Category: Nuclear Proliferation
"Brazil vowed Wednesday not to 'bow down' to gathering international pressure to impose new economic penalties on Iran over its nuclear program if further negotiations might be fruitful."
"A Fox News poll released Tuesday finds that 60 percent of voters think force will be required to stop Iran, while 25 percent think diplomacy and sanctions alone will work."
"Iran moved nearly its entire stockpile of low-enriched nuclear fuel to an above-ground plant. It was as if, one official noted, a bull’s-eye had been painted on it. Why take such a huge risk? That mystery is the subject of fervent debate among many who are trying to decode Iran’s intentions."
"This is the second time in as many weeks that the State Department has, for reasons that are largely unfathomable, unilaterally taken an anti-Iran option off the table. Two Wednesdays ago Clinton told Al-Arabiya that military action wasn't even a consideration, which had the predictable effect of emboldening the mullahs. Now comes this announcement, which basically tells Tehran they don't have anything to fear from sanctions. Wonderful."
"US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday compared the showdown with Iran over its nuclear program to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war."
Rick Santorum opines: "Armed with atomic weapons, the regime could turn the world order upside down."
"Russia's foreign minister suggested Wednesday that a delay in delivering air-defense missiles to Iran is connected with concerns about regional tensions. Russia signed a contract in 2007 to sell S-300 missiles to Iran, a move that would substantially boost the country's defense capacities. Israel fears the sale would tip the regional power balance."
Mark Steyn opines at NRO: "Iran will go nuclear and formally inaugurate the post-American era. The Left and the isolationist right reckon that’s no big deal. . . . [Y]ou can lock the door and hang a sign, and life will go on, albeit a little more cramped and constrained than before. I think not."
"The U.N. nuclear agency on Thursday said it was worried Iran may currently be working on making a nuclear warhead, suggesting for the first time that Tehran had either resumed such work or never stopped at the time U.S. intelligence thought it did." The UN is finally admitting to some rather old news that apparently was suppressed by the former IAEA head and those doing the 2007 U.S. intelligence assessment.
"In the odd dance of diplomacy, tough talk can be a signal that no action will follow. But the tough talk coming from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about Iran appears to signal an even more disheartening fact: the United States still hasn't decided what to do about the mad mullahs' race to get a nuclear bomb."
