Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a serious resume: nuclear fearmonger, snazzy dresser, Israel-denier, and soon, maybe, his country’s first astronaut.
After blasting a miserable monkey into space, Iran sounds ready to make the next step — or at least its president is, according to the AP:
“I’m ready to be the first Iranian to sacrifice myself for our country’s scientists,” the official IRNA news agency quoted [Ahmadinejad] as saying in an address to space scientists in Tehran.
So not only does he want to make the baffling move of going to outer space himself — can you imagine JFK in a spacesuit? — he’s willing to die in the process. With Iran’s space program still in its infancy, there’s a very good chance Mahmoud would get his chance if he went up in a capsule — it’s unclear if the country could even keep that poor monkey alive.
Still, the claim takes space balls. Maybe Ahmadinejad is bluffing. Maybe these are the words of a crazy man. Or maybe, just maybe, Mahmoud just loves space more than any other world leader, and rather than go out in a nuclear hellfire of his own doing, he wants to reach toward the heavens, where monkeys fear to tread. [AP]