Iran to world: "Drop Dead"

Iran imports a significant amount of refined petroleum products as it lacks the refining infrastructure to do so itself. So, instead of investing in this refining technology, what does Iran want to do? Build 20 nuclear plants.

An Iranian official said that country plans to construct 20 nuclear power plants.

The Fars News Agency reported Mohammad Hosein Farhangi, a member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, said the next Iranian state budget bill orders regulation of the plan, study and construction of the 20 plants.

Farhangi made the announcement at a convention of "resistance units" commanders, the agency said.

The diplomatic waltzes continue over the Russian plan to process Iranian nuclear waste in Russia. As discussed before though, Iran will absolutely not let go of the nuclear material it needs for its nuclear weapons program. These talks will have predictable results.

Iran vowed on Monday to pursue its nuclear research even if talks in Moscow produce agreement on a Russian compromise aimed at keeping bomb-grade enriched uranium out of the Islamic Republic's hands.

There was no word on the outcome of closed-door Kremlin talks between Russian and Iranian officials on Moscow's offer to enrich uranium on Iran's behalf for use in power stations. A Russian source said the two sides would meet again on Tuesday.

"It is too early to talk about results. The negotiations are continuing," Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

The United States and the European Union trio of France, Britain and Germany -- the countries pressing Iran hardest on its nuclear program -- have welcomed the Russian plan.

But U.S. and other officials are skeptical, saying Tehran is keeping the Russian offer on the table to buy time.

"The Iranians will try to throw sand in everybody's eyes, as they have for the last three years," the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said of the Moscow talks. "We'll see what results," he told reporters in New York.

With remarkably convenient timing, clerics in Iran have decreed that using nuclear weapons is peachy keen. From MEMRI:

On February 16, 2006, the reformist Internet daily Rooz (www.roozonline.com ) reported for the first time that extremist clerics from Qom had issued what the daily called "a new fatwa," which states that "shari'a does not forbid the use of nuclear weapons."

The following are excerpts from the Rooz report by Shahram Rafizadeh: [1]

"When the Entire World is Armed With Nuclear Weapons, it is Permissible to Use These Weapons as a Counter-[Measure]"

"The spiritual leaders of the ultra-conservatives [in Iran] have accepted the use of nuclear weapons as lawful in the eyes of shari'a. Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi [who is Iranian President Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor], has spoken for the first time of using nuclear weapons as a counter-measure. He stated that 'in terms of shari'a, it all depends on the goal.'

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