Everyone is more than well aware of what the news will highlight about the Iranian nuclear issue.  Naturally everyone in the reasonable world has a great deal of fear for a regime capable of supporting terror strikes against Israel receiving the destructive capacity to level entire cities with the push of a button - and while a President and a West continue to decry the Iranian regime and inhibit their growth of such a tool there are a number of alarming signifiers that keep coming up of late.  It should be clear that a nation such as Iran, who must displace thousands of gallons of oil just to make room for their nuclear facilities, has no legitimate need for "peaceful" nuclear power - and if one looks at a number of the facts of late, they would agree.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one time hit man for Ayatollah Khomeini, one time student protestor that kidnapped American embassy workers during the Carter Administration, now turned religiously psychotic president of Iran, is something of a media guzzler.  He is utterly obsessed with the idea of appearing on television channels and playing the part of the benevolent leader - as though he receives some kind of high when people chant in unison with him "Death to Israel, death to America".  Indeed, before he gave a speech where he claimed that Iranian scientists "cured" AIDS - which he calls a weapon created by the United States and the West - he had a kind of fluffer of hate come out to woo the crowd into chants of violence and anger towards the United States.

Frighteningly, this is all visible and easily accessible at The Middle Eastern Media Research Institute - anyone is able to go take a glimpse at Middle Eastern television and all of its macabre excerpts.  That's why I find it particularly amusing when I'm told, when espousing my fear of a nuclear armed Iran, to "stop watching television and formulate my own ideas"; I'm forced to inquire if that extends to Middle Eastern Television too.

It is on this television where the first and foremost alarming incident comes to light in the form of a grand "oopsie" by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki when he told Iranian Channel 2 Television, "We emphasize the peaceful nature of our nuclear weapons... I mean... of our nuclear power plant, and nuclear energy and activities."  Such slips of the tongue in Farsi are not something that Westerners are entirely interested in hearing from a high up government official.  Especially when Iranian generals promise that their strategies do indeed involve passing weapons off to suicide bombers, as told by General Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Yahya Safavi:

"Moreover, we are capable of giving these missile systems to neighboring and friendly countries. There is nothing preventing us from doing so.  We do not rely only on defense technology. The IRGC has thousands of martyrdom-seekers, who have gained military experience during the eight years of war, and these martyrdom-seekers are prepared to carry out martyrdom operations on large scales. They operate professionally, and have undergone training. They have a strong spirit of martyrdom."

Add to this the President himself stating that Iran will soon be the "ninth" nuclear nation - while there are, indeed, more than twenty nuclear powered nations, and eight confirmed nuclear armed nations - unless one counts the unofficial Israel which has yet to declare its nuclear status.  While it would seem simple for matters such as this to be a "mistake", the common amount of mistakes being reported are frightening in number, especially when you consider who it is they are coming from.  Are we to believe that before going on Iranian Television Channel 1 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is going to forego confirming which of the two nuclear quantities he's going to claim he is a part of?

It seems bizarre that the West can continue to ignore these "slip ups" - two words that should never go together when discussing nuclear weapons - on the day that Ahmadinejad announces that his country is "now nuclear".  He specifies this, according to the Associated Press, which his nation can "now complete the nuclear cycle".

When you have Foreign Ministers "accidentally" referring to this "nuclear cycle" as weaponry, can one really stand by and keep "talking" as French President Sarkozy advocates?  Talking, really, can only go so far, and as Machiavelli says, "War cannot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the other's advantage," and as long as we continue to delay Iran gets closer and closer to turning this "nuclear cycle" into a nuclear weapon.