Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, June 1, 2008

Putin: Iran not seeking the Bomb

By Cernig



Russia's Vladimir Putin doesn't believe Iran is seeking nukes. If anyone's in a position to know, outside Iran, then he is - and he doesn't exactly have a reputation as an "appeaser".

Asked if Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, Putin replied: "I don't believe so. Nothing indicates it."



"The Iranians are a proud people," he went on. "They want to enjoy their independence and exercise their legitimate right to civil nuclear power.



"I am serious. On a legal level, Iran has infringed nothing at the moment. They have the same right to enrichment (of uranium.) The paperwork says so. Iran is accused of not displaying all its programmes to the IAEA. This point remains to be resolved...."



Putin stressed that Russia was opposed to Iran achieving a nuclear-power status.



"That is our principled position," he said. "Using nuclear weapons in a region as small as the Middle East would be synonymous with suicide. Whose interests would it serve? The Palestinians? Hardly, the Palestinians would cease to exist...."

Russia has an ongoing wrangle with Iran over Caspian oilfields that far outweighs in economic terms any possible trade with Iran, has several Muslim former-Soviet Republics on its borders where terrorists would love to grab a nuke or dirty bomb, and has large chunks of valuable territory (including the Black Sea Fleet's base) within range of current Iranian missiles. Putin is a machiavelian soft-totalitarian and has more reason to be cautious than the US, but he is instead certain (likely based on Russian intel penetration of Iran's program via Russia's nuclear aid) that Iran isn't seeking the bomb.



So when US pundits pull the old WMD lie - everyone believes that Iran/Iraq is seeking WMD - remember Putin.



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2 comments:

  1. Cheryl RoferJune 2, 2008 at 2:00 AM

    I know that the idea that Iran might not be making a bomb becomes more and more seemingly remarkable with every declaration by the Bushies that they are, but that is indeed where all the evidence points.
    The latest IAEA report said so quite explicitly.
    But I have to keep reminding myself too.

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  2. MarkJune 2, 2008 at 5:43 AM

    Actually, I don't think this is particularly newsworthy, and I say this as someone who is not concerned about Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions. It's not that I trust Ahmadinejad, it's that Ahmadinejad doesn't have control over that issue, and the people who do have that control aren't irrational enough to both create a nuclear weapon AND want to use it for offensive purposes. I honestly don't know whether their nuclear program is for weapons or not (my suspicion is that they are not seeking a bomb), but I actually don't really care all that much...they would never be able to build enough nukes to make an offensive nuclear strike feasible. Instead, their nukes (if they existed) could only serve as a deterrent.
    That said, whatever differences may currently exist between Russia and Iran, I don't think Putin has any more credibility on the issue than anyone else. There are just too many other advantages to his siding with Iran on this that go beyond the economic issues. IIRC, he has certainly spoken about the need to end American hegemony, and it doesn't take much to come to the conclusion that he believes Russia should play a major role in that. By backing countries like Iran on issues that place him up against the US, Putin is establishing a lot of street cred with Second and Third World nations.

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