Tehran raps U.S. as ‘war criminals’

Iran’s hard-line president said yesterday the Bush administration should be tried on war-crimes charges, and he denounced the West for pressuring Iran to curb its controversial nuclear program.

Iran’s hard-line president, who was one of the student leaders involved with the Carter-era US embassy hostage taking (and holding), is re-hashing some of the same types of claims that they were expounding during the late 70’s incident. He’s nothing if not consistant with his hatred of the USA as the great satan.

“You, who have used nuclear weapons against innocent people, who have used uranium ordnance in Iraq, should be tried as war criminals in courts,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

This one is new: equating depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds with the use of nuclear weapons. Not any technical validity, but hey, just saying the word “uranium” gets a lot of mileage propaganda-wise, and is even likely to elicit sympathy from western envirowackos who are just as ignorant of the issue as the Iranian peasant population is.

Mr. Ahmadinejad Ah’m-mad-in-jihad did not elaborate, but he apparently was referring to the U.S. military’s use of artillery shells packed with depleted uranium, which is far less radioactive than natural uranium and is left over from the process of enriching uranium for use as nuclear fuel.

Iran has been under intense international pressure to curb its nuclear program, which the United States claims is part of an effort to produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies such claims and says its program is aimed at generating electricity.

Yeah, right, you can believe as much of THAT as you want to. (If you do believe him on that, please e-mail the Chief: I have some GREAT tropical beach property in Moody County, South Dakota I would like to sell you.)

Also, a possible marriage made in hell is in the works:

Meanwhile, a leading German newsweekly reported that Iran has offered North Korea oil and natural gas as payment for help in developing nuclear missiles. A senior Iranian official traveled to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, during the second week of October to make the offer, the Der Spiegel magazine reported yesterday, citing unidentified Western intelligence sources. It was not clear what North Korea’s response was, the magazine said.

If they keep going like this, with any luck they’ll be turning themselves into a bombing practice range for the Israeli Air Force, assuming Sharon doesn’t put their gonads into a lock-box, but that’s another story.