« Iraq Briefing - 09 June 2008 - Job Creation to Defeat the Insurgency | Main | Krauthammer Hits a Homer »
June 15, 2008
When Will We Learn?
Over at The Corner, Michael Rubin has found something at Barack Obama and all liberals who think we should negotiate with Iran should read.
The former spokesman of the President Mohammed Khatami's government (1997-2005) has admitted that the only reason they negotiated with the West was to stall for time so that they could continue their nuclear weapons program. From a report in the Fars News Agency (you have to trust Rubin's translator, the Royal Danish Defence College analyst Ali Alfoneh):
Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami-era government spokesman, on a panel with Mehdi Faza'eli, general secretary of the Muslim Journalist Association: "We did our outmost to prevent the case of Iran being sent to the Security Council, whose judge is the United States.... During the confidence building-era, we entered the nuclear club, and despite the suspension [of uranium enrichment] we imported all the materials needed for our nuclear activities of the country...We were not subjected to sanctions regime during the reform era, but today, even our ophthalmologists are not allowed to import laser products [needed for operations]... If we pursue the right to nuclear energy for bombs, it is clear that the world does not want this, and if we want it for electricity, they say 'you don't have nuclear power plants, what do you want nuclear fuel for?' Just take a look at what the Russians have done to us in the Bushehr nuclear power plant.With the current speed of enrichment, it will take us 25 years before we reach enrichment self-sufficiency. And who knows where we want to find nuclear fuel? And our reserves are unknown... The solution is to prove to the entire world that we want the power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities... The peak of our goal is an honorable life for the people. Do we want to become another North Korea...
And this isn't even the good part. Read on
There are only two ways of coming through the current crisis. One is what Khatami did by winning the election of 1997, and the other what [he did] after September 11th, which both guarded the country against war. Today, the solution is to marginalize the Ahmadinejad government from political decision-making in the nuclear energy field, with decisions be taken elsewhere.As long as we were not subjected to sanctions, and during our negotiations we could import technology. We should have negotiated for so long, and benefited from the atmosphere of negotiations to the extent that we could import all the technology needed. The adversary wanted the negotiations to come to a dead end and initiate a new phase. But we wanted to continue negotiations until the U.S. would be gone from the circle of negotiations. We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities...
We consider access to all sciences and technologies of the humankind a necessity, but we also prioritize confidence building. Today, in the field of confidence building, Japan is the most advanced country in the world, but Japan can produce a nuclear bomb in less than a week...We achieved to divide the Europeans from the Americans, but today it has come to a point that the Europeans and the Americans have harmonized their policies.
Yes I know, this does not necessarily mean that they're working on nuclear weapons now. And Ramezanzadeh doesn't come out and directly say they were working on nuclear weapons. But I think it's pretty clear what he's talking about.
And in case you think this was the first such admission, think again. In March of 2006 The Telegraph reported that
The man who for two years led Iran's nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic programme.In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.
Iran has completed uranium enrichment equipment at Isfahan
He boasted that while talks were taking place in Teheran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake - a key stage in the nuclear fuel process - at its Isfahan plant but at the same time convince European diplomats that nothing was afoot."From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them'," he said.
Remember last December's National Intelligence Estimate? The one that was used by the left to "prove" that Iran wasn't seeking nuclear weapons? The one in which the authors confidently said that
A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program...
Oops.
Unless this Ramezanzadeh fellow is blowing smoke, we've been had. And by "we" I mean the Bush Administration as well as his predecessors. We've been talking to Iran for 38 years and it hasn't worked. When will we learn?
Posted by Tom at June 15, 2008 8:20 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.theredhunter.com/mt/refer.cgi/1139
Comments
Tom,
Spot on!
Of course, Iran has been stalling for time to do whatever the powers there want to do.
Other countries are dhimmified idiots not to see the elephant in the room.
Posted by: Always On Watch at June 16, 2008 6:39 AM
To rephrase my comment in the post above: I wonder if the Obamatons even care that Iran is using negotiations as a cover for their nuclear weapons program?
You can bet they will be the first to scream and yell once Iran gets a bomb and starts making trouble. Either that or they will be the first to demand we surrender to whatever it is that the Iranians want.
Posted by: Mike's America 
at June 17, 2008 11:49 PM
