I had added this as a post in the Iran-America thread, but decided to make it a separate topic, since the other thread was more or less a watered down pissing contest, and this is a much more potentially significant event.
Is anyone else seeing any more information about this, and have any ideas of what we might be looking at now with an Ahmanatujob ally in there?

"Things have just gotten a tad more tense with Iran and it's nuclear program.

Ali Larijani, the chief nuclear negotiator for Iran, has resigned. While Ahmanutjob was busy posturing and declaring Iran will not back down, Larijani was the voice of the moderate Iranian people handling the negotiations with Europe and the IAEA, and was part of a small group of officials who were trying to temper the Iranian President's positions.

Larijani was appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmanutjob apparently has Khamenei's blessings to continue with his hardline approach, appointing an ally to fill the position now.

How much any of this can be related to the recent visit of Putin remains to be seen, but it does ratchet up the tension in the Mideast, knowing that Iran will now be even more uncompromising regarding their nuclear aims.


On a side note, last night SNL rebroadcast the LeBron James episode with the love song to Ahmanutjob skit, and once again I did not get it copied. :("
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All Ive read was todays paper noted Cheney making warnings that Iran is a growing obstacle to peace and promising severe consequences if they dotn abandon there nuclear program and Bush saying a nuclear armed Iran could lead to WW3 while pushing EU to impose stiffer sanctions on Iran.

I caught this blurb in the St Paul Pioneer Press today:

"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cut short a planned two-day visit to Armenia on Tuesday, officials there said, as the hard-line leader faced growing unhappiness back home over the resignation of Iran's top nuclear negotiator. The sudden replacement of negotiator Ali Larijani fueled already increasing complaints - even from conservatives who were once his supporters - that the fire-brand president was mismanaging Iran's most vital issues, particularly the confrontation with the West over the nuclear program."

It would appear all is not well in the land of Ahmanutjob. People are actually daring to voice discontent? Where would they get such ideas?




On a side note, thousands of university students clashed with police while protesting Chavez' attempts to change the Constitution of Venezuela to allow him to run for re-election indefinitely. In addition to taking away limits on election terms, there is also a lessening of civil liberties, in that authorities in a "state of emergency", could detain citizens without charges.

Where do people get these ideas, anyway?

From visiting Castro in Cuba last week maybe ?