Travelin' Man
By Thomas JeffreyArticle Posted: Sunday May 4, 2008
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in India earlier this week, meeting in New Delhi with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and several cabinet ministers on an unoffical state visit.
President Ahmadinejad took the opportunity to tweak the United States over its “bullying” of Iran and other nations in their efforts to seek the use of nuclear power — a thinly veiled nuance to the United States as last year it had awarded India the right to purchase non-military American nuclear technology on the world market.
The Iran president had earlier in the month toured his own nuclear facility at Natanz, inspecting the site’s uranium enrichment centrifuges and other technology while on Iranian television, allowing the world to see up-close the progress it has made with its own nuclear initiative.
In related fashion news, President Ahmadinejad looked fashionably scientific as he donned a white lab coat and green booties for the tour, a look that served to accentuate his Don Johnson stubble and beady-eyed stare.
Iran and India True Friends: Ahmadinejad — Arab News.com
Western scientists intrigued by photos from Iran’s nuclear site — International Herald Tribune
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
Depots of the World: Unite!
By Thomas JeffreyArticle Posted: Wednesday July 4, 2007
In an effort to perhaps appease the masses, to say nothing of saving his job, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has turned to another thorn in US foreign policy to help him and his country with their critical shortage of gasoline — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
In meetings held in the Iranian capital of Tehran on Tuesday, the visiting Chavez agreed to sell the Middle Eastern nation a unspecified amount of Venezuelan petrol as well as entering into other trade agreements with Iran, cementing the two country’s transatlantic partnership.
Iran’s large dependence on foreign imports of gasoline prompted that county to begin a rationing program last week in advance of anticipated further UN and US sanctions against those countries who are currently helping to fill the tanks of Iranian cars, trucks, and taxi cabs throughout the country.
Attempting to deflect criticism of the program by the Iranian masses, President Ahmadinejad on Monday labeled the program as the beginning of an “economic revolution” and urged his country to suck it up, lest the world see the Iranian leader as the incompetent boob that he is.
President Ahmadinejad, pick up the clue phone, it’s for you.
Venezuela agrees to sell gasoline to Iran: paper — Reuters News Service
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!