Word: ahmadinejad
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...anybody assumed Iran would blink in its dangerous standoff with the West, they were wrong. Ten days ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted overwhelmingly to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a defiant speech last Saturday to tens of thousands of Iranians marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Repeating that Iran "will not forgo its irrefutable right" to develop nuclear energy, Ahmadinejad warned that Iran may even withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the IAEA-policed pact defining the rules of peaceful nuclear energy programs...
...Ahmadinejad committing diplomatic suicide, considering how even Russia and China are now showing a degree of solidarity with the American-led pressure on Iran? Ahmadinejad, who came to power in an upset election victory last year, is a hard-liner. But not even moderate Iranian leaders accept Western demands that Iran completely abandon the right, guaranteed under the NPT, to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. After six months in office, Ahmadinejad has concluded that no Iranian compromise will satisfy Washington. By restarting enrichment, says one Tehran analyst, Iran is simply saying that it will not permit the West to determine...
...Ahmadinejad seems none too worried about U.N. sanctions. As he no doubt sees it, Russia and China are unlikely to go along with such punitive measures, because of their deep economic interests in Iran. The wider international community, he knows, is concerned that a crisis involving Iran could spike oil prices even higher. And he surely calculates a certain advantage to Tehran in relation to Washington right now, created by the foreign policy challenges the Bush Administration faces in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories, where Iran now enjoys influence with key local players...
...Back in 2000, the Russian president had told a G-8 summit in Japan that he had convinced North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his missile program. Sounded good, until Kim explained he was joking. This time, Putin seems to be the butt of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's practical joke...
...threat of a resurgent Iran, with its nuclear ambitions and its crude new President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has concentrated the minds of both Western diplomats and Middle Eastern Sunni governments. Suddenly the prospect of a permanent Iraqi government dominated by Iran-friendly religious Shi'ites seems a more pressing problem. "If the negotiations in Iraq do not yield a government acceptable to Sunnis," the Middle Eastern diplomat told me, "we could be looking at a civil war that becomes a regional conflict...