Nuclear Politics Update

Little reported until this morning, the US Navy is tracking a North Korean ship bound for Singapore or Myanmar. It is believed the ship is carrying banned material, like missile parts, that earn the Norks hard currency. In an earlier post, I opined as how denying Kim Jong Il hard currency is the best leverage we have to influence his behavior on the nuke issue. I am waiting to see how the current administration handles the situation. They have been getting quite an education lately between Iranian electoral shenanigans and North Korean nuclear sabre rattling. Let's hope they are fast learners. As usual, Information Dissemination has excellent in depth naval analysis. They also believe that Kim Jong Il will not last without Chinese support and have reason to believe that Chinese support for "the little perv" as Dean called him, is eroding.

Interestingly, Information Dissemination linked to this scholarly mathematical analysis showing that the Iranian election results were almost certainly fraudulent (99.6% likely to have been faked). This is important, because the nuclear hard line taken by Ahmedinejad is certainly not in the best interests of the people of Iran. This will dawn on them as events unfold; posessing nuclear weapons means you can also be on the receiving end of nuclear weapons. A move to true democracy won't make Iran our new BFF, but will result in a regime more amenable to listening to reason on the nuke issue.