Posted on 08/15/2005 1:59:33 AM PDT by F14 Pilot
When it comes to chutzpah,Iran's turning into an Olympian champion. But consider this - in the midst of on-again, off-again negotiations with both the UN and the European Union about whether Iran can resume its suspicious and suspended nuclear development program, the mad mullahs of Iran decided to thumb their noses at the world. Brazenly removing UN seals on the uranium processing equipment at its Isfahan reactor, Iran unilaterally made the important plant fully operational. As an added touch of bravado, the Iranians waited until UN surveillance cameras were in place and running so that everyone could witness their cheek. What's the big deal, you may ask? Why not let Iran develop nuclear energy like other nations?
Simple - though Iran denies it, the fact is that the most radical and potentially most dangerous nation in the Middle East has long been in the process of developing a nuclear weapon.
Indeed, current denials notwithstanding, the fanatic Islamists who've ruled Iran since the fall of the shah were never too shy in the past to boast that Iran could become a nuclear power if it so chose. Now Tehran and its apologists tell us there's nothing suspicious about Iran's nuclear program. It's simple, Iran needs nuclear power to feed the needs of its developing economy.
Now that sounds pretty strange to me and to a lot of other people. After all, Iran is still the world's fourth-largest producer of oil. Right now Tehran pumps out more than 4 million barrels of oil a day. Experts say its oil reserves should last at least 80 more years.
And that's not all. According to the international energy reports, Iran also boasts spectacular reserves of natural gas.
Besides, there's another reason not to trust Iran's pollyannaish claims of innocence. While the Iranians technically had the right under international rules to process uranium for peaceful purposes, they steadfastly kept several of their most important nuclear facilities secret for more than 18 years. The secret was disclosed by Iranian dissidents.
Expert observers of Iran's politics say that not coincidentally this new offensive by Iran comes the very week its newly elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took office. A radical hard-liner who was elected with a large popular majority, Ahmadinejad won his fanatic's wings in the early days of Iran's Islamist revolution; as a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard, and, according to Mideast intelligence sources, as a member of the secret unit that assassinated Iranian opposition leaders around the world.
Dissing the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency was his way of showing who's in charge these days.
Iran's defenders are warning against responding toughly. Rami Khouri, the editor at large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, points out that "in the past three weeks, the leaders of Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah have made official visits to Tehran." This, says Khouri, indicates that Iran rather than Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Israel or the Palestinians is becoming the Mideast's center of gravity for trends and emotions regarding the U.S. and the West.
As Khouri sees it; the U.S. and others should tread softly with Iran and not display "arrogance." I say the opposite. Recognize terror-supporting Iran for what it is. Make it stop its nuclear testing now, pending agreements, and impose UN sanctions if need be.
We can't afford to reward Tehran's chutzpah.
In one of the world's greatest ironies, a group of shiiteheads with no redeeming values whatsoever, are perched atop pools of energy that they are too ignorant to manage properly, and too stupid to realize the longterm benefit it could bring to their fellow camel jockeys.
All they are interested in is sticking it to The Great Satan no matter the peril they place themselves in. Their bravado is a direct result of mistakes made by, first, the Carter administration, and followed in varying degrees of incompetence by succeeding presidents.
Hard to blame the mullahs for thinking they can keep poking sticks at a serpent with very sharp fangs, but they must be made to realize the day is coming when we will no longer roll over or dance to their tune.
To my way of thinking, the window of opportunity is narrowing by the day, and the sooner we blast these idiots into oblivion, the sooner they and the rest of the Mohammedans realize they cannot win WWIII.
Khouri appointed a cabinet stuffed with Islamofascists. Not a moderate in the bunch.
I wonder, who are these Iranian "dissidents" that disclosed this secret. What political groups do they belong to?
Who are these Iranian dissidents, that are keeping Iranian nuclear facilities under surveillance, at great risk to their lives? Has their intelligence proved to be true?
They are called MEK - An Islamist/Marxist group
A terrorist group which is listed as an FTO by State Dept in 1997
They are known as traitors among ordinary Iranians because they fought their homeland along with Saddam in 1980s.
They are also responsible for murder of American military personnel in Iran in 1970s.
They have their own Agenda!
Thank you. Was their information accurate?
Before THEY can learn that lesson, I think it is WE who must learn it. And that means getting rid of the Kerrys and Kennedys and all their ilk.
Unfortunately, they have a lot of ilk.
Yes & No!
There are many! But their agendas are unknown
I tend to have doubts President Bush will do what should be done; not that he does not wish to, but the 'rats and MSM will ask for his head on an impeachment platter if he attacks the mad mullahs. They have smeared him for years, driven down his approval ratings to near Jimmy Carter levels.
Of course if Iran attacks, the rats and MSM will howl that it is the President's fault of course.
Hmmm, given that, maybe he will take out Iran's nuke capabilities.
Iranian spokesperson, Scott Ritter, announced today that Iran is a peaceful tolerant nation and has no nuclear weapons program despite Iranian comments to the contrary.
Iran 'kept EU talking' while it finished nuclear plant
By Colin Freeman
(Filed: 14/08/2005)
An Iranian foreign policy official has boasted that the regime bought extra time over its stalled negotiations with Europe to complete a uranium conversion plant.
In comments that will infuriate EU diplomats, Hosein Musavian said that Teheran took advantage of the nine months of talks, which collapsed last week, to finish work at its Isfahan enrichment facility.
Technicians working at the Isfahan uranium conversion facility
"Thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year in which we completed the [project] in Isfahan," he told an Iranian television interviewer.
Mr Musavian also claimed that work on nuclear centrifuges at a plant at Natanz, which was kept secret until Iran's exiled opposition revealed its existence in 2002, progressed during the negotiations.
"We needed six to 12 months to complete the work on the centrifuges," said Mr Musavian, chairman of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council's foreign policy committee. He made his remarks on August 4 - two days before Iran's foreign ministry rejected the European Union offer of incentives to abandon its uranium enrichment programme.
Critics of the regime will see his comments as confirmation that Iran never contemplated giving up its programme, despite top-level diplomacy involving Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and his French and German counterparts.
The US was always pessimistic about the talks' chance of success. Yesterday President George W Bush refused to rule out using military force to press Iran into giving up its nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is a front for weapons-making. "All options are on the table," Mr Bush told Israeli television.
Mr Musavian, whose remarks were translated by the Middle East Research Institute based in Washington, was responding to criticism from Iranian hardliners that Teheran should never have entered into the EU negotiations.
He said that until then, Iran had dealt solely with the UN-backed International Atomic Energy Authority, which had given it a 50-day deadline to suspend uranium enrichment on pain of referral to the UN Security Council.
"The IAEA give us a 50-day extension to suspend the enrichment and all related activities," he said. "But thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year, in which we completed the [project] in Isfahan."
The plant, about 250 miles south of Teheran, carries out an early stage of the cycle for developing nuclear fuel, turning yellowcake into UF4 and then into UF6, a gas essential to enrichment.
"Today, we are in a position of power," Mr Musavian said. "Isfahan is complete and has a stockpile of products." Mr Musavian also said that Iran had further benefited from sweeteners offered by the EU, including the invitation to enter talks on Iran joining the World Trade Organisation.
Iran is facing possible referral to the Security Council after scientists began breaking seals at the Isfahan plant, a precursor to resuming the research it agreed to suspend during the EU talks.
The Foreign Office declined to comment on Mr Musavian's rem-arks. Last week it said Iran made a "serious mistake" by opting to resume uranium conversion.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, is due to report on Iran's renewed nuclear activities on September 3, which could trigger a Security Council referral.
Why is it every one of our enemies - foreign and domestic - has learned from our 'diplomatic' mistakes in Viet Nam but us?
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