Iran - clear and present danger

By now most people have read of the comments from the Iranian president saying that Israel should be wiped off the map, along with the lukewarm reactions from Germany and France.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been busy with other comments lately as well. He ridiculed the West's response to Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying "At first, they made a lot of noise about it, but gradually they were made to sit down quietly” and insisting Iran:

...will resume work on the full nuclear fuel cycle, which includes uranium enrichment, adding that his government “seriously supported” the resumption of nuclear activities at the Uranium Conversion Facility in Isfahan “and will stand by this decision”.

“The Islamic Republic reached the conclusion that continuing the status quo was harmful to our national security”, he said.

“The more we retreated, the more they stepped forward, to the extent that Mohammad ElBaradei, the secretary general of the [International Atomic Energy] Agency [IAEA] recently told us, ‘They don’t want you to have nuclear technology’.”, Ahmadinejad said, referring to the now suspended negotiations between Iran and the European trio of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

“Why should we give in?” the ultra-Islamist president asked. “Where does it say in our laws that we have to beg the Europeans for our rights?”

Ahmadinejad expressed confidence that the West will be forced to retreat in the face of the Iranian regime’s uncompromising stance, and he indicated that his government was emboldened by what it perceived as the West’s “feeble” reaction.

“God willing, the West will accept our position since Iran’s political power in the world is very great and in certain regions unrivalled. We need the world but we have shown that we can achieve development without them”.

“The British asked us in New York not to bring up this matter. This shows the West is very susceptible to blows and more feeble than it pretends”, the hard-line President said, referring to meetings he had with British officials at the United Nations in September.

The hard-line president dismissed speculations of a military strike on Iran.

“If the West was capable of striking a blow at us, it would not inform us in advance. If you see that they are not hitting us, be sure that they are not capable of doing it, and will never be capable of doing it”.

The hard-line president added that the West was “very angry” at Iran, but “that doesn’t bother us. We say that they can take this anger with them to their graves”.

Ahmadinejad said the West was opposed to the very existence of the Islamic Republic. “If this [nuclear] problem is resolved, then they will bring up the issue of human rights. If the human rights issue is resolved, then they will probably bring up the issue of animal rights”.

“We told them that everything has now changed”, he said.

“As time goes by, we will continue to move up step by step and we will not back down. When we start the fuel cycle, no doubt, everything will become different”.

Also, note that his remarks calling for the genocide of Jews in Israel were spoken at a conference called "World Without Zionism." Guess what last year's conference was called?

Yup: “World without America”.