Yellowcake, Yellowcake, Who’s Got the Yellowcake
I never post on Sunday. But I’m doing this anyway, because I feel that time is of the essence on this one. It may be quite important. Or not. We’ll see soon.
Yellowcake is a concentrate of uranium ore that is used to make nuclear material. It is the first step on the road to fuel for a peaceful nuclear reactor for power, or the makings of war materials.
Remember just before the Iraq war, when we were told that North Korea was supplying Iraq with yellowcake for their Weapons of Mass Destruction? Remember how that turned out to be based on forged documents? Remember how it helped start that war?
Now there is ‘intelligence information’ circulating that North Korea was shipping 45 tons of yellowcake, enough for 3-5 nuclear devices, to Syria at the time the Israeli airforce destroyed something in Syria, which is widely accepted to have been a war-oriented nuclear plant under construction. After the bombing, the Koreans turned the ship around for home port.
But now ‘intelligence sources’, which can probably be traced to the Israeli Mossad (their equivalent of our CIA but with a much better track record), say that those 45 tons of yellowcake were re-shipped to the Middle East last summer. More specifically, to Iran. This information has also been published by the New Agency of India, although they attributed it to a ‘Western diplomatic source’, which indicates to me that the United States is either involved with this story, or will gladly accept it as true.
Woah Nellie! That’s a game changer… if true.
Eerily, today’s New York Times is running a story that Iran officially told the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago that they moved their entire declared stockpile of nuclear fuel above ground, where an air strike could destroy it easily. Let me pause to say the timing in reporting that story is tremendously odd when coupled with the yellowcake revelations.
People have different theories about why Iran would do such an amazing thing. One is that they are trying to entice Israel into striking so that Iran’s dissenters will close ranks with the Iranian government against the West. Do you believe that? Another was that it was supposed be a bargaining chip to avoid sanctions. Do you believe that? I’m not sure anyone actually believes either of those two flights of fancy.
So then, why?
As a state department official said recently, we have an almost perfect track record of guessing the Iranian’s intentions incorrectly. But it seems logical that you put a valuable item at risk only if you have more of it. Perhaps much more of it than other people thought you had.
That is the conclusion that the ‘intelligence sources’ seem to want everyone to come to. But they have an agenda, and that is for the world to unite against Iranian nuclear power. If Iran suddenly has a whole bunch of material to process, that would surely swing the international community closer to the desires of the Israelis, whether by a military strike or ‘crippling sanctions’. If the yellowcake story is true, countries would very probably think that the risk of war from airstrikes, or a blockade against Iran getting gasoline, would be a necessary gamble.
But is it necessary that it be true?
A story about yellowcake that later proved to be untrue worked well enough the last time. Have we become smarter in the past few years? Do we even remember the last time very clearly?
When the tales about Iraq were being told, did we remember the story about the non-existent battle in Haiphong Harbor that started the deep involvement in the Vietnam war?
