The Israeli government has learned that Bashar Al-Assad recently bought significant quantities of cement from North Korea.”
OK. Maybe this line won’t make it into the president’s next State of the Union speech, but we should be in no doubt that once again the neocons are on the loose and in response the Washington Post and New York Times have dutifully put on their dunce caps. Continue reading
Has Iran paused its uranium enrichment program?
By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy, August 25, 2007
Iran appears not to have significantly expanded its uranium enrichment program this summer, a development that has many experts wondering whether the threat of sanctions finally has had an impact on the Iranian government.
Experts won’t know for sure if Iran has paused its program until a report this week from a team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who were in Iran last week for the third round of inspections this summer. A public debate on the report is scheduled for the IAEA’s Sept. 10 meeting.
But after five years of frustration at a lack of Iranian cooperation, those who closely follow Iran’s nuclear program believe that Iran’s resumption of IAEA inspections coupled with the apparent halt in expansion may signal that the Islamic Republic is willing to compromise. [complete article]
Dissent threatens U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal
By Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, August 26, 2007
After two years of painstaking negotiations, a historic nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India appears to be unraveling as a broad spectrum of political parties calls on the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to scrap the deal, saying it limits the country’s sovereignty in energy and foreign policy matters.
The landmark accord that just weeks ago looked like a major foreign policy triumph for this energy-starved subcontinent has become a political liability for India’s fragile ruling coalition.
The brouhaha over the deal has surprised some nuclear analysts in Washington, partly because the Bush administration was widely perceived as having caved in to key Indian demands. The administration had assured the government here that it could receive uninterrupted nuclear supplies from the United States and maintain the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — a potentially dangerous prospect because reprocessing technology can also be used to make weapons-grade plutonium. To many Western observers, India already had the upper hand in the deal, a testament to its growing international influence. [complete article]