The Iranian Shuffle
Dick Cheney warned Iran of ‘meaningful consequences’ if it doesn’t come around on the nuclear issue; meanwhile, Iran continues to offer nothing in the guise of something:
Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons and faces “meaningful consequences” if it persists in defying the international community, Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday.
“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences,” Cheney said in a speech to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.
Cheney’s warning came come as a diplomat in Vienna, Austria — where the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency board is meeting — said that Iran is offering to suspend full-scale uranium enrichment for up to two years.
The offer reflected Tehran’s attempts to escape Security Council action over the activity, which can be used to make nuclear arms.
The diplomat, who demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the issue, said Tehran’s offer was made Friday by chief Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani in Moscow in the context of contacts between Iran and Russia on moving Tehran’s enrichment program to Russia.
The diplomat also said Germany remained open to the proposal, which would allow the Iranians to run 20 uranium-enriching centrifuges domestically while ceding control of large-scale enrichment to Moscow, on Russian soil.
But Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said Tuesday his country was not prepared to freeze small-scale enrichment.
The key here is that Iran is not offering to stop enrichment – this is a quite obvious ploy to string the Europeans along. The original proposal was to stop all enrichment, large and small. This plan is a non-starter…
It is all bluster. I don’t believe we have the political will, nor the military wherewithal to do anything substantive to stop them.
The article on Iran’s negotiator that I referenced earlier is here:
http://smh.com.au/news/world/iranian-negotiator-boasts-of-fooling-europeans/2006/03/05/1141493547376.html
He’s basically laughing at the Euros – and who can blame him?
what too many steves said
Speaking of “non-starter” plans is military action. I hope you like paying a lot for gasoline.
I find it interesting that there’s been no discussion of the two attempts that have already been made on the Iranian President’s life over the past 6 months. Granted, the real power is with the ruling cleric – but he has a terminal illness, and is not expected to survive the year. Is that not a relevant aspect to this story as well? Curious.
True, an awful lot of power is with the clerics, but the Iranian President has been very busy creating his own power center. The situation is more complex than most reports in the MSM suggest.
I don’t think the Iranian government speaks for the country. I think the general population is a lot more moderate than the people blowing the government horns. I’ve read several articles about how the government is trying to impose more fundamentalist rules and the people just basically ignore them (like with regard to what sort of music they can listen to).
Just one more thought here – why does the MSM insist on assuming that Iran is Arabic in nature and custom? For years I’ve been hearing from the many exiles here that they consider themselves Persians first and foremost, and not Arabs.
It’s an important and critical distinction in their view, and one that may give us hope that their citizens will yet find a way out of their current predicament – they don’t consider themselves part of Arabia or any external Arab causes (despite their ruling regime’s Islamicist bent and covert support for the terrorist actions in Iraq).
dmac, I agree with you that the assassination attempts represent the most intriguing part of this issue. They bring to mind that huge train station explosion that took place in North Korea just a few hours after the Dear Leader rolled by. I wouldn’t be surprised, and in fact I would be pleased, if the United States had some role in those things, though I realize it would probably be toxic for the United States to admit involvement. But I think both situations are so dismal now that a fairly direct form of “regime change” may be the only way to deal with the issues without thousands (or millions) dying in the process.
Thanks for reminding me of the North Korean attempt, Dennis – that’s also been almost nonexistent from the usual suspects of news organizations. Seems like the worst characters always avoid these attempts; reminds one of the lives that would’ve been saved had the assassination attempt on Hitler succeeded.
Iran is not an Arab country, and the population does not speak Arabic (they speak Farsi) –