End Of Days News
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday, Feb. 10 echoed supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rejection of direct talks with the US four days ago
which he said were on the grounds that they “would solve nothing” because, "You
are holding a gun against Iran.”
Ahmadinejad added is own rider to this dismissal: “God willing, soon Iran’s
satellite will be located in orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, next to
others from four or five advanced powers and it will relay a message of peace
and fidelity to the world,” he said.
The boast that Iran would soon be the
world’s sixth space power came two weeks after Tehran claimed to have put a
monkey in orbit around earth, although it did not report bringing back to earth
either the space capsule or the monkey.
Indeed, US State Department
spokesperson Victoria Nuland, pouring a healthy dose of skepticism on the very
existence of the project, commented: “The Iranians said they sent a monkey, but
the monkey they showed later seemed to have different facial
features.”
Tehran is again caught wandering at ease through its favorite
terrain between fact, hyperbole and fiction about its achievements, whether in
space or its nuclear program.
In recent weeks, reelected Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stressed he wants a broad government
coalition for the critical objective of preventing Iran acquiring a nuclear
weapon.
The question is how does he propose to achieve this when tough US and
European sanctions have not just failed to stop Iran in its tracks but
accelerated its nuclear progress. Iran is now estimated to be within four months
of a nuclear bomb capacity from the moment a decision is taken to build
one.
Those months are critical: On February 25 the five UN Security Council’s
permanent members plus Germany sit down with Iran in Kazakhstan for a fresh
round of negotiations. Former rounds in this format led nowhere and no
breakthrough is expected this time either beyond, at best, a date for a
continuation.
On March 20, President Barack Obama arrives in Israel for the
first foreign trip of his second term. The purpose of his visit is plain, except
to Netanyahu’s domestic rivals: Facing a 50 percent cutback in military
spending, the Obama administration cannot credibly threaten to go to war against
a recalcitrant Iran. But the US president may still wave the Israeli military
option in Tehran’s face.
Not that the ayatollahs are likely to be impressed. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad
have both dismissed talks with Washington "with a gun" at their head, meaning
that they are not scared of the Israeli gun the Americans are putting to their
heads.
In fact, the Islamic rulers of Tehran are reported by debkafile’s intelligence and Iranian
sources to be fully confident that they are home and dry as a nuclear power
after a secret US Pentagon research study was leaked that “casts doubt on
whether the multibillion-dollar missile defense system planned for Europe”
(originally by the Bush administration) “can ever protect the US from Iranian
missiles as intended.”
Clearly the missile shield against Iran, which aroused ire in Moscow, looks
like falling under the defense budget axe.
The missile shield in Europe was
also designed to defend Israel and Turkey against Iranian ballistic missile
attack. Leaving it unfinished because of “flaws” exposes both those countries to
such attack.
President Obama will no doubt tell Netanyahu that the system for
intercepting medium-range Iranian missiles is to be scrapped. However, he will
have to take into account that if the Iranians do finally manage to put a
capsule in orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, they will be able to fire
a ballistic missile at any point on earth as well, including the United States.
Even if they did fail to put a primate in space, they will keep on trying and
advancing until they get there.
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