Khamenei: Iran Will Have Bomb in April

April 8, 2006 could turn out to be an ominous date in history - that's the day Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says that Iran will have a nuclear weapon.

Late last year Khamenei gathered his top advisers for a strategy meeting and told them "it has been promised that by April 8, we will be in a position to show the entire world that we are members of the club."

This presumably refers to nuclear weapons, according to National Review Online Contributing Editor Michael Ledeen, who offered an inside look at the top-level meeting.

Among the assessments by Iran's leaders:
The U.S. is seriously divided and President Bush is paralyzed, unable to make any tough decisions - and therefore unable to order an attack against Iran.
Israel is also divided. Netanyahu has opposed Sharon (the meeting took place before Sharon's stroke) and no strong government is possible, so Israel too is unable to order an attack against Iran.
Since the mullahs are confident that Iran will soon acquire nuclear weapons, there is no longer any need to play stalling games with the West.

But if the Iranian leadership has come to believe it has little to fear from the West, there are clear signs of trouble within the regime, Ledeen reports.

Khamenei is said to be fighting a losing battle with cancer, and a succession struggle is already underway. The government has stepped up repression of groups suspected of opposing the regime, and President Ahmadinejad recently canceled most foreign travel by government officials, which is "not the sign of a confident mullahcracy," Ledeen writes.

What's more, the Iranians may be misreading the U.S., says Ledeen. He writes that the perceived "paralysis" of America is "nothing more than a replay of the usual blunder committed by our enemies, who look at us and see fractious politics," only to learn that "free societies are quite capable of turning on a dime and defending their interests and values with unanticipated ferocity."