Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official
for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy
Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department
of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the
Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security
affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. - ranking member of the Senate
Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and
Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear
weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California
and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Enver Masud, "Iran Has an 'Inalienable
Right' to Nuclear Energy," The Wisdom Fund, January 16, 2006
[Ronald Reagan told reporters on the campaign trail that he did not believe
the United States should stand in the way of other countries developing
nuclear weapons. "I just don't think it's any of our business," the future
president said.--David Armstrong and Joseph J. Trento, "America
and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise," Steerforth (October 23, 2007), p94]
Leonard Doyle, "U.S. Hits Iran
With Toughest Sanctions Since 1979," Independent, October 26, 2007
Tahani Karrar, "Third Middle East Undersea
Cable Cut," Zawya Dow Jones, February 1, 2008
[The evidence was gleaned largely from a laptop computer that was spirited
out of Iran in 2004 and obtained by U.S. intelligence agencies.--Warren P.
Strobel, "Iran rejects
U.S. weapons evidence, U.N. agency says," McClatchy Newspapers,
February 22, 2008]
[There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents
not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.--Gareth Porter, "Iran Nuke Laptop
Data Came from Terror Group," Inter Press Service, February 29, 2008]
[Last Monday, the chief United Nations nuclear inspector gathered
ambassadors and experts from dozens of nations in a boardroom high above the
Danube in Vienna and laid out a trove of evidence that he said raised new
questions about whether Iran had tried to design an atom bomb.--William J.
Broad and David E. Sanger, "Meeting
on Arms Data Reignites Iran Nuclear Debate," New York Times, March 3, 2008]
Robin Wright, "Iran a Nuclear Threat, Bush Insists: Experts Say
President Is Wrong and Is Escalating Tensions," Washington Post,
March 21, 2008
Eric Umansky, "Lost Over Iran:
How the press let the White House craft the narrative about nukes,"
Columbia Journalism Review, March / April 2008
[At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin
America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in
starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation
experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of
those nations.
At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that
they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of
nuclear fuel, . . .
Although U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran halted its
research into making nuclear weapons five years ago, the Islamic republic
still seeks to make enriched uranium with centrifuges at its vast
underground facility at Natanz.--Joby Warrick, "Spread of Nuclear Capability Is Feared: Global
Interest in Energy May Presage A New Arms Race," Washington Post,
May 12, 2008]
[The U.S. intelligence community, however, thinks that Iran halted an effort
to build a nuclear warhead in mid-2003, and the U.N. International Atomic
Energy Agency, which is investigating the program, has found no evidence to
date of an active Iranian nuclear-weapons project.--Jonathan S. Landay, "Both McCain, Obama
exaggerating Iran's nuclear program," McClatchy Newspapers, June 2,
2008]
[Iran's supreme leader has insisted it will continue its nuclear activities
for civilian purposes only and will not manufacture nuclear weapons.--"Iran 'not
seeking' nuclear arms," BBC News, June 2, 2008]
[Iran has never attacked anyone outside of its borders for 280
years--Seymour M. Hersh, "Congress Agreed to Bush Request
to Fund Major Escalation in Secret Operations Against Iran,"
Democracy Now, June 30, 2008]
[The consensus view on Iran's nuclear program shifted dramatically last
December with the release of a landmark intelligence report that concluded
that Iran halted work on nuclear weapons design in 2003.--Joby Warrick, "Ex-Agent Says CIA Ignored Iran Facts,"
Washington Post, July 1, 2008]
Seymour M. Hersh, "Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret
moves against Iran," New Yorker, July 7, 2008
Gareth Porter, "Nuclear
'scare' against Iran exposed," Asia Times, July 10, 2008
[In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields
in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli
fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against Iranian nuclear
installations.--Arnaud de Borchgrave, "Israel of the Caucasus,"
Middle East Times, September 2, 2008]
Scott Peterson, "For Iran,
energy woes justify nuclear push: Many Iranians see the Nuclear Suppliers
Group's Saturday decision that could permit nuclear trade with India as a
double standard," Christian Science Monitor, September 9, 2008
[Energy security will also become a major issue as India, China and other
countries join the United States in seeking oil, gas and other sources for
electricity. The Chinese get a good portion of their oil from Iran, as do
many U.S. allies in Europe, limiting U.S. options on Iran. "So the
turn-the-spigot-off kind of thing -- even if we could do it -- would be
counterproductive."
. . . there is no evidence that Iran has resumed work on building a weapon,
Fingar said, echoing last year's landmark National Intelligence Estimate on
Iran, which concluded that warhead-design work had halted in 2003.--Joby
Warrick and Walter Pincus, "Reduced Dominance Is Predicted for
U.S.," Washington Post, September 10, 2008]
[The shah's plans and Iran's co-operation with Europe and the US came to an
abrupt halt after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. . . .
When Dwight Eisenhower initiated his Atoms for Peace programme in 1953,
Iran was one of the first countries to receive a small nuclear reactor. It
was primarily used for university research. Then, in the early 1970s, the
shah came to the conclusion that Iran should develop its nuclear technology.
We needed nuclear power plants to generate electricity: the population was
increasing and people were using more electricity than before. . . .
The shah always believed that oil shouldn't just be burned to produce
energy. He used to tell other world leaders that oil is an industrial
product and we have only a limited amount of it available to us. He thought
that everyone should be looking for alternative sources of energy.--Maziar
Bahari, "'The shah's plan was to build bombs'," New Statesman, September
11, 2008]
[The problem is the IAEA's failed record with respect to Iraq, where
eventually the US utilized information procured by the IAEA to help justify
its invasion in 2003.
The Iraq analogy is hardly misleading. Just as Iraq was pressed to "prove a
negative", that is, the absence of a clandestine weapons of mass destruction
program, the IAEA is now dead set on denying Iran a clean bill of health as
long as it has not satisfied concerns about a similar absence.--Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, "Big-bang report blasts Iran," New Statesman, Asia Times 17,
2008]
[Known for its cult-like behavior, the MEK (also known as the People's
Mujahedin of Iran, PMOI or MKO) fought alongside Saddam Hussein's regime
against its own country during the bloody Iran-Iraq war. This is one reason
why it has almost no Iranian support, even if it refers to itself as the
"most popular resistance group inside Iran" on its official website. It
does, however, enjoy the backing of several US heavyweights with high
national security credentials.--Jasmin Ramsey, "Iranian terrorist group has close US
allies," New Statesman, Asia Times 17, 2008]