the warmongers who are trying to infuse our minds with fear. Fear is generated from ignorance. We need to educate ourselves about the reality of what is going on in Iran regarding its nuclear program and the fact that nothing in Iran equates to a desire to possess nuclear weapons or the capability to produce them. This is the truth, and the truth will set us free if we're only smart enough and wise enough to embrace it.

That's been my rant. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know. Next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know.

═══ Транскрипция видео 2 ═══

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ritter's Rant. Today we're going to be talking about mushroom clouds. Yep, we're talking about nuclear weapons. You guys remember back in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, I think it was in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice said, we don't want the smoking gun, she was referring to the proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. And she was instilling fear in people, the fear of an Iraqi nuclear weapon that justified the United States carrying out a war of aggression against Iraq, void of any authority under international law or even domestic law. She was fear-mongering in the worst way. It turned out, of course, that Iraq not only didn't have a nuclear weapons program, they didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. And the facts made that clear. But, you know, one of the problems is people are, you know, prone to accepting statements from erstwhile experts or politicians and breathing life into them as if because somebody of stature says it, it must be true. Ignoring that there might be political motivations behind the words that people might be deliberately seeking to manipulate fear into action that otherwise wouldn't be endorseable. Today, we look at Iran and, you know, the United States and Israel, of course, carried out their 37-day war of aggression against Iran. There is a tentative ceasefire in place as both sides, you know, work toward hopefully what will be a negotiated solution to, you know, this crisis. But one of the key sticking points, of course, is Iran's nuclear program. Let's just make it clear that there is no evidence at all that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, that Iran ever had a nuclear weapons program, that Iran desires to have a nuclear bomb. We know this in any number of ways. First and foremost, and perhaps most importantly, it's because the Iranian government says they don't want one. And over time, their words have played out.

You know, there are a lot of people out there that think they can speak on behalf of the Iranian government and talk about the absolute necessity of a nuclear bomb in the hands of the Iranian government to deter aggression against it. Well, gosh, that didn't work. But Iran won the war. I mean, let's not forget that, that the 37-day war ended not because Iran was suing for a ceasefire, but because the United States was begging for a ceasefire because their war objectives had not been met. Iran defeated two nuclear-powered states, Israel and the United States, without having to resort to the threat of nuclear weapons. They defeated them through sheer will and, of course, a very deadly ballistic missile program conventionally armed that was able to overcome the combined military prowess of both Israel and the United States. Iran doesn't want nuclear weapons. This was made very clear last September when I met with the Iranian president, the Iranian foreign minister. And I asked the question, how are you going to deter potential acts of aggression by the United States and Israel if you don't have nuclear weapons? And they said our ballistic missiles will speak for us, that we have no desire for nuclear weapons. We don't want them. We don't need them. And we believe that our possession of nuclear weapons would make us weaker, not stronger. Those words have turned out to be prophetic because had Iran actually pursued a nuclear weapons program. The illegitimacy of American and Israeli actions today would not be, you know, manifested. You know, as we speak right now, there is no doubt that both Israel and the United States violated international law and attacking Iran. There was no justification whatsoever for these attacks, especially when it comes to Iran's nuclear weapons program, which does not exist. But now we have Donald Trump trying to negotiate his way out of this mess that he's made. And he needs to be seen as a man who has accomplished something of significance, something worthy of the expense and the sacrifice that the United States has made in going to war against Iran, something that makes the world forget that there's a global economic crisis brought on by, you know, energy shortages created or directly attributable to American actions against Iran. So Trump is seeking to spend this war as a conflict against the Iranian nuclear bomb. They can never have one, he says.

They never wanted one, Donnie. They will never have one. They will never try to get one, Donnie. But that doesn't matter. Now he has to get the Iranians to play along as if somehow they're guilty. They're not guilty of anything. Iran has shown an incredible willingness to work with the United States and the international community to alleviate the concerns of the United States and, indirectly, Israel about the potential for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. This is why on February 26, two days before the United States and Israel carried out their day of infamy, their surprise attack against Iran, the Omani foreign minister who was brokering a negotiation between Iran and the United States was flying to Washington, D.C. with an agreement in hand that would have permanently closed the door for any possibility of Iran to move forward towards a nuclear weapon should they have ever made the decision. And again, I need to remind people, Iran doesn't seek one, doesn't want one, isn't moving in that direction at all. But to appease the international community, to appease the United States, the Iranians had agreed to very stringent measures. This could have been the deal that Donald Trump was always looking for. He said that he would through from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action because that was a bad deal and he wanted a better deal. Well, Donnie, you got a better deal. It was right there. But you didn't take it. Instead, you used the negotiations as a front to carry out a surprise attack, which is one of the reasons why the Iranians are having a hard time trusting you today about negotiating on anything, along their nuclear program. But now that Donald Trump has created this political opportunity, what I mean by that is he has politicized a non-event. He's politicized the potential of an Iranian nuclear weapon. We see a lot of people suddenly jumping on this bandwagon. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ostensibly a credible journalistic scientific journal, has published an article written by Henry Sokolsky. Henry Sokolsky is a former nonproliferation political appointee who served in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush a while back. He's not an expert on anything. He got a degree, a bachelor's degree in political science, and he's a political appointee, which means he's loyal to the policies of the president who appointed him. But he doesn't really know much about nuclear weapons, about nuclear technology, about what it takes to actually do the things he's accusing Iran of having the potential to do. You see, normally when we speak about a path to an uranium bomb, we speak about the uranium path, because this is the one of the greatest controversy, Iran's uranium enrichment program. This is why Donald Trump has focused so much effort on, you know, gaining access to and control of the 400 plus kilograms of 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock that goes into Iran's centrifuge cascade programs that would be used to enrich it up to 90% if Iran indeed wanted the weapon, which they don't. Sokolsky says we're looking at the wrong thing, that what we should be looking at is plutonium. Now, that's amazing, because, you know, in the entire time that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the international community has been focused on Iran's potential as a nuclear weapons producing state, the plutonium path has not been on anybody's mind. I mean, people have talked about it peripherally, but people aren't saying, wow, we're really worried about a plutonium weapon coming out of Iran. That's not been the case. The focus has been singularly on uranium, because that's where Iran had put the focus of its efforts. So what is Sokolsky talking about? Well, you see, the Russians have helped complete a nuclear reactor of Boucher, which uses 3.75% enriched uranium to make fuel to power the plant. I think the reactor got fueled up in 2010. Now, you know, fuel becomes depleted. You swap out the fuel rods, put new ones in. The old fuel rods go into cooling ponds where they have to sit for 36 months to cool down to the point where they could be handled.

And under the agreement with the JCPOA, the fuel rods were supposed to be taken out to Russia for reprocessing, for dismantling, for disposal. But because the JCPOA is no longer in effect, there has been a pause in this. These fuel rods are in Iran today in the cooling ponds. Fully accountable. Everybody knows they're there. None are missing. But now Sokolsky is saying that hidden inside these these spent fuel rods is over 2,100 kilograms of plutonium 239, which can be used to make a nuclear weapon. And he's saying this is the real potential, that Iran is literally weeks away from having 200 plutonium bombs. Well, my goodness, we don't want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud, now do we? Well, that wasn't a viable argument back in 2002. And it's not a viable argument today. The fact of the matter is, while Iran has shown an ability under laboratory conditions using glovebox technologies to reprocess plutonium, they've not done it on any significant scale, nor have they shown any desire to do so. Those spent rods are where they're at in the ponds, fully accountable. Iran hasn't built the significant infrastructure necessary to do the reprocessing that would be required to extract the plutonium. I mean, this is just simply a hypothetical, not founded in anything. You know, that people have alluded to the Iraq nuclear reactor. It's a heavy water reactor. What is heavy water? It's a drudium oxide. Basically, drudium is a heavier form of hydrogen. H2O is water. D2O is heavy water. And heavy water is a good neutron moderator. What does that mean? It means that you can make a reactor that doesn't require enriched uranium. Ah, amazing. It uses natural uranium to generate the reactions. But the thing is, it also produces you know, low-grade plutonium, not weapons-grade plutonium, low-grade plutonium. Iraq or Iran, when talking about the Iraq reactor, has agreed to its full monitoring and has said that the fuel rods that are used there will be taken outside of Iran for reprocessing, that Iran has no desire to have plutonium whatsoever. He solved, but not in the mind of Henry Sokulski and the other non-nuclear specialists who are seeking to make political hay out of, you know, this current crisis. You know, but other people now are picking up on a statement made by Ibrahim Razay.

Ibrahim Razay is an Iranian parliamentarian. He sits on certain committees inside the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, and he has come out and made a politically motivated statement. He says if Iran is attacked, Iran could consider enriching to 90%. That's something that will be discussed in parliament. This has now been picked up in social media and elsewhere as Iran threatens, Iran threatens to enrich to 90%, which of course is the percentage necessary to make a nuclear weapon. But Iran has made no such threat. Ibrahim Razay does not speak for Iran. He doesn't even speak for the parliament. He speaks for a committee and he speaks hypothetically about what Iran could do if maybe somebody wanted to consider it. But the parliament does not have any decision-making authority over Iran's nuclear program, none whatsoever. The entire parliament can come out and vote that Iran will enrich to 90%. And it doesn't move the needle at all because they're not players in the equation. The national security infrastructure that makes these decisions has already spoken.

The president has made it clear. No desire whatsoever to have a nuclear weapon. And the supreme leader has continued the fatwas or religious edicts of his deceased father, which said Iran can't have a nuclear weapon because to possess one would be in violation of Islamic norms, values, etc. It's against Islam to possess a nuclear weapon, in other words. And yet people are picking up today. Today, the social media world is ablaze with Iran's threat to produce 90% enriched uranium. No such threats exist. The bottom line is that we have a lot of people who are pushing for war without recognizing the consequences of this war. I mean, again, there's a reason why Donald Trump pursued a ceasefire. We ran out of weapons and Iran was choking off the global energy supply. We don't have any more weapons, but Iran is continuing to choke off. So there's an absolute need to create the conditions for conflict termination. But the neoconservatives and the warmongers, it's the last thing they want. They want to fight literally to the last whatever. Israeli, American, Iranian, Iranian. They don't care. War is the only concept they know. Even Robert Kagan, who recently published an article in the Atlantic, which is a transatlantic pro-NATO, pro-war journal, you know, he was critical. He said, checkmate Iran. But his solution to the obvious fact that Iran won the war? Seek peace? No. More war. Bigger war.

But how do you justify a bigger war? You need a bigger threat. And now we come back to the ongoing statements made about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program or desires to possess a weapon. They don't have a nuclear weapons program. They have no desire to possess a nuclear weapons program. And anybody suggesting otherwise is dealing in a fact-free world, a fantasy-infused reality that seeks only war, only terror, only chaos, only death, only destruction. We're supposed to be better than that. We're supposed to be humans. We're supposed to care for one another. We're supposed to be seeking peaceful outcomes. I've written and discussed this. I have a wonderful, beautiful granddaughter, Marceline Salome McDowell. She just opened her eyes. I want her to be able to have those eyes open, to see the world, to see the world in all its glory and all of its wonder, to see a world where peace is that is the coin of the realm, not war. We, the people of the United States and the world, have to be smarter than the warmongers who are trying to infuse our minds with fear. Fear is generated from ignorance. We need to educate ourselves about the reality of what is going on in Iran regarding its nuclear program and the fact that nothing in Iran equates to a desire to possess nuclear weapons or the capability to produce them. This is the truth, and the truth will set us free if we're only smart enough and wise enough to embrace it. That's been my rant. Next time the thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know.