Iran's continued bellicosity and defiance of the UN is an intriguing contrast to Israel's apparent naive willingness to accept UN-sponsored Lebanese (i.e., Hizballah) troops on its border. And both tend toward the same end. From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
IRAN today repeated its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment activities as called for in a UN resolution, threatening instead to withdraw from the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Iran doesn't accept suspending its uranium enrichment," the official IRNA agency quoted parliamentary speaker Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel as telling Parliament."If the result of our being part of international organisations and the IAEA is to be deprived of our absolute right (in nuclear matters), there is no reason for us to continue to be part of such organisations," he said.
The UN Security Council has given Iran until August 31 to halt enrichment and reprocessing activities or face possible sanctions.
The resolution was pushed through after Iran ignored a previous non-binding deadline and failed to respond to an international offer of incentives in exchange for a moratorium on nuclear fuel work.
Iran has repeatedly insisted its nuclear programme is for civil purposes only despite Western concerns that it may be cover for an attempt to develop the bomb.
This is a shame. It's clear that Iran knows the West is in "appeasement" mode. I'm worried about this Shi'a concept of hurrying the end of the world by erasing Israel. Does Iran have a nuclear device ready? If they do, have they transported it to Hezbollah?
I think anyone who sees this danger clearly should be worried. If Iran is ready to assist Hezbollah in destroying Israel, it will be a very short time later that Western cities are destroyed.
I am no longer worried about August 22. iran's thugs have already given their reply, and I don't even bother reading 'experts' stating that it will take iran 5 years to make a bomb. I think they have some 'dirty' bombs already, and what they might achieve 5 years from now from refining no longer matters. Somebody already has those bombs.
Hi Rafael. Don't think cos you believe the West is in appeasement mode that Iran is winning......You and we do not know what is going on concerning strategic thinking in Washington and Jerusalem. You and we can only guess.
IF Iran does something nasty they know to expect a
bigger nastier response - that's all I can guess.
The West has not gone soft. It's keeping its powder dry.
I think one thing we can be sure of is that Israel isn't naive. It's been under attack for far too long. European nations and their calls for immidiate ceasefires on the other hand...
Lebanese troops are indeed likely to be handmaids of Hezbollah. The army itself is under the control of a Gen. Suleiman, known to be favorable to Syria and hence to Syria's agent Hezbollah. The army is 40% Shi'a, which is close to saying 40"% of the army will fight with and not against Hezbollah. It is possible that moving the Lebanese army to the south is a deliberate attempt to create a situation in which Israel will at some future time (all it takes is for Hezbollah to shoot some missiles in to Israel to start things up, and Hezbollah knows this) have to fight not only Hezbollah but also units of the Lebanese army, and the destruction of that army, as the only remaining barrier to Hezbollah's complete domination of Lebanon and its silenced people, whose Cedars Revolution was much-ballyhooeed, but the clear signal for the West to come in, and push Syria permanently out of the country, and to suppress the agent of both Syria and Iran, Hezbollah, was ignored by that West, so divided by policy in Iraq, and in the United States, with an Adminstratin that kept congratulating itself with its "Democracy is on the march" idea that it forgot to actually help, not "the Lebanese people" (who exist only slightly more than do the "Iraqi people"), but rather the Christians, and the enlightend Druse and Sunni and even perhaps a few Shi'a Arabs, who wanted to be rescued, who were waving flags like people drowning not waving, and who received from teh West all kinds of magazine-cover coverage, but not the stern anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah measures that they were semaphoring to the West that they wanted.
Now Israel has doe the job, as far as it can be done. It will get no thanks from most "Lebanese" save for the most intelligent and morally aware. It will have to endure hearing that Syrian agent, the corrupt Lahoud, prate about Lebanese sovereignty, and Siniora, who has behaved terribly with that spectacle of those ready tears -- tears for "innocent Lebanese civilians" whose numbers are exaggerated (at least Siniora did acknowledge in one case that 40 dead were in fact -- 1 dead), whose too-easy description as "civilians" is entirely unproven and still, perhaps permanently, unclear (why is a male of fighting age, in a Shi'a village, to be described as a "civilian" given what we know o the failure of Hezbollah members to wear any distinguishing marks, but to blend in, as much as possible, with those who are truly civilians?), or all the others who will now emerge from their mentla hiding-places, now that the main fighting will have stopped, and possibly acquire the courage not to berate Israel, but to demand an end to the power of Hezbollah within the Lebanese state, and also, more importantly, demand that outside forces patrol not so much southern Lebanon, as the border betweeen Syria and Lebanon, to interdict weapons shipments to Hezbollah that are directed at Israel, but not only Israel.
Back in 2003, a co-worker (white South African immigrant by the way) criticized his adopted government by saying, "Where did we (US) get the right to tell other governments that they cannot have nuclear weapons?" Or something like that.
My reply was by analogy that we do not allow certain citizens to own firearms due to their criminal activities, and the world cannot allow certain governments to own WMD due to that government's record. He was not satisfied, and immediately replied that our invasion of Iraq was a manifestation of American imperialism and a grab for oil. Oh,well,if one can't win the argument, change the subject.
We must remain ever so vigilant of the Islamic nuclear threat.
The Iranians would never have come so far had it not been for fecklessnes of the intelligence services entrusted with our security.
On August 9th, 2005 the former prime minister of the Netherlands, Ruud Lubbers gave an interview to the Dutch Radio program Argos, of the VPRO broadcasting station.
Lubbers explained that in 1975 and again in 1986 the Dutch authorities deliberately refrained from taking any action against the Pakistani master spy Abdul Khan. In both instances, Lubber alleged, the Dutch authorities desisted from moving in on Khan on the behest of the CIA and upon the suggestion of the Dutch foreign intelligence service, the “BVD” which followed closely the position of their American colleagues.
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was spying in the Dutch uranium enrichment facility Urenco in Almelo. He sold classified atomic designs which he had pilfered to Libya, North Korea and Iran. Mr. Lubbers, who was minister for economic affairs in 1975, has no proof for the fact that the decision to withhold legal proceedings against the industrial espionage of Khan in 1975 was based on a request from the CIA. But in his interview Lubbers says that “this is my assessment, though I cannot prove anything”. And thus A.Q. Khan was merely moved to another function within the nuclear conglomerate Urenco. During that year Khan eventually got suspicious and did not return from a vacation in Pakistan.
In 1979 Khan’s espionage activities were exposed in a TV program of the German ZDF station. As a result, the case of misappropriating state secrets was tried in the Netherlands and Khan was sentenced in absence to 4 years in prison. Khan appealed this verdict in 1985. Due to an inexplicable quirk in the process, the higher court dismissed the case on grounds of futility. In 1986 the ministry for legal affairs recommended to drop the case because it had taken place more than 10 years before, even though the statute of limitation had still not expired and the case could have been pressed onwards. Lubbers was prime minister of the Netherlands in 1986, when the case was discussed between the various ministries of Foreign, Legal, and Economic affairs and between his own office of the Prime Minister. Although Lubbers was himself not in favour of dropping the legal case, he eventually conceded to his ministers, because as he recalls in his interview in August 2005 “the last word in such matters always lies in Washington”. The ex-prime minister believes the decision in 1986 was influenced by the role Pakistan played in the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, as an ally of the US.
According to the VPRO radio program of 2005, Khan, a metallurgist, since visited the Netherlands on two occasions. In 1988 he was caught with false identification papers during a car accident in Bergen op Zoom and he was subsequently expelled as an unwanted alien. In 1992 the Dutch foreign intelligence service, the “BVD” granted him the permission to visit his father in law who was ill. Khan who was born in 1935 in Bhopal had studied in the Netherlands and his South African wife is a fluent speaker of Dutch.
The judge who sentenced Dr. Khan in 1984, Mrs. A. Leeser-Gassan retired in 2005 and confirmed last year that the file of the criminal proceedings of the Father of the Islamic Atomic Bomb had meanwhile disappeared from the archives of the Amsterdam court where she functioned as vice-president. In the Dutch TV program Nova of 9th September 2005, Mrs. Leeser-Gassan said it was “baffling and unheard of for us” that a file should get lost. “Things don’t disappear here just like that” she explained. She believes this has to do with the involvement of the American intelligence service the CIA. Mrs. Leeser-Gassan furthermore explained she had found it had been very strange that the ministry for public affairs, i.e. the ministry of justice had never detained Khan, because it would have been quite easy to apprehend him at the time. The judge commented that political games as in this case were unusual in the Netherlands.
The New Duranty Times also pointed the finger at the CIA regarding the easy slip away Khan was given, in an article from December 26th, 2004, which cited a “senior European diplomat” as a source.
Numerous officials in the Netherlands have however, rejected these claims, and the statement of ex-prime minister Lubbers himself is not unequivocal. Moreover, in 2004 the Dutch chief prosecutor explained that the legal file of Khan was destroyed in accordance with standard procedures after the legally required time for keeping documents had lapsed.
And so this whole affair still retains mysteries.
Whether the insinuation of Lubbers is really true just a smear campaign on the Americans is hard to tell. At least, let it be a lesson here not to relinquish the pressure calling on our governments not to go soft anymore on the nuclear Islamic threat.
The US and GB would do well to set an example by not using depleted uranium shells themselves, and making it clear that they are not being used.
Houri wrote:
"The US and GB" (also Russia, Red China, France, and probably another dozen countries) "would do well to set an example by not using depleted uranium shells themselves, and making it clear that they are not being used."
DU is used in kinetic energy, armor piercing weapons. Since DU is NOT used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons (it is actually the leftovers from the enrichment process), it is irrelevant in this discussion.
Short of military action, I do not see how we can prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons if they really want to. However, if Iran or one of its proxies (Hezbollah, for example) did use a nuclear weapon, the response should be the swift, certain destruction of Iran.
Houri wrote:
"The US and GB" (also Russia, Red China, France, and probably another dozen countries) "would do well to set an example by not using depleted uranium shells themselves, and making it clear that they are not being used."
DU is used in kinetic energy, armor piercing weapons. Since DU is NOT used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons (it is actually the leftovers from the enrichment process), it is irrelevant in this discussion.
Short of military action, I do not see how we can prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons if they really want to. However, if Iran or one of its proxies (Hezbollah, for example) did use a nuclear weapon, the response should be the swift, certain destruction of Iran.
The followers of islam are clearly focused on wearing down the following, Israel, U.S.A, Great Britian, France, Russia, although some nations here are under attack more than others.
What do these nations have in common? In what way can these nations give a threat to islam?
They want nukes? Let them have it. Detonate one over Tehran.
OK, so you insist. You want to deport all Muslims presumably to Iran and then blow up the whole caboodle. Sorry to seem cynical, but you'd still have the koran to deal with, and raving new convert loony Muslims, not only relatively unamused with us, but also mutants with christ knows what mutant powers, survivors living in the sewers of Iran, horrible mutants with one aim and one aim only (apart from the two headed ones) to avenge the destruction of Iran and DESTROY AMERICA....see 2000AD. ;)
Since when do we decide what weapons we are going to use on the enemy based on how much it will make them complain? If anyone is having a problem with the US, UK, and a dozen other nations using DU penetrators in our ordnance, maybe they should quit giving us reasons to shoot at them.
That's just my simple American logic.
And, as jay mentioned, weapons that utilize depleted uranium are made with U238 that's had most of the U235 removed. They are the best way of getting through tough armor and are useful for penetrating bunkers. If you don't want us using them on you, don't give us a reason to shoot at you. If you're going to shoot at us, don't do it from tanks or bunkers. If those options are not to your liking, shut the hell up. We are going to use whatever is necessary to kill you.
Maybe if mohammedans would set the example and quit starting shit with everyone else in the world, they wouldn't be getting DU rounds tossed in their direction.
Yeah, that's gonna happen.