Western powers believe that Iran is running short of the raw material required to manufacture nuclear weapons, triggering an international race to prevent it from importing more, The Times has learnt.
Diplomatic sources believe that Iran’s stockpile of yellow cake uranium, produced from uranium ore, is close to running out and could be exhausted within months. Countries including Britain, the US, France and Germany have started intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade major uranium producers from selling to Iran.
Before Christmas, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sent out a confidential request for its diplomats in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Brazil, all major uranium producers, to lobby governments not to sell uranium products, specifically yellow cake, to Iran.
Iran’s stock of yellow cake, acquired from South Africa in the 1970s under the Shah’s original civil nuclear power programme, has almost run out. Iran is developing its own uranium mines, but does not have enough ore to support a sustained nuclear programme.
At soroslapdog’s suggestion, I propose Mr. & Mrs. 24 Hours, starring Joe and Valerie.
A job for Joe Wilson.
game over
I’m sure everything will be better once Barky has a nice chat with them.
Send in Hans Blix.
The western world has seen this Iranian victory coming for twelve years or more and has done everything it could to usher it in. Why? Political cowardice (everywhere) is about as close as I can come to an answer. It’s overbroad but I think it fits.
Only 35 bombs, no problem eh?
Now, it seems WHEN Iran gets The Bomb, it’s probably Game Over in the Mid-East.
Iranians = Persians = Not-Arabs. The Arab states would be terrified of a nuclear Iran, and would probably pay any petro-dollar price to get nukes of their own? Sanctions? Hah, we’re going to get the world, especially Europe to embargo the Mid-East for Nuclear Proliferation violations? That’s funny.
If you think Mid-East crises are fun now, wait till Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and who knows else has The Bomb.
Go get ’em Agent 00Plame.
Leon Panetta will stop this. Or Hillary. Whomever.
my money’s on Hillary and her “smart power”. so smart she had NO IDEA Bill was fooling around.
Is “smart” power named after Maxwell Smart?
Can’t be. Maxwell Smart always did solve the problem, by accident, but it did get solved.
Iran will listen to Barack. Everyone must listen to Barack. Attention must be paid.
This administration is however making use of the “would you believe…” bit though.
Wow, only 4 days on the job and Obama’s already neutralized the threat from Iran!
Is there anything he can’t do?
as he crackles
Ya see, dumbasses? If you just elect the right guy, problems take care of themselves. BHO ascends = Iran runs out of gas on the side of the road on the way to the big debutante ball. It’s some kinda cosmic shit so don’t try to explain or understand. Of course happyfeet (#2) had to go and find out that they had a spare can of gas in the trunk. Couldn’t you just shut the fuck up and let us be happy in our ignorance, happyfeet? Like the other 52% of us get to be?
Is there anything he can’t do?
Answer questions.
Talk without a teleprompter.
Get Michelle to wear something tasteful.
Explain why the validation system was turned off on his donation web site.
Tell us why he sat in a racist church “every Sunday” for twenty years.
Share his thesis topic with us.
Fill us in on the details of his associations with Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko.
Bowl.
Golf.
Play defense.
Pass up a 3-pointer.
Be seen in the same room with Alfred E. Newman.
Find ear muffs that fit.
Play Edgar Winter in ABC’s made-for-TV-movie: The Edgar Winter Story
Go down in history as one of the good presidents.
Recognize humor
Answer a simple question about Bill Lynn.
Still just Carrot Top and Pauly Shore?
Wat Up?
It’s not that they’re SOL, it’s that they only have material for 35 nukes.
You’re familiar with Carrot Top and Pauly Shore parsnip? That’s sad, in a pathetic, lonely, ugly introvert kind of way. Really sad.
Pauly Shore, he was so sad when his porn star friend died. I saw him on the tv and he was crying and he looked very lost and he was in pain and no one was comforting him. Carrot Top I don’t know about.
Perhaps the new Work Projects Administration will train some right wingers how to be funny?
Perhaps the new Work Projects Administration will plow under next years parsnip crop to satisfy Gaia.
Wait parsnip, shouldn’t you have at least one funny comment on your resume before you’re able to judge the humor of others?
The answer: Obama
Write a publishable academic paper.
Come up with an original thought.
Hold a real job.
Uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all its enemies, foreign and domestic.
The old politics that divide us no longer apply. You’re on notice, Mahmoud, so shape up.
Parsnip, again, we are new to this and I never did get my Leftist memo about what I’m supposed to do as the loyal opposition. You know, things like:
Constantly and continuously compare the President to Adolf Hitler
Make films depicting the fictional assassination of the President
Contend that the President deliberately allowed a terrorist attack on his own country for political gain
Have my Senate leadership declare a war that is occurring in real time to be “lost†without regard for the troops in the field, their families back at home or the welfare of the nation at large
Put an ad in the New York Times suggesting that the President’s top general is a traitor for accepting the job of top military commander during a war
You’ll have to pardon our sarcastic comments about Baracky. Totally inappropriate and uncalled for, especially during this amazing era of Change I Can Believe In. I promise to cease all sarcasm…in 4 years when Baracky gets land-slided harder than Jimmay did in ’80.
Publish in his own Law Review.
Let his wife find an honest job.
disown Rev. Wright
oh wait…
“Iran now had enough of this gasified uranium, stored in canisters weighing 10-14 tonnes each, to produce as many as 35 bombs…”
That’s enough bombs to terrorize the middle east, and perhaps part of south-eastern Europe…
Or, God forbid, smuggle one into the US…
I thought O! said he wasn’t going to allow them to get a nuclear bomb..?
I guess that promise has already expired…
This is the worst species of the various lies he might tell, I think, Bob, if it is or does prove to be a lie. Baldly lying to your people, your allies and even your adversaries about your strategic intent is the stuff of disaster, I think. It may mean that he’s lying to himself and that ain’t good. I have to point out though, that on this score, Pres. Bush hasn’t done much better.
It’s important to remember though that lots and lots of liberal CIA nancy boys put thwarting Bush’s foreign policy aims well ahead of national security concerns. There’s only so much you can do when the CIA is teh gay.
Sdferr,
O! running our foreign policy is surely the stuff of disaster…
Bosh should have struck the Iranians, with our bunker busting, penetrator, nukes-from subs-and when the Iranians whined about the radiation traces said something like, “Well what would you expect after an accident at a nuclear weapons facility”…
Plausable.Deniability.Rawks…
A really nasty plausible deniability scenario would involve “dusting” the Iranian nuke sites with radioisotopes, preferably ones derived from ex-Soviet material acquired on the black market, so the isotope signatures don’t point back to the parties with actual responsibility.
I’m not advocating that, mind you. As I said, very nasty.
I think it would be a terrible mistake to put this burden on Israel alone. But I have no belief that Obama will step up to the challenge. None.
Sdferr, I do, however, have faith that Israel will take care of the problem if Obama doesn’t.
They shouldn’t have to, you’re right. But they will.
Something bad is happening to me these days, SBP. After that Turki al-Saud column addressed to Pres. Obama the other day, with the unsatisfactory end to the Hamas provocations in Gaza, with Obama’s capitulation on the question of Guantanamo and military tribunals, with the story of the Yemeni released by the Bush admin back to Saudi Arabia and that joke of a jihadi-rehabilitation program, thence on to Yemen to head up the Yemeni al Qaeda group and with a myriad of like stories issuing from the Mid-East I have begun to fall into the grip of an irrational belief that the US (and it’s allies, for whom I have no hope whatsoever, but granting them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of comity) ought to march into SA and kill them all. Wipe the place clean of the lot. Raze their stinking nation and let the survivors start over. Now I know that these thoughts are insane, which is what bothers me about them. And yet I have the sense that nothing less will do.
I’m not ready to advocate going full-bore Roman Empire, Sdferr, but I fear that it wouldn’t take too many large-scale terrorist attacks to make that happen.
And I don’t see Barky’s policies helping in that regard.
Ooooh yeah SBP,
Great idea with the radioisotpoes…
I was counting on any signatures discerned during the insuing UN investigation to be muddled sufficiently in the mish-ka-mosh of nuclear material as to mask our involvement…
But you idea, I like!
And I’m close to being with Sdferr on this one; it’s nearly Roman empire time, especially if they start releasing all the
retrainedreformed jihadisa that O! is gonna send to them…[…] WESTERN POWERS believe that Iran is running short of the raw material required to manufacture nuclear weapons, […]