In The News: Iran has enriched uranium

Well, it finally happened. Iran has successfully enriched uranium, a huge step in developing nuclear energy, among other things (ahem). Let Cold War II begin. No, it's not like that, or so says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He insists that Iran does not plan to develop nuclear weapons, they are merely concerned with energy. Ok, good, now we can just all relax, forget about any threat, and ignore them as they make nuclear weapons! Bullshit they don't plan to make nuclear weapons, that's exactly what they want to do. That has been their goal for a while. Last year, they had a nuclear program with Russia. Russia would supply Iran with fuel for its new nuclear reactor just as long as Iran would send back the spent fuel rods. It was cut off because Iran refused to hold up its end of the bargain and return the spent rods to Russia. This was a huge deal of course, because those rods contain plutonium, which is very radioactive, is the key element in nuclear weapons, and has a half life of this will be around forever! (24,110 years to be exact). Not to mention Iran isn't exactly the safest of hands for something like this to be in (Putin, what the hell were you thinking anyways?). What could Iran possibly have wanted with those spent rods? Interesting. But hey, it's different this time.

Naturally, this hasn't gone over that well for everyone else. The White House announced its displeasure, with Scott McClellan saying these events "continue to show that Iran is moving in the wrong direction." The U.N. Security Council has demanded Iran stop all enrichment activity by April 28. Iran refused, big surprise.

This is really helping relations with Iran, isn't it? They're just slapping us in the face with this. "Hey look, we have nuclear capabilities now, and there's nothing you can do about it." I'm pretty sure that was a direct quote from the Iranian President, yeah. I think they're just saying they don't intend to make nuclear weapons because they know that process takes a long time. They aren't close to having the resources to make a nuclear weapon. Yet. They just want everyone to butt out so they can have enough time to make them. It's very unsettling thinking about the possibilities of Iran with a nuclear weapon. I'll tell you how this thing works: Iran + nuclear weapons = bad situation.

In my opinion, the U.N. needs to grow a pair, go in there and stop this right now (yeah, right). If not the U.N., then somebody, although I think we are out of the running barring our recent successes, notably when we proved so conclusively that Iraq had WOMDs. There is no reason for Iran to have nuclear power though, that's a common sense issue. If you know enough of your politics, you know this is a bad situation to boot. The problem is, they won't go in. They'll keep telling them to stop, and Iran will keep saying no, and it will be this shoving match that doesn't get anywhere. Meanwhile, Iran is producing God knows what (my guess is nuclear weapons).

I've got April 28 marked on my calendar. We'll see where things are at then.