Asia Times: Debunking Iran's nuclear myth makers

the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, has made known his displeasure with Ahmadinejad's hardline politics through an editorial in the newspaper Jomhuri Eslami, which has called on the president to stay out of the nuclear issue.

The fact is that after some three years of intrusive inspections, the IAEA has discovered no smoking gun and in its various reports, including the September 2006 report, it has admitted that "to date there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities were related to a nuclear-weapons program".

But don't tell that to the formidable army of Iran nuclear myth makers, whose venerable list includes US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who said in Dubai this week that "there is no doubt that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons".

I can accept that the Bush administration has "no doubt" that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, just as they had no doubt that Saddam's Iraq had WMDs. But "no evidence" is no evidence, and does not make a very good pretext for war.