Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Tuesday that Iran has successfully enriched uranium.

"Iran has joined countries with nuclear technology," he said.

"Iran has put into operation the first unit of 164 centrifuges, has injected (uranium) gas and has reached industrial production," Rafsanjani was quoted by the agency as saying. The interview was also carried by the Iranian Student News Agency.

"We should expand the work of these machines to achieve a full industrial line. We need dozens of these units (sets of 164 centrifuges) to achieve a uranium enrichment facility," he said.

I don't think it would be inaccurate to say that the shit is actively hitting the fan and splattering all over the place. There is brinksmanship going on, on a very large scale. This weekend we had the Hersh article, which was clearly released with US approval, flaunting that we are waving around the big (nuclear) stick. We have Saudi Arabia, who has long been terrified by the possibility of a Shiite presence in the south of Iraq unified with Iran, announcing it will join the nuclear club if Iran does. We have Iran doing military exercises displaying it (thinks it) can shut down the Strait of Hormuz, while claiming it has missile technology that can evade our detection capability. Meanwhile, we have the US forces doing mock bombing runs across Iran. We have disclosure of all kinds of things, including intelligence activities inside Iran. And all of this, leading up to (and clearly driven by) talks with Iran about Iraq.

What an unbelievable fucking mess! Not only all this, but at the helms of the two ships colliding in the night, we have Bush who believes he is being guided by God, and Ahmadinejad who believes it's his destiny to pull the next Caliph out of a well (or something along those lines). The Sunni/Shiite spat in Iraq will look like an inconvenient argument if we wind up in a situation where Iran seriously threatens the Saudis. I could envision a ramp-up occurring depending on how things play out in the near term. The worst case scenario for the Middle East looks pretty damn bad these days.