The occupiers of the White House call their political opponents enemies. Yet here these blithering idiots at the State Department are sending birthday greetings to one of the most evil men on the planet. Change can't come soon enough, folks.There was no immediate response from the Iranian president.He was too busy laughing his ass off.
It was a strange week for the loony strongman from Iran.Here's another sampling of the charming folks who've received a free pass from our so-called Justice Department. And here they are meeting with a declared enemy of our country, yet most of the media casually ignore it.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's six nights in New York featured a secret sit-down with militant minister Louis Farrakhan, heckling in a hotel bar, and a fear of being rubbed out that bordered on paranoia.
The president shared a hush-hush meal with Farrakhan and members of the New Black Panther Party Tuesday at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street.
The meeting of the podium smackers took place in a banquet room, where the fiery leaders presumably exchanged theories on what's wrong with the world.
It'll be interesting to find out exactly who these American government officials are he claims to be meeting with.Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can’t get enough of the Big Apple.After that debacle at Columbia in 2007 it'll be curious to see which university opens it's doors to this maniac. No doubt all his media pals will be lining up to slobber over him.
The Iranian President left Saturday for a three-nation trip, which includes the U.S., where he’ll attend the United Nations General Assembly meetings next week, AFP reported.
Ahmadinejad said that besides attending the U.N. meeting, he’d also meet with American government officials.
"In New York, I will talk to heads of governments, a group of American people, industrialists, thinkers, politicians and decision-makers, have a dialogue with one of the American universities, and talk to the media," local media outlets reported.
In Syria, the anti-American leader said that Middle Eastern countries will “disrupt” U.S. and Israeli plans to change the political geography of the region but did not elaborate.
That meeting comes just days after Syrian President Bashar Assad met with President Obama’s special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell. The back-to-back trips symbolize the battle between Iran and the U.S. to influence Syria, a historic Iranian ally.
Ahmadinejad later made a brief stop in Algeria and met with the country’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, according to local media reports.
The Holocaust denier, accused terrorist and proud member of the “axis of evil” has been a guest at the United Nations several times since being elected to power in 2005.
He has set off firestorms in the past in New York. He previously asked (but was denied the opportunity) to lay a wreath at Ground Zero. He also made a previous controversial visit and speech at Columbia University.
Maybe he'll stop by to see his pals at Columbia again.Iran's Holocaust-denying, America-hating President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning to come to New York for a nuclear conference at the UN that starts Monday.So we have a maniac who wants to nuke Israel coming for a nuclear conference?
Iran has not said when Ahmadinejad would arrive, trailing gridlock and noisy protests through Manhattan in his wake. But Iran applied at the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland for a visa for its delegation.
The visit will coincide with stepped-up U.S. efforts to win a new round of UN sanctions against Iran's nuclear programs.
Iran is increasing its paramilitary Qods force operatives in Venezuela while covertly continuing supplies of weapons and explosives to Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Pentagon's first report to Congress on Tehran's military.Oddly enough, there's another familiar anti-U.S. government agent who's also friends with Hugo Chavez.
The report on Iranian military power provides new details on the group known formally as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), the Islamist shock troops deployed around the world to advance Iranian interests. The unit is aligned with terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, North Africa and Latin America, and the report warns that U.S. forces are likely to battle the Iranian paramilitaries in the future.
The Qods force "maintains operational capabilities around the world," the report says, adding that "it is well established in the Middle East and North Africa and recent years have witnessed an increased presence in Latin America, particularly Venezuela."
"If U.S. involvement in conflict in these regions deepens, contact with the IRGC-QF, directly or through extremist groups it supports, will be more frequent and consequential," the report says.
The report provides the first warning in an official U.S. government report about Iranian paramilitary activities in the Western Hemisphere. It also highlights links between Iran and the anti-U.S. government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been accused of backing Marxist terrorists in Colombia.
Gee, that smart diplomacy is really paying dividends, isn't it?Iran's hard-line president on Wednesday ridiculed President Barack Obama's new nuclear strategy, which turns the U.S. focus away from the Cold War threats and instead aims to stop the spread of atomic weapons to rogue states or terrorists.I guess it's time for more outreach and smart power, huh?
Obama on Tuesday announced the new strategy, including a vow not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. Iran, however, was a notable exception to that pledge, along with North Korea, because Washington accuses them of not cooperating with the international community on nonproliferation standards.
Concerns over Iran's nuclear program figure prominently in the new U.S. strategy. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the focus would now be on terror groups such as al-Qaida as well as North Korea's nuclear buildup and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad derided Obama over the plan in a speech Wednesday to a crowd of thousands in the country's northwest.
"American materialist politicians, whenever they are beaten by logic, immediately put their finger on the trigger like cowboys," he said.
"Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer (to politics). Wait until your sweat dries and get some experience. Be careful not to read just any paper put in front of you or repeat any statement recommended," Ahmadinejad said in the speech, aired live on state TV. "(American officials) bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn't do a damn thing, let alone you."
I noticed the story of a British IT consultant who had been kidnapped in Iraq while working there and was released yesterday and waited to see what sort of ransom had been paid to secure his release. Well now we know the answer.Foreign and Commonwealth Office sources confirmed, however, that the transfer from US custody a few days ago of Qais al-Khazali, a cleric and commander of AAH, helped to pave the way for Mr Moore’s release. They also admitted that British diplomats had been pressing the US to hand over al-Khazali to the Iraqi administration.Mr. Moore was kidnapped along with four British security personnel. Three of them have been killed, and the fourth is also suspected of being killed. This is the Muslim version of negotiating in "good faith."
The insurgent leader, who is suspected of helping to plan an attack that killed five US servicemen in Karbala in 2007, is expected to be released as part of reconciliation talks between the Iraqi Government and extremist groups.
When Laith al-Khazali, a brother of Qais al-Khazali, was released in June, the remains of Jason Creswell, 39, and Jason Swindlehurst, 38, were surrendered. Inquests were told that each died from a gunshot wound to the head. The body of Alec MacLachlan, 30, was handed over in September.
Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, said that at a conference in Bahrain on December 13 he had asked General Petraeus whether Mr Moore was moved to Iran.So we hand over a terrorist who was already suspected of having a hand in the killing of five U.S. service members, the captors killed three, and probably four of the other people they kidnapped and we get one British hostage back in exchange.
Mr Gardner told Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: “He didn’t hesitate. He said ‘I’m absolutely certain. I’m 90 per cent certain.’
“I said: ‘Is this a personal view or have you seen hard intelligence?’, and he thought for a minute and he said ’I am pretty sure I’ve seen hard intelligence on it’ ... that they were held in Iran for some of the period of their captivity.”
Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe plan to address negotiators at international climate talks in Copenhagen next week.So nice to see the Warmer hoaxers in such fine company.
The three leaders are listed in a line-up of more than 180 government officials published in a United Nations schedule of speakers. Each head of state will have up to three minutes to address roughly 700 delegates, reporter, observers and civil society groups.
TODD: A little bit of the shine is going to wear off today. It's a stomach punch. But we'll see. There will be plenty of people that will write on a lead to their column, "Boy in a day that unemployment went up his hometown doesn't get the Olympics. He couldn't bring it home. You know, this guy's president...?" blah, blah, blah. You could see how that could shape itself. The president could use a victory here sometime soon, that's for sure.Seems someone ought to send Mitchell a clue, so we'll be happy to do so. Actually, happy probably isn't the right word since this is rather depressing. And if this is any indication of Obama's famed powers of persuasion, already in ruins after the Olympic debacle, well, we're in for a very bumpy ride.
MITCHELL: Well, it's a good thing he did well in the, uh, the diplomatic talks with Iran, but that's another whole subject.
BY all accounts, Thursday's talks between Iran and the 5+1 group of major powers represent a diplomatic coup for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he faces continued political unrest at home.So let's detail where Iran is coming out ahead on points.
Before the talks, Ahmadinejad's opponents -- among them former Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mussavi, the man who believes he won last June's presidential election -- claimed that Tehran's stance on the nuclear issue was driving the country toward "sanctions and war."
Ahmadinejad had countered the claim by promising to lock the 5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) into "long and well-planned talks" with an agenda proposed by Tehran.
* The negotiations are no longer about Iran's compliance with the Security Council resolutions it has violated. Obama is careful not to even mention the resolutions in his statements.Depressing, isn't it. If I didn't know any betetr I would think Obama's on Ahmadinejad's side in all this.
* A new agenda, based on a "package" proposed by Iran, is to be developed. Talks on that issue will start by month's end.
* The 5+1 are no longer demanding that Iran stop uranium enrichment. Instead, they're promoting a range of ideas that would let Iran continue its program.
* Obama's delay in challenging Iran on the newly revealed Qom nuclear site also played into Ahmadinejad's hands.
* Obama got his allies in Congress to bury a resolution to impose a ban on the sale of gasoline to Iran. (The move, supported by 300 House members and 75 senators, was one of the "crippling sanctions" threatened by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)
* For the first time in 16 years, Iran's foreign minister was granted a visa to visit Washington -- sending a signal that Obama endorses the second Ahmadinejad administration.
* Obama has rejected Sarkozy and Brown's suggestion to fix a time frame for the talks to produce results. Ahmadinejad thus needs only to stall: All he wants is another 18 to 24 months, by which time Iran's nuclear program would become irreversible.
When Obama became president, Iran had 800 centrifuges enriching uranium. Now it has 8,000. By 2010, it may have twice as many -- including the "ultraefficient" new ones promised by Ahmadinejad's new nuclear chief, Ali Salehi.
Ahmadinejad is intelligent enough to have understood one fact: For Obama, the way things look are more important than the way they are. The Iranian will happily feed the American's illusions. He has already done so by taking a number of steps:
* He has agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the Qom enrichment plant in a few weeks' time rather than the three months previously promised. This allows Obama to declare a diplomatic victory: "We forced Iran to open its plant in weeks rather than months," he told Charlie Rose. (Rose was too polite to ask: Why wait weeks, when IAEA inspectors could be there in an hour?)
In the process of winning this "concession," the US has fudged away the fact that Iran built the plant in defiance of UN resolutions and that its existence was kept a secret from the IAEA.
* Iran will allow retiring IAEA Director Muhammad ElBaradaei to make one last visit to create the illusion that Obama's "smart engagement strategy" is working.
* The regime-controlled media are donning kid gloves for Obama and blasting Sarkozy and Brown. The official news agency, IRNA, talks of Obama's "reasonable approach" as opposed to "conspiracies hatched by France and Britain."
Now the fun and Olympic games are over.Well, he did finally get to meet Gen. McChrystal yesterday. For 25 minutes. Who says he's not focused on Afghanistan?
The president returned to America, where real, serious -- and neglected -- problems await him.
His signature health-care legislation is dying on the operating table. The ranks of the unemployed keep stubbornly rising.
Yet, with all that Obama neglected at home, perhaps nothing is as grave as the troubles abroad.
In Iran, a madman is playing with nukes. Israel-Palestinian peace is no closer. And in Afghanistan, the Taliban are taking over as our soldiers die at an alarming rate.
When Obama went begging to the IOC, he promised, "We are putting the full force of the White House and the State Department" to make the games in Chicago a success.
If only he could muster that much commitment and determination for winning the war in Afghanistan.
Dude.And we thought Chewbacca was a good guy! Iranian soldiers looking like Wookiees parade yesterday past Ayatollah Khomeini's tomb in Tehran. The men, in camouflaged sniper uniforms, or "ghillies," were marching for the 29th anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq war.Speaking of Iran, Little Hitler spoke to all his friends at the UN yesterday.
His pals at the NY Times said he was conciliatory. Strange how they're nicer to psychopaths like him than they are toward conservatives.
Venezuela and the United States moved to end a bitter diplomatic spat that entangled both countries last year, signaling a thaw in Washington's relationship with one of its fiercest opponents in South America.Now he's got a leftist leader in Washington who's openly critical of the United States. They should get along swimmingly.
Patrick Duddy, the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela who was expelled by President Hugo Chavez last year, is expected to return to Caracas, while Bernardo Alvarez, who was serving as Venezuela's envoy to Washington when the quarrel erupted, will return to his post.
The administration of President Barack Obama has expressed its desire to improve relations, "and we're willing to move forward," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said in an official statement Wednesday.
"It's a clear attempt to improve the relations between both countries," said Michael Shifter, a vice president at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. "It's a logical step."
The bad blood between Chavez and Washington reached a boiling point last September, when the fiery former paratrooper expelled Duddy "in solidarity" with Bolivia, which had told a top U.S. diplomat in La Paz to leave for allegedly supporting separatists in the Andean nation's eastern provinces. Bolivia has yet to re-establish diplomatic ties with the U.S.
Chavez had often accused the Bush administration of plotting against him, repeatedly called the former U.S. president a "donkey" and famously referred to him as "the devil" at the United Nation's General Assembly in 2006.
Bush administration officials had often charged that the Venezuelan government had abetted, if not aided, Colombian terrorist groups, and said Chavez was growing increasingly authoritarian at home.
Since coming to power in January, President Obama has sought to improve relations with Venezuela, a top oil exporter to the U.S. A turning point in the U.S.-Venezuela relationship came in April, when Obama and Chavez shook hands and smiled in Trinidad and Tobago during a regional heads-of-state gathering. During their encounter, Chavez said to Obama, "I want to be your friend."
The statement was seen as a major change in the Venezuelan leader, who usually deploys anti-U.S. rhetoric for political gain and to defend his socialist-inspired policies.
Since coming to power a decade ago, Chavez has spearheaded a wave of leftist leaders in the region who are openly critical of Washington, including Bolivia's Evo Morales.
Today Mr Ahmadinejad struck back and accused the US President of following his predecessor's lead.Sounds like a guy we want to have a relationship with, no?
"Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things. Our question is why he fell into this trap, and said things that previously (former President) Bush used to say," Mr Ahmadinejad said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela who is an ally of Mr Ahmadinejad, added: "People are in the streets, some are dead, they have snipers, and behind this is the CIA, the imperial hand of European countries and the United States."
Prior to this month's disputed presidential election in Iran, the Obama administration sent a letter to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for an improvement in relations, according to interviews and the leader himself.What is there to cooperate on? The Iranians have been waging war on us for 30 years now and their stated goals is our destruction. Geez, we can't even send them a strongly-worded letter. Instead we pander to them and they laugh at us.
Ayatollah Khamenei confirmed the letter toward the end of a lengthy sermon last week, in which he accused the United States of fomenting protests in his country in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 presidential election.
U.S. officials declined to discuss the letter on Tuesday, a day in which President Obama gave his strongest condemnation yet of the Iranian crackdown against protesters.
An Iranian with knowledge of the overture, however, told The Washington Times that the letter was sent between May 4 and May 10 and laid out the prospect of "cooperation in regional and bilateral relations" and a resolution of the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
The Iranian, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the letter was given to the Iranian Foreign Ministry by a representative of the Swiss Embassy, which represents U.S. interests in Iran in the absence of U.S.-Iran diplomatic relations. The letter was then delivered to the office of Ayatollah Khamenei, he said.Sure looks like they're ready for some of that vaunted dialogue.
The letter was sent before the election, whose outcome - delivering a supposed landslide to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - has touched off the biggest anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Obama administration, while criticizing a violent crackdown on demonstrators by Iranian security forces, has said that it will continue efforts to engage the Iranian government about its nuclear program and other issues touching on U.S. national security.
...
"On the one hand, they [the Obama administration] write a letter to us to express their respect for the Islamic Republic and for re-establishment of ties, and on the other hand they make these remarks. Which one of these remarks are we supposed to believe? Inside the country, their agents were activated. Vandalism started. Sabotaging and setting fires on the streets started. Some shops were looted. They wanted to create chaos. Public security was violated. The violators are not the public or the supporters of the candidates. They are the ill-wishers, mercenaries and agents of the Western intelligence services and the Zionists."
Before June 12, Obama's eagerness to negotiate with Ahmadinejad -- ridiculed by his conservative critics -- was hailed by the establishment and the left as proof of his high-minded faith in diplomacy, a healthy antidote to President George W. Bush's allegedly close-minded approach.
But now, if the clerical junta prevails, anyone who shakes hands with Ahmadinejad will have a hard time washing the blood off his own hands.
For some reason, Obama can't fully accept this. In his press conference Tuesday, the president finally condemned the outrages in Iran in terms he should have used a week ago. But he also kept alive the idea that the current Iranian regime could be a fruitful negotiation partner, despite what has happened in that country.
"It's not too late," Obama explained, for the regime to negotiate with the international community. He wouldn't even cancel plans to invite Iranian officials to Fourth of July barbecues at US embassies.
That amounts to tacit approval of the bloodshed and fraud that we've already seen and acceptance of the ultimate triumph of the regime. And it won't work.
Neither can most of us. Don't worry though, there won't be any repercussions from the hot dog crew.The young Iranian woman whose gruesome killing has become a rallying cry for the nation's opposition movement eerily predicted her violent death by gunfire -- but was determined to protest against "the injustice of it all," a friend said yesterday.
As the violence continues to escalate on the streets of the embattled Middle Eastern nation, the beautiful philosophy student, Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, who had been engaged to be married, is being hailed as Iran's Joan of Arc.
The government yesterday blocked a wake for her in a central Tehran mosque for fear that the outpouring of grief would lead to more anti-regime protests, her fiancé, Caspian Makan, told the BBC.
"The authorities are aware that everybody in Iran and throughout the whole world knows about her story," Makan said.
"They were afraid that lots of people could turn up."
The 40-second video of Neda's death has not been aired on Iranian state-sponsored TV, but many in the country -- and worldwide -- have seen it on the Internet.
It captures Neda, shot in the heart, in her last moments of life, bleeding to death on the street as a friend wails, "Don't be afraid! Neda, dear!"
As the life leaves her face and blood pours from her nose, a white-haired man, her music teacher, yells, "Stay with me!"
Since the video made shock waves across the Web, her photo has been held aloft at demonstrations all over the globe.
But to her relatives, she is more than just an icon of change.
She loved Persian pop songs and her piano lessons, was the second of three children, and was passionate about travel.
In turns mischievous, smart and caring, Neda studied to become a tour guide and took Turkish language courses in the hopes of leading Iranian tourists on trips abroad, friends and relatives said.
On Saturday, the day she was killed, her friend told The Los Angeles Times that she had tried to persuade Neda to stay away from the massive march.
"I told her, 'Neda, don't go,' " the friend, who gave her name only as Golshad, told the paper.
But Neda was adamant.
"She said, 'Don't worry. It's just one bullet and it's over,' " recalled Hamid Panihi, the music teacher and friend who was with her when she died.
"She couldn't stand the injustice of it all," he told the paper.
Iran's powerful mullahs are considering replacing the nation's hard-line "supreme leader" or forcing the resignation of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in hopes of ending the 10 days of angry protests by pro-democracy demonstrators, it was reported yesterday.Considering Ahmadinejad came in third, that's the least he should do.
A committee of religious leaders would take over for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the plan secretly under review by members of Iran's Assembly of Experts, sources in the holy city of Qom told Al Arabiya TV.
Another option to end the crisis is the resignation of Ahmadinejad, the news channel said.
In 1979, the people looked to the Shiite clergy for leadership. This time, the clergy is pushed into the background. The new "moral references" of Iranian society are no longer clerics; they are intellectuals, academics, lawyers and independent trade-union leaders. Whatever the struggle's outcome, one thing is certain: Mullahs will never regain their position of moral authority in Iranian politics.Maybe there'll be some teaching posts available at Berkeley.
Another difference is that the ruling elite in 1979 had little stomach for a fight. Many of its members had homes and investments abroad and thus could just pack and leave -- they weren't forced to fight with their backs to the wall.
But the overwhelming majority of today's ruling elite has no fallback position. If driven from power, "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei or Ahmadinejad would have nowhere to go. They have no choice but to fight to the bitter end. This time, it is in the opposition camp that one finds most of those who can pack and go to golden exile abroad.
In 50 Iranian cities the number of votes cast in this month presidential election exceeded the number of eligible voters, the state's election watchdog admitted today.Sure. Now maybe the Obamas of the world would buy this tripe, but I suspect the Iranian citizens won't.
The surprising admission by the Guardian Council was, however, designed to undermine the claims of the defeated candidates that the vote was rigged.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main rival in the hotly-disputed election, and the other two losing candidates have claimed that the vote exceeded eligible voters in as many as 170 districts.
Abbasali Kadkhodai, a spokesman for the council of senior clerics, told the state television channel IRIB: "Our investigation shows that the number of districts they announced is not correct. Based on our preliminary report, 50 districts face this issue."
Mr Kadkhodaei also argued that voter turnouts of more than 100 per cent were not unusual because Iranians can cast their ballots where they want. Although it is summer in Iran and some of the cities in question are in desert areas, he suggested some voters might have gone to them on holiday.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard is threatening to crush any further opposition protests over the disputed presidential election and warns demonstrators to prepare for a "revolutionary confrontation" if they take to the streets again.In case nobody noticed, our Dear Leader showed so much concern over the weekend that he managed to go for ice cream and then went golfing.
The country's most powerful military force ordered demonstrators to "end the sabotage and rioting activities" and said their resistance is a "conspiracy" against Iran.
A statement posted Monday on the Guard's Web site warned protesters to "be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces."
It's images like this seen around the world this past week that reflect the face of the opposition in Iran: Young women unafraid to appear publicly to denounce the stolen election.To the iconography of revolution -- the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, young people ripping shards off the Berlin Wall -- we can now add this: the red nail polish, black eyeliner and side-swept bangs of young Iranian women.Well, that appreciation is likely soon to wear off as Mrs. Obama is even more silent than her feckless husband.
So conservative by American standards, yet revolutionary by Iranian ones: these women, who by law can do and say and expose and adorn almost nothing, are agitating for the most basic human rights in the smallest of ways. And it is these tiny acts of rebellion that the Iranian government, which has further constricted the rights of women since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, cannot abide.
"I do not know a single woman who is pro these laws," says a 29-year-old Iranian woman, who has lived in the US for the past 11 years. "They are not as bad as the Taliban, but it's all relative."
The women of Iran are on the verge. They are more literate and highly educated than men (63% attend university), and, as in the US, women comprise 50% of the vote. Ahmedinejad's challengers -- even Karroubi, the cleric! -- made a point of soliciting the female vote, appearing in public with their wives, or speaking to the need for more women in parliament or positions of power. Mousavi, the so-called reform candidate, shrewdly deployed his wife, political science professor Zahra Rahnavard, as a vocal campaigner. Her electrifying effect on the electorate led to comparisons to Michelle Obama.
"I really like her," says the Iranian ex-pat. "She could be very influential and help change the suppression of women. She's educated and very open-minded. A lot of people follow her."
ElBaradei must be so proud to have helped them accomplish this goal.Iran wants the ability to build nuclear weapons to gain a reputation as a major power in the Middle East, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran sees nuclear weapons as an "insurance policy" against perceived threats from neighboring countries or the United States.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election has cast doubt on Western powers' hopes of a new dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program, which Iran says is peaceful rather than military.
"My gut feeling is that Iran definitely would like to have the technology ... that would enable it to have nuclear weapons if they decided to do so," ElBaradei told the BBC. "It wants to send a message to its neighbors, it wants to send a message to the rest of the world: yes, don't mess with us, we can have nuclear weapons if we want it.
"But the ultimate aim of Iran, as I understand it, is that they want to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East and they are.
Only in Little Mahmoud's world can a Holocaust-denying freak call someone else Hitler. Hey, maybe if he wants to score some points with Western elites he should call his opponent Rush Limbaugh. Heck, MSNBC would probably kvell with delight.In the final hours of Iran's election campaign, the top pro-reform challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got a sharp warning yesterday that authorities would crush any attempt at a popular "revolution" for freedom, while the Holocaust-denying incumbent likened his foe to Hitler.
The threat by an official of the powerful Revolutionary Guard reflected the increasingly tense atmosphere surrounding tomorrow's up-for-grabs election. It also marked a sharp escalation by the ruling clerics against the youth-driven campaign of and its hopes of an underdog victory.
Even after the official end of campaigning at midnight, tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters remained in the streets, dancing on cars and waving green flags.
The lingering images from the campaign's final hours summed up the intensity of the past weeks. Ahmadinejad drew tens of thousands of flag-waving backers as he claimed he was the victim of Nazi-style propaganda. Mousavi's backers staged a huge march through central Tehran waving the campaign's trademark color, green.
"They applied the methods of [Josef] Goebbels, propaganda minister of Hitler," Ahmadinejad told supporters. "They used this method of psychological war against our nation."
In two weeks, Iran’s presidential election will determine whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains in office and whether his country continues its drive to become a nuclear power.
The stakes could scarcely be higher, but it is the lowly potato that has been grabbing attention.
The Iranian government is handing out 400,000 tons of free spuds in rural towns. It says that it is merely distributing the surplus from a bumper crop, but Ahmadinejad’s opponents accuse it of bribing the poor. “Death to potatoes,” they chant at rallies.
The spat is instructive. To much of the world, the election is about the nuclear ambitions of a pariah state. To most Iranians, the economy is the main issue. Ahmadinejad’s rivals are savaging the record of a president who took office promising to give all Iranians a share of the oil wealth.
Iran has enjoyed revenues in excess of $300 billion, but the poor are worse off than before. By spending those revenues as if there were no tomorrow he has sent inflation, rents and property prices spiralling upwards while failing to tackle rampant unemployment.
He is seeking to divert attention from the economy by focusing on Iran’s nuclear program, a source of pride to most Iranians, and his refusal to bow to Western demands that he should suspend it. He has compared Iran’s critics to dogs, declaring: “If you retreat, they attack. If you attack, they retreat.”
Aw, it looks like Barack Obama has a special admirer.Barack Obama's offer of a hand of friendship to Iran after 30 years of hostility may have met with a sceptical public response from Tehran. But now a rapprochement of sorts may be under way amid evidence that the US president's can-do electioneering tactics have struck a chord with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.It also shows the swarthy munchkin going topless at the beach, video of him raining threes on the hardwood and plenty of golfing video.
Obama's signature campaign slogan, Yes We Can, has been replicated by the Iranian president in a promotional video issued for Iran's presidential poll on 12 June, when Ahmadinejad is seeking re-election.
The video features a cover picture of Ahmadinejad wearing his trademark white jacket and pointing to the Farsi phrase Ma Mitavanim (We Can) on a blackboard. The film is aimed at students and capitalises on his former status as a university lecturer.
Iran may reconsider an eight-year jail term for an American journalist during her appeal, the judiciary spokesman said Tuesday in an indication her sentence will be commuted.
The statement was the latest hint Iran could be backing off from the imprisonment of 31-year-old Roxana Saberi on charges of spying for the U.S. On Monday, the judiciary chief ordered a full investigation into the case, a day after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Tehran's chief prosecutor to ensure Saberi be allowed a full defense during her appeal.
The case has been a source of tension with the U.S. at a time when President Barack Obama is trying to open a dialogue with Iran to end a decades-long diplomatic standoff. The U.S. has called the accusations against Saberi, a dual American-Iranian citizen, baseless and demanded her release.
