The "Khameini move" - Ahmadinejad OUT of Iran nuke talks?

Iran Soft-Posturing For Nuke Talks

Steve Schippert

[link to rapidrecon.threatswatch.org]

The United Kingdom’s Sunday Times is reporting that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini is considering removing Ahmadinejad and his current team from any representation of Iran on its nuclear program and replacing them with “a more moderate team for international negotiations on the supervision of its nuclear facilities.”

The ‘Khameini’ move, if implemented, would come towards the end of the 60-day deadline the UN Security Council demanded for Iran’s cessation of uranium enrichment activities. It would also come after Khameini’s health has taken such a drastic turn that he was reported as being dead, which was immediately followed by a sudden move – claimed to be at the behest of the ailing Supreme Leader – of round criticism of Ahmadinejad in Iranian state-controlled newspapers and a directive to the Mejlis permitting them to draft a formal admonishment from the elected body.

All of this unusually robust activity while failing to meet with foreign visitors or customarily delivering Friday sermons.

Expect Europe, Russia and China to react within hours at the news of potentially renewed nuclear talks with Iran, perhaps even extending or otherwise circumventing the looming UN Security Council mandated enrichment cessation deadline, with ripple effects on every other dealing regarding Iran. Further anaylisis will be provided as this develops, and it most certainly will.

The nuclear crisis looks to once again serve to obscure the true nature of the threat from Iran for those who wish not to acknowledge it, much less address it.

It’s the terrorism, stupid.

In yesterday’s commentary, Talk Iran’s Walk: A Start, addressed was the fact that Iran walks the walk as the world’s foremost state sponsor of international terrorism, crossing sectarian lines and supporting terrorists of varying stripes, from Hizballah to al-Qaeda to Hamas and including killing American servicemen in Iraq.

The world will soon want to talk the talk of nuclear discussions with a newly sidelined menace in Ahmadinejad removed from the uncomfortable landscape.

If we are going to talk at all, we would be well advised to Talk Iran’s Walk rather than continue to ignore it, watching with seeming disinterest as more US soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines die at the hands of an aggressive enemy we prefer to relegate to the United Nations for discussion on a weapon that they do not yet even possess.

The weapons they do possess are killing us.

And everyone’s OK with this?

January 21, 2007 2:56 AM