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You All Know Hanoi Jane, Now Meet Tehran Todd
By Russ Wellen (about the author) Page 2 of 4 page(s)
2. One of the kidnappers himself, president Ahmadinejad, has been only too happy to play bogeyman for us. Of course, his role in the hostage crisis is as apocryphal as his call for Israel to be wiped off the map. But the infamous holocaust denial conference he hosted was all too real.
Recently he boasted that Iran's nuclear program was now cascading (separating out the bad uranium from the good) 3,000 centrifuges. Once a program reaches this threshold, it's on its way to producing nuclear energy and, down the road, weaponizing it.
You've seen or heard of the movie "300," in which the Persians get their heads handed to them by the Spartans. Now see "3,000," in which Ahmadinejad's boasts bring down the wrath of Israel and the US on him and his country. (Though how 3,000 centrifuges stacks up against 10,000 nuclear warheads between the US and Israel isn't clear.)
3. When the names Osama and Saddam merged in the minds of Americans, it was one occasion when the use of that jargony word "conflate" (v. to bring together; meld or fuse) was warranted.
Because their names are much more similar, we're that much more likely to conflate the menacing Ayatollah Khomeini, who led Iran's 1979 Revolution, with its present "Supreme Leader" Ali Khameini. When it comes to niceties like getting foreign names right, Americans don't stand on ceremony.
4. Nor do we sweat the small stuff when it comes to stretching the meaning of a term. Even though terrorist groups are, by definition, non-state actors, we don't object to Bush & Co. designating the Revolutionary Guard, with its elite Quds unit, as a terrorist organization.
They cite the arms with which they believe Iran supplies Iraqi Shiite militias. Especially EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) which are taking the "improvised" out of IEDs (improvised explosive devices).
If these devious devices are crossing their mutual border, the Revolutionary Guard's guilt has yet to be supported by evidence. In fact, as the erstwhile Gareth Porter explains, while their use is down in recent months, constructing them has been one of Iraq's new cottage industries.
It just that, given the Revolutionary Guard's past as a mentor to Hezbollah, supplying Iraq with arms sounds like something Iran would do. Also, the Guard supports Iraq's Badr brigade and may have provided training for Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army.
Still, the Guard's support for Shiite militias is a drop in the bucket compared to the funding our allies, the Saudis, funnels to Iraq's Sunni insurgents. Also, an unwritten rule holds that you don't go to war over the actions of another nation's proxies or intelligence agencies. Were that the case, the whole world would have been warranted in declaring war on us decades ago for the wholesale depredations of the CIA.
5. Ahmadinejad may crow about his centrifuges and Cheney and the Neocons portray Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons as nearly a done deal. But there's another reason why we think Iran is on the yellowcake road to nuclear weapons. It's hard to believe that, when all these other countries have developed them, Iran is still playing with test tube like high school students in chemistry class.
After all, the technology has been around 60 years. Aren't a brainy college kid, the Internet, and a good machine shop all you need today to toss together a rudimentary bomb?
Iran may have benefited from the technical and material largesse of Qadeer Khan, the "grandfather" of Pakistan's nuclear program. But between the shutdown of his black market (since rumored back in action) and the International Atomic Energy Agency breathing down its neck, its nuclear program has two strikes against it. One shudders to think of the third - an attack by the US.
6. Thus skeptical of Iran's nuclear innocence, we find ourselves secretly rooting for the administration to bust a bunker or two hundred belonging to Iran's underground nuclear program. The debacle of the Iraq War has failed to disabuse us of the notion that we can still get in and out fast, like in the Gulf War.
Iran may be it own worst enemy at times. But it can also be its own best friend -- and, if we let it, ours (maybe not BFFs, but joined in a marriage of convenience).
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues.
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