They learned that lesson.
Oh... they learned that it's better to permit aggressive threats against another member of the United Nations than to actually act to deter or punish such threatening behavior?
That's a pretty interesting lesson they've learned...
Maybe they also might be learning that they will be increasingly seen as irrelevant if they fail to take actions against such agression...
Maybe they will learn the lesson that they lose face everytime the US has to stand up and enforce the UN charter when the UNSC is unwilling to do so..
Maybe Rummy could get a hold of Curveball to see if he has any photos of semis being used as mobile uranium enrichment facilities.
Maybe Mr. Drumheller, the CIA analyst who commented on 60 minutes the other night, would care to comment on why he failed to mention that Sabri stated that Saddam had 500 Metric tonnes of chemical weapons hidden away...
I don't know if you saw it, but the Russians have asked the US for proof that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. I suspect that we have less proof of that than we had on Iraq's WMD.
I would concur.. Evidence is scanty (although I certainly do not know whether we've developed any further intelligence on it). But apparently IAEA inspectors discovered traces of Uranium which had been enriched FAR BEYOND (upwards of 20% U235) what is necessary for providing fuel to a nuclear reactor (which is about 3-5% U235).
csmonitor.com
But we do know that Iran spent the past 18 years involved in a clandestine uranium enrichment program that they failed to disclose to the international monitoring agency, the IAEA. Under the NPT, all nuclear related activites are required to be disclosed to the IAEA.
We do know that they were clients of Mr. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear proliferator...
And we know that Mr. Admadinejad, a member of the Pasdran, which also oversees the uranium enrichment program, has threatened to wipe another country off the face of the map.
And from the quotes the BBC carried, it was not that Israel "would" be wiped off the map, but that it "MUST" be wiped off the map.
A bit of a difference there..
news.bbc.co.uk
And if you don't believe the BBC, then here it is from Al Jazira News:
"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said.
"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini.
His comments were the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official has called for Israel's eradication, even though such slogans are still regularly used at government rallies.
english.aljazeera.net
There is no hope of coming to a lasting agreement with Iran as long as the west insists that Iran has no right for development of the full nuclear energy cycle. Which is a right they have under the NPT.
ONLY if they are fully disclosing and grant open access to all of their nuclear related facilities to the IAEA for inspection.
As it currently stands, they are in violation of the NPT because they refuse to fully disclose their activities and permit them to be monitored.
Thus, if peaceful nuclear energy is all they have in mind, one would theorize that the Iranians would have no problem in opening up the nature of their nuclear programs to the rest of the world. It shouldn't be a secret, right??
Hawk |
