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 Vahid Salemi / AP Iranian women form a chain outside the Isfahan uranium conversion plant as part of a protest against Western efforts to regulate Tehran's nuclear program |
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Jan. 11, 2006 - After Eugene “Bull” Connor, the sheriff of Birmingham, Ala., turned dogs and fire hoses on black protesters in May, 1963, John F. Kennedy observed that “the Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.” It was the perfect putdown. Connor had been a hero to Southern bigots. JFK, with one withering remark, condemned him to that most ignoble form of immortality for a Southerner. He would forever be remembered as the butt of a Yankee joke.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may someday qualify for a similar kind of historical ignominy among his own countrymen. Iran's president is probably the last one to realize it, but the joke is on him. Though he is rabidly anti-American, Ahmadinejad has done more to help the Great Satan than anyone since the fellow Iranian he most despises—that great toady of Washington, the Shah.
In fact, Ahmadinejad, who has piled idiocy upon idiocy in a series of offensive remarks that have alarmed the world, has achieved a truly amazing feat. He has made George W. Bush look like a statesman. Since Ahmadinejad has embraced his role as this era’s Muammar Kaddafi, the Bush administration mustered international unity against Iran of the kind that hasn’t been seen since right after September 11.
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And now this broad diplomatic front will be put to the test. On Tuesday, the Iranians brazenly removed what nuclear expert David Albright calls the “last major technical hurdle” to a nuclear bomb-breaking the seals on a 164-centrifuge cascade that will allow them to master the process of enriching uranium to bomb-grade purity.
NEWSWEEK has learned that Washington, with likely support from Britain, France and Germany, has called for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors for as early as next week. The issue will be whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over Tehran’s breach of a previous commitment not to enrich. The Americans and Europeans are likely to get a quick meeting despite some balking by Russia and China, which fear an automatic referral. Still, Moscow and Beijing are more aligned with Washington than they have been in the past-all thanks to Ahmadinejad. On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called Iran's decision “cause for alarm.”
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