Last Thursday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the Islamic Republic was ready to renew nuclear talks with members of the UN Security council; United States, Russia, China, France and Britain, and Germany. Most likely the action was the result of the oil Embargo placed on the Islamic Nation and pressure placed on the Iranian leadership by the Russians.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Iranian press “Russia wants a quick renewal of talks between the international community and Iran on the country’s nuclear program and supports holding the meetings in Turkey [without preconditions].”
Embargo
President Ahmadinejad publicly admitted the economic sanctions placed on the country’s central bank and oil production has created hardship for the Iranian people. Oil sales account for 80% of export revenue. Since the embargo Iranians have be dumping rials (their own currency) for gold or foreign currency, fearing that their money would become worthless. This currency crisis contradicts the regimes rhetoric that an embargo would have little effect. The lack of faith of the Iranian people in the regime has to make it nervous about creating an environment similar to the one that brought about the uprisings in Egypt and Libya last year.
Nuclear Program
The Iranian President stands firm that the sanctions will not discourage the regime from going forward with its nuclear program. Despite Iran’s insistence that it only exists for peaceful purposes, Western Intelligence agencies and the UN believe they have to be performing weapons test in secret. The Iranians have offered to allow the UN Agency full supervision of its nuclear program if the West agrees to lift the sanctions against them. However, the Iranian President insists that the Islamic Republic has the right to enrich uranium.
Speculation among Western Diplomats is that the offer was nothing more than an effort to buy time to enrich more uranium and hide any evidence of weapon development. So far, there has been no official request for talks form the Iranians, right now it is just talk. Perhaps the Persian Napoleon is waiting for his letter from Obama asking him to come to Turkey for talks.
By Jim Emerson, Coach Is Right
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If those controlling the government of Iran genuinely want to use nuclear fission for peaceful civilian purposes, they can and should consider developing the Thorium fuel cycle, which has a number of advantages over the Uranium fuel cycle.
And this includes “better resistance to nuclear weapons proliferation.”
It being a matter of simple fact that nations all over the world do not trust the people who control the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the resources to build nuclear weapons, the legitimate civilian power generation needs of the Iranian people can be well-satisfied by the intrinsically safer and lower-cost use of Thorium fission.
If they were to take that course of action, no one could question the Islamic Republic’s intention to maintain international peace. What’s more, they would gain a tremendous edge (and a critically important track record) in making a relatively new zero-carbon electrical power generation technology available to the whole world.
The Thorium fuel cycle offers one of the best abilities to usefully destroy bomb-grade plutonium from old nuclear and thermonuclear warheads. To the extent that the existing nuclear powers wish to draw down their weapons inventories, Thorium powerplants can play a strategic role in the promotion of nuclear disarmament to whatever extent that this is desired, at the same time “burning” Plutonium (a deadly heavy metal toxin as well as a high-level radioactive waste material) to create valuable electricity.
Rather than this idiotic scramble for yet another “Islamic bomb” (remember, Pakistan got there first), the mullahcracy in Iran could be putting their efforts into making their nation the world leader in a form of peaceful nuclear proliferation, the development of safer and cheaper fission generation that will give the Iranian people desperately needed low-cost electrical power and the nation itself vastly improved international standing.
I would not be so certain that Iran has blinked. This whole thing sounds dangerously like a ploy out of North Koreas’ play book. Let’s not forget how Kim Jong Il kept offering to negotiate and often pledged that their nuclear facilities were being dismantled. Now, the NKs have nukes and they are impossible to deal with on any level. They are emboldened enough to launch missles at SK and threaten Japan. Watch the political pressure placed on the rest of the middle east when Akkie has an a-bomb. Who is going to keep the waterways open for oil shipments then??? The Iranian regime has been waging a war against the U.S. since 1979. It is about time to throw a little something back their way.