Iran says it has legal right to nuclear research
President denounces West over threats to refer Tehran to Security Council

Jan. 14: President Bush says if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, it would pose a grave threat to the security of the world. NBC's Jeannie Ohm reports from the White House.

MSNBC
Updated: 1:16 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran’s president on Saturday denounced Western nations threatening to refer his country to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear program, saying the international community has no legal basis for restricting Tehran’s right to research.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran’s president said his country has not violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows signatories to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel.

“There is no evidence to prove Iran’s diversion (toward nuclear weapons),” Ahmadinejad said at a news conference.

His comments came a day after Iran threatened to end surprise inspections and other cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency if it is referred to the Security Council.

Europe and the United States have been trying to build support for such a move, saying more two years of acrimonious negotiations have reached a dead end. But they faced resistance from China, which warned the move could only escalate the confrontation.

Iran insists its program is peaceful, intended only to produce electricity, but the U.S. and others believe it is seeking to develop atomic weapons.

“The world public opinion knows that Iran has not violated the Nonproliferation Treaty,” Ahmadinejad said. “There are no restrictions for nuclear research activities under the NPT protocol and Iran has not accepted any obligation (not to carry out research). How is it possible to prevent the scientific development of a nation?”

International condemnations
Iran resumed research work on uranium enrichment earlier this week drawing fierce international condemnations.

Ahmadinejad called the accusations against Iran were “propaganda” and that the presence of surveillance equipment from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is proof Iran has nothing to hide.

“How will the world public opinion accept their propaganda campaign against Iran when IAEA cameras are installed on all nuclear sites?” Ahmadinejad asked.

He complained that “a few” Western countries were lobbying against Iran and said Tehran did not trust them.

“They speak and behave as if they are living in the medieval age,” the hard-line leader said. “I’m recommending these countries not isolate themselves more among the people of the world. Resorting to the language of coercion is over.”

He said Iran had tried for two and a half years to restore the trust of the international community, including by sealing some research sites, signing a protocol allowing snap IAEA inspections and ceasing uranium enrichment.

“Now, it is the turn of the European countries to apply trust-building measures,” he said.

On Tuesday, Iran removed some U.N. seals from its main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, and resumed research on nuclear fuel — including some small-scale enrichment.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Nope, the National Guard just defends this country.

Oh, wait.....

so, the U.N. aside, why can't iran have nuclear weapons when the U.S. can?

Because we have agreed not to use them in most all circumstances.

but the U.S. has them, right?

I really wish he would stop making threatening comments about Israel. It really doesn't help the region

and yet, we're the only country to have ever used them...

Is this an actual question, or are you attempting to be funny?




Because the president of iRan believes in a hidden iMam, who will unite the world in an iSlamic state of peace. This iMam's coming is preceeded by a wordwide conflict between light (islam, read: religion of peace) and darkness (everyone not a Shia Muslim). He also believes the mortals can speed up this process and it is the responsibility of iSlamic leaders to do this.

Summary:
1.) believes some iSlam (religion of peace) mumbo-jumbo.
2.) beliefs come true when the world is in a war between Muslim and non.
3.) believes mortals can and must speed this up.
4.) is president of an actual threat to world stability (unlike say.. iRaq).

Now, riddle me this:

Why wouldn't would the entire rest of the world want iRan to nuclear bombs?

-------------------

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... world.html
'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader
By Anton La Guardia
(Filed: 14/01/2006)

As Iran rushes towards confrontation with the world over its nuclear programme, the question uppermost in the mind of western leaders is "What is moving its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to such recklessness?"

Political analysts point to the fact that Iran feels strong because of high oil prices, while America has been weakened by the insurgency in Iraq.

But listen carefully to the utterances of Mr Ahmadinejad - recently described by President George W Bush as an "odd man" - and there is another dimension, a religious messianism that, some suspect, is giving the Iranian leader a dangerous sense of divine mission.

In November, the country was startled by a video showing Mr Ahmadinejad telling a cleric that he had felt the hand of God entrancing world leaders as he delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly last September.

When an aircraft crashed in Teheran last month, killing 108 people, Mr Ahmadinejad promised an investigation. But he also thanked the dead, saying: "What is important is that they have shown the way to martyrdom which we must follow."

The most remarkable aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's piety is his devotion to the Hidden Imam, the Messiah-like figure of Shia Islam, and the president's belief that his government must prepare the country for his return.

One of the first acts of Mr Ahmadinejad's government was to donate about £10 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the pious come to drop messages to the Hidden Imam into a holy well.

All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. A common rumour - denied by the government but widely believed - is that Mr Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a "contract" pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi and sent it to Jamkaran.

Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.

He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.

This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.

Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.

The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying. The unspoken question is this: is Mr Ahmadinejad now tempting a clash with the West because he feels safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? Worse, might he be trying to provoke chaos in the hope of hastening his reappearance?

The 49-year-old Mr Ahmadinejad, a former top engineering student, member of the Revolutionary Guards and mayor of Teheran, overturned Iranian politics after unexpectedly winning last June's presidential elections.

The main rift is no longer between "reformists" and "hardliners", but between the clerical establishment and Mr Ahmadinejad's brand of revolutionary populism and superstition.

Its most remarkable manifestation came with Mr Ahmadinejad's international debut, his speech to the United Nations.

World leaders had expected a conciliatory proposal to defuse the nuclear crisis after Teheran had restarted another part of its nuclear programme in August.

Instead, they heard the president speak in apocalyptic terms of Iran struggling against an evil West that sought to promote "state terrorism", impose "the logic of the dark ages" and divide the world into "light and dark countries".

The speech ended with the messianic appeal to God to "hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace".

In a video distributed by an Iranian web site in November, Mr Ahmadinejad described how one of his Iranian colleagues had claimed to have seen a glow of light around the president as he began his speech to the UN.

"I felt it myself too," Mr Ahmadinejad recounts. "I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there. And for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink…It's not an exaggeration, because I was looking.

"They were astonished, as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic."

Western officials said the real reason for any open-eyed stares from delegates was that "they couldn't believe what they were hearing from Ahmadinejad".

Their sneaking suspicion is that Iran's president actually relishes a clash with the West in the conviction that it would rekindle the spirit of the Islamic revolution and - who knows - speed up the arrival of the Hidden Imam.

You cannot deny the fundamental hypocrisy of saying "we can have 'em but you can't." The argument is well made by India, and I think they are well within their rights to say we won't sign any further treaties if you don't.

However, to say that "oh it's only the UN who says they can't have nuclear weapons" plays down the significane of what the UN represents.

The UN may be a ginormous bureaucracy, which has proved to be largely ineffective in securing world peace. However, it is a club, and a club can only ever be as good as it's members. It is also the best thing we have in terms of an "international voice".

If the General Assembly comes together to say "countries A, B, and C should not have nuclear weapons for the greater good of the world community", then I consider that a legitimate basis on which to say a country like Iran should not be in the business of trying to acquire them in the foreseeable future. If and when it proves itself to be a peaceful country, with no apparent tensions with neighboring countries, we can revisit the question, although, at that point, why would they want nuclear weapons at all?

Then again, why let India and Pakistan get away with it? It's tough. International relations and international law are nothing if not inconsistent and oftentimes, irrational. But even so, it beats complete anarchy.

this policy drives me FUCKING INSANE.

if we want to run around policing the rest of the world regarding nuclear activity, we should set an example by destroying our entire nuclear arsenal. period.

But then...who holds the nuclear world in check?

No, you're right...no wait....

God, this issue gives me a headache.

i've heard that argument be presented very well... the whole if we get rid of them we have no authority blah blah blah.

but it still just doesn't seem right that we think we're so much more nobile in intention than anyone else. especially because once again - i can't get it out my head that we're the only ones to have ever used a nuke.

so we paint "savage dictators" and whoever else out as crazy fuckers for wanting these weapons. but we have them. and we've used them. and i can see us doing it again, especially within this administration considering bush's reckless disregard of the opinion of the rest of the world.

gah. you're right. headache.

You don't think we were justified in using them?

That's a bit of an oversimplification. Its more like saying "we made all these terrible things, now we are stuck and can't get rid of them. The best we can do is to prevent anyone else from making them."



I must be blinded by a euro-centric view of the world but not all nations are equal. The former colonized nations (africa, middle east, etc.) are not a state where they should be trusted to have these things (yes I know there are exceptions). It would be like giving pepper spray to a 8 year-old boy to protect themselves vs giving it to a 25 year old girl to protect themselves. There has to be a level of responsiblity for things, another example is a drivers license, and Iran with it's insane leader is not even close.

I could be wrong, but isn't the US actively producing more and more WMD every year? If that's the case, then this version of the story cannot hold.

Furthermore, there are ways of dismantling and "getting rid" of nuclear weapons. It's just that the US (rightly or wrongly) doesn't have the slightest interest of doing anything of the sort.



Did you read the rest of my post?

A colleague of mine once made an interesting point: the society that should determine the regulation of atomic weapons should be the citites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The list of countries that have used nuclear weapons offensively is pretty exclusive. As far as I know there is only one member. It's obviously not an ideal situation but, I think we have to give America credit for wanting to be the only member of their sad club. For all the intellectual bleating of the Euros and Canucks, they simply don't have the perspective that the US does. (I'm speaking as a European born American/Belgian/Canadian, living in Canada). Check out Herman Kahn, "Thinking About the Unthinkable."

wishing this board had spell check