Iran Wants the Bomb, and It’s Well on Its Way: Jeffrey Goldberg

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- The Iranian government, which isknown neither for transparency nor candor, has insisted for manyyears that the goal of its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.And for many years, the International Atomic Energy Agency,whose motto is “Atoms for Peace,” has tended to give theayatollahs the benefit of the doubt on this question.

The agency’s former chairman, Mohamed ElBaradei, now acandidate for the presidency of Egypt, seemed to take theattitude that anxiety about Iran’s nuclear objectives wasmotivated by the strategic self-interest, even the paranoia, ofthe U.S., Israel and the Arab states near Iran, rather than bythe reality-based worry that bloody-minded mullahs bent ondominating the Middle East aren’t the sort of people who shouldhave the bomb.