2/14/08

Financial Genii

On the one hand we’re told that Iran continues to secretly conduct a nuclear weapons program, brilliantly hiding it from the IAEA and the rest of the world. Only the super-cunning Israeli Mossad can discern the even greater evil cunning of the Iranians. And they rend their clothes and throw ashes on their heads trying in vain to convince the Stupid World that the Iranians are making nuclear weapons. !!!

Yes. Let’s just go with this line of thinking for a minute. Just yesterday Thomas Fingar, who once upon a time had a reputation as a respected intelligence analyst, testified before the House Armed Services Committee that Iran was still developing technological and industrial capabilities that the intelligence community judges could be used to develop nuclear weapons, should the Irans want to, sometime between 2010 and 2015. I mean, it’s all very speculative, especially since the Iranians insist they merely want to pursue nuclear energy, and they are within their rights to do so, and the IAEA has made great progress certifying that Iran poses no danger to the world. But Still! Iran Is Dangerous and Don’t You Forget It.

It must cost the Iranians a fortune keeping all this under wraps. Secret underground facilities, huge bribes to buy off corrupt politicians and nosy reporters, high tech spy equipment…the works. Right? You can’t hide something like this with the US and Israel breathing down your neck unless you have deep pockets and a surplus of cunning, evil genius scientists and intelligence people in your employ.

On the other hand, what’s weird is that Iran has a very low defense spending per capita.

Iran’s defense expenditure per capita remains among the lowest in the Middle East region despite having the second highest population behind Egypt, according to the new publication of Military Balance.

The 2008 edition said that Iran’s total defense spending for 2006, the latest available, was nearly 55 percent less that Israel’s, despite having ten times the population of the Zionist entity.

Per capita, Israeli regime’s expenditure was calculated to be nearly 17 times higher at an average of $1,737 per person compared with only $110 for each Iranian.

Israel’s military spending was shown to be the second highest in the world and only $59 per capita behind the U.S., excluding Qatar, which only has a population of less than one million.

Even as a proportion of GDP, Iran’s defense expenditure of 3.3 percent was found to be well less than half of Israel’s 7.9 percent, which is among the highest in the world and even more than the U.S.

Oh dear. That is very perplexing, don’t you think? How could the Iranians possibly be doing all this super-secret nuclear weapons development, in secret, under pressure, on a shoestring budget?

You know, if they are doing this, we really need to talk to their budget guys, because damn they are good. We could use that kind of financial acumen around here. For example, we have this giant hole in our budget that really should be plugged up, but nobody seems to know what to do about it:

Under a new agreement with the U.S., it also said Washington was providing Israeli regime with a $30 billion package of Foreign Military Financing between 2009 and 2018, an increase amounting to around 25 percent more than in the previous ten-year period.

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