Iran's Five-Foot Tall Boogeyman
By Thomas JeffreyArticle Posted: Saturday April 12, 2008
The news this past week that Iran was planning to nearly triple its capacity to enrich uranium over the next few weeks was met with a collective yawn on this side of the pond, which was surprising to this Leftwing Nutjob as anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows that the Bush Administration is fishing for any reason to fulfill John McCain’s desire of bombing Iran. But some observers were quietly doubting this latest boast from Tehran as so much hyperbolae, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trying his best to keep his critics both at home and abroad at bay with nothing more than a little bit of good old-fashioned sabre-rattling.
During a speech this past Tuesday while on a visit to Natanz, the location of Iran’s main uranium enrichment complex, President Ahmadinejad at times crowed about his country’s technical prowess while at other times fanned the flames of Islamic hysteria in the region by accusing the United States of unprovoked attacks on both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Following the announcement, former nuclear inspectors were quick to note that Iran’s ability to effectively enrich uranium in the past has often been hampered by their engineer’s inability to construct centrifuges of both high quality and reliability, and they saw nothing from recent events to believe that things had changed all that much for the middle eastern nation. However, with both Russia and China — and to some extent France — helping Iran in their nuclear endeavors, without UN inspectors on the ground in Natanz, no one can really say for sure what Iran’s capability really is.
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In other Iranian news, President Ahmadinejad sacked two members of this cabinet — the economic and interior ministers — for unknown reasons last week, but defended the decision on his blog as keeping with his policies of “progress and development” for the country. This latest shakeup within Ahmadinejad’s inner circle brings the number of original cabinet members that he has dismissed since taking office to 8 out of the original 21. Critics within Iran continue to point to that country’s double-digit inflation and perpetual energy shortages as proof of the president’s inability to effectively govern the country.
Well, that and his inability to choose a tailor that dresses him in something that would allow him to be taken seriously.
Iran ‘installing new centrifuges’ — BBC News
Iran Says It’s Installing New Centrifuges — New York Times
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Podcast #117
By Thomas JeffreyArticle Posted: Tuesday April 15, 2008
Leftwing Nutjob Podcast, Episode 117, for Sunday, April 13, 2008
Penn hits the bricks, Iran in the spotlight again, the Obama money machine, al Qaeda’s rising star and more!