Word: uranium
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...critical issue of Iran's uranium-enrichment program, Tehran and Washington are now engaged in a game of geopolitical chicken, which favors hard-liners on both sides, making compromise more difficult, escalation more likely and war - by accident, if not by design - a greater possibility than before. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after stepping up defiance of U.S.-led efforts to compel Iran to halt enrichment, this week appeared to gain greater domestic influence over the issue with the replacement of Iran's pragmatic top nuclear negotiator by a key Ahmadinejad ally. After President Bush invoked the specter of World...
...perfect storm. The decline of U.S. fortunes in Iraq has been accompanied by a rise in Iranian assertiveness, which has intensified with Ahmadinejad's recent tough talk. Trumpeting Iran's nuclear ambitions as a nationalist cause, Ahmadinejad rejected the agreement by his moderate predecessor, Mohammed Khatami, to voluntarily suspend uranium-enrichment during three years of negotiations with European powers. Ahmadinejad abandoned Khatami's "dialogue of civilizations" for more confrontational rhetoric, calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and goading the West by denying the Holocaust. Iran enthusiastically backed Hizballah and Hamas in their confrontations with Israel, and denounced...
...against Iran, to the anger and alarm of others in the Iranian leadership structure, who accuse him of downplaying a real danger. Ahmadinejad says that he considers the U.N.'s case against Iran's nuclear program closed, and dismisses U.N. sanctions as "piles of paper." Bragging that Iran's uranium-enrichment efforts have succeeded in achieving "the capacity for industrial-scale fuel cycle production," he also recently withdrew a compromise Iranian proposal that would base its enrichment activities in an international consortium that would allow Western countries to participate in and monitor Iran's activities. "The proposal was based...
...leadership role in nuclear decision-making, which is controlled by the regime's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Last week, Ahmadinejad accepted the resignation of Ali Larijani, the pragmatic conservative chief negotiator who is a bitter political rival to the President. Although all Iranian leaders defend their right to uranium-enrichment technology for purposes of producing nuclear energy, Larijani believes it is in Iran's national interests to reach an understanding with the West. But on at least two occasions, Ahmadinejad has publicly slapped down Larijani's conciliatory efforts...
...tougher tone suggests that U.S. policy has taken a subtle, yet decisive, turn toward not merely stopping Iran's nuclear program, but seeking the end of the Islamic regime. Cheney's objections to Iran went well beyond its uranium-enrichment activities, to include Iran's policies toward Israel and the U.S., its activities in Iraq, its suppression of domestic opposition and what he called its drive for "hegemonic power" in the region - a term echoed by the less hawkish Rice in her congressional testimony...