Crush Liberalism

Oy, vey.  Excerpt:

President Barack Obama suggested that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful.

In a BBC interview broadcast Tuesday, he also restated plans to pursue direct diplomacy with Tehran to encourage it set aside any ambitions for nuclear weapons it might harbor.

Iran has insisted its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity. But the U.S. and other Western governments accuse Tehran of seeking atomic weapons.

“What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations,” Obama said, adding that the international community also “has a very real interest” in preventing a nuclear arms race.

Ed nails it:

The inconvenient fact? Iran has all the resources it needs for energy production now.  In fact, with the money they’ve spent on nuclear technology, they could have built oil refineries that would have reduced or eliminated their depending on imports for gasoline, producing it themselves from their own abundant supply.  Absent sanctions, Iran could make a mint each year off of oil revenues and produce all the energy they need for domestic consumption, too.

So why do they pursue nuclear power?  They want it for something other than energy production, although they’ll take that, too. Since they also spend a lot of money testing and launching rockets these days, the conclusion is a lot less difficult than Obama makes it.  Iran has mainly illegitimate motives for pursuing nuclear technology.

The last time we took a hostile nation’s word for it that they would only use nuke energy for energy and not for weapons, the NorKoms convinced us (or, more accurately, the naive Democrat president and his Not Bright Secretary of State) of their peaceful intents.  Say, how’d that work out?