From The Washington Times:
The head of the United Nations’ nuclear monitor has rejected an EU request to condemn Iran’s nuclear program.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was urged to issue a condemnation of the Iranian situation before his agency meets in special session next month.
But, ElBaradei, though frustrated by Iran’s resumption of nuclear research and a slowdown in Iranian cooperation with his inspectors, has given Tehran until the end of next month to give his inspectors improved access to documents and sites.
Only if Iran does not accede would he be ready to declare his investigation was no longer making progress and that his hands were tied, the Financial Times said.
ElBaradei’s reports are said to usually set the tone for the international debate on the nuclear issue, meaning his decision could weaken U.S.-European efforts for a speedy referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council.
Let me put this as delicately as I can: when the EU is being rebuked as the hardliners in their attempts to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear armed, the world is about to be royally ass fucked by a big, cold, radioactive warhead.
So long, and thanks for all the (gefilte) fish!
****
(h/t Link Mecca)
That is unless Bush sends our military in there to seize the Iranian nuclear sites. Then we’ll probably come up empty handed. Although surprisingly Libya will reveal, again, that it has a nuclear weapons program no one had a clue existed but feel compelled to come clean about it.
Yep, time to see who get’s “glassed” first.
The UN – Worthless By Design!
“Well, it was a feature…”
I really hope this isn’t the case…but I fear we have two choices, a really hard, messy, troubling non-nuclear war with Iran now or a really hard, troubling, catastrophic nuclear war with Iran later. I would be more than happy to entertain thoughts from our friends on the left on this matter.
Not to speak out of school, but, maybe ElBaradei is on Iran’s payroll somehow. He doesn’t seem to have been listening to what’s been coming out of Teheran for a couple of years.Just a uninformed guess.
On Iran’s payroll?
Now what could possibly give you that idea?
*Oil for food* cough *oil for food*
This is what wins you the Nobel Peace prize, kiddies.
A shame the committee wasn’t around in Ancient Roman times. They could have given Nero the award, for ‘trying not to make the fire too angry’. And God knows they love tyrants.
“I would be more than happy to entertain thoughts from our friends on the left on this matter.”
Feelings yes. Thoughts, unlikely.
To me, trying to depend on the UN to be tough on evil, oppressive, terrorist regimes is no different than letting the Cookie Monster protect the contents of the cookie jar.
If we are going to get ass fucked by Iran, I had better pick up some KY jelly. But I need to find out if (a) it reduces radiation exposure and/or contamination, and (b) if it is haram. Any one?
/United Nations
Yes children the word for today is “GLASS”. The goegraphical area where Iran used to be……..
El Baradei, keep in mind, holds a rather high rank in the Egyptian nuclear program.
Which, of course, is entirely peaceful. As proven by Baradei’s own investigations.
Gee, now that’s more like having the cookie monster watch the oven while the cookies are baking.
UN= Unbelievably Negligent.
Crimeny. Never send a mild-mannered Egyptian “professor” to do a real man’s job.
If John Lennon spectacles and a “ready smile” ever deterred an NPT violator, I’m not aware of it. /snark
-Steve
these guys make Neville Chamberlain look like a warmonger. It’s not like it hasn’t been apparent before; the UN is spineless, incompetent, irrelevant, unimportant, obstructionist, unserviceable, paltry, empty, barren, trivial, and sterile. Can you say “worthless as tits on a boar hog”?
And this is who we are counting on to make sure millions of lives are protected?!!
I feel really sorry for the Jews.
I feel sorry for us: we’ll be doing just as much heavy lifting as the Israelis before this is over with.
What a freakin’ mess.
Heh. There’s nothing at *all* cold about a detonated warhead. For that matter, even the undetonated ones aren’t cold either. As one of the workers noted in Rhodes’ “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” while assembling the Fatman device, the plutonium core felt like a live rabbit because of the self-heating caused by the high rate of alpha decay. Even with better cleanup of stray isotopes in more modern weapons, smart money still says they don’t sit there at room temperature.
Getting back to the story at hand, did anyone *really* thing that El-Baradei wasn’t criminally negligent and corrupt from the very get-go?
tw: short… The amount of time we have before the fit hits the shan, as they say.
Time to start stocking up on the iodine pills, folks…
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’m convinced that the Iranians are going to get a really big foot up their collective ass very soon. One can only hope.
Spamword, “close,” as in, “Isn’t that B-52 awfully close?”
I recently saw a repeat of a C-SPAN broadcast with Richard Miniter, and he said that Iraqi Shi’ites are going into Iran to tell their co-religionists that democracy is much better than a mullahcracy.
Now that the Sunnis seem to be turning on al Qaeda and the Saddamists in Iraq, I think the entire region will see that even a country as fractious as Mess O’ Potamia can benefit from elections and the rule of law.
I still think the Iranians will rise up. After Operation Iraqi Freedom Phase One ended, we learned that 15,000 special operations forces and intelligence paramilitaries from all over the world had gone into Iraq, some as long as 18 months before the actual war started. We just found out that there were even Germans involved.
According to Strategy Page, Afghanistan has become the Special Operations Olympics, with forces from every major western country (including neutral Sweden) and most Arab nations sending troops in order to garner experience.
I think the world is preparing to give the Iranian people an awful lot of covert help in the very near future. Everybody’s scared crapless by President Ahmedjemaniac. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a massive bombing campaign because it won’t be necessary.
We can surely hope that the Iraqi’s are spreading a little Democracy around.
The good news is, Real Jeff S, that KY jelly is not a petroleum based product. It will therefore still be available after Iran has cut off our oil supply. So ya got that going for ya.
Some good news. Take it where you can get it these days.
Here ya go.
Corvan, I really hope this isn’t the case…but I fear we have two choices, a really hard, messy, troubling non-nuclear war with Iran now or a really hard, troubling, catastrophic nuclear war with Iran later. I would be more than happy to entertain thoughts from our friends on the left on this matter.
You should look, there is plenty of good discussion on the left, that mostly concludes with the same set of choices.
If the current leadership of Iran wasn’t so obviously a religous wack job end-times believer, we could contemplate a standoff like we see in south asia, but we’d have to conclude it was still unacceptable.
The one technical measure I haven’t seen discussed or proposed is monitoring of centrifuge lines to verify that they are not being used to produce HEU. I’d hate to be one of the engineers designing and setting up such a monitoring system; it sounds really hard.
Other choices:
Pressure Iranians (through a combination of threats) to abandon their uranium enrichment program and monitor the heck out of the remaining nuclear power program. (possible, but the window is closing)
Hope for political change in Iran without an actual invasion. (stupid)
Cause or force political change in Iran without an actual invasion. (possible but unlikely)
Surgical strike with unprecedented numbers of special forces units. (don’t have expertise to rate this one’s likelyhood of success, depends mostly on quality of intelligence, which in hindsight (post Iraq) seems unlikely to be high enough.)
Full invasion – invading a country of 69 million (with what army?) seems unlikely to be a good idea, and it would cement the notion that the west is engaged in a Crusade.
I’m scared, frankly. Israel presumably has made it clear that if Tel Aviv goes all the unfriendly Arab capitals go, if Jerusalem goes, Mecca and Medina go, but Iran’s president has made noises indicating that this might not bother him.
Y’all need to read some of David Cook’s stuff. He’s a prof at Rice U in Houston, who specialises in Islamic apocalyptic. I’ve personally read his Darwin Press book, “Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic”, but he’s got some more “popular” accounts here and there.
The Shi’ites don’t really care about the sanctity of Mecca. True little-known fact: the Ismaili Shi’a (called the Qarmatians, then) stole the Black Stone off the Ka’bah back in 900 AD or so. They took it off to the Arabian seacoast first, and then they brought it to Iraq and tossed it into a mosque at Kufa. (Back then, Kufa was the primary Shi’a city, as it was the capital city of the only recognised Shi’ite Caliph, the Prophet’s adopted son ‘Ali. Karbala was a tourist spot and Qom + Najaf were nonentities.)
Shi’ite apocalyptic further teaches that at the end of days, the qiblah – the direction of prayer – is going to move to Kufa. Which it would, if there was no Black Stone in Mecca, as happened under the Qarmatian adventure.
Mahdi-Nutjob is praying that someone nukes Mecca. It would discredit Sunnism and mainstream Shi’ism. All that would be left is… apocalyptic Shi’ism.
TW: expected
To back David Ross: not only did they steal the Black Stone, when they returned it, it was broken into four or five pieces (which is why it’s held together with silver thread and a silver frame today). Various Muslim rulers and authorities pleaded with them to return the Stone, but they ignored them. They threw the Stone at their own will and time.
Shiites place a great amount of importance on ziarat – which means, literally, “visit” but in the theological sense means “pilgrimage,” referring to pilgrimages made to various cities and shrines special to Shiites. Each site has its own special prayer which pilgrims recite when they reach the site. Even in Saudi Arabia, they have their own sites and attach a bit different importance than Sunnis on sites that exist already.
Some Shiites – the quietists – believe that the way to wage jihad (which should not be done by force if the Imam is not present, as is the case today) is to go on ziarat.
Although, no one will nuke Mecca. Western troops help rescue the Grand Mosque in 1979 when it was taken over by disgruntled Ikhwan (members of the old Wahhabi militia that was disbanded when they began criticizing the King). Besides, it’s such a pretty monument.
The_Real_JeffS: (b) if it is haram. KY jelly would in and of itself not be haram. However, to use it for anal sex would be haram, as Islam strictly forbids anal sex (and sex between men). But seeing as there’s little else to do with the young boys that will be provided to the men in Heaven, I think it’s safe to say God was only fibbing when He told Muhammad that anal sex and/or sex with men is/are haram. Enjoy!
Why is a criminal group like the UN allowed to continue? They are useless. Is this something that will just be allowed to continue on into eternity, with everyone watching and knowing the truth?
I’m not just talking about their uselessness in regards to the current situation. I’m also talking about their uselessness in regards to human rights. It’s a shame.
Why would we even need to occupy Iran? We’re not planning on rebuilding the Iranian army and police from the ground up, nor should we. Iran’s civil society functions pretty well.
All we really need to do is decapitate the leadership, and remove the secret police and the generals loyal to the mullahs. A 12-week ground/air campaign aimed at the regime and its loyalists should accomplish that handily. After that, we step aside and let the Iranian democrats and their loyalists take care of things. Casualties could be kept under 1,000.
Additionally, a substantial number of Iranian pro-democracy exiles/dissidents could be trained in southern Iraq and accompany our forces.
Shortly after our initial success in Iraq, a number of Iranian bloggers wondered why America didn’t invade Iran.
They were willing to accept a small number of Iranian casualties (in the thousands) for regime change.
Muslihoon: According to al Sistani, it’s “permissible but extremely abominable”, unlike chess, which is “absolutely forbidden”, or gold cuff-links, which are just “forbidden”.
The Iranian state of mind;
A recount of a discussion in which Japanese Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi presents his case for “The extreme use of tradition” to Admiral Soemu Toyoda.
Onoshi: Pirot wirr fry off fright deck. Fry to Amelican ships, fry down smoke stack and brow up ship. Any questions?
Toyoda: You say Pirot wirr fry off fright deck. Fry to Amelican ships, fry down smoke stack and brow up ship?
Onoshi: Yes honolabre Admilal that is collect!
Toyoda: Onoshi. Ale you fucking clazy?
It is a scary time. I don’t see how we would possibly invade Iran. We don’t have enough troops or political will to do it. They do have true believers, not to mention those who live off the largesse of the mullah millions, who would I think fight to the death. And the aftermath would replay Iraq and Lebanon: every nut group and gang would raise a militia and bomb the other gangs to fight over the scraps. Europe and its “armies” would be of no help. Russia would ally with Iran, I think, as well would Hugo and Fidel.
If I were Bush, I would start talking to the country about conserving oil to choke off Iran. Take the bus once a week to work. Get the people involved. Prepare them.
Question is, what will be Prez A’s first move? A strike on Israel?
How true! TW: hard.
Mushiloon, thanks for the good word on KY jelly not being haram. Especially since Vaseline is petroleum based, and would likely be in short supply if the Mad Mullahs push the button.
But “enjoy” is not a word that I would be using in this context, eh?
LOL! Thanks, xj. I did not know that.
Sorry, The_Real_JeffS. I should have said, “Brace for impact!”
I can tell you now: if the US doesn’t soon attack, Israel is gonna unleash hell on Iran. You think the Osirak (Iraq) reactor strike was something? That’s gonna look like peanuts.
China, Russia, & India, in that order have dibs on Iranian oil, France and Germany after, so conservation is pretty much a losing game. Iran
can retaliate with Chinese Silkworms, and of course the Shahab missile. against targets in
Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States. They could play the Sadr card in Iraq, creating another duel insurgency we’d be dealing with justs as the fall election comes to a boil. They could also infiltrate their forces into already tense and predominantly Shia Azeirbaijan, and Sunni Kazakhstan, our other reserve oil producers;
The Tamraz and Azhem? pipelines involved in the
Clinton coffees/ finance scandals concerned these
pipelines; The moment there’s a test ploom by the
Iranians, oil will spike higher than the Matterhorn. This of course, will be followed in
short order by Saudi and Egyptian if not Jordanian and Syrian nuclear programs, then Katie
bar the door.
They’ll lose those dibs if we effect regime change. Any government we install will owe its allegiance—and it oil—to the United States. That’s part of the beauty of Iranian regime change.
Not to worry. You think the Iraelis are sitting around on their hands waiting for someone to put a device together? On June 7, 1981, the Israeli Defence forces struck the Osiraq nuclear reactor in Iraq and changed more than a few horoscopes.
All kinds of reports in MSM that there is a March deadline on a massive airstrike against known facilities. These guys are the best combat aviators in the world… they’ve been sniping individual terrorists with rockets from helicopters.
The only reason they haven’t gone already is Bush (believe it or not) holding them back, because conventional wisdom (that’d be 9/11 type wisdom) says a bomb is years away.
Can you say, “Flat, black and glows in the dark?”
Well…
UN what can I say, They condem Isrelis, But Iran can do what they want. Com on….what the Hell. USA, made one mistake now the western side gets tramped on, put down etc, by other countrys and Its not rememberd for the good they did but their mistakes?. USA, should tell the world to Fuck… their selves and pull the troops, send back immigrants close their doors, take care of their own, CANADA too…. We don’t need this, and 1st country too start trouble, tell UN cheif too Fuck OFF… blow that country out of the water. Don’t Pass go… Or clect 200 Dollers…. I’m sick of of the reteric of offending some religions, draw a cartoons start a riot?, Pack up the fanatics and ship them home….make them pay for the ride. As for the regimes screw it, start troube, Use their planes and crash them into their Home, shrines or what ever…… then come back and complain…… UN is a Dead dog, USLESS, unless you wine and cry to them they might lift a finger…….2010…..Help on the ………….way……………3000. Oh..ya were here to help….