Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Wife

Finally, a photo of the Islamic Republic of Iran President Ahmadinejad’s wife!!! We still don’t know her name, but we finally have a picture of the woman who actually married the Aha-mama-jihad!! We do know that she has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and teaches in a university. We know that she likes traveling with her husband in the official presidential airplane all over the world and that she has influenced her husband on women’s rights in Iran. I’ve noticed how open-minded he is in regards to women’s rights - haven’t you?

So here she is. Isn’t she lovely?

One of John McCain’s strengths is his strong grasp on the conflicts that our country is currently faced with and his understanding of how to deal with conflict. He certainly knows that pretending conflict is not there doesn’t make it go away.

While John McCain has been touring the Middle East this week he has visited King Abdullah II of Jordan and Israel. He has voiced his support of Israel as well as hope for peace in the Middle East as a whole.

The Jerusalem Post

“If Hamas/Hizbullah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn’t the only enemy,” Arizona Sen. McCain said, in the only interview he is giving to the Israeli media during his visit here.

“They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel.”

McCain calls Israel a partner, not a client. He says as partners it is not our place to tell Israel how to handle the conflicts they have with their neighbors. While he would not recommend that Israel not talk to Hamas he said that he is personally against it.

“Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction,” McCain said in a lounge in Jerusalem’s David Citadel Hotel, as Lieberman and Graham listened.

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“I really think that we should understand that the US and Israel are partners. Israel is not a client of the United States,” he said. “If you are partners, then you don’t dictate what you think the terms of the survival of a nation should be.”

Asked whether Israel was using the right tactics in trying to quell the rocket fire on Sderot and the western Negev, McCain praised Defense Minister Ehud Barak - terming him “one of the great military people” he has met - and added, “I can’t give you a good answer as to how you respond to these rocket attacks.”

But, he then said dryly, “I can tell you that I believe that if rocket attacks came across the border of the United States of America, that the American people would probably demand pretty vigorous actions in response. I think I know my constituency in the state of Arizona, and they would be pretty exercised if rockets came across our southern border.”

And what did he have to say about Iran ….

“I think Iran is a threat to the region,” McCain said, adding that not only were the Iranians “obviously pursuing nuclear weapons,” they were also arming and training extremists to send into Iraq, supporting Hizbullah and influencing Syria.

“At the end of the day, we can still not afford to have Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “We know they have ambitions that are not just aimed at the State of Israel.”

These ambitions included “destabilization of the entire region upon which the United States’ national security interests rest,” he said.

McCain is in the region with his close friends, fellow Senators, Joe Lieberman and Lesley Graham. Here are some photos from their trip. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

John McCain has consistently been an ardent supporter of Israel. He has reiterated his support of Israel during his current trip to the Middle East by verbalizing his support of Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as the Capital of the Jewish State.

Haaretz

Before his arrival in Israel on Tuesday, McCain said he supports Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. He told reporters in Jordan: “I support Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

Later, speaking at a meeting with President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, McCain said he was concerned by Iran’s negative influence on the region - namely, the fact that it trains, finances and otherwise assists radical groups - and that his concern had merely been heightened by his current tour of the region.

Of course, the Arab News took exception to McCain’s stance. They emphasize the importance of McCain continuing work on the Middle East peace process. However, it appears from their view the only cause of conflict there is because of the Jews and that they only resolution has to do with the Jewish community giving in the every demand made by the Palestinians.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam Hadad has warned that the “countdown to Israel’s destruction has begun,” in an interview published Thursday in an Iranian newspaper. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday called Israel a “filthy germ” and “savage beast” established by Western states in their bid to dominate Middle East…

read more | digg story

TEHRAN — A young Iranian man has been sentenced to hang for repeatedly drinking alcohol which is strictly banned in the Islamic republic, the Etemad newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The 22-year-old, identified only as Mohsen, was handed down the death penalty by a criminal court after being found guilty of drinking alcohol for a fourth time, the daily said.

“The defendant in this case has been sentenced to death and the official notification will be given soon,” it quoted Judge Jalil Jalili as saying.

“According to article 179 of the Islamic penal code, if someone drinks twice and is punished for it on each occasion he should be executed on the third offence,” Jalili said.

Mohsen was punished for drinking alcohol three times in May, June and October 2006. In the latest case, he was arrested for drunken and disorderly behavior on the street, the daily said.

The young man had expressed his repentance in a letter, but the judges of Branch 72 of Tehran penal court sentenced him to death.

The usual punishment for a single drinking offence is 80 lashes, according to Iran’s penal code which is based in Islamic sharia law.

His execution still needs to be confirmed by Iran’s supreme court before being carried out, as with all executions in the country. There are no recent records of any people being hanged in Iran for drinking alcohol.

The consumption of alcohol has been strictly forbidden since the 1979 Islamic revolution, although some Iranians flout the rules and the police regularly announce major alcohol seizures.

Only recognized Christian minorities in Iran, such as the Armenians, are allowed to produce and consume alcohol, discreetly and behind closed doors in order not to offend Islamic sensibilities.

Iran has seen an upsurge in executions — mostly of rapists, murderers and drug-traffickers — in recent months as the authorities implement a campaign which they say is aimed at improving security in society.

Apparently, the Iranian government has been lenient on this young man as he was supposed to have been executed on the third offense of drinking alcohol.

The last sentence in this article is chilling. Where have I heard that before? The part about cleansing society of undesirables? Oh. I remember. Nazi Germany.

You may remember the big uproar created last fall when Columbia University invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak there. The university apparently takes some pride in their willingness to embrace psychotic dictators and enemies of our country. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger attempted to redeem himself a little bit by giving Ahmadinejad a bit of a hard time during his introduction, but it was really too little too late. Ahmadinejad was able to use the situation to his benefit in the propaganda he put out upon his return to Iran.

All of that happened last fall and everyone has moved on. Except the liberal professors at Columbia who are still stinging from the incident. Ahmadinejad got what he wanted from the incident and went home quite satisfied. He’s still carrying on about how he’s going to destroy the US and Israel and even sends his little speed boats to try to evoke an incident with US Warships. But these professors are projecting their own feelings on Ahmadinnerjacket and think they have to go apologize to him on behalf of Columbia University and the United States.

From Dhimmi Watch

NEW YORK (MNA) – An academic delegation of Columbia University professors and deans of faculties plans to visit Tehran to officially apologize to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

The delegation plans to express regret for the insulting remarks Columbia University President Lee Bollinger directed at Ahmadinejad on September 24 in his introductory speech, the Mehr News Agency correspondent in New York reported.

Since the incident, the deans and professors from the faculties of history, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, philosophy, and Islamic studies have criticized Bollinger’s behavior toward Ahmadinejad.

A member of the delegation, who requested anonymity, said the main goal of the visit is to meet the Iranian president and officially apologize to him.

These guys are pathetic. Don’t you just know that Ahmadinejad is loving every minute of this.

The U.S. Navy releases video of the Iranian boats that swarmed US Warships a couple of days ago.

video thanks to 123Beta

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Big Dog’s Weblog, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, Wake Up America, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

A little tidbit of news that has been lost in all the media covers of politics and the New Hampshire caucuses is the fact that Iran made aggressive gestures towards the United States over the weekend. Five Iranian speed boats with mounted guns swarmed three US Warships. They were seen tossing boxes into the path of the warships, presumably explosives. They messaged the ships in English that they were coming and would blow them up ‘in a couple of minutes’. The speed boats came within 200 yards of the US Warships on at least two occasions.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Armed Iranian speedboats swarmed three US warships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, radioing a threat to blow them up and sending tensions flaring ahead of President George W. Bush’s trip to the Mideast, US officials said Monday.

“I’m coming at you and you will blow up in a couple of minutes,” a Defense Department official quoted the radio transmission as saying.

Crew aboard two of the five speedboats also dumped floating boxes into the path of one of the vessels during the incident Sunday morning, but it passed them without incident, officials said.

The US government accused Iran of engaging in provocative and potentially hostile behavior and vowed “to confront Iranian behavior where it seeks to do harm to either us or our friends and allies in the region.”

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the incident was “quite troubling actually and a matter of real concern.”

“This is a very volatile area and the risk of an incident and of an incident escalating is real. I can’t imagine what was on their minds,” he told reporters in San Diego, California.

But Iran played down the encounter, which came just days before Bush travels to the region to boost the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and assure allies that Washington continues to view Iran as a threat.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini called it “an ordinary occurrence which happens every now and then for both sides.”

Gates said there had been two or three such incidents — “maybe not quite as dramatic as this one” — over the past year.

Pentagon officials said the Iranian speedboats swarmed the US ships in international waters in the strait on Sunday at around 0400 GMT, peeling off into two groups as they approached.

The cruiser USS Port Royal, the destroyer USS Hopper, and the frigate USS Ingraham received a radio call threatening to blow them up and saw two of the speedboats drop floating boxes into the path of the Ingraham, officials said.

“They were called on radio, ship’s whistles were sounded — those sorts of things — to draw attention to the fact that their maneuvers were a cause of concern to the commanding officers,” said Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the US Fifth Fleet.

He said the warnings went unheeded, and that the speedboats came within less than 500 meters (yards) of the US boats on a couple of occasions. Other defense officials put the distance at a couple of hundred meters.

Ship commanders responded by increasing their vessels’ “onboard readiness,” but no shots were fired, the admiral said. “In this case, the commanding officers did not believe they needed to fire warning shots.”

Cosgriff said the incident lasted less than 30 minutes, ending when the speedboats turned and headed back to Iranian waters.

I wonder how enemy boats can come that close to US warships and be able to speed off when the warships prepare to fire on them. That’s how Sailors get killed. I suppose I understand why the ships Captains showed restraint, but that takes me really trying to understand. What if those boats had delivered on their threats. Its not like they can’t or wouldn’t. Remember the USS Cole? Those boats should have been in pieces at the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz. But they’re not. They are getting bolder as they get a pass on their increasingly aggressive behaviors.

Get more details at AubreyJ

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Big Dog’s Weblog, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, Wake Up America, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

During an interview on IsraelNationalRadio’s with Tovia Singer about the recent Bush Administration intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities Bolton and Singer had this interesting exchange about BDS in the State Department..

When Singer said he wanted to bring up the recent American intelligence report that downplayed the Iranian nuclear capabilities and brought great joy to Iran and to the left, Bolton said, “I don’t think we should call it an intelligence report, but rather a document of the Executive Branch. It was a highly-politicized document, written by some who are not even intelligence community professionals, but rather from the State Department… In theory, they all work for the President, but they don’t like his policies and they think that he’s too belligerent towards Iran - though my own personal view is that the President was not tough enough - and this paper was intended to undercut the Bush position. This report has put Bush’s policy on the bottom of the ocean.” (source)

This report has succeeded in exactly that. There is no way President Bush can effectively lobby the United Nations to deal with Iran and its nuclear program. Thanks to someone’s shortsighted, politically motivated actions, no action will be made against Iran for non-compliance with multiple United Nations resolutions.

Crossposted at Conservative Thoughts

Crossposted from Conservative Thoughts

Iran continues to tighten the noose around women’s freedom. The latest knot in that rope is banning women from tucking their pants in their boots out of fear someone may see the shape of their legs.

It still surprises me that Islamic men are not insulted by the way women are forced to dress on their behalf. After all if they were honorable and decent gentlemen instead of barbaric animals, all these ridiculous measures to “hide” women from them would not be necessary.

Why would you want your country and culture to treat you mother, wife or daughters this way? Shameful.

Tehran, 12 Dec. (AKI) - Women have been banned from wearing boots and on the streets of Tehran.

Police chief, General Ahmad Radan, announced the ban on Wednesday saying that boots could only be worn if they were covered by pants.

“If boots are not covered by pants that fall to the ankles, they show the female shape and that is therefore in contradiction with Islamic dress code,” said Radan.

Iranian women can no longer leave home with their pants pushed inside their boots and they can no longer wear hats without a veil.

“A hat is not an adequate substitute for a veil or a hijab,” he said. ” If someone really wants to wear a hat, they can put it on the veil.”

Feminist Rezvan Moghdaddam told Adnkronos International (AKI) that police should be concerned about drug traffickers than street fashion.

“Instead of being busy with women’s hats and boots, the police would be better catching the merchants of death that kill our young people with drugs,” she said from Tehran.

“Our cities are infested by delinquents and security forces are only worried about how women dress, all this is really ridiculous.”

Generale Radan said decision to apply the Islamic code had come from a committee composed of the Revolutionary Guard, the judiciary, police and officials from the intelligence ministry and the ministry of culture and Islamic orientation.

How incredible! How incredibly convenient! It seems the National Intelligence Estimate has been declassified and guess what - NIE Report: Iran Halted Nuclear Weapons Program Years Ago.

ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, Jonathan Karl, Luis Martinez and Kirit Radia Report: In a stunning reversal of Bush administration conventional wisdom, a new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies concludes Iran shelved it’s nuclear weapons program over four years ago.

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” reads a declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate key findings. “We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a weapon is late 2009.”

The entire NIE report will remain classified, however the office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified version of the key findings that can be read HERE.

Did I mention how convenient this is at this particular moment in time? The Iranians have shelved their uranium enrichment program, but they will still be capable of enriching uranium in a couple of years. This report has a little something for everyone.

Perhaps someone should inform Iranian President Amadinnerjacket that his program has been shelved. He doesn’t seem to know it. Just in the last month …. Iran Graphically Illustrates Their Threats Against America and Israel and he announced that Iran Produces Nuclear Fuel Pellets of Enriched Uranium.

Here is the White House reaction.

Samson Blinded sees this as an arranged peace deal between the United States and Iran.

According to the US-Iran peace deal, Iran winded down its support for Iraqi guerrillas, and the US guaranteed it won’t bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran made good on its promise, and allowed the US Administration a tactical PR victory of reduced casualties in Iraq. The US Administration waited with fulfilling its part of the game until after the Annapolis peace show. Refusing to attack Iran over its nuclear program earlier would have likely derailed Israeli commitment to the Annapolis peace parley.

He goes on to state that the US sold Israeli security for Iranian assistance in Iraq. I’m not sure about that or to what extent that might or might not be. There are still Iranian bombs killing Americans (and Iraqis) in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan. Their interference in Iraq and Afghanistan and their supplying troops and weapons to be used against American Soldiers has not changed. So I’m not sure that this is the motive for this sudden turn of events although I can’t argue as to what the motive would be.

I do believe that Christians in the United States will never sell out Israel. The only way that would happen would be if it happened out of sight and under the table so that people didn’t realize what was happening. Unfortunately, that’s how most things happen in politics. Its done deals before the people know about it. Still, it goes against everything that we as Christians believe in to turn against Israel. I just don’t believe that would happen with the knowledge of the people.

AJ Strata is also commenting.

The NIE is quite clear. We know they stopped, we have no intel on whether they are still stopped or not. The reporting that Iran has stopped as of now is not accurate. Here is the scary part – Iran is still processing fuel! They don’t NEED to process fuel for Nuclear Energy. Russia has offered to SELL THEM fuel if they return the spent fuel so it cannot be used to make weapons

Right Wing Nuthouse has a bit more optimism than I am prone to at this point.

For those disposed to disbelieve or reject this NIE, it would be well to remember that if a consensus about something this vital to our security was found among such a fractious, quarrelling, multi-agenda driven group of spooks, you can bet the information it’s based on is pretty solid.

And what’s with this news out of Iran about their nuclear program? How does this all fit into the unexpected news from the NEI? (from NRO)

A French diplomat leaks information about the latest round of EU-Iran nuclear crisis negotiations. He describes the talks a “catastrophe,” says Said Jalili told EU’s Javier Solana that Iran would not honor agreements between Iran and the EU made by former Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani.

Said Jalili, secretary of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council: “United Nations Security Council not able to stop Iran’s nuclear program with new resolutions.”

Ahmadinejad: “We have shown that development is possible without U.S. assistance…There is not going to be a third [UN Security Council] Resolution.”

Vice Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Abou-Torabi Fard: “Our victories in the nuclear field, especially after entering the nuclear club, are bigger than our victory in the ‘Sacred Defense’ [the Iran-Iraq war].”

Jalili heads to Moscow

IAEA approves Russian nuclear fuel for Bushehr.

Others are reacting: Michelle Malkin, The Weekly Standard, Hot Air, The Unalienable Right, MacsMind

Iran: We have nuke fuel pellets

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has produced its own nuclear fuel pellets of enriched uranium for the first time to power its under construction heavy water research reactor, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said Saturday according to the state news agency.

Iran has long been working on its uranium enrichment capability to fuel its developing nuclear power program, including a 40-megawatt heavy water nuclear reactor under construction in Arak in the center of the country. The announcement indicates they have finally completed the nuclear fuel cycle.

The U.S. and its allies have called to a halt to the enrichment process which it says could be used to produce weapons, a charge Iran denies.

“Fuel pellets to be used in the 40-megawatt Arak research reactor have been produced,” IRNA quoted Aghazadeh as saying Saturday.

Producing enriched uranium fuel pellets is the final stage in a long process that begins with extracting the uranium ore, converting into a concentrate called yellow cake before processing into a gas that then has to be enriched using centrifuges.

Aghazadeh, who is also the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said they are already testing the fuel pellets and the fuel rods produced at its nuclear fuel production facilities in Isfahan, central Iran.

Just a couple of weeks ago Ahmadinejad was boasting that Iran had started uranium enrichment and now we learn that they have succeeded. About the same time they made that annoucement, they gave a graphic diagram illustrating what they wanted to do with their nuclear capabilities.

And the beat goes on ….. how safe does this make you feel?

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