Over Reaction

Professor Cole puts the Iran uranium enrichment claim in perspective. Short form – they are years from having the capability of building a bomb and the Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei says that nuclear weapons aren’t halal [that’s kosher for Muslims].

For those that don’t know what’s going on: You have to enrich uranium to use it in a nuclear reactor, just like you have to refine crude oil to use it in a car. The Iranians want to have their own processing facilities. They are in the oil business and know all about screwing people by withholding products at inconvenient times. They don’t want to be on the receiving end of a boycott. After what Russia did to the Ukraine and Georgia with natural gas this winter, they don’t want to be dependent on the Russians. They have to forget a thousand years of conflict to deal with the Russians in the first place.

The US put the Shah on the nuclear energy path beginning back in the 1960s, but the US clamped down on their nuclear reactor program after the Shah was booted. They have been dealing with the US blocking the program for years and have lost millions of dollars spent on equipment that the US forced people not to deliver.

They have fulfilled all of the paperwork and haven’t done anything illegal to date. The “secret programs” were “discovered” within the timeframe specified in the treaties they have signed.

The current President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a whacko, but he won the election because of his anti-US rhetoric. That has been the path for success in a lot of the world. A nasty word from the Shrubbery is worth thousands of votes everywhere except Utah. The US did nothing to support the Iranian reformers when it would have mattered, so this guy’s popularity is based in no small measure by being against anything the US does.

Iran poses no threat to the US. Attacking Iran after all of the lies used to start the Iraq War, would isolate the US in the world. At this point we need the world more than they need us.