Gee, if only there were a US government institution that could confirm the known liar Bolton's words. Say, the CIA:
Oil - production: 3.979 million bbl/daySo plenty of time left. But it would be nice if we could trust that the government of the United States had the math skills of a fourth-grader.
Oil - proved reserves: 133.3 billion bbl
Reserves/Production: 33,500 days (91 years)
At least in one sense, Bolton and the US position is right - it makes no sense to replace oil and gas with nuclear, and I do believe that Iran is probably covering for a weapons program. That said, it's a cover they're allowed under international law, and the program is probably a decade or more away from being usable. This is not a crisis, except for the fact that Bush is facing election troubles. Why Iranians should die for that is left for you to figure out.
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Bolton's argument is not logical anyway. Iran uses oil and gas to produce electricity, but they would be better off displacing the oil and gas with nuclear and exporting the gas and oil, which is worth more as exported liquid fuel than as domestic electricity. Assuming that nuclear power isn't ridiculously expensive to produce (and certainly many other countries don't find it so) this is simple profit-seeking.
We should remember that the Iranian nuclear program began under the Shah, under whose regime many students were sent abroad to study nuclear engineering and who intended to build reactors in Iran even in the 70's. This is not some plan concocted after the Islamic Revolution.
The real reason to think Iran is planning to misbehave is that it doesn't seem to make sense for them to do their own enrichment. They will never have the economies of scale that the US or Russia or France have, and to do it they have to build an infrastructure that currently doesn't exist and isn't really useful for anything else.
As far as I can see, the most likely explanations for their insisting on doing enrichment themselves are either some kind of weird national pride thing or a weapons program.
Given the odd nature of the Iranian regime, I could believe either.
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