Ah, technicalities.

If you're like me, you've been working on containing your rage to the extent that you can now sit through a full thirty minutes of the Vice-President lying, misleading, and just plain being a dick to the American people on national television without smashing anything. You are probably not like me. Studies have shown that nine out of ten bodhisattvas are not in fact remaining on Earth to help others achieve Nirvana - they are waiting for their turn to cold-cock Dick Cheney.

In between the dodges and stonewalling about Darfur, domestic spying, and those little jokes about energy dependence and the Iraqi insurgency's being "on its last legs", Cheney took the opportunity to dodge and mislead about the Iranian nuclear power issue.

One thing that you will find mentioned occasionally, but never in the domestic press, is that while the US government likes to insist that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, this is simple conjecture. That is, despite what our State Department tells us, there is no material reason to suspect that Iran wants a nuclear program for other than peaceful reasons.

And Cheney knows this. Knowing that he knows this, my ears perked up as soon as Jim Lehrer broached the subject and I listened very carefully to what Cheney had to say on the subject. In fact, immediately after Lehrer made the inchoate but predictable statement that we know Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, without specifically denying it, Cheney went into a detailed litany of what we do know. Specific knowledge about an Iranian weapons program was not on his list. Dick Cheney refused to confirm that we had evidence of an Iranian weapons program in a way that disguised his admission. By contrast the "non-confirmation confirmation", used repeatedly throughout the Lehrer interview, is the phrase "operational details".

In the current climate, this can be regarded as a tacit admission that not only does the administration not possess intelligence that suggests such a program, but they do not expect to discover any. A continuing problem for this administration's credibility is the Iraqi WMDs lie, and the associated linkage of Iraq with al-Qaeda. By not making the connection themselves, relying on an insufficiently critical press to do the heavy lifting for them, the Bush administration retains plausible deniability in the event that the view be demonstrated to be false. To come full circle, they would not need to protect themselves from the chance of demonstrable falsehood unless it were still a possibility, that is, unless they still lacked incontrovertible evidence.

If you listen to what the Bush administration is saying about Iran, it will always be framed in terms of their current public refusal to comply with the IAEA. I don't blame them. The US wouldn't admit IAEA inspectors either. And Iranian refusal, even refusal of the Russian plan, can be explained away much more quickly by something far more prosaic than a covert nuclear weapons program:

Iran wants energy self-sufficiency forever. Petroleum, which Iran has a lot of, is a limited resource. It will run out someday, and it must be replaced. Nuclear power, unlike more environmentally sound alternatives, is not contingent on weather and, probably also importantly for Iran, less likely to be sabotaged due to the massive consequences for the entire world and any discovered culprits. Nuclear power will cut Iran's own petroleum usage while petroleum is available, boosting their profits, and they will have positioned themselves to become the Middle East and Southwest Asia's premier energy exporter.

Whence the ire of the State Department. As far as they're concerned, that is enough reason to oppose the Iranian government's uranium enrichment program. Unfortunately "The US opposes Iranian nuclear power because it is economically inopportune for us" travels very poorly.