In a sane world, this wouldn't even be a news story.
Iran is an energy power. It had no need for nuclear research except for a weapons program. It has blown through fortunes on its nuclear program that make no sense in a country with low energy prices.
Despite this the media insisted on believing the "fatwa" nonsense that Iran considered a bomb un-Islamic, even though the program began due to the Iran-Iraq War. The entire nuclear deal is premised on the bizarre idea that Iran wants a peaceful nuclear energy program. And now Obama Inc. is haltingly admitting that Iran did have a weapons program, but promising that this time it'll be really peaceful.
The Obama administration has concluded that uranium particles discovered last year at a secretive Iranian military base likely were tied to the country’s past, covert nuclear weapons program, current and former officials said, a finding that contradicts Tehran’s longstanding denials that it was pursuing a bomb.
Traces of man-made uranium were found at the Parchin facility, southeast of Tehran, by investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, as part of an investigation tied to the landmark nuclear deal reached last July between Iran and global powers.
The Iranians have claimed that the site was used for developing and testing conventional weapons. The particles were the first physical evidence — on top of satellite imagery and documents from defectors — to support the charge that Iran had been pursuing a bomb there.
The Obama administration didn’t comment about the uranium in December when the IAEA released its report; the finding got only one brief mention in the 16 pages. But in recent interviews, current and former U.S. officials asked about the uranium finding said the working assumption now is that it is tied to nuclear weapons development that Iran is believed to have pursued more than a decade ago.
Administration officials also said the discovery hasn’t altered the assessment by U.S. intelligence that Tehran suspended its bomb-making efforts in 2003.
2003 isn't "decades" ago. And the working assumption is whatever Obama Inc. finds convenient at any given time.
So Iran rather blatantly lied about its weapons program. But now we're pretending that it's telling the truth. And the original WSJ story should be viewed with a grain of salt as the White House has focused on leaking its Iran spin, particularly damaging information, such as its spying on Israel to protect Iran's weapons program, through the Wall Street Journal. So think of this as more narrative. Ben Rhodes sitting and chuckling to himself while pushing this story to avoid the latest damaging revelations coming down the pike.
Iranian and Russian officials are discussing building several new nuclear power plants in Iran, according to an article published Thursday by the news agency Trend.
The two countries are working together to build as many as eight new nuclear power plants as well as modernize existing reactors, according to Trend.
Mission Accomplished.