Redlines

Shot…

MATTHEWS: Where is the heart of the zealotry here? Do you have a name of a person who is really saying, we will do anything it takes to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?

HERSH: The one that’s on the record is George Bush, and so is Mr. Cheney. Bush has said repeatedly, again, people talk to me and they use the word messianic. He has had two red lines that the Iranians cannot cross. _One is Iran is planning to run a small pilot program for enriching uranium, probably in the next month or two, maybe six week. If they do that, that’s it for Bush. That’s a line they can’t cross._

*Chris Matthews and Seymour Hersh on “Hardball,” April 10, 2006*

… and chaser.

TEHRAN — Iran announced Tuesday that its nuclear engineers had advanced to a new phase in the enrichment of uranium, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a series of the country’s ruling clerics declared that the nation would now speed ahead, in defiance of a United Nations Security Council warning, to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a speech that was broadcast live from the city of Mashad, said Iran is determined to develop production on an industrial scale.
“Iran has joined the nuclear countries of the world,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said during a large, carefully staged and nationally televised celebration in Mashhad, which included video presentations of each step of the nuclear process that he declared Iran had mastered. “The nuclear fuel cycle at the laboratory level has been completed, and uranium with the desired enrichment for nuclear power plants was achieved.”

“Iran Reports Big Advance in Enrichment of Uranium”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/world/middleeast/12iran.html?hp&ex=1144900800&en=b9ad13587321bba1&ei=5094&partner=homepage
New York Times, April 11, 2006