Category Archives: nuclear issues

Obama wants to expand America’s military reach

As President Obama prepares to present his first Nuclear Posture Review, the news is that he’s about to announce plans to eliminate thousands of nuclear weapons from the United States arsenal. So good so far — but it gets worse from here on in.

If a smaller arsenal might look like a step towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, the fact that this president wants to retain a first strike option is not a step in the right direction. Worst of all are the designs for a non-nuclear future in the shape of what is called “Prompt Global Strike” — the ultimate form of remote warfare through which the US could strike any target on the planet in less than an hour.

This is how the New York Times describes the new class of non-nuclear weapons:

The idea, officials say, would be to give the president a non-nuclear option for, say, a large strike on the leadership of Al Qaeda in the mountains of Pakistan, or a pre-emptive attack on an impending missile launch from North Korea. But under Mr. Obama’s strategy, the missiles would be based at new sites around the United States that might even be open to inspection, so that Russia and China would know that a missile launched from those sites was not nuclear — to avoid having them place their own nuclear forces on high alert.

Better than firing nuclear weapons, isn’t it? Of course. But the one virtue of strategic nuclear weapons is that their use has seemed unthinkable to a point where we’ve gone 65 years without their use — apart from in testing.

To call Prompt Global Strike a “non-nuclear option” is to imply that it is some kind of relatively benign alternative to nuclear force. On the contrary, what we’re looking at here are two classes of weapons of mass destruction: one whose primary function is that they be held in reserve as a diabolical threat; the other system is very much designed for use. Indeed, one can imagine that at some point in his or her term of office, every American president will make a point of showcasing American power with a prompt global strike.

Noah Shachtman describes how this would work:

A tip sets the plan in motion — a whispered warning of a North Korean nuclear launch, or of a shipment of biotoxins bound for a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon. Word races through the American intelligence network until it reaches U.S. Strategic Command headquarters, the Pentagon and, eventually, the White House. In the Pacific, a nuclear-powered Ohio class submarine surfaces, ready for the president’s command to launch.

When the order comes, the sub shoots a 65-ton Trident II ballistic missile into the sky. Within 2 minutes, the missile is traveling at more than 20,000 ft. per second. Up and over the oceans and out of the atmosphere it soars for thousands of miles. At the top of its parabola, hanging in space, the Trident’s four warheads separate and begin their screaming descent down toward the planet. Traveling as fast as 13,000 mph, the warheads are filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. Just above the target, the warheads detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods-each one up to 12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated.

If Pentagon strategists get their way, there will be no place on the planet to hide from such an assault.

What Prompt Global Strike is really about is turning inter-continental ballistic missiles (minus nuclear warheads) into usable weapons.

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Is Israel really prepared to go it alone?

Reuters reports:

Israel’s perspective on Iran’s nuclear program differs from that of the United States, and the two may part ways on what action to take, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.

Washington’s clout over its Middle East ally is under scrutiny after Israel’s veiled threats to attack Iran preemptively if international diplomacy fails to rein in Tehran’s uranium enrichment, a process with bomb-making potential.

The United States this week said it did not want to hurt the Iranian people with “crippling” sanctions against Iran’s energy sector, measures Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as the only viable diplomatic solution.

“There is of course a certain difference in perspective and a difference in judgment and a difference in the internal clock, a difference in capabilities,” Barak told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank, when asked about Israeli-U.S. discussions about Iran.

“I don’t think that there is a need to coordinate in this regard. There should be understanding on the exchange of views, but we do not need to coordinate everything,” said Barak, who was in Washington for strategic talks.

Yet again, we are supposed to believe that Israel is prepared to go it alone and take on Iran.

Israel can destroy a nuclear reactor in Iraq; it can destroy one under construction in Syria; it wipe out a weapons convoy in Sudan; it can kill a Hezbollah commander with a bomb in Damascus; it can smother a Hamas commander with a pillow in Dubai; and it can flatten Southern Lebanon and Gaza.

Therefore, Israel’s ready to go to war with Iran… or, it loves to show off its power when it perceives the risk of doing so is minimal. If that was the case with Iran, we wouldn’t be weighing the chances of an Israeli attack — we’d be looking at the results of such an action.

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Is Obama’s national security adviser out of the loop?

It could simply be Gen James Jones’ unassuming manner, but President Obama’s national security adviser certainly sounds and looks disengaged. He’s like a retired executive who got called up to fill-in during a protracted search for a permanent replacement.

A week ago, Peter Feaver noted that a Financial Times article on Obama’s core team of advisers made no mention of Jones. To have been included would have been no honor, yet to be left out of the picture reinforces the impression that Jones has a voice that simply doesn’t get heard and when you hear what he has to say it often seems like he’s not worth listening to.

Bloomberg reported:

Tighter international sanctions on Iran will increase pressure on the government there and could end up causing regime change, U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones said.

“We are about to add to that regime’s difficulties, by engineering, participating in very tough sanctions,” Jones said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Combined with internal dissent, the sanctions “could trigger regime change,” he said.

At Foreign Policy, Blake Hounshell dismisses Jones’ prediction:

First, let’s get one thing straight: There will be no tough sanctions. As FP’s Colum Lynch has reported, China doesn’t even have a go-to Iran hand right now, and has shown little interest in damaging relations with a country that supplies 11 percent of its oil imports. Beijing will see to it that whatever sanctions do pass the U.N. Security Council are toothless, as the Chinese have done on all previous occasions. They’ll give just enough to allow the Obama administration to say it passed something, while wringing concessions out of Washington that we may never know about.

As for the likelihood of regime change, Hillary Clinton certainly didn’t give a hint that she sees that prospect. On the contrary, she sees the regime’s power concentrating in the hands of the military.

The New York Times reported:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that the United States feared Iran was drifting toward a military dictatorship, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seizing control of large swaths of Iran’s political, military, and economic establishment.

“That is how we see it,” Mrs. Clinton said in a televised town hall meeting of students at the Doha campus of Carnegie Mellon University. “We see that the government in Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the Parliament, is being supplanted and that Iran is moving towards a military dictatorship.”

The United States, she said, was tailoring a new set of tougher United Nations sanctions to target the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls Iran’s nuclear program and which she said had increasingly marginalized the country’s clerical and political leadership.

Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were remarkably blunt, given her audience in Qatar, a Persian Gulf emirate with close ties to Iran. But they build on the administration’s recent strategy of branding the corps as an “entitled class” that is the principal menace in Iran.

Even if Clinton doesn’t belong to Obama’s inner power circle, there’s much more reason to think that she reflects the views of the administration than does Jones.

That view has hardened to one which sees neither the possibility of productively engaging with Iran’s current leadership nor the prospect for sweeping political change inside the Islamic republic.

The language of engagement is now being replaced by the language of containment.

As the Times reported:

The United States, Mrs. Clinton said, would protect its allies in the gulf from Iranian aggression — a pledge that echoed the idea of a “security umbrella” that she advanced last summer in Asia. She noted that the United States already supplied defensive weapons to several of these countries, and was prepared to bolster its military assistance if necessary.

“We will always defend ourselves, and we will always defend our friends and allies, and we will certainly defend countries who are in the Gulf who face the greatest immediate nearby threat from Iran,” she said. “We also are talking at length with a lot of our friends in the Gulf about what they need defensively in the event that Iran pursues its nuclear ambitions.”

Pressed repeatedly by an audience of mainly Muslim students, Mrs. Clinton said the United States had no plans to carry out a military strike against Iran.

The Pentagon likewise echoes Clinton’s lack of appetite for military action, as Ynet reported:

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Israel on Sunday that the US administration is very serious regarding its plans to impose harsh sanctions on Iran and expressed hope that such a step would ‘not end in violence.”

During a press briefing held at the US embassy in Tel Aviv, Mullen hinted that the US could attack Iran if negotiations failed and that such action could have “unintended consequences” throughout the volatile Middle East.

And if the US is unwilling to use force, that should not be taken to imply that Israel will take on the task.

As Reuters reported on Saturday:

Israel may lack the military means for successful pre-emptive strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, its former top general said on Saturday.

While endorsing international efforts to pressure Tehran into curbing sensitive nuclear technologies, Israel has hinted it could resort to force. But some analysts say Israeli jets would be stymied by the distance to Iran and by its defences. Asked in a television interview about Israeli leaders’ vows to “take care” of the perceived threat, ex-general Dan Halutz, who stepped down as armed forces chief in 2007, said: “We are taking upon ourselves a task that is bigger than us.”

“I think that the State of Israel should not take it upon itself to be the flag-bearer of the entire Western world in the face of the Iranian threat,” Halutz, whose previous military post was as air force commander, told Channel Two.

If the Obama administration’s approach to Iran is uninspired, maybe we can at least be thankful that Washington now wants to invoke images of umbrellas rather than mushroom clouds.

As for talk of regime change, that just comes from a retired general content to merely dream that one day he might advise the president.

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New light cast on the recent murder of an Iranian physicist

The Economist reports:

When a motorcycle was blown up by remote control in Tehran last month, killing Masoud Alimohammadi, a professor of physics, the regime blamed “the triangle of wickedness”—Israel, America and their “hired agents”.

It is no secret that America, Israel and European countries are seeking to impede Iran’s nuclear plans, overtly and covertly. Yet the assassination theory was widely dismissed. The professor’s known works on particle and theoretical physics did not seem central to Iran’s nuclear programme. And his name had appeared on a list of Iranian academics favouring Iran’s protest movement. So, ran the prevailing theory, Israel or America had little reason to kill him, though Iranian hardliners may have wanted to do so.

But listen to the whispers of Western spies and diplomats, and the Iranian regime may turn out to be right. Well-placed sources in two Western countries now say the professor was “one of the most important people involved in the programme”.

Such conclusions, admit some, are based on “imperfect insight” into the workings of Iran’s nuclear establishment that includes the public and ostensibly civil projects run by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) and an overlapping but secret organisation run by the ministry of defence that focuses more on turning fissile material into nuclear weapons.

The AEOI said it had not employed Mr Alimohammadi. Several Iran-watchers said they had never heard of him until his death. But a Western counter-proliferation source says he “is known to have worked closely” with two key figures in Iran’s ministry of defence, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi and Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani. Both are on the UN’s sanctions list of Iranians whose assets are to be seized and whose travels must be reported to the UN.

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Atomic agency views Iran’s stepped-up enrichment of uranium as a violation

The New York Times reported:

Iran’s surprise move this week to begin enriching its uranium to a level closer to weapons-grade violated an agreement with atomic inspectors in Vienna, diplomats said, very likely providing the United States with another piece of evidence that Iran is not living up to its international commitments on its nuclear program.

The breach involved Iran’s starting the enrichment process in the absence of atomic inspectors — something that the International Atomic Energy Agency had specifically asked Iran not to do. Narrowly, the violation was viewed as technical in nature. But it caused resentment at the atomic agency’s headquarters in Vienna because Iran had acted so quickly and with such apparent contempt of the agreement.

“There’s a feeling of pique and annoyance,” said a European diplomat who works with the agency and spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.

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Iran hails nuclear advance on Revolution Day

Australia’s ABC News reported:

Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied across Iran to make the anniversary of the country’s Islamic revolution.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a massive pro-government rally in Tehran to boast that the Islamic republic is now a nuclear state and on the brink of having the means to produce weapons grade uranium.

He was addressing a crowd of tens of thousands of government supporters who turned out in the capital’s Freedom Square to celebrate the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ousted Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

“By God’s grace it was reported that the first consignment of 20 per cent enriched uranium was produced and was put at the disposal of the scientists”, Mr Ahmadinejad told the crowd.

The Associated Press reported:

Iran expects to produce its first batch of higher enriched uranium within a few days but its effort is modest, using only a small amount of feedstock and a fraction of its capacities, according to a confidential document shared with The Associated Press.

The internal International Atomic Energy Agency document was significant in being the first glimpse at Iran’s plan to enrich uranium to 20 percent that did not rely on statements from Iranian officials.

Iran says it wants to enrich only up to 20 percent – substantially below the 90 percent plus level used in the fissile core of nuclear warheads – as a part of a plan to fuel its research reactor that provides medical isotopes to hundreds of thousands of Iranians undergoing cancer treatment.

But the West says Tehran is not capable of turning the material into the fuel rods needed by the reactor. Instead it fears that Iran wants to enrich the uranium to make nuclear weapons.

The IAEA confidential document (made public by Arms Control Wonk) states:

1. Further to the Director General’s report of 8 February 2010 (GOV/INF/2010/1), the Agency received on 8 February 2010 a separate letter from Iran, dated 8 February 2010, informing the Agency that the operator of the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) intended to transfer a small amount (about 10 kg) of low enriched uranium (LEU) produced at FEP from a large container into a smaller container for feeding into PFEP, and that these activities were to be performed on 9 February 2010. Iran requested that the Agency be present on the site on that date.

2. In a letter dated 8 February 2010, the Agency sought clarification from Iran regarding the timetable for the production process (including the starting date and the expected duration of the campaign), along with other technical details. In light of Article 45 of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement, the Agency requested that no LEU be fed into the process at PFEP before the Agency was able to adjust its existing safeguards procedures at that facility.

3. After the arrival of Agency inspectors at FEP on 9 February 2010, Iran transferred the LEU into the smaller container and moved the material from FEP to the feeding autoclave at PFEP. On 10 February 2010, when the Agency inspectors arrived at PFEP, they were informed that Iran had begun to feed the LEU into one cascade at PFEP the previous evening for purposes of passivation. They were also told that it was expected that the facility would begin to produce up to 20% enriched UF6 within a few days. It should be noted that there is currently only one cascade installed in PFEP that is capable of enriching the LEU up to 20%.

Arms Control Wonk provides this explanation of what “passivation” means:

One of the preparatory processes that is required before using a centrifuge component for the first time is “passivation” – which basically involves bathing any UF6 exposed bits in UF6 so that anything with a remaining potential to react will react in a controllable environment rather than in the vacuum system.

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Iran plans to get one small step away from producing weapons-grade nuclear fuel

Iran’s formal notification on Monday to the IAEA that it is going to start producing 20 percent enriched uranium in order to supply its research reactor that produces medical isotopes, means that it will be taking a major stride towards producing weapons-grade fuel.

The Washington Post reports:

…enriching uranium under the guise of medical needs will get Tehran much closer to possessing weapons-grade material. Iran insists it has no interest in nuclear weapons. But Albright said 70 percent of the work toward reaching weapons-grade uranium took place when Iran enriched uranium gas to 3.5 percent. Enriching it further to the 19.75 percent needed for the reactor is an additional “15 to 20 percent of the way there.”

Once the uranium is enriched above 20 percent, it is considered highly enriched uranium. The uranium would need to be enriched further, to 60 percent and then to 90 percent, before it could be used for a weapon. “The last two steps are not that big a deal,” Albright said. They could be accomplished, he said, at a relatively small facility within months.

Jeffrey Lewis provides a more detailed explanation of why 20 percent HEU is much closer to 90 percent than 3.5 percent LEU is to 20 percent.

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Iran and the bomb — faster, please!

Considering the fact that the New York Times is in its Middle East outlook a predictably liberal Zionist newspaper, it’s often refreshing to see what kind of surprises occasionally pop up on the op-ed page.

I dare say quite a few of the paper’s readers had heart palpitations on Monday morning after stumbling upon Adam B. Lowther’s piece on why a nuclear-armed Iran would be good for the United States.

“Believe it or not, there are some potential benefits to the United States should Iran build a bomb,” Lowther writes, while underlining that he is speaking for himself and not the US Air Force Research Institute where he works as a defense analyst.

None of Lowther’s arguments is particularly persuasive. He pictures the US providing the region with a nuclear umbrella and then being able to apply leverage on the major oil producing countries to bring about everything the US might wish for — lower oil prices; “economic, political and social reforms in the autocratic Arab regimes responsible for breeding the discontent that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001”; a much needed shot in the arm for the American defense industry — even a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That’s a big payoff from Iran becoming a nuclear power!

Lowther’s thinking seems to be at its fuzziest here:

Israel has made clear that it feels threatened by Iran’s nuclear program. The Palestinians also have a reason for concern, because a nuclear strike against Israel would devastate them as well. This shared danger might serve as a catalyst for reconciliation between the two parties, leading to the peace agreement that has eluded the last five presidents. Paradoxically, any final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians would go a long way to undercutting Tehran’s animosity toward Israel, and would ease longstanding tensions in the region.

Pointing out that the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza would be at as great a risk from nuclear fallout as would Israel’s own population in the event of an Iranian nuclear strike is actually one of the most compelling reasons why an Iranian nuclear arsenal could only serve the Islamic Republic as a nuclear deterrent.

As cynical as the use of the Palestinian issue by Iran’s leaders might be, it’s really hard to see how killing tens of thousands of Palestinians would serve Iran’s strategic needs. In other words, in the event that Iran becomes a nuclear power, Israel should probably start viewing its Palestinian neighbors as part of its own insurance policy (along side its own large nuclear arsenal).

Of course, proponents of the mad mullah theory argue that the Iranian regime is driven by its own death wish, in which case the Palestinians would be out of luck. (Mind you, the equally mad bomb-Iran crowd seems to be subject to its own variety of death wish — war with Iran would surely push a teetering global economy over the edge.)

So, to return to Lowther’s original assertion — that a nuclear Iran would benefit the United States — I’m inclined to agree, but for utterly different reasons.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday: “The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned.”

Is Iran about to conduct a nuclear test?

I, like just about everyone else, would indeed be stunned if that happened, but let’s suppose it does — and even if it doesn’t happen on Thursday, let’s just picture it some day down the road in the coming months.

What then?

Well, at that point I would expect an invective-filled global shrug. There would be a few days of hyperventilation as international leaders tried to outdo each other in expressing their shock and outrage, and then…

And then we’d be able to get on with the rest of our lives. We would — just as former CENTCOM commander John Abizaid predicted almost three years ago — “learn to live with a nuclear Iran.” Indeed, we might at that point be willing to admit what is already true: that the nuclear weapons that should cause the greatest global concern are further east, in Pakistan.

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Iran ratchets up atom work despite sanctions threat

Reuters reports:

Iran’s president gave instructions on Sunday for the production of higher-grade nuclear reactor fuel, prompting the United States and Germany to threaten carefully targeted new sanctions against Tehran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announcement raised the stakes in Iran’s dispute with the West, but he said talks were still possible on a nuclear swap offer by world powers designed to allay fears the Islamic Republic is making an atomic bomb.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the response by Iran, a major oil exporter which says its nuclear program is to make electricity and not bombs, was very disappointing.

Deutsche Welle added:

US Senator Joe Lieberman, who heads the Senate Committe on Homeland Security, told the German Press Agency dpa that the world faces a choice between imposing tough sanctions against Iran or launching a military strike.

Lieberman was the last speaker of the day on Saturday and obviously frustrated at the Iranian Foreign Minister’s late-night speech on Friday didn’t mince his words.

“We have a choice here: to go to tough economic sanctions to make diplomacy work or we will face the prospect of military action against Iran,” Lieberman said.

That is because a nuclear-armed Iran would create chaos in the Middle East, send oil prices soaring and shatter any hope of an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said.

“They should just accept the existing (IAEA) proposal,” Lieberman told dpa.

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Gates scoffs at Iran nuclear claim

The New York Times reports:

As Iran’s foreign minister met with the chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency here, the United States and Germany rejected Iran’s assertion that it was close to accepting an international compromise on its nuclear program.

Western officials expressed deep skepticism toward Tehran’s contention that a deal was close for having uranium enriched abroad for Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said that the Iranians presented no new proposal or counterproposal during a meeting on the sidelines of a security conference here Saturday.

“Dialogue is continuing,” Mr. Amano said. “It should be accelerated. That’s the point.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that actions by Iranian leaders did not back up their conciliatory public statements. “Based on the information that I have, I don’t have the sense we are close to an agreement,” he said at the conclusion of talks with Turkish leaders in Ankara.

Julian Borger adds:

The Tehran government has a gift for the theatrical. The arrival of the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, at the Munich Security Conference was confirmed at the very last moment, and since he got here, Mottaki has held it in the palm of his hand. On Friday night he claimed a deal on Iran’s uranium was close, but then added that it was up to Iran to decide how much of its enriched uranium would be included in the deal. Jam tomorrow, but perhaps not very much.

Today, Mottaki elaborated on his theme at some length, without saying a whole lot more. Asked whether Iran was still willing to export the 1200 kg of low enriched uranium (LEU) provisionally agreed in Geneva last October, he slipped into the opaque language of the bazaar.

It is very common in business, for the buyer to talk about the quantity, while the seller only offers the price. We determine the quantity on the basis of our needs, and we will inform the [international] bodies about our requirements. Maybe it is less than this quantity you have already mentioned [1200kg] or maybe a little more than that quantity that we may need for our reactor.

Mottaki also said that Iran’s nuclear experts had studied the time interval it would take to turn Iranian LEU into 20% enriched uranium in the form of fuel rods, and endorsed that interval. The talk in Geneva was that this would take a year. A few days ago in a television interview, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talked of four to five months. Mottaki did not make it clear which time-scale he was talking about.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program will neither completely stop Teheran’s nuclear march, nor bring down the ayatollahs’ regime, according to former Swiss ambassador to Iran Tim Guldimann.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on the sidelines of this week’s Herzliya Conference, Guldimann, who knows the Iranian way of thinking well, expressed – as a personal opinion – his deep concern about the military option against Iran.

Guldimann was Swiss ambassador to Iran and Afghanistan from 1999 to 2004. As ambassador to Teheran, Guldimann – now senior adviser and head of the Middle East Project at the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva – represented US interests in Iran, acting as a go-between. He gained notoriety for a memorandum he transmitted to the US in 2003, which posited an alleged Iranian proposal for a broad dialogue with the US, with everything on the table – including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian armed groups. The proposal was rejected by the Bush administration.

According to Guldimann, the position that unless the international community stops Iran’s nuclear program, Israel would have to do it alone is based on the unproven assumption that Iran will actually go down the road of having a nuclear weapon at its disposal.

“My understanding is that they will not go as far as that. If you say that there is [in Iran] a clear policy of achieving a nuclear capability, I would fully agree. You can define that as a breakout period. But will they make a political decision to produce a bomb? Such a breakout is an absolutely different question,” he says.

The Washington Post says:

China on Thursday threw a roadblock in the path of a U.S.-led push for sanctions against Iran, saying that it is important to continue negotiations as long as Iran appears willing to consider a deal to give up some of its enriched uranium.

“To talk about sanctions at the moment will complicate the situation and might stand in the way of finding a diplomatic solution,” Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said at a conference in Paris.

The Guardian reports:

Iran has launched a ­research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space – showing that the country can defeat the west in the battle of technology and that it will soon send its own astronauts, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saidtoday.

Iranian state television broadcast images of officials placing the animals inside a capsule in the Kavoshgar 3 (explorer in Farsi) rocket before blast-off, although it did not report where or when the launch took place. The Iranian Students News Agency said the capsule had successfully returned to Earth with its “passengers”.

Western powers fear the technology used by Iran’s space programme to launch satellites and research capsules could also be used to build long-range intercontinental missiles. A US defence expert said the launch underlined the closeness of Iran’s space and military programmes.

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Iran says ready to send uranium abroad as UN wants

From the Associated Press:

Iran said on Tuesday it was ready to send its uranium abroad for further enrichment as requested by the U.N.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the decision in an interview with state Iranian television.

He said Iran will have “no problem” giving the West its low-enriched uranium and taking it back several months later when it is enriched by 20 percent.

The decision could signal a major shift in the Iranian position on the issue.

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Iran praises West’s ‘realism’ on nuclear issue

Iran praises West’s ‘realism’ on nuclear issue
AFP, January 19, 2010

Ian on Tuesday welcomed what it called the West’s newfound “realism” on Tehran’s nuclear programme after world powers failed to decide on new sanctions.

China, meanwhile, urged flexibility on the standoff over Iran’s nuclear drive and a return to negotiations.

However, Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi renewed a warning that Iran’s forces could hit Western warships in the Gulf if it comes under attack over the nuclear standoff.

On the diplomatic front, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters: “Speaking of sanctions is repetitive and it is not constructive.

“Some Western countries … should correct their approach and be realistic about our (nuclear) rights. And we feel there are traces of realism to be seen,” he added. [continued…]

China urges flexibility over Iran
AFP, January 19, 2010

China on Tuesday urged flexibility in the standoff over Iran’s nuclear drive, as well as a return to negotiations, after world powers failed to reach a decision on whether to hit Tehran with new sanctions.

“China has all along proposed the proper settlement of the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and consultation,” foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters.

“We hope relevant parties can enhance consultations, show flexibility and promote the early peaceful solution of the relevant issue in a proper manner.”

Ma was speaking after representatives of six world powers who met in New York on Saturday failed to reach a decision on whether to impose new sanctions on Iran over its long-standing nuclear defiance.

The meeting brought together senior officials from four of the five permanent UN Security Council members — Britain, France, Russia and the United States — as well as Germany.

But the fifth member China, signalling its reluctance to back tougher sanctions pushed by the West, sent a lower-level diplomat, winning praise from Tehran. [continued…]

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Elite US troops ready to combat Pakistani nuclear hijacks

Elite US troops ready to combat Pakistani nuclear hijacks
By Christina Lamb, The Sunday Times, January 17, 2010

The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country’s security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one.

The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them.

The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan’s military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight.

“What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department’s intelligence unit. “There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities.” [continued…]

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Iranian scientist killed by bomb had opposition links

Iranian scientist killed by bomb had opposition links
By Richard Spencer, The Telegraph, January 12, 2010

An Iranian nuclear physicist with ties to the reformist movement led by the opposition leader, Mir Hossein Moussavi, has been killed by a bomb near his home.

Dr Moussad Ali-Mohammadi was leaving his house on his way to work at Tehran University when the bomb, attached to a motorbike, went off, killing him instantly.

The Iranian authorities said they suspected the hand of exiled opposition movements working on behalf of America and Israel, a charge denied by Washington.

They drew parallels with the disappearance of a scientist attached to the country’s nuclear programme while on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, who the authorities say was kidnapped and handed over to the Americans.

But Dr Ali-Mohammadi’s academic work was highly theoretical and the body responsible for the country’s nuclear research programme, which has brought Iran into conflict with the West, said he had no connection with it.

Opposition movement supporters also said he was on a list of 240 academic backers of Mr Moussavi published before last year’s disputed election. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — It comes as little surprise that the Iranian government would be quick to accuse Israel and the US of being behind this assassination. The US is currently operating a far from covert assassination program in Pakistan and less than a year ago it was reported that Israel had launched a program specifically targeting Iran’s top nuclear scientists.

Last February, The Telegraph reported:

Israel has launched a covert war against Iran as an alternative to direct military strikes against Tehran’s nuclear programme, US intelligence sources have revealed.

It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime’s illicit weapons project, the experts say.

The most dramatic element of the “decapitation” programme is the planned assassination of top figures involved in Iran’s atomic operations.

Israel is also widely assumed to have been behind the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, a leading member of Hezbollah, in Damascus two years ago.

Governments that sanction or instigate assassinations have a hard time pleading innocence.

So, does this mean that Mossad is the prime suspect in this case? Probably not. More likely this was instigated by the regime itself. The killing would send multiple messages:

1. The official line – foreign enemies of the state are on the lose and Iranians must stand together to face this threat.
2. Those who support the opposition are risking their lives by doing so.
3. Any Iranian nuclear scientists who might consider defection have been served notice that they might meet the same fate.

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UPDATED: Report: Iran slows down nuclear program in gesture to West

UPDATED: Report: Iran slows down nuclear program in gesture to West
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz, January 11, 2010

Iran has suspended its uranium enrichment program for two months, Iranian media sources reported on Monday, saying the move was meant as a gesture of good will toward Western powers.

The report has not been confirmed by any other sources.

Meanwhile, with or without connection to these reports, U.S. government officials have said that there was still a chance of striking a deal with Iran over its nuclear program.

The possible deal, according to the Washington based newspaper Politico, would be based on the proposal formed late last September and early October in talks in Geneva and Vienna, between Iran and Western powers. The agreement may still go through, even though the deadline which U.S. President Barack Obama set for nuclear talks with Iran, the end of 2009, has expired. [continued…]

UPDATE: Iran denies report on uranium enrichment suspension
Al Bawaba, January 11, 2010

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast on Monday dismissed an Israeli newspaper report on the suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities as “unfounded” and “baseless”, stressing that Tehran will continue its unabated nuclear activities.

“From our viewpoint, these newspapers and information-dissemination sources are not creditable and there is no audience for such fabrication of news and purposeful mistakes in Iran,” Mehman-Parast told FNA. Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reported earlier that Iran has suspended its nuclear enrichment program in gesture of goodwill towards the West. [continued…]

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Iran offers nuke fuel deal

Iran offers nuke fuel deal
By Laura Rozen, Politico, January 10, 2010

There are signs that negotiations with Iran over a nuclear fuel swap have resumed despite the expiration of the end-of-year deadline for a deal set by President Barack Obama.

While the Obama administration has stepped up talk of expanding sanctions on the regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iranian news reports and U.S. official sources say that Iran has recently returned a formal counter offer to swap low enriched uranium, or LEU, in exchange for nuclear fuel cells produced in the West.

The proposal comes as Iranian news reports say the foreign ministry has announced the halting of uranium enrichment for two months as a good-will gesture. Outside observers have not confirmed that claim. [continued…]

U.S. shifts Iran focus to support opposition
By Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2010

The Obama administration is increasingly questioning the long-term stability of Tehran’s government and moving to find ways to support Iran’s opposition “Green Movement,” said senior U.S. officials.

The White House is crafting new financial sanctions specifically designed to punish the Iranian entities and individuals most directly involved in the crackdown on Iran’s dissident forces, said the U.S. officials, rather than just those involved in Iran’s nuclear program.

U.S. Treasury Department strategists already have been focusing on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has emerged as the economic and military power behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [continued…]

The state of the opposition is strong
By Abbas Milani, The New Republic, January 8, 2010

A couple of days after June’s stolen election in Iran, Flynt Leverett and I were both guests on “The Charlie Rose Show.” Mr. Leverett was waxing eloquent about how Ahmadinejad could have actually won the election. His supposed evidence was a May poll, conducted by phone from Turkey, before the presidential campaign had even begun. Apparently he did not read the entire report of the poll, merely a summary, published in a Washington Post editorial. Much of the full report contradicted his conclusions. Moreover, anyone who believes that Iranians today will reveal their real electoral preferences to a pollster calling from Turkey probably responds to emails from Nigerian princes. [continued…]

Steady drip of leaks corrodes the core of the Iranian regime
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, January 7, 2010

Beatings, arrests, show trials and even killings have failed to discourage Iranians from taking to the streets in protest. But those same tactics may be taking a toll on the government itself, eating away at its legitimacy even among its core of insiders, Iran experts are saying. The evidence? Leaks.

They began in December. Leaks about private meetings of the intelligence services and Revolutionary Guards; an embarrassing memo from state-owned television on how to cover the protests; a note about how the security services have been using petty criminals to fill out the ranks of pro-government demonstrations.

There is no way to verify the accuracy of these leaks. But the government appears to have grown so angry and frustrated with what it calls a “soft war” to overthrow the state that it recently made it a crime to be affiliated with many foreign news outlets, dozens of nongovernmental organizations and opposition Web sites deemed “antirevolutionary.” [continued…]

Iran’s parliament exposes abuse of opposition prisoners at Tehran jail
By Robert Tait, The Guardian, January 10, 2010

Iranian MPs lifted a blanket of official denial on the country’s post-election upheaval today by blaming a ­senior regime insider for abuses that led to the deaths of at least three prisoners in a detention centre.

In the first publicly documented ­admission that abuses occurred in the weeks after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election, the majlis, Iran’s parliament, identified Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran’s former chief ­prosecutor, as the main culprit in the scandal over the Kahrizak facility.

A report read out to MPs said 147 prisoners had been held in a 70-square-metre room for four days without proper ventilation, heating and food on ­Mortazavi’s orders. The prisoners were sent to ­Kahrizak after being arrested at a demonstration on 9 July, less than a month after ­Ahmadinejad’s victory. [continued…]

Iran’s opposition spreads to heartland
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2010

Mohammad knew he had to be careful in approaching his old classmate Hamed, the one from the conservative Iranian family. They come from a small city, after all, and word gets around.

When they ran into each other last summer in their eastern Iranian hometown of Birjand, the pair hadn’t seen each other for nine years. As they caught up on old times, the conversation turned to the country’s disputed election in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

“He believed Ahmadinejad’s victory was not fraudulent, and that Mousavi was angry because Iranians didn’t vote for him,” said Mohammad, a 23-year-old engineering student in Birjand, a provincial capital of 160,000 near the border with Afghanistan. “He also thought that the people who protest are some gangsters and not civilized people.” [continued…]

Rafsanjani so silent because he gets no respect, brother says
By Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2010

For months Iran watchers have wondered what was up with Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council, as well as a pillar of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Once considered the second-most powerful man in the country and the primary backer of Iran’s burgeoning opposition movement, he has grown uncharacteristically quiet in the last couple of months.

In an interview published this weekend by the Mehr news agency (in Persian), his younger brother, Mohammad, says he’s grown so silent “because no one listens to him.” [continued…]

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Elite Revolutionary Guard’s expanding role in Iran may limit U.S. options

Elite Revolutionary Guard’s expanding role in Iran may limit U.S. options
By Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, January 10, 2010

A major expansion in the role played by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is giving the elite force new economic and political clout, but it could also complicate efforts by the United States and its allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts.

Commanders of the Revolutionary Guard say its growth represents a logical expansion for an organization that is not a military force but a popular movement that protects the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard’s expanded economic role is mirrored by a greater role in politics and security since the disputed presidential election in June, which the government says was won by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a landslide but which the opposition says was stolen.

U.S. officials consider the Guard a ripe target for sanctions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program because of the group’s central role in repressing post-election opposition protests. The officials are also concerned that broader-based sanctions risk alienating the Iranian public at a time when the government here faces protests from an energized opposition. But they also know that because of the Guard’s growing economic influence, sanctions on it could pinch the broader Iranian public as well.

Supporters and opponents alike say the Guard has dramatically expanded its reach into Iran’s economy, with vast investments in thousands of companies across a range of sectors. Working through its private-sector arm, the group operates Tehran’s international airport, builds the nation’s highways and constructs communications systems. It also manages Iran’s weapons manufacturing business, including its controversial missile program. [continued…]

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Israeli general Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam denies Iran is nuclear threat

Israeli general Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam denies Iran is nuclear threat
By Uzi Mahnaimi, The Sunday Times, January 10, 2010

A general who was once in charge of Israel’s nuclear weapons has claimed that Iran is a “very, very, very long way from building a nuclear capability”.

Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.

The views expressed by the former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission contradict the assessment of Israel’s defence establishment and put him at odds with political leaders.

Major-General Amos Yadlin, head of military intelligence, recently told the defence committee of the Knesset that Iran will probably be able to build a single nuclear device this year. [continued…]

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