September 25, 2009
More (NOT) Shocking News of the Day: Ahmadinejad said Obama is making a mistake!
This would almost be comical if it weren’t such a serious threat to the United States and our allies:
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned President Barack Obama against pressing Tehran about new revelations that Iran has been constructing a secret uranium-enrichment plant. “If I were Obama’s adviser, I would definitely advise him to refrain making this statement because it is definitely a mistake,” Ahmadinejad told TIME in New York on Friday. “It would definitively be a mistake.” His comment came as President Obama, speaking at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, made a dramatic announcement that Iran has been constructing a second uranium-enrichment facility whose existence had been kept secret in violation of the non-proliferation agreements to which Tehran is a signatory.
Flanked by Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama warned that Iran would be held accountable if it failed to live up to its international obligations. Fearing imminent disclosure of the plant being built into a mountain near the seminary city of Qom, the Iranians had earlier this week written to the International Atomic Energy Agency to confirm its existence.
(Read the full transcript of TIME’s exclusive interview with Ahmadinejad.)But in an exclusive interview with the editors of TIME that coincided with Obama’s announcement, Ahmadinejad insisted Iran was not keeping anything from the IAEA. “We have no secrecy, we work within the framework of the IAEA,” he said. Still, the Iranian leader seemed nonplussed by the news that Obama was revealing the Qom plant’s existence. Ahmadinejad’s response meandered from the defensive to the aggressive. “This does not mean we must inform Mr. Obama’s administration of every facility that we have,” he said, warning that if Obama brings up the uranium facility, it “simply adds to the list of issues to which the United States owes the Iranian nation an apology over.” And he boasted that Obama’s “mistakes” work in Iran’s favor.
And, in related news, looks like some of what I said in my post this morning was pretty darn accurate:
Iran has proven adept over the years at dividing the international community, weakening the affect of past sanctions and buying time to advance its nuclear program, which by now has stockpiled enough low-enriched uranium to enable it to produce sufficient highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon. It seems as if the Iranian leadership may have pulled the same trick again. Perhaps Merkel really did have a more pressing engagement — the German embassy did not immediately return calls requesting an explanation. But for all the positive spin U.S. officials had put on Russia’s hints of greater willingness to support new sanctions, Medvedev’s absence from the podium on Friday spoke far more loudly of the difficulty the U.S. faces in mustering a durable coaltion for sanctions. Without Russia, it will be very difficult to build a united international front, even in light of Iran’s new transgressions.
Remember that guy on my first post who said that Obama did the right thing because he got Russia and China on our side? Ha! What an effing joke! I don’t see how people can be so stupid, especially when it comes to our enemies.
People around the world who hate America don’t hate America any less because Barack Obama was elected. And, nations are not going to be more willing to stand with us now because there’s a half-black man in office. Morons.
Bush didn’t act unilaterally because he wanted to; he acted unilaterally because he needed to in order to ensure the country he was elected to lead and protect was safe and secure. I’m no Bush fan, but at least he didn’t see the presidency as a popularity contest and sacrifice the safety of her citizens in order to make friends around the globe.
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