Just in Time for Ramadan:  Iran Goes Nuclear

Putin’s Russia has at long last stopped the dawdling and is ready to load fuel into Iran’s Bushehr plant. Just in time for Ramadan! Cynical types may suggest it has something to do with the current leadership in Washington:

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Russian officials did not say why they had decided to move ahead with loading fuel into the Bushehr plant now. But the move could have been triggered in part by Moscow's desire show the Iranians it can act independently from Washington after its decision to support the fourth set of U.N. sanctions in June and its continued refusal to ship surface-to-air missile systems that it agreed to provide under a 2007 contract to sell the S-300s.

Russia has been fence sitting on Iran for years. But, today, evidently, Putin finally recognizes Iran’s urgent need for nuclear power. Skeptics could question whether a nation awash in petroleum needs a nuclear plant for “peaceful” energy production. It takes the disturbed mind of the State Department’s P.J. Crowley to explain why Russia fueling Iran’s nukes is actually a really good thing:

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Bushehr ‘does not represent a proliferation risk. ... However, Bushehr underscores that Iran does not need its own indigenous enrichment capability. The fact that Russia is providing fuel is the very model the international community has offered Iran.’

Russia insists that the Bushehr project is "essential" for persuading Iran to follow through on nonproliferation. Liberal “logic” can be quite labyrinthine. The administration wants you to believe that allowing Iran to fire up Bushehr will convince the Iranian bedlamites to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear lapdog and abide by its nonproliferation agreements. In other words, allowing the mullahs to have nukes guarantees that they won’t be tempted to use them in annihilative ways. We needn’t worry. Iran has signed a pledge to ship all of the uranium fuel from Bushehr back to KGB Colonel Putin for reprocessing, thus precluding any possibility that a single particle of it could be used to make nuclear weapons. Former U.S. Ambassador, John Bolton takes a more pessimistic view of these happy developments:

News that Russia will load nuclear fuel rods into an Iranian reactor has touched off a countdown to a point of no return, a deadline by which Israel would have to launch an attack on Iran's Bushehr reactor before it becomes effectively ‘immune’ to any assault, says former Bush administration U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton.Once the fuel rods are loaded, Bolton told Fox News on Friday afternoon, ‘it makes it essentially immune from attack by Israel. Because once the rods are in the reactor an attack on the reactor risks spreading radiation in the air, and perhaps into the water of the Persian Gulf.’

Luckily, there is no reason to be concerned. Putin, who served honorably in the KGB for years, assures us that Bushehr will be closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which means those efficient, pro-civilization watchdogs at the U.N. will be on the case. And, if that isn’t enough to make the doubters ashamed of themselves—Iran’s promise to send spent fuel rods to Putin was in writing. It’s not yet clear whether the document included boldface and underlining. If we can’t trust the KGB and Ahmadinejad, we’re doomed.