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Iranian Heavy Water Nuke Plant Goes Online Today
avtchillsboro writes "According to an article in the NYT, an Iranian heavy water nuke plant goes online today. From the article: 'An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the plant, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. The announcement comes days before Thursday's U.N. deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment — which also can be used to create nuclear weapons — or face economic and political sanctions.'"
The real problem is that Iran is not letting international inspectors see their installations. Remember what happened to Iraq in a similar case?
Future conversation:
UN: Stop enriching uranium or face political and economic consequences.
Iran: Do so and we will stop selling you oil. China will buy it if you don't. Continue your threats and we will use our position in OPEC against you.
UN: Uhhh....
Iran has money to burn, and UN sanctions don't seem to be particularly effective ways to convince to governments; it's the proletariat who suffer. In the meanwhile, Iran's government gets to play the "it's us against the (non-Muslim) world!" card again. Jihad, anyone?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
With Israel a known (suspected within 99.999%) holder of nukes, Iran sees themselves as the logical counterpoint. They do mean to make weapons, of this I have no doubt.
Peaceful purposes? The iranian prez has said Israel should be wiped off the map. He doesn't strike me as a man with peaceful intentions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One quote that might interest people from the interview is this:
Mohammad Saeidi is a practical man. Sidestepping the political, ideological and historical aspects of the nuclear dispute with the West, the vice-president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation is focused on a set of problems that must be solved logically if the country and its people are to develop to their full potential. "The country's oil and gas reserves will last a maximum of another 25 or 30 years," he says. "Therefore we have to provide other resources."
If you are an American, please don't support your current administrations drive to cause yet another war by believing their propaganda about Iran. Really, you should trust your politicians as soon as they find the WMD that they told you existed in Iraq.
Please don't let Bush plunge the world into the Realm of $200 a barrel oil prices by attacking Iran.
I alway wondered if radioactive oil is as useable as the clean crude. I suppose we could always use it to lube the current nuke plants ;)
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
Iranian Heavy Water Nuke Plant Goes Online Today.
How long before it feels the slashdot effect?
Naive of me, but did anyone RTFA? It says that Iran can now produce heavy water, not that they have a nuclear reactor. FFS, I thought the NYT had higher standards of journalistic integrity than to use a misleading headline.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It is my understanding that Iran would like to build a uranium nuclear device. While these are impressive--and definitely make a big boom--they are not nearly as deadly or frightening as a plutonium nuclear device. The reason? Deliverability. While a plutonium nuclear explosive can be squeezed down to a pretty small size (to fit on the tip of a cruise missile, for example), a uranium device has to be pretty massive.
Essentially, while a plutonium device is a ball of plutonium surrounded by concentric spheres of perfectly timed explosives, a uranium device is the equivalent of a 5-inch diameter gun which fires a uranium slug at a uranium target. The advantage of a plutonium device is obvious: it's small. The disadvantage of a plutonium device is the fact that it's very, very difficult to get the timing right so that you don't incinerate the plutonium before it goes critical. Meanwhile, a uranium device is dirt-simple to develop once you have the material. However, these things are huge. So huge, in fact, that you need something the size of a B29 in order to deliver it. We're talking several tons here.
Incidentally, the US developed one of each during the Manhattan Project, culminating in the two dropped bombs: Little Boy and Fat Man (no prizes for guessing which is which). While the Plutonium devices needed to be tested to make sure it worked, the scientists didn't even bother to test a uranium explosive at full scale. They just dropped the sucker.
Basically, this boils down to a pretty simple reality: even if Iran develops a uranium device, they can't deliver it. They can't put it on a missile, and I think it's a 100% certainty that Israel (or anyone else, for that matter, though Israel is the most likely target) would shoot down anything the size of a B29 flying in from Iran. If I had to guess, I'd wager that's why the Bush administration doesn't seem terribly worried about Iran. North Korea is a different matter, but Iran just isn't as big of a threat as everyone seems to be making it out to be.
And as an aside, it's certainly tempting to say "well, they could just put it on a boat and hide it and float it to a port and explode it." However, there are a couple of problems. First of all, each nuclear device that Iran develops will be a sort of force-multiplier for its power in the region. So if it develops--say--three devices, that means that losing just one is going to be a dramatic blow to its power. If you say that there's a 50/50 chance that the device will actually make it to its target, there's just no way to rationalize that risk. Much better to use the threat as leverage. The Iranian leaders don't subscribe to Western modes of thought, but they're aren't utterly irrational.
LR
1. Diplomacy, so far has failed.
2. Air strikes, don't know where all the facilities are and many of those we do are located so far underground that conventional weapons are useless. Not only that but Iran would no doubt cut off oil supplies which would cause an oil crisis.
3. Military invasion, not enough troops because of our excursion into Iraq. The only possible alternative is a draft.
4. Leave it for the next administration to sort out, the most likely scenario.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
This is not a nuclear power plant that's online (yet), but merely a facility that produces heavy water.
It's fun to get people worked up with such a headline (and almost all the AP wire sites did so), but on closer examination, it's hard to get too outraged at Iran for manufacturing something that you can buy on eBay.
You mean like this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5217424.stm
On 15 August, 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka.
Her death sentence was imposed for "crimes against chastity".
The state-run newspaper accused her of adultery and described her as 22 years old.
But she was not married - and she was just 16.
Sharia Law
In terms of the number of people executed by the state in 2004, Iran is estimated to be second only to China.
In the year of Atefah's death, at least 159 people were executed in accordance with the Islamic law of the country, based on the Sharia code.
Since the revolution, Sharia law has been Iran's highest legal authority.
Alongside murder and drug smuggling, sex outside marriage is also a capital crime.
As a signatory of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, Iran has promised not to execute anyone under the age of 18.
But the clerical courts do not answer to parliament. They abide by their religious supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, making it virtually impossible for human rights campaigners to call them to account.
Code of behaviour
At the time of Atefah's execution in Neka, journalist Asieh Amini heard rumours the girl was just 16 years old and so began to ask questions.
Crane for hanging in silhouette
To teach others a lesson, Atefah's execution was held in public
"When I met with the family," says Asieh, "they showed me a copy of her birth certificate, and a copy of her death certificate. Both of them show she was born in 1988. This gave me legitimate grounds to investigate the case."
So why was such a young girl executed? And how could she have been accused of adultery when she was not even married?
Disturbed by the death of her mother when she was only four or five years old, and her distraught father's subsequent drug addiction, Atefah had a difficult childhood.
She was also left to care for her elderly grandparents, but they are said to have shown her no affection.
In a town like Neka, heavily under the control of religious authorities, Atefah - often seen wandering around on her own - was conspicuous.
It was just a matter of time before she came to the attention of the "moral police", a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, whose job it is to enforce the Islamic code of behaviour on Iran's streets.
Secret relationship
Being stopped or arrested by the moral police is a fact of life for many Iranian teenagers.
Previously arrested for attending a party and being alone in a car with a boy, Atefah received her first sentence for "crimes against chastity" when she was just 13.
Although the exact nature of the crime is unknown, she spent a short time in prison and received 100 lashes.
Atefah was soon caught in a downward spiral of arrest and abuse
When she returned to her home town, she told those close to her that lashes were not the only things she had to endure in prison. She described abuse by the moral police guards.
Soon after her release, Atefah became involved in an abusive relationship with a man three times her age.
Former revolutionary guard, 51-year-old Ali Darabi - a married man with children - raped her several times.
She kept the relationship a secret from both her family and the authorities.
Atefah was soon caught in a downward spiral of arrest and abuse.
Local petition
Circumstances surrounding Atefah's fourth and final arrest were unusual.
The moral police said the locals had submitted a petition, describing her as a "source of immorality" and a "terrible influence on local schoolgirls".
But there were no signatures on the petition - only those of the arresting guards.
Men's word is accepted much more clearly and much more easily than women
Mohammad Hoshi,
Iranian lawyer and exile
Three days after her arrest,
Considering Iran ordered Hezbollah to cause a war with Israel to distract attention of its program and its leader publically plans to destroy Isreal publically several times is cause for concern.
They already started a proxy war with Israel and mentioned the Lebannon war was proof that Israel must be destroyed. You want this country to have a nuclear weapon?
http://saveie6.com/
I voted for the guy. Not once, but twice, so don't preach at me about being mental. :)
FP was meant to be a joke...it isn't flamebait.
Why doesn't cringe every time the guys says Nucular?
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/iran/index.don /alert081606_ebadi.htm7 7bc-61bb-4b7d-87e0-663033df3404.htmlm
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=mideast&c=iran
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/defenders/hrd_ira
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/02/49f8
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4114621.st
From the BBC article:
The execution of children
Torture, as well as degrading punishments such as amputation, flogging and stoning
Discrimination against women and girls
The persecution of political opponents, following last February's mass disqualification of opposition candidates in the run-up to parliamentary elections
Discrimination against minorities, including Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, and in particular followers of the Baha'i faith, including arbitrary arrest and detention.
Can we start being worried yet?
Can we start telling them they can't do this yet?
Or are these still wonderful people who should have A-bombs?
*sits and waits for the moral equivalency arguments*
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I for, one, do NOT welcome our new-clear, Shi'ite Overlords. No matter how you pronounce "nuclear", or, for that matter, "Shi'ite".
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
If Iran sells the oil to *someone*, it makes no real difference who. It just means that whoever would have sold to China, would sell to whomever Iran is now not selling to. This extra constraint on the distribution network just adds a small price per barrel. That's just as empty a threat as the UN's.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
My naturally trusting personality leads me to the following theory:
The Iranians are indeed flying in the face of the UN by developing tech that could be used to develop nuclear weapons without letting the UN see it, just to piss 'em off.
However, they won't develop nuclear weapons, just so we'll all go "Oh. I suppose since they didn't develop nuclear weapons, we can trust them."
You see? We'll trust them! Then what? We'll have to invade!
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
They need nuclear power like a submarine needs a screen door.
They're sitting on one of the richest petroleum reserves in the world, and selling it off in order to get hard currency, which they want to use to develop a domestic energy industry that relies on imported nuclear fuel? Right.
I'm not saying it's a complete impossibility; under different leadership, in a different situation, if their priorities were obviously not what they are today, it might make sense for them to be looking for a post-petroleum energy source. Heck -- the rest of the world is. But building an obsolete plutonium-factory nuclear reactor (which hasn't exactly solved the rest of the world's energy needs) isn't the way to go about it.
If peaceful energy research was their goal, there are lots of ways they could go about it which wouldn't be so obviously antagonistic. But they're not, and the point is that they've done little to assure the rest of the world that they're out to do anything but build nuclear weapons and use them in a jihad against Israel or the West generally.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"We still reserve the right to fuck you up."
That's how I view the Iran situation. Let them pursue their "peaceful" ambitions (Yeah, I'm sure, but pre-emptive warfare is bullshit), but as soon as they slip they're going to get it, and hard. Listening to their president is enough to make me puke from the rhetoric, especially regarding Hezbollah, and I find it difficult to believe someone could bother me more than Bush when they open their mouth. Same arrogant asshole, different place 'n face.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
It's totally proven. Iran openly admits that it provides Hezbollah with weapons. It's openly admitted that for over two decades. I agree with the rest of your post, that Iran didn't especially time anything, but Hezbollah is a wing of the Iranian administration.
So what? Every country has their share of government committed crime and acts against human rights. Search the news and you will find equally disturbing incidents within USA and EU countries. No such arguments can lead to the conclusion that a country can be told what to do by others.
Sounds like Pakistan.. Oh wait, the US doesn't mind Pakistan having Nuclear weapons because they are an ally.. A religious fanatic ally harboring terrorists, but an ally.
this is clearly to meet energy needs, in particular the need unleash energy in israel on the megaton scale
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
This is such a piece of blatent propaganda, and everyone seems to have fallen for it. The Iranian president has never said this, or anything like it. He says he doesn't recognise the legitimacy of the regime that occupies Jerusalem. Most Arabs say the same thing. He didn't say he wanted to wipe the country off the map, as is discussed here, amongst other places.
Additionally, the US could also be accused of fighting a proxy war in the region, and with more justification.
I don't want anyone to have nuclear weapons, but if you were Iran, you'd want them. Two countries pissed the US off a few years ago, Iraq and North Korea. One was attacked, one wasn't. Guess which one had nukes? The US administration keeps publicly intimating that Iran is next on the list. If you were Iran, it would be pretty clear that the only way to avoid being invaded would be to have nukes.
Eh? Heavy water is used in hundreds of modern fission nuclear reactors around the world--it acts as a moderator for the fission reaction.
Wrong. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor - sure, you don't generate the power from the heavy water itself, but it's needed for that kind of reactor. Together with uranium, which, surprise, they also are building an enrichment plant for.
While I do not completely trust this enterprise to be peaceful, I don't trust the U.S., Israel, the U.K., Russia or any of the other countries that already *have* nuclear weapons, and in the case of the U.S. have used them. Until the nuclear weapon carrying countries that already exists have dismantled their last bombs and missiles, I'll continue finding their cries about others building research facilities or nuclear plants very hypocritical.
Well, at least this time the evidence is somewhat better than the "Oh, oh, they've got metal pipes - they're building nukes!" used as a motive to invade Iraq...
Iran started its nuclear program back when the Shah was still a US puppet. Of course, I don't expect to hear anything about that from the Bushes, who put the Iran in "Iran/Contra".
It's always been a bad idea to proliferate nukes in the Mideast, a part of the world controlled by politicians defined more by death's rewards than life's opportunities. Reading more of the history of Iran's nukes helps explain why the French are so deeply involved, and how the roles of the US and Russia are so "complicated".
--
make install -not war
Doesn't it seem stupid to have only a handful of countries with nuclear weapons?
My solution would for the US to build one ICBM for each country in the UN. If you're in the UN, here's ONE nuke. You only get one.
* You want true equality around the world, there it is. Every country is now equal.
* You want to end wars, you've done it. No one can invade anyone else or risk getting nuked.
* Talk about one world government? Now it's really possible.
Give them all nukes.
Interesting. The United States and the Soviet Union pursued a course of Mutual Assured Destruction for decades, and were roundly critized by, well ... pretty much the rest of the world for it. Nice to know that other peoples, when faced with the EXACT SAME DILEMMA have reached the same conclusion: if I have to glow in the dark for ten thousand years you're gonna glow brighter. There really is no other short term solution that makes any sense at all when thermonuclear weapons are involved. If an ideologically murderous nation is threatening you with a (to quote Lewis Black) nuclear-fuck-holocaust you can a. depend upon their better nature and hope they don't nuke your ass (stupid and probably fatal) or b. build enough weapons yourself to hold them at bay (expensive but survivable.)
... you can build them but God help you if we think you're crazy enough to use them.
Here's one important point, however. M.A.D. only works if the enemy's leadership actually grasps what a nuclear-fuck-holocaust is all about. Nobody has seen a megaton-equivalent blast in a long time, maybe too long. Perhaps if we were still doing nuclear tests we could invite a few of Iran's top officials to witness one, simultaneously pointing out that the U.S. has thousands of the things. I mean, we've spent trillions on our weapons programs, weapons whose primary function is to sit in their silos and deter foreign governments from doing anything really stupid. Might as well use them for that purpose. It's better than having to actually drop them on somebody.
The Soviets, totalitarian empire-builders that they were, were rational enough to care that we could kill them all if we really wanted to do so. Consequently, they never dropped anything big on us, and we never dropped anything big on them. Hideously expensive as it was, as a foreign policy M.A.D. worked just fine, for that matter is still working. This is the problem as I see it: can we trust that the fear of swift and total radioactive retribution is sufficient to sway Iran's "government" from attempting thermonuclear genocide? Other posters have asked what right does the world have to prevent Iran (or any other nation with imperial ambitions and/or dangerous ideological imperatives) from building atomic bombs. That's your answer
{sigh} So far as I'm concerned America may be fucked in its collective head but the rest of the planet is just as screwed up if not more so.
I rest my case.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
A country like Iran doesn't care. They're fixated on a religious war, which supercedes any concern over political matters. These people don't care if they die, because they're convinced that they will reach a special form of heaven in the process. That makes for a very, very dangeous opponent.
and the Neocons?
There is perception and then there is reality. Few politicians are what they appear.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Some history lesson.
Considering Hitler died in 1945 and Israel wasn't a state until 1948, I'm not the least bit suprised that Hitler refused to recognise Isreal.
Read up on the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, a worthless piece of shit who extensively collaborated with the Nazis, helped recruit Muslims to serve in the Waffen S.S., and never missed an opportunity to help kill more Jews.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Or rather three different ways of looking at it:
One is the grandfather clause. Basically when the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed it allowed those nations who already had nukes to keep them. So the US can have them for the same reason as Russia, the UK, France, and so on. That would be the legalistic view.
Another would be because the US has a stable government with excellent protections against accidental launch, or deliberate launch by a rogue person. You can Google around for the details if you wish, but what it comes down to is that GWB can't just wake up one day and decide to nuke a country for the fun of it. He lacks the authority and the ability. The US also cares for the lives of its' citizens to a high degree, and has a stable government that doesn't get overthrown all the time. That's the somewhat moral view.
Finally, there's the simple matter that nobody can stop them. They've got the biggest military, and the amount of nukes they have is such that they can annihilate anyone they wish. There's no possibility of any sort of invasion or strike that could take out even a fraction of the US arsenal before they could retaliate. So there's simply nothing anyone can do about it. That's the practical view.
You can take it any way you like but it really isn't comparable to Iran getting nukes. The US is allowed, under internal law, to have it's nukes, they are not (despite some ranting on Slashdot) run by extremists that can launch them at any time, and there's just really nothing anyone can do to take them away. Iran isn't allowed to develop nukes, there is a concern that they would use them given that there are no controls in the country stopping their hard line government from doing so, and as it happens they can be stopped.
I'm not saying that they should be stopped, that's a different argument. However trying to say "The US has nukes so Iran getting them is the same thing," isn't the case, regardless of what level you choose to look at it on.
A heavy water plant is not a nuclear reactor. Nothing in a heavy water plant is radioactive. Or, for most processes, even toxic. Here's a tutorial on heavy water plants. They're not very complicated or especially large. This is the easy step in the process.
The next step is a nuclear reactor fueled with natural uranium and moderated with heavy water, which can be used, with difficulty, to produce plutonium. This is the route Pakistan took. Here's Pakistan's heavy water plant and its companion nuclear reactor. Israel's Dimona reactor is also of this type. So this is the standard route to nuclear weapons for small countries. This step is much harder and riskier, but the technology is half a century old.
There are other approaches. The United States initially used water-cooled graphite-moderated reactors fueled with natural uranium for plutonium production, as did Russia. Britain used air-cooled graphite-moderated reactors. (Bad idea. The Windscale reactor had a fire in 1957, releasing a considerable amount of radioactive material.) Once both countries had uranium-enrichment capability, newer reactors mostly used low-grade enriched uranium. Both the US and the USSR got so good at plutonium production that both now have tons (literally) of the stuff in storage, in addition to the weapons using it. A nuclear weapon requires about 5Kg.
Are you saying that all Iranians are suicide bombers
I am saying that their politics is influenced by religious extremists who are more likely to not worry about retailation because they believe they will be rewarded in an afterlife. Soviet dogma rejected the idea of an afterlife.
Table-ized A.I.
ASSERTION: If the Iranians build nuclear weapons, then the Iranians will use them without reservation.
If the above assertion is false, then the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should proceed playing word games with the Iranians and allow them to continue using delaying tactics. Of course, the Iranian Muslims are offering false promises in order to buy the necessary time for building a nuclear bomb.
On the other hand, if the above assertion is true, then the Western nations (which includes Japan) must act immediately without waiting for the Chinese to manipulate the UNSC into playing more word games. One possibility is to arrange for unmarked German fighter-bombers to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. This military action should be synchronized with the bombing of North-Korean nuclear facilities by unmarked Japanese fighter-bombers.
So, is the assertion true? The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the assertion is true.
How do people behave if they are genuinely committed to peace and economic development? Consider Vietnam. Washington dropped tons of agent orange on Vietnamese farmlands and forests. Today, thousands of Vietnamese are suffering and dying from this poisoning. Yet, the Vietnamese are not spending every waking moment in plotting how to kill Americans. The Vietnamese government spends most of its budget on economic development and is not attempting, in any way, to build a nuclear bomb.
Consider the Czech Republic. Czechoslovakia was under Russian/Soviet oppression for more than 40 years. Yet, today, the Czechs are not spending every waking moment in plotting how to kill Russians. The Czech government spends most of its budget on economic development and is not attempting, in any way, to build a nuclear bomb.
Now, look at Iran. The Iranians spend every waking moment in plotting how to kill Americans, Iraqis, and Israelis. The Iranians give millions of dollars to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. The Iranians spend millions of dollars on building a nuclear bomb.
Is Iran committed to peace and economic development? You make the call.
An even better question is "What is the fastest way to de-capitate the Iranian government and Iranian society?"
part of the problem is that Israel has never been *serious* about earning a sustainable peace. Sure after decades of war, there are now peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt and a sort of alliance with Turkey. However the fact remains that the large cause of the conflicts are almost always about nothing more than land and water.
Additionally you ahve to understand that while the vast majority of Israelis are reasonable folk and peaceloving, there are extremists (including terrorists) who feel that it is their sacred duty to create a greater Israel spanning from Sinai through Golan. These lands, in their view, must be conquered, depopulated, and resettled by Jews (a term not exactly equivalent to Israeli by modern demographic standards).
What Galloway fails to note is that Israel is an area, like Northern Ireland, where over six decades of conflict have created some really insane dynamics. Indeed I cannot think of a country whose political dynamics make less sense than modern Israel. After all, when a former Nazi sympathizer (who tried to build an alliance between a Zionist resistance group and the Nazis during WWII) can be serve a lengthy term as Foreign Minister and a short term as PM, the last place one would think this could happen would be Israel, and yet that it happened there in the 1980's with Shameer (Shameer's Nazi sympathies were well documented).
But the fact remains-- Israel is a military superpower in the region who is almost unquestioningly backed by the US, France, and other countries. Their alliance while it is their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. For example, in the run-up to the Iraq war, Lebannon exacted some serious water rights concessions from Israel despite threats by Sharon to go to war.
Now, we are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we have many troops which are not committed to the field of battle, most of the active duty troops are committed in various strategic roles (such as South Korea) and are not readily available for redeployment. I do not think it is possible to invade Iran and win by any lasting measure. What was that B5 quote about the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots? At the same time there is the fear that if Iraq stabilizes, then the US might be free to attack Iran.
So what is Iran to do?
1) Destabilize Iraq-- keep us bogged down there.
2) Develop a deterrent nuclear capability capable of holding Israel hostage in the event of pending US military action.
3) Develop ties with terrorist organizations so that if balistic missiles fail to have deterrent capabilities, other deployment options exist.
Iran has seen deterrence work on the Korean penninsula. They know that their only way away to have power in the region is to threaten US allies with massive and illegal weapons.
Ahmedinejad is hardly mad any more than Bush is as dumb as he appears. He is playing a very sophisticated game and doing quite well, and politicians are never what they appear.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Giving arms to Hezbollah does not mean that Iran orcastrated the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. Especially when you consider that Israel gave the US its proposed plans *BEFORE THE KIDNAPPING*.
I also find it ironic about people going on about Iran when Israel for example actually built a fake nuclear control room so that the UN inspectors couldn't determine that they where building nuclear weapons.
But the most classic is that people stating they should bomb the plants, some even say nuke the plants. Have you people even looked at where the actual plants are. They are very near cities in Iran. I am sure some people will go "OMG! They are using these cities as human shields", try comparing locations to other countrys.
">>The US doesn't talk directly with Iran. Or with Syria.
No shit. They refuse to recognize Israel and their main goal is to eliminate Israel and the Jews from the planet."
So what? Why should that dictate who the US talks to and not? Am I paying my taxes to serve the interest of israel or the US?
evil is as evil does
if they did, they haven't had them for that long.
N. Korea's deterrence is the fact that they can launch an artillery barrage that could kill at least 100000 residents of Seoul. Nukes would also allow them to hold hostage a larger area.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Which part of "It's always been a bad idea to proliferate nukes in the Mideast" dont YOU understand?
Before Hitler rose to power in Germany, Bush Sr's father Prescott Bush funded Hitler to ensure his rise. And continued to fund Hitler even as those funds paid for bullets fired at American troops, until stopped for violating the "Trading With the Enemy" laws. Once the bullets stopped, Prescott Bush's boss Averill Harriman negotiated the deal for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in return for which the CIA overthrew the democratically elected successor to the Shah, so the Shah would keep the AIOC deal. The Shah was such a "good customer" of the US that "we" set him up with a nuclear program under Richard Nixon. Whose staff included Dick Cheney, a frequent Director of corporations funded and directed by Harriman and Bush, even through the 1980s. Who has done everything he could to give Iran "reasons" to get nukes, while supplying them with Iran/Contra military parts and recently handing them Iraq.
So don't tell ME about crazy people with nukes. I've got the whole barrel of monkeys on my radar. And, through my taxes and against my votes, many of them on my payroll.
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make install -not war
Good ol' Hal Porter. You're a semantic webbist, not a economist. Don't venture out of your domain, chico.
Financially, they're better off selling their petrochemicals to nations like the United States and China, who are willing to pay (at this time) $70 for each barrel. They could use their oil domestically, of course, but then they're not maximizing their return. In economics, failing to maximize one's return shows that some resources are being wasted, and that's not a beneficial thing to do.
Iran knows better than to deal with the US. They've seen what happens to countries (Iraq, Lebanon) that aren't self-reliant. And again, it may be a matter of economics why they didn't subscribe to such a deal. Their return may be maximized if they perform the enrichment themselves. Anybody with even the smallest amount of financial or economic knowledge should be able to comprehend their stance.
Of course I can't go into any actual numbers, the people in the spiffy suits and sunglasses would take me away for a long vacation elsewhere. You've got it about right though and yes, Pu-239 aside from being highly radioactive also is extremely toxic. Turn a few kilograms, if that, into a dust and you could wipe out NYC easily with the right approach, the heck with turning it into a nuke.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
You grossly oversimplify; actually, the situation was a lot more complex than that. Saddam was selling oil way too cheap, in euros, to the French. So we didn't like him.
.... that is why we "didn't like him".
Right.... and the reason that Enron's executives are liable for repaying $183 million, and probably jail time, is that their stock "under-performed" the market.
Saddam used the wholly corrupt "Oil for Food" program to bribe all manner of foreign officials, buy influence in the Security Council, undermine UN sanctions, buy weapons, and fund terrorists, all the while skimming billions of dollars off the top. Even UN Secretary General Koffi Annan's son took bribes, and the Deputy Secretary General was eye deep as well. So, it was that, his refusal to fully and voluntarily comply with the weapons inspections, his record of genocide, aggression against pretty much every country around him, the abysmal human rights record, his military regularly fired on US aircraft (act of war), his support for international terrorists, well.... you get the picture,
Personally, I think you want to let President Saddam "I grind my opponents alive, and my sons are worse" Hussein off the hook a little too easily.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
He did all the things you mentioned, but frankly the US didn't give a toss about that.
The problem was that the second largest oil field in the world would soon only be available in Euros. Which would mean that oil buyers wouldn't have to buy dollars to get the oil. Which reduces the demand for US dollars. So. supply and demand. demand for dollars decreases, the value decreases, the US dollar begins falling in value. The dollar is worth less the more of them you need to buy things, That's called inflation and guess what, devaluing dollars severely limits the US government's ability to print more of them with abandon, to pay their huge military, to pay huge subsidies to industry and farmers etc etc.
Guess what. Iran is planning to set up an oil exchange which would operate in Euros. I wonder who's going to be hit next.
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