Iran has announced it plans on further enriching its uranium stockpile. As the LA Times reports

Any move by Iran to produce a 20%-enriched nuclear fuel supply could provoke Western nations and Israel, which allege that Tehran ultimately plans to build atomic bombs. Uranium enriched at the current 3.5% level can fuel civilian power plants; moves toward enriching it beyond 20% could suggest a goal of making weapons.

There are a number of very worrisome issues with Iran’s nuclear program. First, there’s no need for the Iranians to enrich fuel for civilian energy purposes, since the fuel for the Busehr reactor is being provided by the Russians. Also, although the Iranian regime would say mastering nuclear enrichment may be a matter of national pride, it doesn’t make fiscal sense for the second largest oil producer in the Middle-East to be developing an extraordinarily expensive nuclear program—compounded by the brutal economic difficulties the country finds itself in.

Regarding Iranian claims that the purpose of 20% enriched uranium is for use in a medical reactor, the LA Times reports, “only France and Argentina have the facilities to turn the material into the fuel plates for the reactor.” Unless some agreement can be reached with these countries, Iran would be left with a stockpile of useless material.

While getting to 3.5% enrichment is a major technological feat, enriching to 20% “would be going most of the rest of the way to weapon-grade uranium,” as David Albright, an official with Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security, told the Associated Press. On top of this, it was reported months ago that Iran possessed enough uranium—if further enriched— to make a nuclear bomb.

Former CIA director Jim Woolsey said in a 2007 hearing before the House

“The traces of highly-enriched (not just fuelgrade) uranium, their deception, their heavy water plant and other indicators brand their program as one designed to develop nuclear weapons even in the absence of considering their rhetoric about destroying Israel and ending the world”

You can read the LA Times article here.

Guess which picture is more recent? As Egypt becomes increasingly radicalized, we see the rights of women moving further and further back in time. Nonie Darwish, featured in Obsession, explains how this radicalization is in part, a rejection of Western values.

“Expecting Muslim women to be behind the reformation of Islam and Sharia, is like asking slaves to end their own slavery without their masters’ approval or asking prisoners to get out of prison without the guards opening the doors. […] For Muslim women to simply revolt against Islamic gender apartheid will be regarded as anti-man, anti-family, anti-religion, anti-government and worst of all, anti-Allah himself.”

Check out Nonie’s take on the potential for a feminist movement in the near future here.

The fight against a nuclear Iran and support for the self-determination of the Iranian people go hand in hand, as Mehdi Khalaji, a scholar with the Washington Institute, pointed out in testimony before Congress last week.

Peace in the region and democracy in Iran now seem to be inseparable, because the same forces that threaten the peace are the same powers in Iran who threaten democracy and run the repressive machinery against the Iranian people. The threat to regional peace and Iranian democracy are the same: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is not only the main body in charge of the Iranian nuclear program, but also is the most effective means for political suppression in the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader and commander-in-chief.

…

Democracy and peace can be achieved through weakening the military government in Tehran and pressuring the IRGC. The two parallel tracks — the international community’s effort for peace and the Iranian people’s democratic movement — naturally reinforce each other, because they fight with the same enemy.

Among some of the solutions Khalaji suggests are weakening the IRGC, which also threatens U.S. interests by weakening Sunni-Muslim allies of the West, sabotaging the middle-East peace process, and by trying to sabotage the positive developments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

J. Scott Carpenter, who testified with Khalaji, talked about sanctions as another vital tool to address the threat. These include sanctions influencing the IRGC’s political and business interests. Khalaji pointed out that the IRGC and its affiliates “control one third of Iran’s income, dominating construction, oil field services, and telecommunications, among other industries.” Targeted sanctions could also include the threat of gasoline embargo against a regime dependent on other countries to refine the oil it produces.

We can help strengthen the democratic movement by helping the Iranian people connect with the outside world, in the face of a regime which spends billions of dollars trying to prevent this.

The major internet companies in the West could work with activists to find ways to bypass Iran’s internet censors. Companies that provide Iran with the technology of surveillance and suppression should be named and shamed; consumers should shy away from these companies’ products, and governments should urge these companies to reconsider their practices… New measures and mechanisms are needed to stop Iran from breaking international law.

As citizens we can contact our Congressmen to push for sanctions on groups like the IRGC, we can work together to develop boycotts against groups aiding the regime’s oppression of its citizens, and we can give support to the Iranian people, to help inform the world of what is happening inside and build global support for their struggle.

By doing so, we help fight for the universal human rights of the Iranian people, at the same time as we fight for the security of all other nations—including our own—threatened by this regime.

You can read the testimony of Mehdi Khalaji and J. Scott Carpenter here.

Watch Geert Wilders opening comments at his trial (with subtitles).

“I have nothing against Muslims. I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country…”

Learn more about Geert Wilders trial and freedom of speech here.

From a humanitarian rights perspective, it’s not hard to be moved by the—at times brutal—suppression of the opposition movement building in Iran. For those of us who cherish freedoms like speech and self-determination, it’s not hard to be moved by the images of people killed in protests, and the reports of academic institutions being cleansed of suspected agitators.

At the same time, it may also be easy for some of us to say that these events, half a world away, don’t personally impact our lives. We may then excuse ourselves from any meaningful involvement in the cause. In a recent Op Ed, scholar Mehdi Khalaji shows that this thinking is mistaken. He points out that the regime’s current foreign policy is directly tied to the unrest in the country; this includes negotiations on their nuclear program. Khalaji writes:

[Supreme Leader] Khamenei’s foreign policy is now completely subject to how the domestic situation in Iran develops. As recent months have shown, he will consider a compromise with the West only when he loses his certainty that all is under control internally. It is like a seesaw: Khamenei’s domestic weakness changes the balance of Iran’s foreign policy…

Support of human rights and democracy in Iran is not only a matter of morality. It should be a strategic priority for the West. Empowering the Iranian people means weakening Khamenei and his military allies. And a weakened Khamenei is more likely to compromise on the nuclear front.

You can read the full article here.

Yesterday a terminal in Munich, Germany was closed due to a bomb scare. An individual’s laptop tested positive for explosives and he ran away.

Today we read in the news that perhaps it was a false alarm, perhaps he was running because he was late…

Forgive me for being confused. It is very possible that the laptop did not have explosives and that that information was false, however, how often do innocent people run? As well, aren’t people only checked when they enter the airport, so he left the airport and missed his flight?

If we do not take these incidents seriously we have learned nothing from Flight 253 which happened just a month ago! Calling this Munich incident a false alarm without having more details does not help the threat of terrorism disappear.

Click here to learn more about the threat that terrorism poses.

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I saw this claim written in different places and I didn’t believe it, so I tried it out myself. Well, it turns out they are right. When you type “Christianity is”, or Judaism or Buddhism, “Google Suggest” guesses what you are trying to say and completes the sentence (most of the results are negative). However, when you type “Islam is” there are absolutely NO suggestions!

Google told a wired.com reporter that it was simply a software glitch that they were working on. However, that was already 5 days ago and the “glitch” still exists. Aren’t there millions of geniuses working at Google?

This idea of censoring anti-Islamic rhetoric seems to be a theme these past few days. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York pulled some Muhammad works for fear of igniting a controversy.

Even the director of the film 2012 admitted to being too afraid to depict any Muslim symbols being destroyed in his newest blockbuster film, for fear of attack.

What is going on? It seems that the protesters won in the Muhammad cartoon riots in Denmark a few years back when they sparked fear in everyone one of us. Now it seems that even companies like Google would rather go out of their way to censor themselves, as to avoid what the radical Muslims have in store for us.

Have a look at CAIR on The O’Reilly Factor, days after the Christmas terror plot. Ibrahim Hooper is truly a media mastermind. He clearly avoids all questions asked and stays on his messaging. He makes profiling sound ridiculous and describes Muslims being forced to stand in a separate line. Anyone who understands profiling (see this article), must understand it isn’t about putting people in different lines.

Hooper says in the interview, “It’s very easy to give away ‘other poeple’.” This means that he is trying to show Muslims as “other people”, essentially underdogs. However, the newest CAIR campaign shows Muslims to be normal Americans. Sorry Hooper, you can’t play for both teams! You may sound slick but we can all see through your polished messaging!

Learn more about CAIR by reading a new groundbreaking book- Muslim Mafia.

Here is a funny clip from a recent Daily Show episode. Although humorous, it really drives home the point that the Christmas Flight 253 attack could have been avoided. A real eye opener!

If you see any clips that are relevant, insightful and even humorous, we would love to post them. Please email info@radicalislam.org or post them in a comment below.