Iran stomps down a lose-lose path on nuclear issue
Events in Iran seem to be turning toward a lose-lose outcome, with Iran apparently recommitting itself to a nuclear-weapons program and foreign powers, including perhaps both China and Russia, ready to impose more serious sanctions in response.
TEHRAN — Iran’s government will build 10 new sites to enrich uranium, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday, a dramatic expansion of the country’s nuclear program and one that is bound to fuel fears that it is attempting to produce a nuclear weapon.
Ahmadinejad told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that construction of at least five nuclear facilities is to begin within two months.
The surprise announcement came two days after a censure of Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency over the Islamic republic’s refusal to stop enriching uranium, a key demand of Western powers. The 35-member board of the agency also criticized Iran’s construction of a second enrichment plant in Qom, southwest of Tehran.
It’s hard to see how this ends well for anybody. Increased sanctions can only compound Iran’s serious economic problems, but the Iranian people, divided in many ways, have nonetheless rallied around the nuclear program as an symbol of patriotism and national sovereignty. The Obama administration’s effort to lure Iran away from that approach can now be said to have failed, but as the Bush administration found, alternative approaches offer even less chance of success.
Absent a dramatic reversal of course, Israel may now feel all but invited to act militarily, a step that most experts say will have little long-term impact on the Iranian nuclear program. The consequences of such a step are absolutely unpredictable and, given the volatility of the Middle East, to a degree uncontrollable. It would be a nuclear reaction without effective control rods, so to speak.
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133 comments Add your comment
Boogers for the Children Fund
November 30th, 2009
12:15 pm
Atlanta has reached its peek and is now in decline.
Happy Days are here again.
@@
November 30th, 2009
12:19 pm
jay, I detect no sense of surprise in your column. Can we assume that your previous support for diplomacy carried “Little Hope” to begin with?
Now you know how many independents are feelin’ these days.
Hope for “Hopes” sake offers little in the world of realities.
Jess
November 30th, 2009
12:20 pm
I cannot see where Iran is in a “lose” situation. They are doing exactly what they want to do and if they succeed they are in a win situation. They have learned that the UN, the US, nor NATO has the will to stop them. This is clearly a lose/win situation with the West in the lose column.
Boogers for the Children Fund
November 30th, 2009
12:22 pm
The US should pull out of NATO as the panty wearing Europeans are as usual…worthless.
Hard Right Hook
November 30th, 2009
12:33 pm
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
11:45 am
And I would not recommend irritating the Mossad. Thier[sic] patience is running thin.
“This would be different how?”
The question makes no sense.
I can only assume that you’re asking how irritating the Mossad by America is any different that by the Iranians.
The Mossad knows the Iranians will attack at some point. A given.
The Mossad knows that many people in the US are anti-American cowards, and cannot be depended on for anything but vitriol and hyperbole.
Which you’re pretty good at.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
12:46 pm
Why no climate-gate column on the phony data and manipulation on global warmimg stats? Sticking your head in the sand on a world-wide liberal fraud?
Mrs. Godzilla
November 30th, 2009
12:56 pm
MAC
The website you’re looking for is here….
http://disney.go.com/index
you might also try this
http://thetinfoilhatsociety.com/
Rightwing Troll
November 30th, 2009
1:04 pm
Iran is right,
God told me. Now go back to your tinkertoys…
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
1:34 pm
I can only assume that you’re asking how irritating the Mossad by America is any different that by the Iranians.
Assume and be wrong.
Common Sense
November 30th, 2009
2:05 pm
Kamchak:
They don’t “eat” people as far as I know but they do have a fondness for cutting heads off.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
2:29 pm
Mrs G, your smug small-minded ridicule is a weak deflection of the verified fact from leaked emails that climate change data has been purposely manipulated and fabricated and contary data blocked by the so-called foremost experts. “He betrayed this country and played on our fears” Al Gore, speaking of Bush but might as well be speaking of himself on his climate change hysteria, all simply solved by massive amounts of US money. Reducing energy dependence is a good thing so let’s do it on its own merits.
I feel sad for you. Intelligence declines when you stop listening and you obviously stopped listening to anything beyond the daily kos blog a long time ago.
You are quick to condemn the “money trail” when it is a conservative issue but are blind to the obvious corruption of science by money in the business of climate change. But, in your little world, it’s irrelevant.
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
2:38 pm
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt: Critics “are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way.” Wired’s Threat Level blog reported on November 20 that Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said: “There’s nothing in the e-mails that shows that global warming is a hoax. … There’s no funding by nefarious groups. There’s no politics in any of these things; nobody from the [United Nations] telling people what to do. There’s nothing hidden, no manipulation. It’s just scientists talking about science, and they’re talking relatively openly as people in private e-mails generally are freer with their thoughts than they would be in a public forum. The few quotes that are being pulled out [are out] of context. People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way.”
You obviously stopped listening to anything but Breitbart and Drudge.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
2:50 pm
Kamchak, I am open for debate. You and your fellow climate sycophants are obviously NOT.
Isn’t dissent and debate a good thing? Isn’t science based on continuing review and discovery? There are hundreds of scientists who disagree. Your Gavin Schmidt is one opinion. I don’t know who decided that he was the ultimate authority. And for him to say there are no politics or money corrupting influences is arrogant and LAUGHABLE by itself.
The damning emails and the their implications on the science ought to be examined in the open. The spin to “explain” it and mimimize it is a political act in itself not a scientific conclusion.
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
3:09 pm
The damning emails and the their implications on the science ought to be examined in the open. The spin to “explain” it and mimimize[sic] it is a political act in itself not a scientific conclusion.
Media Matters for America has been debunking this story for days.
Geez.
Gordon
November 30th, 2009
3:18 pm
MAC, you’re wasting your time here. I’ve tried to reason with people on this blog with facts on a different subject, but they just aren’t interested. With very few exceptions, there is no analysis or debate on this site, just regurgitation. They believe everyone who disagrees with them just listens to Rush and thinks Republicans are right all the time. They are trapped in the back and forth of Republican and Democrat talking points. Anyone who truly cared about the implications of man made global warming and the significance of the policies surrounding it, not to mention the mixing of science and politics, would be concerned about the emails. But not the people here. This site is for entertainment, not serious debate.
pat
November 30th, 2009
3:36 pm
I am glad ‘iran is right’ leans left. What a pathetic POS….He’s not the only one ‘round here like to fire the ovens back up.
Fang1944
November 30th, 2009
3:55 pm
“Maybe Obozo could man up and be Dick Cheney for a week or two and scare the hell out of Iran?”
Denigrating somebody by mispronouncing his name is something most people outgrow in elementary school.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
4:01 pm
Media Matters? You just got through dismissing Drudge and Brietbart then you use as the authority a “facts” site funded by Soros, Lewis and Podesta. Not displaying much independent thought there.
What are you afraid of, Kamchak? Transparency?
Geez…..
MAC
November 30th, 2009
4:02 pm
Gordon, good comments, thanks for your perspective.
Mrs. Godzilla
November 30th, 2009
4:04 pm
MAC
I may be smug minded, but at least I’m not a flat earther.
money in science?…..nada compared to oil, gas and coal.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
4:11 pm
smug and small-minded
MAC
November 30th, 2009
4:13 pm
Becoming energy independent is not dependent on the climate change crisis. We should move that way for economic reasons not hysteria.
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
4:15 pm
So much for being “open for debate.”
Geez.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
4:16 pm
For security reasons also but not for climate hysteria.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
4:27 pm
Kamchak, open for debate not for hysteria or ridicule of opposition by label (like flat-earther, global warming denier).
Energy independence is a different issue than minimizing CO2 levels.
hryder
November 30th, 2009
4:44 pm
Most of us are aware that with The Big O in charge Iran is on a win-win path. Unless he finally realizes that there really are people and countries that are evil and only submit to employed power against them. Iran is currently such a country that knows The Big O’s oral offerings are just a collection of words.
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
5:00 pm
Kamchak, open for debate not for hysteria or ridicule of opposition by label (like flat-earther, global warming denier).
Please show me where I “labeled” you.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
5:21 pm
please show me where I wasn’t open for debate
another party is the labeler
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
5:30 pm
please show me where I wasn’t open for debate
Sure
…you use as the authority a “facts” site funded by Soros, Lewis and Podesta. Not displaying much independent thought there.
Marginalization of media sources. A thirty-year old ploy.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
5:32 pm
London’s Sunday Times reports:
Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. . . .
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals–stored on paper and magnetic tape–were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. . . .
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us.’ So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.
The Saturday New York Times reports:
“some prominent climate scientists are calling for changes in the way research on global warming is conducted:
The scientists say that the e-mail messages, which have circulated on the Internet and which disclose the inner workings of a small network of climatologists who chart the planet’s temperature, have damaged the public’s trust in the evidence that humans are dangerously warming the planet, just as many countries are poised to start reining in greenhouse gas emissions.”
“This whole concept of, ‘We’re the experts, trust us,’ has clearly gone by the wayside with these e-mails,” said Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Hardly conservative news sources….
MAC
November 30th, 2009
5:35 pm
“You obviously stopped listening to anything but Breitbart and Drudge.”
Marginalization of media sources. A thirty-year old ploy.
Walk the talk, dude
Kamchak
November 30th, 2009
5:51 pm
“You obviously stopped listening to anything but Breitbart and Drudge.”
I was marginalizing you not Breitbart and Drudge.
MAC
November 30th, 2009
6:09 pm
nice try