On Your Next Trip to Iran, Don't Miss the Uranium Hexafluoride Dance Troupe and Good-Time Boogie-Woogie Revue in the Holiest City of Mashad!

As Iran's thermonuclear answer to the June Taylor Dancers (themselves a sort of entertainment A-Bomb that helped contain Soviet Communism every bit as much as the Berlin airlift) clink vials of uranium hexafluoride above (careful, guys!), Iran's president proclaims to the world that his country has joined the nuclear club by enriching uranium for the first time. Which means a showdown with the UN, the US, and a bunch of other folks is on the horizon:

The announcement from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was certain to heighten international tensions surrounding Iran's nuclear program. The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all enrichment by April 28 because of suspicions the program is designed to make nuclear weapons…..

[President] Ahmadinejad warned the West that trying to force it to abandon uranium enrichment would "cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians."

More here.

And while we're waiting for the bombing to begin (either by them or by us), take the time to read Iraj Isaac Rahmin's brilliant "meditation on a life under tyranny," "Where the Shah Went Alone," which appeared in the July 2003 issue of Reason. Nothing excuses the vile repressiveness of the current Islamic regime, but Rahmin's haunting essay reminds us why the fundamentalist revolution of '79 was, at least for a short period of time, a popular one.