Is anything cooler than super-villains teaming up, like when Doctor Doom and Sub-Mariner settled into an uneasy alliance?
No, obviously not.
So, neither is it surprising that super-hack Con Coughlin alleges North Korea is helping Iran prepare for a nuclear test:
... North Korea had invited a team of Iranian nuclear scientists to study the results of last October’s underground test to assist Teheran’s preparations to conduct its own — possibly by the end of this year.
Boy, that is a Marvel comic just waiting to happen.
Fortunately, this remains the stuff of comic books.
Paul points to two facts that undermine Coughlin’s lurid fantasy:
(1) SECSTATE Rice said the report wasn’t “based on anything that I’ve seen …” and,
(2) A White House commissioned study “of whether North Korea might share some nuclear fuel with Iran” was “inconclusive”.
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Not to mention the technical difficulty of actually producing a controlled, sub kiloton Pu239 weapon. And it seems extremely bizarre to assert Iran would intentionally do a “fizzle” (highly variable sub-design yield).
Con C: “But defence officials monitoring the growing co-operation between North Korea and Iran believe the Iranians could be in a position to test fire a low-grade device — less than half a kiloton — within 12 months.”
— doug · Jan 28, 12:58 PM ·
Jeff,
Seriously, would anyone want to trust something produced by a guy named “Con”? Isn’t this the same guy who reported on super secret Iraqi nuclear advancements?
— RT · Jan 28, 06:39 PM ·
I beg your pardon? Since when did the superhero Sub-Mariner become a “super-villain”? Who writes this blog—Aquaman?
— scooter libido · Jan 29, 07:02 AM ·
In case you missed this unsubstantiated drumbeating: Peter “Huessy says officials from Iran attended the recent nuclear test and likely also attended the salvo of ballistic missile tests this summer in North Korea.”
http://mailman.mcmaster.ca/mailman/private/cdn-nucl-l/0610/msg00034.html
What’s Plan B?: With ground troops overcommitted, Washington faces quandary in North Korea
Aviation Week & Space Technology
October 16, 2006
— Anonymous · Jan 29, 09:35 AM ·
Amongst other things. Did you know that the Iraqi 45-minute WMD launch claim was actually an under-estimate? According to Con’s “sources” they could have popped them off in half-an-hour!
Now, “there is no suggestion that Con Coughlin is dishonest in his work”. However it seems to me that one might wonder what his work actually is.
— duaneg · Jan 29, 04:55 PM ·
I like North Korea’s denial of this story, since it has so much good reputation left to be tarnished:
“The ‘assertion is nothing but a sheer lie and fabrication intended to tarnish the image of (North Korea) by charging it with nuclear proliferation,’ the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.”
— jane · Jan 29, 07:07 PM ·
Bill Gertz quoted Deputy MDA Director Brig. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly as saying Jan. 29 at a Marshall Institute speech that the Iranians “are working in concert with the North Koreans.”
Whatever that means…
— JJ · Jan 30, 09:45 AM ·
God forbid any of us accuse a country that signed the NPT and then developed and tested a nuclear weapon of “nuclear proliferation.” Good catch, Jane.
— Haninah · Jan 31, 04:45 PM ·