Israel is one of the most significant military powers on Earth and has the United States to back them up if they can't handle threats aimed at them on their own. I would very highly doubt Iran would ever try something so stupid as to attack Israel. Remarks such as those Ahmadinejad made about Israel are in the same species of political maneuvering as talk of outlawing flag burning in the US.
Plutonium is highly volatile and difficult to enrich. So if Iran had plutonium reactors, I would be hesitant before making any accusations that they might be using it for nuclear weapons. Moreover, it's difficult to enrich on a mass scale, unlike uranium.
As for your argument about naval reactors, you said they were 50% enriched. That's 50%. Not 90%. 90% is needed for nuclear weapons, and Iran currently has enough centrifuges to reach 90% enrichment or higher.
I'd like to rely on the IAEA, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The super-left seems to think that Iran is a peaceful, happy nation with a big cuddly leader who just needs a gwate big huggly-wuggly. I examine their president's rhetoric, combined with my knowledge on how nuclear weapons are manufactured, before coming up with my own conclusion. Of course, I forget that, for some people, as long as Bush criticizes a country or refuses to take military action off the table, it's evil and untrue
Bush will probably slap himself in the forehead if Iran nukes Israel. Meanwhile, President Obama will look at the crisis and say "But I thought tea and scones were the solution?!"
I can't wait.
Um, Kermit Roosevelt's coup is the reason why a bunch of religious fundamentalists are controlling the country in the first place. Mossadeq was a secularist, and he is, to this day, one of the most beloved figures in Iranian politics amongst Iranians. Though the younger generation has a favorable opinion of American culture and Americans, they still harbor a great animosity toward the American government for its history of interfering in the affairs of their country.
http://news.bahai.org/story/632NEW YORK Six Baháí leaders in Iran were arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison yesterday in a sweep that is ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Baháí leaders were summarily rounded up and killed
The six men and women, all members of the national-level group that helped see to the minimum needs of Baháís in Iran, were in their homes Wednesday morning when government intelligence agents entered and spent up to five hours searching each home, before taking them away.
The seventh member of the national coordinating group was arrested in early March in Mashhad after being summoned by the Ministry of Intelligence office there on an ostensibly trivial matter.
We protest in the strongest terms the arrests of our fellow Bahá'ís in Iran, said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baháí International Community to the United Nations. Their only crime is their practice of the Baháí Faith.
Especially disturbing is how this latest sweep recalls the wholesale arrest or abduction of the members of two national Iranian Baháí governing councils in the early 1980s -- which led to the disappearance or execution of 17 individuals, she said.
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The early morning raids on the homes of these prominent Baháís were well coordinated, and it is clear they represent a high-level effort to strike again at the Baháís and to intimidate the Iranian Baháí community at large, said Ms. Dugal.
Arrested yesterday were: Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm. All live in Tehran. Mrs. Kamalabadi, Mr. Khanjani, and Mr. Tavakkoli have been previously arrested and then released after periods ranging from five days to four months.
Arrested in Mashhad on 5 March 2008 was Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, who also resides in Tehran. Mrs. Sabet was summoned to Mashhad by the Ministry of Intelligence, ostensibly on the grounds that she was required to answer questions related to the burial of an individual in the Baháí cemetery in that city.
On 21 August 1980, all nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháís of Iran were abducted and disappeared without a trace. It is certain that they were killed.
The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháís of Iran was reconstituted soon after that but was again ravaged by the execution of eight of its members on 27 December 1981.
A number of members of local Baháí governing councils, known as local Spiritual Assemblies, were also arrested and executed in the early 1980s, before an international outcry forced the government to slow its execution of Baháís. Since 1979, more than 200 Baháís have been killed or executed in Iran, although none have been executed since 1998.
In 1983, the government outlawed all formal Baháí administrative institutions and the Iranian Baháí community responded by disbanding its National Spiritual Assembly, which is an elected governing council, along with some 400 local level elected governing councils. Bahá'ís throughout Iran also suspended nearly all of their regular organizational activity.
The informal national-level coordinating group, known as the Friends, was established with the knowledge of the government to help cope with the diverse needs of Irans 300,000-member Baháí community, which is the countrys largest religious minority.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/16/iran.bahais/index.html(CNN) -- Six Baha'i leaders in Iran were seized and imprisoned this week, the religious group said. The act prompted condemnation and concern from the movement and a top American religious freedom panel.
A U.S. panel says attacks on Iran's Baha'is have increased since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president.
Iranian intelligence agents searched the homes of the six on Wednesday and then whisked them away, according to the Baha'i's World News Service. The report said the six are in Evin prison and that the arrests follow the detention in March of another Baha'i leader.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, and the incident has not been mentioned in Iran's state-run media.
"Their only crime is their practice of the Baha'i faith," said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha'i international community to the United Nations.
The U.S. State Department issued a statement Friday "strongly" condeming the arrests, which it said were "a clear violation of the Iranian regime's international commitments and obligations to respect international religious freedom norms.
"We urge the authorities to release all Baha'is currently in detention and cease their ongoing harassment of the Iranian Baha'i community," the U.S. statement said.
The group -- regarded as the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran -- says the arrests are reminiscent of roundups and killings of Baha'is that took place in Iran two decades ago.
"Especially disturbing is how this latest sweep recalls the wholesale arrest or abduction of the members of two national Iranian Baha'i governing councils in the early 1980s -- which led to the disappearance or execution of 17 individuals," Dugal said.
"The early morning raids on the homes of these prominent Baha'is were well-coordinated, and it is clear they represent a high-level effort to strike again at the Baha'is and to intimidate the Iranian Baha'i community at large," she added.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom -- a government panel that advises the president and Congress -- condemned the Wednesday arrests, as well as another in March. The commission chairman called the acts the "latest sign of the rapidly deteriorating status of religious freedom and other human rights in Iran."
The commission said the seven were members of an informal Baha'i group that tended to the needs of the community after the Iranian government banned all formal Baha'i activity in 1983.
The commission chairman, Michael Cromartie, echoed the fears that the "development signals a return to the darkest days of repression in Iran in the 1980s when Baha'is were routinely arrested, imprisoned, and executed."
The Baha'is are regarded as "apostates" in Iran and have been persecuted there for years.
"Since 1979, Iranian authorities have killed more than 200 Baha'i leaders, thousands have been arrested and imprisoned, and more than 10,000 have been dismissed from government and university jobs," the commission said.
The commission said that since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power a few years ago, Baha'is "have been harassed, physically attacked, arrested, and imprisoned."
"During the past year, young Baha'i schoolchildren in primary and secondary schools increasingly have been attacked, vilified, pressured to convert to Islam, and in some cases, expelled on account of their religion."
The commission said other groups in the predominantly Shiite Muslim country of Iran, such Sufis and Christians, are subject to intimidation and harassment. Ahmadinejad's inflammatory statements about Israel have "created a climate of fear" among the country's Jews.
The Baha'is say they have 5 million members across the globe, and about 300,000 in Iran.
The Baha'is say their faith "is the youngest of the world's independent religions" and that its basic theme is that "humanity is one single race and that the day has come for its unification in one global society."
They say their founder, Baha'u'llah (1817-1892), is regarded by Baha'is as "the most recent in the line of Messengers of God that stretches back beyond recorded time and that includes Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad."
Are you seriously without any sense of compassion man?bahahahahahahahaha
