At least that's what Iran thinks the USA is doing when it offered a proposal to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme.
"U.S. officials are either unaware of the substance of the talks or (they are hallucinating," Sirus Naseri, a senior member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team, told the official IRNA news agency.Err... yeah. Gets better.
Iran dismissed the U.S. offer as insignificant. Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi told IRNA it was "funny and disrespectful."
"The U.S. should apologize to Iran for making this proposal," he said, going on to describe Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) as a "queen of war and violence."
Naseri said it was not clear if greater U.S. involvement in the negotiations was "helpful or an obstacle to progress." He said the EU, which has persuaded Iran to suspend potentially weapons-related activities like uranium enrichment while the two sides try to reach a solution, was close to accepting that Iran would not give up enrichment.
Instead, Tehran has offered to give "objective guarantees" that it will not divert nuclear fuel to military uses. "It seems the Europeans are ready to
adopt a logical position," Naseri said.Iran has refused to disclose its guarantees publicly but diplomats and analysts say it is offering to allow intrusive inspections that ensure it only enriches uranium to a low grade which would be unsuitable for weapons.
It may also be prepared to restrict its enrichment activities to a pilot project, too small to make weapons production practical, diplomats and analysts say. Such a solution would allow Iran to save face while meeting most of the West's concerns.
Why is Iran, a nation that produces oil so interested in a nuclear programme?
To most observers, doesn't this scream like a case of wanting to have nuclear weapons asa deterrent?
Good God. Now we're playing MAD with the proud Persians.
Or maybe the oil is running out? Or they can foresee a future where oil is going to run out?
It bears thinking upon.
Even so, it's pretty funny how the Iranians construct their rhetoric. IMHO they still have a reckoning with the USA over what happened on Jimmy Carter's watch, and so they had better watch their mouths. They're fully due for a 'smackdown', so to speak; and they don't want to turn Tehran into the next Baghdad. Those guys in the White House are nasty.
Congress Sends An Angry Letter To NASA
Service Hubble, they say.
Congress, in passing an omnibus spending bill late last year, directed NASA to set aside $291 million of its 2005 budget to spend planning and preparing for a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008. When NASA informed Congress just weeks later that it intended to spend only $175 million of that amount on the Hubble repair effort, some saw the move as an indication that the agency was preparing to abandon plans to service Hubble robotically and rely instead on a space shuttle crew to fix the telescope.
Many Hubble backers, including Mikulski, were shocked and angered when NASA announced in early February that it would not make any effort to service the telescope beyond attaching a propulsion module that can be used to drop Hubble into the ocean once it goes dark. Mikulski, an influential member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Gregory in her March 2 letter that Congress will consider this year including money in NASA's 2006 budget for a Hubble servicing mission. In the meantime, she said, she expects NASA to spend every penny of the $291 million included in the 2005 budget for Hubble servicing.
"I expect NASA to carry out Congress' intent and spend the entire amount appropriated this year so there will be no interruption in the planning, preparation and engineering work that will be necessary for a servicing mission to Hubble," she wrote. The funding that I included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act is to ensure that the workforce at Goddard, the Space Telescope Science Institute and their associated contractors remain fully engaged in all aspects of a servicing mission. Any attempt to cancel, terminate or suspend servicing activity would be a violation of the law unless it has the approval of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.
Well, sure it's easy to say this, but nobody has the right price tag for servicing Hubble. As we've been tracking that story, we've found everybody has a different price tag for this mission. I doubt NASA wants it to be Another Seven Astronauts, so to speak, so this is going nowhere.
- Art Neuro
1 comment:
Re: Iran
Apart from the hostage taking, Iran and the US have gotten on pretty well with no substantive action taken on either side. There is a lot of angry rhetoric, but it's all theatre.
When the US invaded Iraq, it shut down the anti-Iran militia that Saddam had maintained (Mujahidin Khalq), and they let an Iranian militia numbering several thousand troops (the Badr brigade) cross from Iran into Iraq. IIRC, the Badr brigade is the military wing of SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iranian organisation). One of the leaders of SCIRI is a guy called Hakim (can't remember first name), who heads the list of Islamic parties that got voted into power in the Iraqi elections.
So what you have is the USA basically turning the governance of Iraq over to an Iranian organisation. Furthermore, I think we will see that this Iranian organisation will make a better quisling government than the piss poor efforts originating in the USA (Chalabi, Allawi, etc).
This is all circumstantial evidence of cooperation, but take away the rhetoric and it's all that remains. I hold the view that Iran and the USA are essentially allies. Remember, Saddam was an ally once. In the long term they may have highly divergent interests, but that doesn't mean that they won't hold hands when it suits them.
BTW, I'm sure there are elements of the US administration that would love to stage Operation Iranian Freedom, but it's a crack dream. They don't even have enough troops to occupy Iraq, an invasion of Iran could not succeed. The Iranians know this, and threats are not going to budge them on the nuclear issue.
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