OH, REMEMBER IRAN? – AT 10:25 P.M. ET:  Do you?  Do you remember that thing about their nuclear program?  Kind of big news occasionally, and off the front burner recently.  Well, as the girl in that horror movie said, "They're baaack!"  From Reuters:

TEHRAN - Iran plans to build "four to five" nuclear research reactors and will continue to enrich uranium to provide their fuel, a nuclear official said on Monday despite Western pressure on Tehran to curb atomic work.

Yeah, we've seen the effects of that pressure.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Fereydoon Abbasi, said Tehran would build the reactors "in the next few years" to produce medical radioisotopes, according to the students news agency ISNA.

"To provide the fuel for these (new) reactors, we need to continue with the 20 percent enrichment of uranium," ISNA quoted him as saying.

Abbasi's remarks are likely to deepen Western fears that Iran's atomic work is aimed at building nuclear weapons.

Oh, those fears are really deepening.  The worries we see...along with the contracts with German firms.

Tehran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and has dismissed international sanctions that were tightened last year as illegal.

Talks with major powers aimed at resolving the nuclear impasse stalled in January, with Tehran insisting it would not accept any attempt to curtail its nuclear enrichment activities.

Experts have previously said Tehran has stockpiled low-enriched uranium (LEU) and has enough for at least two atomic bombs if it was refined to a much higher level.

COMMENT:  We have every reason to be deeply concerned, but Barack Obama is showing little interest.  Iran will either have the bomb, or will proceed to the point where it can build one double-quick if it has to.  Israel obviously is gravely concerned.  But we should be as well.  As for Western Europe, they're concerned unless the concern interferes with economic interests or the 1930s-style diplomacy that many in Europe still favor.

The nightmare is an Iranian nuclear device being sailed into an American port in the hidden hold of a cargo ship and set off by a suicide crew.  Or, the device can be smuggled in sections across our southern border, with the journey possibly originating in Venezuela.

There are people who say that this will never happen.  And remember that it's impossible for Japanese carriers to get within a couple of hundred miles of Hawaii.

April 11, 2011