Iran: US will regret any strike

[Superlative]

The Iranian president has threatened "severe" retaliation if the United States attacks his country, which is locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear programme.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the threat at a news conference in the United Arab Emirates on Monday.
"They realise that if they make such a mistake the retaliation of Iran would be severe and they will repent," Ahmadinejad said.

"All people know they cannot strike us. Iran is capable of defending itself. It is a strong country," he added.
The West cannot stop Tehran from pursuing its nuclear energy programme, he said. "Superpowers cannot prevent us from owning this energy."

The United States, which has a strong military presence in the Gulf, accuses Iran of wanting to produce nuclear weapons and has sought tougher UN sanctions against Tehran.

Iran says it wants only to generate electricity to allow more oil exports.

Using stronger language than on Sunday when he called for US troops to leave the region, Ahmadinejad said Gulf countries should "get rid of" foreign forces, which he blamed for regional insecurity.

"We in the Persian Gulf are faced by difficulties and enemies. Those do not want the region to live in safety ... peace can be achieved by getting rid of these forces," he said.

"They intervene in the region and make it insecure. They claim that lack of security is the reason for their presence (but) the problem is the intervention of foreign powers."

Iraq talks

Ahmadinejad said Iran had agreed to talk to the United States about Iraq to help the Iraqi people.

"The Americans, in order to solve the security situation in Iraq, requested to talk to Iran. In order to support the Iraqi people we will talk to them," he said.

"It (the meeting) will take place in Baghdad in the presence of the Iraqi government," he said, adding that a date for the talks had yet to be set.

The White House said on Sunday that US and Iranian officials would meet in the next few weeks in Baghdad about security in Iraq, confirming a similar announcement by Tehran...............


http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B2240F2E-CA5C-4593-A664-AD68EDCD60B0.htm

 

[Truthmatters]

Pakistan is about to blow up too.

This mess is going to be all on the heads of the fools who mastermined it and supported it.

 

[90K]

Iranian President is a blow hard especially when we are trying for some sort of dialog.

 

[Superlative]

Inspectors Cite Big Gain by Iran on Nuclear Fuel

VIENNA, May 14 — Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to the agency’s top officials.

The findings may change the calculus of diplomacy in Europe and in Washington, which has aimed to force a suspension of Iran’s enrichment activities in large part to prevent it from learning how to produce weapons-grade material.

In a short-notice inspection of Iran’s main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday, conducted in advance of a report to the United Nations Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors, according to diplomats and nuclear experts here. Until recently, the Iranians were having difficulty keeping the delicate centrifuges spinning at the tremendous speeds necessary to make nuclear fuel, and often were running them empty, or not at all.

Now, those roadblocks appear to have been surmounted. “We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the energy agency, who clashed with the Bush administration four years ago when he declared that there was no evidence that Iraq had resumed its nuclear program. “From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.”

It is unclear whether Iran can sustain its recent progress. Major setbacks are common in uranium enrichment, and experts say it is entirely possible that miscalculation, equipment failures or sabotage could prevent the Iranian government from reaching its goal of producing fuel on what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasts is “an industrial scale.”

The material produced so far would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be transformed into bomb-grade material, and to accomplish that Iran would probably have to evict the I.A.E.A. inspectors, as North Korea did four years ago.

Even then it is unclear whether the Iranians would have the technology to produce a weapon small enough to fit atop their missiles, a significant engineering challenge.

Iran says its nuclear program is intended to produce energy, not weapons.

While the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend all of its nuclear activities, and twice imposed sanctions for its refusal to do so, some European nations, and particularly Russia, have questioned whether the demand for suspension still makes sense.

The logic of demanding suspension was that it would delay the day that Iran gained the knowledge to produce its own nuclear fuel, what the Israelis used to refer to as “the point of no return.” Those favoring unconditional engagement with Iran have argued that the current strategy was creating a stalemate that the Iranians are exploiting, allowing them to make technological leaps while the Security Council steps up sanctions.

The Bush administration, in contrast, has argued that it will never negotiate while the Iranians speed ever closer to nuclear-weapons capacity, saying there has to be a standstill as long as talks proceed. In a telephone interview, R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for policy, who is carrying out the Iran strategy, said that while he had not heard about the I.A.E.A.’s newest findings they would not affect American policy.

“We’re proceeding under the assumption that there is still time for diplomacy to work,” he said, though he added that if the Iranians did not agree to suspend production by the time the leaders of the largest industrial nations meet next month, “we will move ahead toward a third set of sanctions.”

Dr. ElBaradei has always been skeptical of that strategy, telling European foreign ministers that he doubted the Iranians would fully suspend their nuclear activities, and that a face-saving way must be found to resolve the impasse.

“Quite clearly suspension is a requirement by the Security Council, and I would hope the Iranians would listen to the world community,” he said. “But from a proliferation perspective, the fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension — keeping them from getting the knowledge — has been overtaken by events. The focus now should be to stop them from going to industrial scale production, to allow us to do a full-court-press inspection and to be sure they remain inside the treaty...............”



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/world/middleeast/15iran.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

 

[Vintij]

They are trying to provoke a war as usual. We can not attack them under any circumstances, unless they attack us. So I guess we will be waiting for the inevitable iranian invasion of iraq.