Iran's February 21 Deadline Probably Won't Result in War >>

[The Cleaner]

This is from last Sunday, February 11, 2007.

His (Ahmidijinad's) comments prompted talk Iran might say it had begun installing 3,000 centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, defying a U.N. sanctions resolution which gave Tehran until February 21 to suspend enrichment or face more measures.

Iran already runs two cascades of 164 centrifuges at the Natanz underground plant, but plans to install thousands of centrifuges and start "industrial-scale" enrichment.

However, some officials have suggested Tehran had no intention to take provocative steps such as announcing an expansion of atomic work to block a political solution to resolve its standoff with the West. Some Western diplomats said on Saturday a small group of European nations were weighing a compromise proposal they plan to put to Iran in the hope it could end the standoff.

The proposal would permit Iran to keep its uranium enrichment infrastructure of several hundred centrifuges but it would not be allowed to feed any processed uranium hexafluoride (UF6) into the machines while negotiating with six world powers over a package of incentives to observe U.N. demands.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/10/AR2007021001147.html

Since that group of European nations are involved in the negotiations it is unlikely the U.S. would unilaterally bomb Iran after Feb. 21. Furthermore skepticism over Bush's "intelligence" on Iran is growing due to his manipulation of the intelligence leading up to Iraq. Essentially Bush has cried wolf one too many times and now he's got nobody to blame but himself.

Edited for clarity and focus.

[bananas]

1. Bush's goal is regime change, those negotiations are irrelevant to him. nt