Iran In The Nuclear Club?

So now Iran has enriched Uranium for the first time. And the world sits and watches. Incredible!

Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark in its quest to develop nuclear fuel, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday, although he insisted his country does not aim to develop atomic weapons.

In a nationally televised speech, Ahmadinejad called on the West “not to cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians” by trying to force Iran to abandon uranium enrichment.

[…]”At this historic moment, with the blessings of God almighty and the efforts made by our scientists, I declare here that the laboratory-scale nuclear fuel cycle has been completed and young scientists produced enriched uranium needed to the degree for nuclear power plants Sunday,” Ahmadinejad said.

“I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries,” he told an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in the northwestern holy city of Mashhad. The crowd broke into cheers of “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!” Some stood and thrust their fists in the air.

So now I suppose the UN will show those rascally Iranians and write a real nasty letter. Maybe even throw a few resolutions at them. That will show them.

Meanwhile this comes out:

The U.S. intelligence community has briefed Congress on the increasing cooperation between Iran and Al Qaida.

Congressional sources said congressional committees have been told that Teheran has sought to use Al Qaida in any Iranian war with the United States. The sources said Iran has harbored leading Al Qaida operatives and enabled them to plan major attacks that would be launched upon Teheran’s approval.

“Teheran has been seeking a range of terrorist options against the United States in case it strikes Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities,” a congressional source said. “Al Qaida has played a role in these options, although it’s unlikely to be a leading element.”

I hope the recent reports of Bush planning to use tactical nukes to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions is true. If using these weapons is the only way we are going to stop this Hitler Jr. from acquiring the bomb then so be it.

UPDATE

Mark Steyn has hit another one out of the park today with his essay on facing down Hitler Jr.

If you divide the world into geographical regions, then, Iran?s neither here nor there. But if you divide it ideologically, the mullahs are ideally positioned at the center of the various provinces of Islam?the Arabs, the Turks, the Stans, and the south Asians. Who better to unite the Muslim world under one inspiring, courageous leadership? If there?s going to be an Islamic superpower, Tehran would seem to be the obvious candidate.

That moment of ascendancy is now upon us. Or as the Daily Telegraph in London reported: ?Iran?s hardline spiritual leaders have issued an unprecedented new fatwa, or holy order, sanctioning the use of atomic weapons against its enemies.? Hmm. I?m not a professional mullah, so I can?t speak to the theological soundness of the argument, but it seems a religious school in the Holy City of Qom has ruled that ?the use of nuclear weapons may not constitute a problem, according to sharia.? Well, there?s a surprise. How do you solve a problem? Like, sharia! It?s the one-stop shop for justifying all your geopolitical objectives.

The bad cop/worse cop routine the mullahs and their hothead President Ahmadinejad are playing in this period of alleged negotiation over Iran?s nuclear program is the best indication of how all negotiations with Iran will go once they?re ready to fly. This is the nuclear version of the NRA bumper sticker: ?Guns Don?t Kill People. People Kill People.? Nukes don?t nuke nations. Nations nuke nations.

[…]If Belgium becomes a nuclear power, the Dutch have no reason to believe it would be a factor in, say, negotiations over a joint highway project. But Iran?s nukes will be a factor in everything. If you think, for example, the European Union and others have been fairly craven over those Danish cartoons, imagine what they?d be like if a nuclear Tehran had demanded a formal apology, a suitable punishment for the newspaper, and blasphemy laws specifically outlawing representations of the Prophet. Iran with nukes will be a suicide bomber with a radioactive waist.

[…]Our failure to understand Iran in the seventies foreshadowed our failure to understand the broader struggle today. As clashes of civilizations go, this one?s between two extremes: on the one hand, a world that has everything it needs to wage decisive war?wealth, armies, industry, technology; on the other, a world that has nothing but pure ideology and plenty of believers. (Its sole resource, oil, would stay in the ground were it not for foreign technology, foreign manpower, and a Western fetishization of domestic environmental aesthetics.)

For this to be a mortal struggle, as the cold war was, the question is: Are they a credible enemy to us?

For a projection of the likely outcome, the question is: Are we a credible enemy to them?

Four years into the ?war on terror,? the Bush administration has begun promoting a new formulation: ?the long war.? Not a reassuring name. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs?our strengths. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower?their strengths, and our great weakness. Even a loser can win when he?s up against a defeatist. A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it?s dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us? If you add to the advantages of will and manpower a nuclear capability, the odds shift dramatically.

[…]Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:

1. contempt for the most basic international conventions;
2. long-reach extraterritoriality;
3. effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;
4. a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);
5. an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.

Yet the Europeans remain in denial. Iran was supposedly the Middle Eastern state they could work with. And the chancellors and foreign ministers jetted in to court the mullahs so assiduously that they?re reluctant to give up on the strategy just because a relatively peripheral figure like the, er, head of state is sounding off about Armageddon.

[…]What?s the difference between a hothead and a moderate? Well, the extremist Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be ?wiped off the map,? while the moderate Rafsanjani has declared that Israel is ?the most hideous occurrence in history,? which the Muslim world ?will vomit out from its midst? in one blast, because ?a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world.? Evidently wiping Israel off the map seems to be one of those rare points of bipartisan consensus in Tehran, the Iranian equivalent of a prescription drug plan for seniors: we?re just arguing over the details.

So the question is: Will they do it?

And the minute you have to ask, you know the answer. If, say, Norway or Ireland acquired nuclear weapons, we might regret the ?proliferation,? but we wouldn?t have to contemplate mushroom clouds over neighboring states.

[…]The cost of de-nuking Iran will be high now but significantly higher with every year it?s postponed. The lesson of the Danish cartoons is the clearest reminder that what is at stake here is the credibility of our civilization. Whether or not we end the nuclearization of the Islamic Republic will be an act that defines our time.

Back when there were but a few nuclear states we all knew that one nuke sent on it’s way would assure mutual destruction, so no one pushed the button. This will not work with these fanatics. They cannot, must not be allowed to acquire this bomb. This will be the test that defines this generation I believe.

UPDATE II

And once again Ed Morrissey spells the whole situation out:

Does this sound familiar? For students of the second World War, it certainly will. Adolf Hitler made a career of breaking treaties and immediately offering to work within them once again, all the while advancing his military position against that of the Western alliance. He started from a position that could kindly be described as prostrate when he came to office in 1932 and immediately began working on building his arsenal in secret. As Hugh Hewitt notes, the first major test of Hitler’s program came when he defied the Versailles Treaty and reoccupied the Rhineland. He had two divisions, a ridiculously small force that could easily have been routed by Britain and France without even much of strain. Instead of confronting Hitler, they meekly shrugged at his defiance, rationalizing it (as the British put it) as simply walking into his own back yard. Hitler won that test of wills and knew the true measure of his foes. He would not miscalculate their will until at least his attack on Poland, and even then he correctly guessed that neither country would actually open a new front in the West until well after he had digested Poland. In fact, they would wait until Hitler attacked them almost a year later.

This is no different; only the stakes have changed. If we allow Ahmadinejad to celebrate this defiance without fixing consequences to his actions, then we will have re-enacted the capitulation of 1936 seventy years later. It will also render the NPT moot and once again show the UN as nothing more than the League of Nations with a better flag and tonier address. The UNSC must take action against Iran’s flagrant violation of both the NPT and its unanimous resolution of last month. Failure to do so will cement its reputation as an anachronistic relic of the Cold War.

Hopefully Bush will not wait, we cannot afford to let this Hitler Jr. fester until god forbid, a Democrat gets into office and then all bets are off.? Hitler Jr. will have free reign throughout the Middle East.

Have we learned from our past?

Other’s Blogging:

• Decision ’08
• Dread Pundit Bluto
• Gina Cobb
• Stop The ACLU
• Blue Crab Boulevard
• Atlas Shrugs
• Junk Yard Blog
• Barking Moonbat
• All Things Beautiful

I hope the recent reports of Bush planning to use tactical nukes to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions is true. If using these weapons is the only way we are going to stop this Hitler Jr. from acquiring the bomb then so be it.

Curt

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