They are at it again.
Mixed with timely but unrelated references to the Hiroshima bomb and sleepercells who might attack British nuclear plants, the London Sunday Times reports on an alleged smuggling of Uranium ore from Congo via Tanzania to Iran.
IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.
A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.
Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check.
[…]
A senior Tanzanian customs official said the illicit uranium shipment was found hidden in a consignment of coltan, a rare mineral used to make chips in mobile telephones. The shipment was destined for smelting in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, delivered via Bandar Abbas, Iran’s biggest port.“There were several containers due to be shipped and they were all routinely scanned with a Geiger counter,” the official said.
“This one was very radioactive. When we opened the container it was full of drums of coltan. Each drum contains about 50kg of ore. When the first and second rows were removed,the ones after that were found to be drums of uranium.”
The story of course does not tell any fact that would support its first words "IRAN is seeking to import". Indeed the story later talks of Iran only as a transit land for a container shipment to Kazakhstan.
But as usual in such psy-ops pieces, there are some bits that are quite possibly true.
Some radioactive ore mixed up with illegally mined coltan is quite likely to be found in shipments from the officially closed Shinkolobwe mine in Congo.
A 2004 report about the mine explains:
"They’re
digging as fast as they can dig, and everyone is buying it," John
Skinner, a mining engineer in the nearby town of Likasi, said of the
illegal freelance mining at Shinkolobwe. "The problem is that nobody
knows where it’s all going. There is no control."The raw uranium is an inadvertent addition to the miners’ real
prize – high-grade cobalt in lucrative concentrations – and there’s no
evidence that Congo’s uranium is being spirited away to terrorists.
…
Today at Shinkolobwe, some 5,500 Congolese using shovels, hoes and bare
hands haul ores overland to nearby Likasi, where businessmen from
Africa, India, China and elsewhere have set up 13 smelting mills.The end product, and just as often the raw material itself,
known as heteroginite, is shipped south by road to neighboring Zambia,
and then abroad.Industry officials say the heteroginite primarily contains
high-grade cobalt. But “trace quantities of uranium are being exported
unwittingly” along with it, said Skinner, the mining engineer, a
Zimbabwean who is a longtime Congo resident.
So the part of smuggled coltan and some mixed in Uranium ore might very well be true.
But where would be the motive for Iran to import half a container, some 10 tons, of raw Uranium ore from Congo? Iran does have active Uranium mines in Saghand and in Gchine. Overall Iranian reserves are estimated to be some 5,000 tons and possibly up to 30,000 tons.
So there is no motive for Iran to smuggle such stuff, but good explanations why a Geiger counter would start ticking from illegaly mined mixed ore from Congo.
But these facts would of course not further the story Murdoch’s London Sunday Times would want to publish. So it puts three of its best authors on the small fact available and blows that up. All three well known veterans of the scare business.
Jon Swan reported in March 2003 that Iraq tried to order drones and spray kits. We know where that one went. David Leppard, publishing through the well know neocon marketing outlet Benador Associates, writes general scare pieces like TERROR PLOT TO ATTACK US WITH BA and Brian Johnson-Thomas finds Radiation rockets on sale to ‘terrorists’ in an unsuccessful scam to buy some old Russian meteorological research rockets.
But the publishing of this story, which will be referenced around the world, tells us that the propaganda machine for a War on Iran is alive and well.
The effect of such stories builds bit by bit until nobody who does not follow the case closely will be able to differentiate between the 10% of truth and 90% of fake information out there.
Then the killing will start again.