The Last Thing The Middle East Needs

In short... a nuclear weapon. When looking at the Middle East (Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc.) One can easily see alot of similarities. Israel has a policy called "nuclear opacity" or "nuclear ambiguity," which consists of refusing to confirm or deny that it has nuclear weapons at all. In 1986, however, whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear weapons worker, published pictures of nuclear weapons facilities in Israel. Today, experts agree that Israel has between 100 and 300 warheads (and Israel doesn't deny it). Besides that fact, none of the middle eastern nations have nuclear weapons. Given the instability of the region (even before the war in Iraq), it's easy to see why this is a good thing. Enter Iran. A theocratic republic. I didn't capitalize on purpose. Their new president Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad is about as extreme as they come and no doubt an ultra-conservative. I'd rather call him a Bin-Laden conservative. The following is an article from Time magazine by Elaine Shannon(Feb. 13, 2006 pg.14).

Green salt isn't something you'd want to sprinkle on french fries. It's what nuclear chemist call uranium tetrafluoride, a grainy substance that can be used to make fuel for a bomb..... Iran has long maintained that it wants to enrich uranium to generate nuclear power, not to make a bomb. Bur disclosure of the (Green Salt) project- and its apparent links to the testing of high explosives- seems to have been just what Washington and its allies needed to send Iran to the U.N. Securit Council for possible sanctions, a measure the IAEA's board of 35 member nations approved last week in a 27 to 3 vote, with five abstentions..... Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice helped firm up support for the IAEA vote by having aides brief foreign officials on a trove of documents that, according to U.S. diplomatic sources, expose a clandestine Iranian military nuclear-research operation....

Even Russia and China with economic ties to Tehran, now seem convinced that it may all add up to a nuclear-weapons program. Rice won those countries' support at a dinner in London last week, hosted by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. "She made the argument," says U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, "that we all have an interest in not introducing another nuclear power into the Mideast."