Iran Can Now Make glowing Mickey Mouse Watches
Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran “going nuclear,” the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they “cascade.”
The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb.
The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods.
What is really going on here is a ratcheting war of rhetoric. The Iranian hard liners are down to a popularity rating in Iran of about 15%. They are using their challenge to the Bush administration over their perfectly legal civilian nuclear energy research program as a way of enhancing their nationalist credentials in Iran.
Likewise, Bush is trying to shore up his base, which is desperately unhappy with the Iraq situation, by rattling sabres at Iran. Bush’s poll numbers are so low, often in the mid-30s, that he must have lost part of his base to produce this result. Iran is a great deus ex machina for Bush. Rally around the flag yet again.
If this international game of chicken goes wrong, then the whole Middle East and much of Western Europe could go up in flames. The real threat here is not unconventional war, which Iran cannot fight for the foreseeable future. It is the spread of Iraq-style instability to more countries in the region.
Bush and Ahmadinejad could be working together toward the Perfect Storm.
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“U.S. investigation in Genoa "Violated the embargo on Iran"
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 in Genoa, the financial police searched the offices of an Iranian-Italian company specialized in the import-export: it was the crucial step taken on an international letter rogatory in the United States. The suspicion is that, through a system of "triangulation" of trade between countries, unrelated to any "black list" have been violated restrictions imposed after the UN Security Council resolutions on particular types of industrial supplies to Iran. Not fully understood the terms of engagement with the Iranian company based in Genoa, where, however, were acquired documents to be sent to the USA.
Site Indymedia has discovered that years ago the Italian military secret service spied many Iranian society – all controlled by the Iranian government – with operational base in Genoa. The site publishes some confidential SISMI's documents where he reveals the names of some secret agents: Altana Pietro and Renato Raso.