I’ll be curious to see if this deters Iran from Nuclear development. I doubt it will.
Sanctions resolution passed:
theglobeandmail.com/news/wor … le1597741/
Let Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tantrums begin… 
He will likely be quite entertaining…saber rattling to ensue. 
Ok I don’t really understand why Iran is not allowed to have a nuclear program in the first place??
What right does one country have to essentially boss another country around??
It seems like a really grey area to me (or I may be missing something) Most of the pressure to control seems to come from the States, yet they have over 5000 warheads. Not to mention they are the only country to ever use one in warfare…
The concern or allegation is that Iran is using its nuclear program … which if used for peaceful purposes is legal … to develop nuclear weapons … which would be illegal in international law because Iran is a party to the Treaty on Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The only countries that are not bound in that manner … because they have never signed the treaty … are India, Pakistan, and Israel (which has a policy of ‘opaquacy’, neither confirming nor denying that it has nucs). North Korea was a signatory, but withdrew.
Variations on the theme that Ahmadinejad is an idiot or a hot-head do not make for a very cogent discussion. It is all really grey …
The only truly good guys on nuclear non-proliferation are the South Africans, who acknowledged that they had made progress towards developing nucs, dismantled their program and signed on to the treaty. They recently de-classified documents on military cooperation with Israel during the 70s and 80s (reported on by journalist Sasha Polakow-Suransky … see guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ma … ar-weapons).
The Iranian president has stated that he wants Nuclear weapons as well, and he is kookoo for koko puffs.
Actually, Ahmadinejad didn’t say that in his interview with Ann Curry of NBC last year. He said that Iran had no plans to develop nukes and didn’t need them. That was spun into a refusal to rule out nukes, notwithstanding that Iranian government policy is that the Middle East should be a nuclear-free zone.
Egypt has called for linkage of the Iranian nuclear enrichment issue to creation of a nuclear-free zone. Also interesting was Brazilian President Lula’s proposal to enter into a supply agreement that would make Iran’s nuclear enrichment unnecessary … There are other perspectives out there besides the usual diatribes.
Well sure he may be a misunderstood soul, but I don’t think so. This is after all the guy that heads off into the Iranian wilderness to await the arrival of Mahdi from time to time (or suggests that the Mahdi is guiding the government to this day.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 03587.html
Seemingly he’s in a hurry for that day and has expressed a desire to speed up the deities arrival, so uh, I’d rather he not have any nuclear weapons.
Actually I’d rather not see him have any weapons at all (ask some of the protestors from last year’s carnage in Tehran) but would be despots will be despots.
Frankly the guy does seem just a tad unstable.
As far as the ‘Mahdi’ belief goes, doesn’t the Christians and the Jews also have their own equivalent Messianic belief?
Yes this is true, but for the most part there doesn’t seem to be the same purpose driven ambition from their governments to spur on their deities arrival, and there are significant checks and balances and separation from church and state so as not to make it official policy.
Most (if not all) US Presidents have been of the Christian persuasion and as such must have espoused the ‘Messianic’ belief and so, are you telling us that maybe they should not have assumed their presidential position due to their religious belief?
Well show me where they made it official policy to put in place the mechanisms to achieve this exalted state and perhaps we can debate, though as worrisome as lets say Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush for instance may have been, I don’t think the world was quite as concerned as to the ramblings of Mr. Ahmadinejad.
But everyone deserves a fan club I guess, if you want to be the president of it, more power to you.
Codybear would probably know the answer to that one , she does know of the faith. I would think she knows some.
Smurfette makes a good point. While the West has certainly been molded by the beliefs of our Judeo-Christian leaders, those leaders generally follow a pretty moderate form of whatever book or sect they subscribe to. I don’t think the same can’t be said of some of their counterparts in the Middle-East.
If you think that there is a “separation from (of) church and state” in the USA … please think/read again:
Faith Base Initiative
Any country that uses belief in a magical being should not have nukes. That includes the US.
fundamentalism + nuclear development = global uncertainty
Wait what? So you’re agreeing with the bolded quote or disagreeing with it? If I was unclear, I was making the suggestion that while our leaders are often religious, they’re not extremists like some of their counterparts in the Middle-East.
Edit: Just saw my own idiotic double negative… “don’t think” and “can’t”.
It should have read, “I don’t think the same can be said of some of their counterparts in the Middle-East.”
Think of how far Harper could go after he learns to walk on water at his new lake. There will be no stopping him.
Yes. I was agreeing with you that some religious elements in the mid-east are extremists which led to my equation relating fundamentalism, nuclear development, and uncertainty.
Sorry for the confusion.