Roger L. Simon: Bushehr - an alternative perspecitve

I have been spending my days in DC unable to blog (obviously) but I did hear something about the Bushehr reactor that may beI have of interest. I have no idea of its reliability, but it presents an alternative (perhaps even supplementary) perspective to the news currently being trumpeted on Drudge (from the NYT) - Russia Gives Iran Ultimatum on Enrichment. According to my source, an Iranian living in the US for many years, the design of the reactor is a German/U.S. type, not a Russian type. The Russians were always ill-equipped to finish it. As Elaine Sciolino writes in the NYT:

The Bushehr nuclear project has a long history. For more than a decade, Russia has been working under a $1 billion contract to complete the ambitious project, which was begun with Germany during the time of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, the project was halted; then the site was bombed by Iraq during its eight-year war with Iran. When Iran decided to complete the facility after the war ended, Germany, under pressure from the United States, refused to finish the project or even provide Moscow with the original blueprints.

But in mid-February, Russia contended that Iran had not made the two last $25 million monthly payments, after insisting that it be allowed to pay in euros instead of dollars. Russian officials also cited a delay in the delivery of safety equipment from an unspecified third country as a secondary reason for the decision.

The Iranians say they have paid... Hmm.... Could the Iranian have been played. Interesting to speculate about. Meanwhile, where's Asgari?

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If only an unidentified someone came in to work at the CIA all upset and had a conversation with a counter-proliferation desk "NOC" about a message from the office of the vice-president and subsequently be overheard by a second someone walking by the hall at Langley. As a result a former ambassador with contacts in Iran married to said "NOC" would be offered up to go to Iran and straighten all this out.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2007%20Opinion%20Editorials/February/19%20o/Russia%20Broadband%20Relations%20With%20Middle%20East%20By%20K%20Gajendra%20Singh.htm

"The two sides(ed Russia and Saudi Arabia) signed three major agreements and two memorandums of understanding covering cooperation in the fields of oil, gas, science and technology, trade and sports. Agreements were also signed for the protection and promotion of investments, air transport and avoidance of double taxation. Riyadh is keen to expand cooperation in research, education and technology."

Russia is also the worlds second largest oil exporter...that little stunt a few weeks back where the Saudis let the price of Oil free fall for a few days surely got Putins attention.

Whatever profit Russia was making off the Iranian nuclear reactor was wiped out in losses in oil revenue..

Soldier's dad: The #1 producer dinged the #2 by causing a transient oil price freefall? How's that work again? A pricing magic bullet that dings just #2?

Tom Tom – that scene at Langley was under oath testimony from Valery Plame as to how the "CIA chose" her husband, Joe Wilson, to go to Niger to verify whether or not Saddam had tried to procure uranium for his WMD program. See, she had nothing to do with it.

The people I've talked to say it was professionally done. This is no cut and paste amateur w/o access to quality footage.

By posting such an excessively long url and failing to either embed or use http://tinyurl.com to shorten it to a reasonable length Soldier's Dad has rendered this post and thread almost impossible, or at least an impossible nuisance, to read. Most browsers can't "break" a url, so instead they increase the width of the page to accomodate it. That, in turn, means that to read the post one must track back and forth with the bottom scroll bar to read every single line of text!

This reminds me of a fact: When Mao died, the Chinese contracted the Russians to embalm him because their embalmed Stalin was so "life-like". The Russians proceeded to do the embalming. Pretty soon the Chinese found out that Mao was rotting in his glass coffin. He was not properly embalmed because the Russians had no ideas what they were doing. That's why viewers can only view Mao's body a couple of yards outside Mao's mausoleum. Why's this relevant? Well, Stalin was embalmed by an American. The Russians were embarrassed to admit it. May be Iran's nuclear reactor suffers the same fate as Mao's dead body.

March 19, 2007: Bushehr - an alternative perspecitve

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