Iranian nuclear crisis, part 3.
US State Department will seek “asset freezes, a Chapter 7 resolution under the U.N. charter, sanctions and travel restrictions on some members of the Iranian government.” (*)
Amir Taheri: Ahmadinejad claims he has a spiritual warrant from “the hidden imam” for a: “single task: provoking a “clash of civilisations” in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the “infidel” West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.” Furthermore, it was immediately after Ahmadinejad’s announcement of uranium enrichment that Iran announced it was building 54,000 centrifuges. Iran will soon offer to suspend enrichment and sign additional protocols in an attempt to wait out Bush, and deal with the next US president, who will be weak and surrender easily to Islam and terrorism. All the while Iran will continue building the bomb. Islamic males of fighting age outnumber Western males of fighting age four to one. (*)
Blair will back a Chapter 7 resolution, but won’t contribute to a military strike. (*)
The IAEA previously found one Iranian facility described as a “250,000-acre complex containing two vast underground bomb-proof bunkers designed for enriching uranium to weapons grade. (*) Iran continues to deny that it is building a nuclear weapon.
Debka: Iran building huge “Shahid Moradian” plant with 155,000 centrifuges, operational by the end of 2007. (*)
Iranian workers striking on basis of low or no wages. “We are hungry.” (*)
Ahmadinejad: “The Zionist regime is a dried up and rotten tree which will be annihilated with one storm.” (*)
Iranian text-messages Amhadinejad, suggests he should bathe more. (*)
Shimon Peres: “The Iranian president represents Satan and not God. History has rejected these sorts of sword-brandishing lunatics.” (*)
Iranian General Yahya Rahim Safavi boasts Iran can easily defeat United States. (*)
Sunday Times: Iran will hit the US and the UK with “battalions of suicide bombers,” 40,000 in total, if it is attacked. (*)
Islamic Jihad claims it will back Iran if Iran is attacked. (*)
Richard Clarke and Steven Simon: the costs of attacking Iran would outweigh the benefits. Iranian intelligence service is too powerful. Bill Clinton took Iranian intelligence down, and easily enough, in 1996. (*) (In other words, the column is nonsensical.)
White House is committed to stopping Iran. Nevertheless, Iranian-sponsored terrorism would spike upward immediately after a strike. (*)
Rumsfeld criticized by some retired US generals in what is apparently a coordinated effort. (*) Does this somehow relate to planning on Iran?
Reuel Marc Gerecht: Iran is choosing this moment because Bush is weak and the media says the US is tied down in Iraq. Iran wants acquiescence now before the wind changes direction. Furthermore, Iran has maintained its radicalism and authoritarianism despite European free trade with Iran, tending to disprove the “free trade causes democracy” assertion. (*)
Retired US general Thomas McInerney: a feasible US military strike option exists. (*)
(Iranian nuclear crisis updates now using only asterisks for links.)