Today Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that the Islamic Republic “had joined the countries that have nuclear technology.”
ISTANBUL, April 11 — Iran has succeeded in enriching uranium to new levels, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday, proclaiming a technical breakthrough that advances both the country’s nuclear program and the international controversy surrounding it.
“I’m announcing officially that Iran has now joined the countries that have nuclear technology,” Ahmadinejad said in a carefully staged presentation televised live across Iran. “This is a very historic moment, and it’s because of the Iranian people and their belief. And this is the start of the progress of this country.”
Standing before a sweeping backdrop featuring doves around an Iranian flag, Ahmadinejad said the country was moving toward enriching uranium on an industrial scale to supply nuclear fuel for power plants, not the weapons that the Bush administration and other governments say are Tehran’s real goal.
“We are saying again that the nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else,” Ahmadinejad said.
Yeah, right. Remember, this is the same guy who talks about bringing about the dawn of the Islamic Messiah. The idea that the Mullahs will restrict themselves to “peaceful research” is, in a word, absurd. The question is whether the West will have the will to stop Ahmadinejad before its too late, if we haven’t already passed that point.
And Ahmadinejad talked about more than peaceful uses of nuclear technology:
“At this historic moment, with the blessings of God almighty and the efforts made by our scientists, I declare here that the laboratory- scale nuclear fuel cycle has been completed and young scientists produced enriched uranium needed to the degree for nuclear power plants Sunday,” Ahmadinejad said.
“I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries,” he told an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in the northwestern holy city of Mashhad. The crowd broke into cheers of “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!” Some stood and thrust their fists in the air.
Yep, precisely the way that a rational society greats the opening of a new power plant.
More coverage of this at All Things Beautiful, Wizbang, and Varifrank, where Frank Martin writes this:
When I was a little boy, some crazy bastard went and put some nuclear missiles 90 miles off our shore, and the world nearly went into global thermonuclear war and as a result, putting an end to my young life and millions of others before it had a chance to get started. My parents always talked about the Cuban Missle Crisis as “the scary times”. My dad always talked about the plans he made with Mom, about how she was to take my sisters and I out of the city if “things got bad” while he was away at sea during the crisis. This was the talk around the kitchen tables of America in October 1962.
Today, I look back on those days with nostalgia as a period of relative sanity and calm.
And if we don’t deal with Iran now, then Americans of the year 2040 may view April 2006 in the same way.
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April 12th, 2006 at 5:11 am
Out Of Time Part II
As I have said before we are Out Of Time. It has become increasingly obvious that when Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad fails to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment program, a strike will indeed become necessary, and assessin…