Ahmadinejad proposes massive increase in military budget

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad sent a proposal to parliament for a $416 billion budget on Wednesday. According to Iranian media, the budget included a doubling of military expenditures and lavish funding for various other pet projects but little relief for working class Iranians. Critics of the budget said it was based on an expectation of 8% economic growth, which had little basis in reality, completely ignoring the high unemployment rate and the likely effects of inflation and international sanctions on Iranian oil sales meant to dissuade the Islamic Republic from pursuing its renegade nuclear program. In related news, a team of inspectors from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced on Wednesday that they would be returning to Iran later this month after a recent three day visit which it described as “good” despite achieving no positive results.

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“We are committed to resolve all the outstanding issues and the Iranians said they are committed too," Herman Nackaerts, IAEA deputy director general, told reporters after returning from Tehran. "But of course there is still a lot of work to be done and so we have planned another trip in the very near future." Asked if he was satisfied with the talks, Nackaerts replied: "Yeah, we had a good trip."

The IAEA subsequently issued a statement that the next meetings would occur from February 21-22 in Tehran, adding that during the recent meetings it had explained to the Iranians its "concerns and identified its priorities, which focus on the clarification of possible military dimensions" to Iran's atomic work. "The IAEA also discussed with Iran the topics and initial steps to be taken, as well as associated modalities."

"This visit will be judged by whether the Iranians provided the visiting IAEA team with cooperation on substantive issues. Anything short of that type of cooperation is not acceptable," one Vienna based diplomat said.

“The IAEA would not be scheduling another trip unless they had an expectation of progress in clearing away at least some of the questions about suspicious past nuclear activity," said proliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick, a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

"We had very good meetings and we planned to continue these negotiations. The team had some questions about the claimed studies. One step has been taken forward," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told the semi-official Fars news agency in Tehran. "We were ready to show them our nuclear facilities, but they didn't ask for it."

“To believe anything other than that Iran is working to get a nuclear weapon is hopelessly naive,” former CIA director James Woolsey said in an interview on the sidelines of the Herzliya Conference in Israel on Wednesday.  “At some point someone is going to have to decide to use force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. I’d argue that those who say we can deal adequately with Iran through deterrence are quite naive. National survival is at issue. In the near term that’s the case for Israel, but in the somewhat longer term it is [the case] for the US, which from Iran’s point of view, is the ‘Great Satan. This is a world-class problem, not an eastern Mediterranean or Persian Gulf problem. The politics of the world will change if this regime gets the bomb.”