You don’t have to be a nuclear engineer to know that much of what’s being said about the Iranian nuclear program, including by the Stephen Harper government, is humbug.

• Iran admits to enriching uranium — for producing energy. But neutral observers are certain it is racing to acquire not so much a bomb as nuclear capability as a tool of regional supremacy.

Iran has not attacked a neighbour or invaded another country for ages. It only fought back ferociously when Iraq under Saddam Hussein waged war on it (1980-88). He did so with American and European arms, while Iran bought Israeli arms. Now the calculus has changed.

Iran may be violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but it’s a signatory that must open up its nuclear facilities to international inspection. Israel, India and Pakistan, which also developed the bomb on the sly, refuse to sign the treaty and don’t show a thing to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Yet they get rewarded by the U.S. while Iran is subjected to illegal covert actions — contamination of its nuclear computers with viruses and assassination of its scientists.

Ordinary Iranians look at all that and back their regime, even as they hate it.

• The atomic agency’s recent report on Iranian nuclear capabilities is not as conclusive as we are told.

The report does not say Iran has the bomb. It does not even say Iran has mastered the technique for making one. What it does say, it couches in qualifiers (that I italicize here): “There are indications that some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device . . . may still be going on.” “Iran appears to have conducted research on a warhead that could be delivered by medium-range missiles.”

The agency’s board of governors, too, was tame in the resolution, co-sponsored by Canada, it passed Friday. It asked Iran to, please, clear the air so as to “exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to its nuclear program.”

• Benjamin Netanyahu, adept at hyping the Iranian threat, has let speculation run rampant that Israel may bomb Iran.

Never mind that Meir Dagan, the former chief of Israeli intelligence, has said that it is “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” U.S. Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta has said an attack on Iran would create instability in the region and trigger an economic crisis — without stopping Iran’s nuclear program. An Iranian joke has it that Iran’s ruling mullahs pray every Friday for an Israeli attack, which would solidify their teetering regime.

Yet the warmongers, including the Harperites, keep beating the war drums.

• The U.S. is happy to sing the Israeli tune, given that it has had its own grudge match against Iran going back to the 1979 Islamic revolution.

For 30 years, we’ve been hearing about Washington “ratcheting up the pressure,” “tightening the noose” and “imposing tougher sanctions” on Iran — to little or no effect. Yet the posturing must continue, especially by Barack Obama heading into next year’s election.

Still, the U.S. tackles Iran the way it wages war — with minimal risk to itself and its personnel. American sanctions still avoid boycotting Iranian oil and gas, and blackballing the Iranian Central Bank, the principal conduit to oil sales — for fear of driving up oil prices.

• Canada has barred transactions with the Iranian central bank and banned exports of items related to oil and gas fields. Yet it allows the Iranian regime’s inner circle to settle in Canada.

“There are numerous accounts of the Islamic Republic elite and families coming to Canada and investing hundreds of millions in real estate projects in Toronto and elsewhere, spreading their illicit wealth, pernicious influence and menacing networks in our country,” says Professor Payam Akhavan of McGill University, a well-informed Iranian Canadian.

• The “moderate” Arab states in the region — Saudi Arabia and the other five oil-rich members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — are playing their own game.

WikiLeaks had Saudi King Abdullah urging the Americans to “cut off the head of the snake,” a.k.a. Iran. Similar sentiments were expressed by the leaders of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt.

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Yet they all do roaring trade with Iran and routinely host Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Some of these leaders are also known to whisper that they know that the U.S. uses the Iranian bogey to scare them into buying American arms. Saudi Arabia recently inked a $60 billion contract for fighter jets, and the U.A.E. is being strong-armed into buying bunker-busting bombs. The Arabs buy the arms partly as a bribe, so the U.S. won’t be tempted to abandon them as it did Hosni Mubarak.

Haroon Siddiqui is the Star’s editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

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