Does this guy already have the bomb?
If you were clandestinely producing a nuclear bomb, you would probably want to keep a bit of a low profile about it, playing the EU and the UN for suckers with the kind of back-and-forth negotiations that Iran has done over the last half dozen years. You wouldn’t lead with your mouth like this fellow, putting the world on notice of his unequivocal belligerent intent:
“Hopefully, the news that the criminal of Sabra and Chatilla has joined his ancestors is final,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency. “Hopefully, others (criminals like him) will join him too,” ISNA quoted Ahmadinejad as telling a group of clerics in Qom, a holy city 80 miles south of the capital, Tehran. He spoke a day after the 77-year-old Sharon suffered a massive stroke and underwent surgery. In the last two months, Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a “myth” and said if Europeans insist it did occur, then they should give some of their own land for a Jewish state, rather than the one in the Middle East. He also called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
Ahmadinejad talks like a guy who already has the bomb and can’t wait to tell the world about it — restraining himself only to build up a sufficient arsenal to feel safe. Think about it: the US went from nowhere to an A-bomb in four years over sixty years ago. Iran has had scientists and aid from China, North Korea, Russia, the Ukraine, and probably Pakistan — as well as its own scientists and a talented population. How inept would they have to be not to have a bomb by now? Ahmadinejad sure talks like a kid spoiling to show off his power.
UPDATE
Bruce Kesler provides us with a link to a discussion of the rather creepy, given 20th century history, relationship between Germany (another country that almost got the A-bomb 60 years ago) and Iran.
January 6th, 2006 at 4:33 am
You’re either on target or he’s a great poker player and is bluffing. My mind wonders why he doesn’t just say he has it if he does – that is all the power he’ll get out of it, short of starting WWIII. Someone maybe needs to call his bluff.
January 6th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Great post Dino. This is part of what I posted on my blog, concerning the same subject.
Let’s think for a minute how ludicrous it is, IF ONE PLANS ON FIRING A NUCLEAR WARHEAD AT AN ENEMY, why one would WARN the enemy, giving him TIME to prepare to make the RETALIATION much more lethal. Iran would be obliterated by the obligatory Israeli retaliation, reduced to a smoldering cinder, and rightly so…….