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POPSNow Bush Is Appeasing Iran joined envoys from France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany in talks with Saeed Jalili -- Iran's nuclear negotiator and an Ahmadinejad confidant -- about incentives to give to Tehran. ven with record oil prices, mismanagement has driven the Iranian economy into the ground. On July 14, the Ministry of Housing reported an "historical" 125% rise in housing prices. The same day, Tabnak, a news Web site run by a former head of the IRGC, admitted foodstuff inflation had reached 50% annually. On July 8, 2008, a National Iranian Oil Company executive acknowledged in the Iranian press that, without significant investment in infrastructure, Iranian oil production would decline each year by 300,000 barrels a day. In the past month alone, Iranian workers have struck for unpaid wages at the Khodro automotive plant (which assembles Peugeots), the Alburz Tire Company, and the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane factory.
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POPS Suicidal Mystics With Nukes After more UN sanctions were threatened, Ahmadinejad stated: As God promised, the oppressors will have their noses rubbed in the dirt. Now they are fulfilling this promise by themselves... Let it be known that in whatever we do, I see the hand of God and the hidden imam at every moment. The expansion is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge -- possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran -- to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years.
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POPSThe Israeli "Dry Run"On Iran's Nuclear Facilities
Looks like there would be a side benefit from an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities: the blind, toothless UN atomic "watchdog" -- Mohamed El Baradei -- promised to resign if Iran is targeted. US officials reported on Friday that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged a complex operation over the Mediterranean during the first week of June. The aircraft traversed more than 900 miles, about the distance from Israel to Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility; the exercise also tested the refueling of planes and helicopters tasked with rescuing downed pilots. El Baradei wasn't pleased. He warned that any attack on Iran would turn the entire Middle East "into a fireball." Russia's response: as Iran's preeminent nuclear technology supplier, Russia is concerned with its cash flow. It also warned Israel not to attack. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov instructed Israel not to use force, claiming there is no proof Iran is trying to acquire atomic weapons.
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POPSIran Supplying Equipment To Taliban To Fight British Evidence found by UK special forces is understood to concern the supply of the same bomb-making equipment Iran provides to insurgents in Iraq, namely components for explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs. It is not clear whether the bomb that last week killed four British SAS reservists in Helmand province was such a device, although British military commanders fear that increasing Iranian involvement in Afghanistan may render irrelevant attempts to increase the number of armoured vehicles in the conflict. Yesterday four coalition soldiers were killed by a bomb in the province of Kandahar. Meanwhile, as investigations continue into the use of Snatch Land Rovers in southern Afghanistan in which the four UK troops died last week, new figures obtained by The Observer reveal that more than 700 armoured vehicles that could be deployed to protect British personnel in Helmand are out of action.
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POPSThe New Meaning Of "Politics Of Change" * Obama repeatedly vowed to meet with various heads of terror states - most notably Ahmadinejad of Iran - "without preconditions." Then, with the nomination in sight, he zigzagged: "There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad. He's not the most powerful person in Iran." * In October, he supported NAFTA expansion. In March, campaigning in the Ohio primary, he called for a "reopening" of the trade pact's terms. This week, he called his own primary rhetoric "overheated" and said NAFTA has had a positive effect on the US economy. Change, yes. But "change we can believe in"?
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POPSObama and Iran:The Democrats Modern-Day McGovern Judging from last week's address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Sen. Barack Obama doesn't want voters to see him as soft on Iran and its genocidal President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranians "understand - sometimes, it seems, better than a lot of Americans do - that if American power collapses in Iraq, if we abandon our allies" then "our position throughout the region will become much weaker and Iran's position much stronger," Lieberman added. The Senate - including well over half of the Democrats - voted for the amendment, which passed 76-22. Obama, who was absent, said he opposed the amendment because it could be used as pretext to invade Iran. Obama denounced Kyl-Lieberman as "reckless" and criticized his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for supporting it. However tough he tries to sound when talking to AIPAC, Barack Obama's real sympathies are with the George Soros/MoveOn.org wing of the Democrat Party.
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POPSMore Insanity From Columbia University When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Columbia last fall and made a similar claim ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country."), students laughed and booed. They recently, however, elected to award Massad the Lionel Trilling Book Award for making the nearly identical claim. Last year, Marty Peretz reported some good news: Columbia University had declined to give Massad tenure. Apparently, Peretz spoke too soon. After cries from the Middle Eastern Studies Department, the Provost agreed to appoint a second ad hoc committee this year. Will Columbia have the good-sense to banish him once and for all?
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POPSScandal As Ahmadinejad's Ally Makes Accusations Of Corruption Professor Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University in New York, said that commentators were mistakenly writing off Mr Ahmadinejad in next year’s presidential elections. “He is a ferocious competitor, an edgy populist who wins the hearts of his lumpen proletariat countrymen even while he is demolishing the economy, and a supremely ambitious politician who is a threat to the entire post-revolutionary establishment,” Prof Sick told The Times.
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POPSObama The Humble Savior Only last week, another of his pals bit the dust, convicted by a Chicago jury of 16 counts of this and that. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew," said the senator, in what's becoming a standard formulation. Likewise, this wasn't the Jeremiah Wright he knew. And these are guys he's known for 20 years. "I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we........ It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility," isn't it? Because otherwise who knows what he'd be saying. But mark it in your calendars: June 3, 2008 – the long-awaited day, after 232 years, that America began to provide care for the sick.
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POPSPersonal Carbon Ration Card For Every Citizen of tar-and-feathering anyone who dares question climate alarmism -- a key tactic in their effort to dupe the nation into consuming the green Kool-Aid. One event is an indisputable historical fact of hideous dimensions; the prophesied specter of catastrophic global warming, however, is just a politically driven fear scenario based on unreliable computer models and the wishful bending of the laws of climate physics. There is no comparison. Can anyone reasonably equate, say, the 31,000 U.S. scientists, engineers and physicians who recently signed a petition against global warming alarmism -- including Princeton theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson and Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Richard Lindzen -- with the likes of neo-Nazis and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who constantly calls for Israel's destruction? But Krauthammer's adoption of the greens' most effective word weaponry nonetheless plays into their thought-shaping rhetoric.
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POPSMcCain: Obama's Positions Are So Changey WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to please a pro-Israel crowd this week by saying that Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel and that the holy city should not be divided. That angered Palestinians, who claim part of the city, and Obama clarified his remarks to say that the fate of Jerusalem should be a matter for negotiation. That angered some Israelis and their U.S. supporters. By week's end no one was happy. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080606/D914QUV82.html
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POPSU.N. Chief Meets With Ahmadinejad particularly the demand that it suspend its uranium enrichment. "We expect to hear that the secretary-general told the Iranian president that he was in violation of three Security Council resolutions, that he should comply with international demands to stop enriching uranium, and to stop the crazy talk," a spokesman for the American mission to the United Nations, Richard Grenell, said. Iranian officials increasingly are emphasizing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's prophecy that Israel will be erased from the map of the region, but the Western response has been muted. The U.N.-affiliated Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the three-day food conference in Rome, where yesterday Mr. Ahmadinejad blamed the "bullying powers" for creating a food crisis and called for the formation of "an independent and powerful body" that would "justly regulate" food distribution. Mr. Mugabe, who critics say has single-handedly transformed his country from a food exporter into a starving n
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POPSMullahs Keep Fighting Us While Destroying Iran against an official estimate of $45 billion. This sort of discrepancy typically occurs when capital flight is disguised as imports through fraudulent invoices and similar devices. A small current-account deficit would be of little concern for a nation with normal access to world capital markets, but Iran is unable to borrow. There is indeed massive capital flight. As I wrote a couple of years ago, Gulf bankers told me that they can’t handle all the money pouring out of Iran. Wealthy Persians long since saw the doom of the Islamic Republic, and have been looting the country’s resources for their own gain. They are printing money, further pauperizing Iranian workers–who are famously paid very late, if at all, as demonstrated by the ongoing demonstrations and strikes at government-owned companies– The message Spengler delivers is that there is no way out of this war. Left to their own devices, the mullahs will destroy Iran, and, if they can, us as well.
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POPSWould This Prompt An "Unconditional Meeting"? In yet another New York Times advocacy piece for Barack Obama, we discover that the Obama campaign is trying to rewrite history again. The problem is, Barack Obama did say he’d meet with Iran unconditionally, in front of a lot of people, at the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate last July. He was specifically and directly asked if he would meet with the leader of Iran (and the leaders of several other “so-called rogue states”) without preconditions, in the first year of his presidency, and his answer was, “I would.” Democratic Debate Transcript, CNN/YouTube - Council on Foreign Relations. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/29896_Obama_Changes_His_Unconditional_Position
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POPS Iran Hoarding Oil In The Persian Gulf: 270,000 Tons Of Crude Some energy analysts have speculated that Iran is holding out for a better market price to sell its oil. But with oil prices already hitting record highs, this explanation does not add up. Another explanation is that the current policy is a result of the NIOC’s inferior management skills — which is certainly possible, given Iran’s poor track record in managing its investment-deprived energy sector. The intent behind such a policy would be for Iran to manipulate global crude prices by reducing exports and driving up demand. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad already threw around threats in recent days to cut Iranian oil output, sending jitters through the energy market that ended up pushing oil prices to $127 per barrel. From the standpoint of the Iranian Energy Ministry, the threats to reduce output combined with a reduction in exports could drive up prices further and allow the Iranians to get a better deal on their crude sales.
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POPS Diplomats Say UN Probe Of Iran Nukes A Failure Ahmadinejad said last month that Iranian scientists were putting 6,000 new uranium enriching centrifuges into place, about twice the existing number, and testing a new type that works five times faster. But the diplomat who provided details on the report said it will say the rate of expansion has been much below that touted by Ahmadinejad. He and other diplomats close to the IAEA previously said Iran has exaggerated its progress and is having problems operating the 3,000 centrifuges already in place. Additionally, the diplomat speculated Tuesday that Iran might be holding back on a quick build-up of enrichment capabilities hoping it will be easier to come to terms with the U.S. administration that will succeed President Bush, known for his hard-line Iran policies. The commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment program can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale program that could churn out enough enriched material for dozens of nuclear warheads over time.
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POPSAhmadinejad: Israel Is Doomed Ahmadinejad used an Arabic word, ismihlal, that can also be translated as destruction, death and collapse. "Nations of the region hate this criminal fabricated regime (Israel) and will uproot this fabricated regime if the smallest and shortest opportunity is given to them," Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in an address broadcast live on state television. He spoke hours after President Bush arrived in Israel for the anniversary celebrations.
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POPSObama & Hamas: McCain Camp Responds: Andy McCarthy We understand why Senator Obama doesn't want to engage in a debate over leadership and judgment with John McCain, but the American people demand that debate take place. Just today, the president of Iran, whom Senator Obama wants to meet with unconditionally, called the state of Israel a 'stinking corpse.' Iran is the paymaster and state sponsor of Hamas. In his victory speech this week, Senator Obama stated that 'wisdom' is meeting with our enemies, including Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Raul Castro. John McCain couldn't disagree more. Rather than giving tyrants and dictators the prestige of meeting with an American president, John McCain will instead meet with the champions of human freedom around the world and opposition leaders fighting for liberty
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POPSWhat Would Reverend Jeremiah Wright Do? In an emotional testimony he tells the world how, as he was watching YouTube clips of the Reverend, a voice said "Follow this man." He then made his hajj to Chicago, joining Rev. Wright's congregation. Everyone is acepted under Jeremiah Wright's large tent as long as they accept a few simple dogmas and agree to repeat them five times a day during prayers: * Being White is immoral. Every White person is guilty of conspiring against the Blacks * Being rich is immoral. Every rich person is guilty of conspiring against the poor * America is the infamous product of conspiracy by rich White males to create the source of all evil. Later it turned even more evil under the rule of Zionist puppet masters. * Jesus was a homeless African-American male who fell victim to a conspiracy of the rich Whites against the poor Blacks that resulted in racial profiling, followed by torture and crucifiction * The 10 Commandments are optional.
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POPSBig Taxing, Big Earmarking, Big Congress Grills Big Oil (continued) will Rep. Walden agitate for lower tax rates? What about Walden’s earmarks of over $46 million? Will he think about lowering his earmarks, in light of the federal government’s record profits? * * * * * As Ronald Bailey of Reason writes: “Finally, if Congress wants to blame someone for high oil prices, blame the benighted oil producing countries that have underinvested in oil production for at least a decade. But Congressional grandstanders can’t haul the likes of Venezuela’s Chavez, Russia’s Putin, and Iran’s Ahmadinejad to their hearing rooms.” The spectacle of the House blaming the oil companies in a free market for high prices would be bizarre, if it didn’t happen so often.
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POPSKen Blackwell: The Real Obama Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He’s not. He’s the next George McGovern. And it’s time people learned the facts. Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton. Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost. Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he’s not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.
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POPS ElBaradei's Real Agenda<>Middle East Forum Website On his watch, but undetected by his agency, Iran constructed its covert enrichment facilities and, according to the 2007 U.S. National nieIntelligence Estimate, engaged in covert nuclear-weapons design. India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear godfather, exported nuclear technology around the world IAEA technical experts have complained anonymously to the press that the latest report on Iran was revamped to suit the director's political goals. In 2004, Mr. ElBaradei sought to purge mention of Iranian attempts to purchase beryllium metal, an important component in a nuclear charge, from IAEA documents. He also left unmentioned Tehran's refusal to grant IAEA inspectors access to the Parchin military complex, where satellite imagery showed a facility seemingly designed to test and produce nuclear weapon The IAEA director seems intent on undercutting Security Council diplomacy
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POPS"False hopes?" Obama told a crowd "There's no such thing." Meanwhile the authoritarian Putin has punkishly succeeded in restoring Russia to its inglorious heritage, reminding the world of the old formula that capitalism plus state power equals fascism. In Iran, none of Ahmadinejad's domestic troubles seem to have modified the state's sense of ascendancy, or its will to nuclearize itself, or its appetite for instability in its region. In Iraq, the streets are safer but the sects are not sweeter. In the Korean peninsula, diplomacy has gone ominously cold. In Palestine there are two Palestines, and one of them belongs to Hamas. In Darfur--well, you know, because everybody knows. In Latin America, the failures of liberal economics have sullied the reputation of liberal politics. And so on. And into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world?
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POPS Ahmadinejad.......U.S. Declaration Of Surrender Iran regularly calls for a change in behavior from the United States, which cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 1980 after radical students seized the U.S. embassy and took diplomats hostage during the 1979 Islamic revolution.
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POPS Iran's Nuclear Program Editorial cartoonists comment on the National Intelligence Estimate that says Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program years ago.
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POPS "Ahmadi-Pinochet, Iran Will Not Become Chile!" A new demonstration at Tehran University on Sunday, damaging the main gate to allow outsiders into the campus and denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, news agencies reported. The protesters chanted slogans against the president and carried banners calling for the release of three fellow students who have been held since May in a high-profile case, the Fars news agency state-run IRNA reported. Arabshahi said the protest lasted for more than two hours after starting at 12:00 pm (0830 GMT) and that it was peaceful. "We are gathered here to say students are alive and are critical of wrong polices," IRNA quoted another unnamed student as saying. The demonstration came a day after the intelligence ministry said it had arrested an unspecified number of people using "fake student cards to hold an illegal demonstration" at Tehran University. The timing of those arrests was not given, but it is likely that they took place before Friday which was annual students' day in Iran
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POPS U N Ratchets Up 'Global Warming' Hysteria Reducing emissions can be met at moderate cost relative to global GDP, but the window of opportunity for quickly reaching a safer, stable level is closing fast. “We need a new ethic by which every human being realises the importance of the challenge we are facing and starts to take action through changes in lifestyle and attitude Green groups said the Valencia document had rammed home the dangers of warming more forcefully than in any other assessment issued in the 19-year history of the IPCC. ,“This is the strongest document the IPCC has produced,” said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF’s) Global Climate Change Program… Emissions are now spiralling, driven especially by carbon dioxide (CO2) spewed from coal-fired plants in fast-growing China and India, and Kyoto’s present commitments will not even dent the problem. Reducing emissions implies a cost in converting to cleaner energy or more efficient energy use.
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POPS Warhead Built Within A Year UN's Nuclear Watchdog Russian officials yesterday called for patience, insisting Iran could still clinch a deal with the international community in the next few weeks. They pointed to other parts of the IAEA report showing Tehran had been cooperating with the agency's inspectors on other nuclear issues. "We are most concerned to prevent Iran being cornered so that they walk out of the Non Proliferation Treaty, and break relations with the IAEA," one Russian source said. He said Chinese officials were stepping up diplomatic pressure on Iran, with Moscow, to avert a collision. "They are on high alert that something has to be done quickly," the source said
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POPS The Oil Hydra by Victor Davis Hanson The nearly half-trillion dollars we will soon pay for imported oil does a lot more than prop up Russia's Vladimir Putin, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The petrodollar drain also contributes to our trade deficits, falling dollar and a general demoralization of the American people. Our oil habit not only makes us dependent on some creepy suppliers, but we look like fools as we work nonstop to hand over our earnings to those who are rich by an accident of sitting atop oil someone else found and developed.
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POPS President Putin:: Found Iran's Leaders 'Bizarre' "This was the first time that Putin was talking to senior Islamic Republic leaders in a substantive and focused way," says a senior Russian official familiar with what happened. "The president found his Iranian interlocutor weird, to say the least. The Iranians mouthed a lot of eschatological nonsense and came close to urging Putin to convert to Islam. It was clear they lived in a world of their own." Ahmadinejad gave the impression he sought neither advice nor support from the Russians. All he wanted was to project the Islamic Republic as the regional superpower and invite Putin to acknowledge its new status. "It was as if Russia needed Iran, not the other way round," says the Russian source. "Putin was taken aback. He had not expected what he heard." "The Iranians think they have already won," reports one Russian source who witnessed the visit. "So intoxicated they appeared with hubris that they did not even ask Putin to help them ward off further United Nations sanctions."
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POPS Bahrain's Crown Prince Accuses Iran “While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it,” he said – the first time one of Iran’s Gulf neighbours effectively has accused it of lying about its nuclear programme. It is not a position from which to mince words. In an interview with The Times the Crown Prince has become the first Arab leader to jettison the language of diplomacy and directly accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons. The US Fifth Fleet is based here, its main carrier battle group tasked with securing the Strait of Hormuz. The King Fahd causeway to Khobar makes Bahrain a gateway to the richest oil reserves on Earth in eastern Saudi Arabia. There is no suggestion – yet – of an Iranian invasion of Bahrain. But even as the kingdom throws up skyscrapers to compete with Dubai and Abu Dhabi for regional financial dominance, its security forces are on high alert for evidence of Iranian-backed “sleeper cells” that could bring them all tumbling down.
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POPS Cascade Of World-Wide Nuclear Proliferation If the sanctions and threats and carrots all still failed? If Kim and Ahmadinejad's successors insisted, after all, on tooling up? A denuclearising world could - as an absolutely last resort - justify taking military action to prevent other countries going nuclear. But today, to go to war to uphold the NPT would be a sick joke, when the world's leaders are all blatantly burning it themselves - and ramping up the risks of the second nuclear age
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POPS Ahmadinejad Pushing Iran Into Future Trouble It could be a risky bet. Ahmadinejad's main vulnerability is domestic: rising criticism from a public angry over the country's poor economy and from politicians disillusioned by what they call his mismanagement. Even some conservatives have expressed fears Ahmadinejad is pushing Iran into future trouble over the nuclear issue Further sanctions, even unilateral ones from the U.S., could hurt the economy more by further isolating it from international finance—and Iranians were already expressing worries over the new measures. Ahmadinejad, who faces elections in 2009, knows "jobless and poor people will not vote for him if his policies bring them more difficulties," said Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a political science professor at Tehran's Azad University. But he believes "unilateral economic sanctions by Washington are not strong enough (to hurt Iran) due to Iran's widespread economic relations with the world."
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POPS Blocking Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions As the new member of the policy team, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has been given this assignment. His task is to start afresh and to reexamine our position today, our national interests, and our options. Specifically, the President and the Secretary have asked Negroponte to be inventive in exploring options between acquiescence and attack that best protect and advance American national interests. The task is to be inventive, to be prepared to use all the sticks and carrots in the American arsenal, and, indeed, everything in the international arsenal that can feasibly be mobilized to this end. Our operational objective, the President reiterated, is to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons within the foreseeable future, by which he said he means at least five years.
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POPS Tehran’s Atomic Ayatollahs Can Iran spark global conflict? Yes, but so can other nations, some of them far less dangerous than the regime run by Tehran’s atomic ayatollahs. It’s not only Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about whom we should be worried. Unfortunately, the international system is so fragile that almost any autocrat can commit the act that brings about global conflagration. Today, we see the same conditions that existed before World Wars I and II.
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