political nonsense

Iran announced had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, a major breakthrough it’s atomic drive. The United States said that Iran was “moving in the wrong direction.”
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The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran.
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Iran successfully test-fired a new high-speed underwater missile capable of destroying huge warships and submarines, a top military commander announced.
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As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites with terrorism.
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In response to a UN demand that Iran freeze nuclear enrichment, Iran’s chief representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told The Associated Press that “it is impossible to go back to suspension.”

“This enrichment matter is not reversible,” Soltanieh said.
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The 15-member UN Security Council unanimously approved a non-binding statement giving Iran 30 days to comply with demands that it abandon uranium enrichment activities.
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Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that he approves of proposed talks between U.S. and Iranian officials on Iraq, but warned that the United States must not try to “bully” Iran.

President Bush said Tuesday he favors the talks and that American officials would show Iran “what’s right or wrong in their activities inside of Iraq.”
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In what appears to be a major turnaround in policy, Iran’s national security chief announced Thursday that his government intended to name a team of negotiators to hold direct talks with the United States on the subject of calming civil strife in Iraq. If negotiations take place, they will mark the first direct, open contact between the two governments in about two decades.
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Iran threatened the United States with “harm and pain” Wednesday for its role in hauling Tehran before the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program.
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The Bush administration made an emergency request to Congress yesterday for a seven-fold increase in funding to mount the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Tehran government, in a further sign of the worsening crisis between Iran and the west.
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Iran is sponsoring a competition for Holocaust cartoons in retaliation for Mohammad cartoons, one of which depicted him with a bomb in his turban, which first ran in Denmark last September.
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Iran ended snap U.N. checks of its nuclear sites and said it was resuming uranium enrichment, a day after being reported to the Security Council over suspicions it is building nuclear weapons.
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In Iran, hundreds of women protested outside Tehran University Sunday, calling for greater rights and a boycott of the upcoming presidential election. Nearly 90 female candidates have been barred from running for president. “We are women, we are the children of this land, but we have no rights,” they chanted.
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A group of Iranian women successfully petitioned to be able to attend soccer games.
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Iran said they won’t make any nuclear weapons if Europe gives them lots of money.

Iran decided to resume some nuclear activities, but claims it will stop short of full-blown uranium enrichment. The US doesn’t believe them.

Iran threatened Saturday to resume producing nuclear fuel, and North Korea dismissed President Bush as a “philistine whom we can never deal with.”

A philistine is a crass prosaic often priggish individual guided by material rather than intellectual or artistic values.

Philip Zelikow, the interim director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center said, “Unfortunately, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and in particular, Iran continued to embrace terrorism as an instrument of national policy. Most worrisome is that these countries also have the capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and other destabilizing technologies that could fall into the hands of terrorists.”

Newsweek is reporting that in November 2003 British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw personally complained about Bolton to then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Straw accused Bolton on making it impossible to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Newsweek reports that high-ranking British officials successfully persuaded the Bush administration to keep Bolton off the team working to negotiate with Libya.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has said if any new allegations come out against Bolton he would not vote for him.
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John R. Bolton — who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.

Republicans still support him despite multiple recent allegations. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said, “If there’s nothing more that comes out, I will vote for Bolton.” One of the allegations against Bolton included the harrassment of one of Hagel’s staff members.
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