Below The Beltway

Speaking of Iran, this little piece of information certainly raises eyebrows:
March 4, 2010: Another sign that Israel expects to be attacked; air force ground crews are being trained to perform dangerous “hot refueling.” This procedure is used to speed up refueling of combat aircraft that have just landed, so they can take off quickly and [...]

The President of Iran is crazier than we thought:
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a “big fabrication” that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West and Israel, made the [...]

Jimmy Cater still thinks he handled the Iran Hostage Crisis just fine:
CHIANG MAI, Thailand – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Monday he had no regrets about his handling of the Iran hostage crisis more than 30 years ago, saying he didn’t attack the country as his advisers proposed because thousands of people would have [...]

A new round of protests in Iran today, and the protesters have a message for the President of the United States:

It would appear that President Obama’s idea of a dialogue with Iran is not well-received:
TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader, spurning what he described as several personal overtures from President Obama, warned Tuesday that negotiating with United States was “naive and perverted” and said Iranian politicians should not be “deceived” into starting such talks.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [...]

Well, so much for that:
WASHINGTON — Iran told the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Thursday that it would not accept a plan its negotiators agreed to last week to send its stockpile of uranium out of the country, according to diplomats in Europe and American officials briefed on Iran’s response.
The apparent rejection of the deal [...]

From yesterday in the House Foreign Affairs Committee:

It appears that the West is quickly coming to the realization that preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a strategy that probably won’t work:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons.
U.S. officials [...]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not able to persuade Russia to sign on to sanctions against Iran over it’s nuclear program:
MOSCOW, Oct. 13 — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton held lengthy talks with senior Russian officials Tuesday as part of an intense American effort to improve relations, but she made few gains on [...]