Tuesday, February 28: A Talk by Michael Veiluva, Iran Expert for Western States Legal Foundation

Iran and the Bomb – Talking Sense with Mike Veiluva
The sanctions and the threats on Iran (“everything is on the table”) regarding its nuclear program are in the news every week. The International Atomic Energy Agency submits reports whose titles suggest a nuclear weapons program on the rise, but the evidence is about the same as before. Iran conducts various military-related tests that seem designed to shake up the region. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes another defiant statement and the U.S. and Israel, perhaps together or separately, murmur about war.
The questions persist: How much uranium is Iran enriching? How much bigger of a percentage of enrichment does that country need to make a bomb? How long will it take? Does it want the bomb? Will U.S. actions push that ambition further? Will sanctions work? How close are we to a war with Iran…and how can it be avoided?
The Iran story is looking darkly familiar to the events of 10 years ago. Indeed, even back then someone in the George W. Bush Administration blithely declared “…real men want to go to Tehran.” (We are confident that person had no intention whatsoever of picking up a gun, putting on a helmet and flack jacket and boarding a C-130 for Iran.)
For its February meeting, Peace Action of San Mateo County is fortunate to have Michael Veiluva, general counsel to the Oakland-based peace and disarmament organization Western States Legal Foundation. Michael is also WSLF’s expert on Iran and how it fits in with U.S. foreign policy and world events. He is the author of the book Burdens of Proof: Iran, the United States and Nuclear Weapons (2009), and contributed to Beyond Arms Control (2010), published by the Reaching Critical Will Project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. He has written extensively on the subject of Iran’s nuclear program, most recently in the January 2012 Canadian Peace Magazine.
On Tuesday, February 28, Michael will offer his insights into this fluid situation, even as they and it currently evolve. We will gather at 7PM in Beck Hall of the Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo, 300 E. Santa Inez Avenue (at Ellsworth) in San Mateo. We are asking a donation of $5-10 sliding scale; no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
This is a chance to learn about preparations for the next war – and try to gather some knowledge on how to stop it.