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Thursday, September 25, 2008

Iranian nuke roundup - old news recycled

The EU has now officially stated that "Iran is likely to have the technical capability of arming a nuclear bomb" and that "Iran's nuclear program appears to be aimed at acquiring weapons." Also that "Iran is close to developing the ability to arm a nuclear warhead."

The IAEA said that Iran appeared to be making plans to add nuclear warheads to its long-range missiles. And also that "the IAEA has recently found evidence of 'foreign expertise' in Iran's nuclear research program, something forbidden by both UN sanctions and international non-proliferation treaties. And Tehran refuses to say whether it has 'specialized high-precision explosives of a type commonly used to detonate nuclear warheads.' The IAEA knows Iran once had such detonators and suspects it still may."

Well. it's not as if we weren't warned. Three years ago, Ahmadinejad ridiculed Western efforts to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions:
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 unrivaled. ...The West is very susceptible to blows and more feeble than it pretends.

“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”.
Iran's game plan was explicit and they've followed it, unlike the blustering Western responses of partial and ineffective sanctions. Iran knows quite well that the West is paralyzed by its unwillingness to act without consensus, which can never happen as long as there is even implausible deniability and gutless EU diplomats for whom aggression is not a last resort, but an impossibility.