At a massive Tehran rally marking Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution Feb. 10, President Mohammad Khatami pledged that no Iranian government would abandon the country's program to devlop peaceful nuclear technology. (AP, Feb. 10) He promised a "burning hell" for any aggressor, to chants of "Death to Ameirca!" and "Death to Israel!" (CNN, Feb. 10)

"Iran is not a country where they can come for an adventure," cleric and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers the following day. "It is not acceptable that developed countries generate 70 or 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear energy and tell Iran, a great and powerful nation, that it cannot have nuclear electricity. Iran does not accept this." (Bahrain Gulf Daily News, Feb. 12)

Actually, France is the only developed nation that begins to approach that percentage. In the US, the figure is around 20%. And even if we are to take the Iranian regime at its word that it it is only pursuing nuclear power for peaceful purposes--why are they so damn eager to follow our mistakes? Do they really want their own damn Three Mile Island or (worse) Chernobyl?

Where are the anti-nuclear dissidents in Iran who oppose both their government's atomic ambitions and Washington's exploitation of same for its own imperial agendas?