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Iran Announces Manned Space Mission Plans
Lucas123 writes "After Iran's first attempt to launch a satellite on Sunday fell noticeably short of the Earth's atmosphere (though Iran claimed it made it into orbit), government officials stated they intend to put a man into space within 10 years. The long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into space can also be used for launching weapons. Iran says it has no intention to use the technology for launching nuclear warheads."
Pretty simple, actually. Iran has very limited capability to refine their own oil, so they need to pay to get it to a country with more refining capability, then pay to get it back.
You must really be crazy to call the proven conspiracy of Bush's team members to arm Iran something worthy of a "tinfoil hat".
Especially when you yourself link Rumsfeld and Cheney with Ford. But then, you don't bother to point out that Rumsfeld and Cheney met while working together for Nixon. All of which is consistent with working with America's enemies.
You've got your tinfoil hat on backwards. It's frying your brain.
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make install -not war
I know you're making a joke here, but the joke is less funny the more you know about Iran. Iran and Iraq differ by a lot more than one consonant. For one thing, the way their government works is much more complicated than the old Baghdad Bob's Baathist regime.
First of all, charming Mr. Ahmadinejad, although he is quite capable of saying some pretty outrageous things, doesn't wield supreme power, or even anything close to it. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khameni, is much more powerful. But even his power is arguably the ultimate one, it is by design much more awkward for him to wield than, say, Saddam's version of ultimate power.
There are even relative moderates in the government like Akbar Rafsanjani, former president and current chairman of both the Expendiency Council and Assembly of Experts. The Assembly theoretically has the power to dismiss the Supreme Leader, although no actions in that direction have ever, so far as we know, been taken.
The point here is that the Iranian government isn't even close to being the kind of dictatorship where everybody has to parrot the President's fantasies. To tell you the truth, it isn't quite like any other form of government I can think of, it's more like a hybrid of a democratic Republic and a theocracy, with the theocracy acting primarily in a judicial role but with certain executive powers theoretically in their direct or indirect control. Ack, that's a really bad summary, but the best I can do.
The important thing that everybody should understand about Iran is that the Iranian government is not anything monolithic entity driven by the ego or ideology of any single person, not even the Supreme Leader.
The way we deal with such a country isn't quite the same as you would deal with a dictatorship. Perhaps one might approach Iran in the way we dealt with the old totalitarian states, although Iran isn't really very much like them. There is a power structure there which, through its various organs, might be dealt with pragmatically. Such dealings might even, in some cases, tip the balance of power between factions.
The Iranians take seriously the idea of being an "Islamic Republic". It seems almost incomprehensible to the Western mind that this could be anything but a sham, but it's not. There's a thousand years of Shiite historical and religious thought which limits the ability of even senior religious leaders to wield absolute power.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I believe parent was talking about the prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 in 1953. I suggest you google "Operation Ajax".
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
But at some point the Islamic side will wake up and see just how godless the Chinese can be, and the Chinese will wake up and see just how unsensibly non-pragmatic the Islamic fundamentalists can be, and things will become "interesting", in the Confucian sense.
It isn't reported much, but there ARE Islamic bombings in China already...