Iran rejects nuke proposal(?) (Update: Iranian DM threatens “nuclear defense”)
posted at 3:44 pm on June 15, 2006 by Allahpundit
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I noted on Monday that the formal nix could only come from Khamenei. Well, here you go:
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not bend to these pressures,” he said, referring to proposals drawn up by Britain, France and Germany, and backed by the United States, Russia and China, in a bid to defuse the nuclear crisis.
“The continuation of this scientific progress is its fundamental and basic right,” Khamenei said Thursday, quoted by state television in a meeting with staff of the Iranian Nuclear Energy Organization…
“Iranian youths achieving the nuclear technology is a historical milestone, and this move should be pursued in other (scientific) fields,” he added, after a briefing on Iran’s nuclear breakthroughs.
There’s wiggle room here. The proposal would allow construction of light-water reactors inside Iran; it’s uranium enrichment that’s the sticking point. Khamenei could, in theory, agree to forfeit the latter on grounds that the former is sufficient to achieve, ahem, “scientific progress.”
Ahmadinejad either didn’t get the memo or the two of them are playing good cop/bad cop because he says Iran is ready to start negotiating. No doubt that’ll come as a surprise to the EU, which complained today that Iranian cooperation has dwindled to nothing ever since they received the west’s proposal. Straight out of the appeasement playbook: as soon as you earn a concession, act twice as recalcitrant.
I leave you with the latest from MEMRI TV. Here’s the brother of Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, himself the drector of the Iranian Institution for Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, with a brilliant nuclear proposal of his own. What could go wrong?
Update: What happened to the peaceful nuclear energy program?
Iran’s defense minister on Thursday vowed that his country would “use nuclear defense as a potential” if “threatened by any power.”
Speaking following a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Hassan Ali Turkmani in Teheran on Thursday, Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar emphasized that Iran “should be ready for confronting all kinds of threats.”
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I see this “proposal” as GWB’s counter-move to the “call to Islam” he got from the wackjob leader of Iran.Their refusal,if confirmed,will clear the way to taking them out.
bbz123 on June 15, 2006 at 3:53 PM
“What’s wrong with Saudi Arabia or Iraq obtaining this capability?”
Not much, actually, Just the end of the world.
ForYourEdification on June 15, 2006 at 3:57 PM
Why am I not surprised by any of this?
Anyone who actually believes that the mullahs have even the remotest intention of negotiating in good faith is a fool. All the jawboning we’re seeing is nothing more than a footrace between ourselves and the mullahs:
- We’re hoping to jump through all the diplomatic flaming hoops (all the requisite and futile UN resolutions, as well as letting the European weenies talk themselves into exhaustion) in time to strike before they finish the “Islamic Bomb;”
- They’re hoping to string us along with idiotic “negotiations” long enough to complete that bomb before we can muster enough domestic will and international support to strike.
War with the mullahs is inevitable. The only worthwhile questions worth pondering are (1) when it’ll begin, and (2) whether it’ll be us or the Israelis who take the lead. Everything else is either academic or a distraction.
Spurius Ligustinus on June 15, 2006 at 4:23 PM
Spurius, I unfortunately agree with you. Let’s just pray for some divine protection. This confrontation is, IMO, inevitable, and will make Iraq seem like a picnic.
Thank you, Jimmy Carter.
dman on June 15, 2006 at 4:48 PM
The offer of incentives to Iran was nothing more than giving them enough rope to hang themselves.
inmanjh on June 15, 2006 at 4:49 PM
Can we nuke them now?
Defector01 on June 15, 2006 at 5:05 PM
Soon, soon. Patience, weedwacker.
inmanjh on June 15, 2006 at 5:28 PM
Start the bombing NOW !!
gary on June 15, 2006 at 5:58 PM
The “nuclear defense” remark is a confession that Iran has violated all treaties which they have signed on this subject. Time to push them hard.
Perhaps America’s troops in Iraq will come home via Bandar Abbas.
chsw
chsw on June 16, 2006 at 9:38 AM
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