Ahmadinejad: a rigorous proof

The Pentagon has listed 1200 targets in Iran that would be attacked from the air if it became necessary to eliminate Iran's military, an unlikely scenario that became somewhat more likely last week. Many negative and unfortunate consequences of such an attack could be expected and havoc could spread across the region. And it's just very sad to bomb a cradle of civilization with so many people we know and like.

On the other hand, there could be clear advantages, too. Iran's self-confidence as a regional power would drop, together with its ability to threaten other countries and to create tension in Iraq (Iran is now arguably the main source of it). Nicolas Sarkozy has also warned Iran that it may be bombed if the nuclear crisis is not resolved. You might want to know: is the coalition of U.S., Turkey, and Israel going to attack Iran?

Solution

A mathematically skillful engineer has found a double proof that the answer is No. He describes himself as an engineer - because of his PhD in transport engineering - and a master in calculation and tabulation. His rigorous proof has two parts:

1. Drawing up tables for hours
2. Believing in what God says

The name of the Persian mathematician is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and he is the president of Iran. If you want some details about the second step, here they are:

"God says that those who walk in the path of righteousness will be victorious. What reason can you have for believing God will not keep this promise."

It sounds pretty convincing, especially from the righteous president. Well, we will probably have to wait for some time to see whether someone finds an error in his proof.

Proofs of other lemmas

While Dr Ahmadinejad has one more proof than what is normally needed, some diplomats say that they have one fewer proof than what is needed to show that Iran is running 3000 centrifuges - an amount that needs to operate for one year to get one nuclear bomb. Apparently, the diplomats don't consider the self-confident words of Dr Ahmadinejad to be a proof.

At the same time, Israel starts to prepare for the worst Middle East they can imagine - after the U.S. withdraws - and they view recent increases of the U.S. military aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia as a proof that it will happen soon. Bush stays peaceful and calm and consider the Anbar province to be a proof that progress is possible.

Bush officials highlighted Iran's failure to answer IAEA as a proof of a lack of Iran's transparency. Let me summarize: the Middle East is a field of science where there are many proofs but the situation nevertheless remains very uncertain.

And that's the memo.