[Bugs]

Drudge runs one of his screaming headlines IRAN ANNIVERSARY 'PUNCH' WILL STUN WEST

This is the lede of the story:

[kwlafayette]

Maybe they will take over the US embassy again? I suspect the Canadian embassy would not have such an easy time of it this go round though.

[Bugs]

I don't know if it means anything, but Drudge has already put the story in his archives. If it was a story about a boy with two penises, he'd have it on his page until it was pushed off.

It's still worth watching what happens in Iran on Feb 11th. Kind of important, too.

[Dallas]

If Iran would detonate a nuclear bomb. Where would they target besides Israel? Germany if they have it in range on a US base? Just wondering.

[Bugs]

[Bugs]

As I write this, it is 7.10 pm in Tehran, and pretty much nothing much has happened.

Ahmadinejad made a speech, announcing that Iran is producing its first uranium enriched to 20 per cent, and defied the Great Satan -- that would be Obama -- to stop him.

[DFP]

Here is probably one of the better reviews of the iranian nuclear pogrom that you are likely to come across:

http://www.truthdig.com/report....._20100216/

"The focus of attention shifted away from Iran’s ongoing enrichment capability, which the U.S. and Europe demanded be permanently suspended, to Iran’s 1,800 kilograms of 3.5 percent enriched uranium. This material represented Iran’s theoretical atomic bomb. If the material could be placed under international control, then Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, at least for the immediate future, could be thwarted. Iran was not going to freely hand over this material. However, a deal was negotiated between the U.S. and Iran that would have Iran ship 1,600 kilograms of its 3.5 percent enriched uranium to Russia, which would then further enrich it to 19.5 percent before sending it to France, which would process the uranium into fuel rods unusable for nuclear weapons. This fuel swap appeared to provide an elegant solution to a vexing problem. Indeed, President Obama embraced it as his own initiative when it was announced in October 2009. "

'The U.S. policy objective was never to provide Iran with 19.5 percent enriched uranium fuel rods, or to lock Iran in at a 3.5 percent enrichment threshold, but rather to get the majority of Iran’s existing stocks of 3.5 percent enriched uranium out of the country, thereby eliminating any scenario that had Iran using this low-enriched uranium as feedstock for any breakout nuclear weapons production capability, no matter how farfetched such a scenario might be. This is why the Obama administration never paid much attention to the details of such a swap, since these details simply didn’t matter. The U.S. approach was never about facilitating a swap so much as it was about facilitating a kidnapping. The policy objective was to get the majority of Iran’s enriched uranium stocks under international control. Once Iran no longer had access to 1,600 kilograms of its 1,800-kilogram stockpile of low-enriched uranium, the Obama administration could blunt the fear-driven concerns over the immediacy of any Iranian nuclear capability. It would take Iran several months to reconstitute its low-enriched uranium stocks to the level needed to produce its hypothetical nuclear bomb. During this period, the U.S. would redouble its demands for suspension of uranium enrichment and develop a comprehensive package of stringent economic sanctions that would be imposed on Iran should it fail to cooperate.'

"With the true U.S. policy objective thus exposed, Iran last week announced that it would carry out its own indigenous enrichment of uranium to the 19.5 percent needed to fuel the research reactor. Whether Iran has the technical or practical capabilities necessary to bring such a plan to fruition is debatable. While reconfiguring its existing centrifuge cascades to produce 19.5 percent enriched uranium is not impossible, Iran has never before attempted to process enriched uranium into nuclear fuel rods. Likewise, there is a question about the viability of Iran’s feedstock of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), the gaseous material that is fed into the centrifuges for the purpose of enriching uranium.

Iran’s stores of foreign-procured UF6 are nearly exhausted. So is the stock of UF6 that Iran produced using foreign supplies of natural uranium. What is left for Iran is UF6 produced from indigenous sources of natural uranium. However, these stocks are believed to be contaminated with molybdenum, a metallic substance the presence of which creates destructive mass-distribution problems when Iran’s centrifuges are spun up to the more than 60,000 revolutions per minute needed to extract enriched uranium from the UF6 feedstock. If Iran cannot come up with the means to extract the molybdenum from its indigenous UF6, then short of finding an outside supplier of natural uranium or clean UF6 (activities that would have to be declared to the IAEA), the Iranian enrichment program will halt.

This would not prevent Iran from using its existing stocks of 3.5 percent enriched uranium as the feedstock for any effort to produce 19.5 percent uranium. Reconfiguration of its centrifuges to conduct this higher level of enrichment is likewise well within the technical capability of Iran. The ultimate testament to the failure of U.S. nonproliferation policy when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program is the reality that, in an effort to retard any Iranian nuclear breakout scenario that saw Iran rapidly converting its low-enriched stocks to high-enriched fissile material, the United States has actually facilitated such a scheme. Had the U.S. sought to lock Iran’s enrichment infrastructure in at a 3.5 percent capacity, any deviation from that level would have been viewed with suspicion. However, by creating the conditions that have Iran now seeking to build enrichment facilities capable of 20 percent enrichment, the Obama administration has significantly reduced the threshold of detection and prevention which was in place when all Iran produced was 3.5 percent enriched uranium.'

[DFP]

[don muntean]

[Bugs]

All the article contains is Iran's side of the story, without mentioning all the treaties that were breeched, bribes paid, facilities hidden, and threats made by Iran.

For the layman's information, bombs require about 30 kg of U235 at 95% purity. Nuclear reactors producing electricity generally run on rods that have been enriched to about the 10% levels. The reactor that produces these isotopes is a small reactor, older than Chalk River, that goes back to the Shah's time.

If Iran got a large number of 19% enriched rods, the material could be easily further enriched to 95%. Their road to their bomb would be expedited. Do you just wish the threat away?

Do you think that the western nations should cease trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear arms?

Or do you think that Iran should be allowed to build its bombs because it's only fair?

[don muntean]

Iran is seeking nuclear arms - anyone who thinks otherwise is fool number one!

Their getting these weapons is of concern because of their continued rhetoric concerning a demise of the "Zionist entity" [Israel] and the "satanic" west and to a lesser degree - some of the other "infidel" Arab regimes.

For instance - Saudi Arabia - the Iranians are machinating to topple the wahabi regime and thus 'liberate' mecca. Naturally the Iranian Mullahs would like to control this place...it's more than a passing desire.

Naturally there is an irony here for the cultist wahabi Saudi regime - they too are in the business of exporting their own extremist Islamist revolution!

Iran has allied with Lebanon, Syria and Hamas - it also has clandestine involvement with Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. There are dealings with China and Russia - who consistently veto significant security council sanctions against Iran.

We all know that the Iranian state is ruled with an iron fist - by cultist Mullahs.

There is very little possibility that the outnumbered dissident Iranians [most of whom are also extremists of another strain] will be able to topple the Iranian regime. We cannot count on a regime change - to check the direction they are heading.

How long shall the leftists in the western nations deny that these intransigent Iranian Mullahs [and others] are positioning for a wider 'Islamic revolution'...

[Bugs]

Even forgetting about Israel, there are a bunch of other outcomes. It is likely to start an nuclear arms race in the region because Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, all do not want a nuclear Iran, unless they, too, have a bomb. Nice, eh?

It's the end of the battle to keep nuclear weapons in the hands of a few responsible nations, the fewer the better.

I wish DFP would explain how this can possibly be a good thing. Why should we be happy about Iran getting nuclear weapons of mass destruction? Because it's only fair?