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"Friend and Ally" Pakistan refuses to go after major Taliban figure

"American intelligence officials suspect Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency uses [Siraj Haqqani] for its interests in Afghanistan."

A particularly obvious example of Pakistan's ongoing double game. "Pakistan nixes going after Taliban," from UPI, December 22:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has spared no effort to publicly laud the vital role of Pakistan for the success of its Afghanistan strategy, but what is happening behind the scene tells a different story.
Pakistan, going by recent reports, is making no secret of its resentment of U.S. policy, which in essence wants its military to do more to crack down on the Taliban and other militants using its territory as sanctuaries to launch attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
That was in evidence last week when the Pakistani military refused to go along with a U.S. demand it go after Taliban commander Siraj Haqqani, who uses his North Waziristan hideout in Pakistan to plan attacks by his warriors across the border.
The Pakistani military argued it is already heavily involved in a counterinsurgency campaign in South Waziristan and that its resources cannot be further extended into North Waziristan. But the criticism against Pakistan is that its two-month old South Waziristan campaign has only targeted domestic militants who threaten the country's security and not against the Afghan Taliban using its territory as sanctuaries. The offensive also has only helped many of the militant leaders to escape to North Waziristan and other areas.
A senior Pakistani security official told The Times of London any confrontation with Haqqani could create more problems for the army and that "we cannot fight on so many fronts."
The Obama administration wants Pakistan, set to receive $1.5 billion of U.S. civilian aid a year for five years, to dismantle the Taliban sanctuaries in return for a long-term strategic bilateral partnership.
U.S. officials also say that besides Haqqani, top Taliban leaders including Mullah Mohammed Omar are using Quetta, capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, as their base, and that the United States may decide to go after these militants on its own through expanded Predator drone strikes if Pakistan doesn't cooperate.
As for Haqqani, The Times of London reported, American intelligence officials suspect Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency uses him for its interests in Afghanistan.
A New York Times report, quoting officials, said Pakistanis feel the U.S. demand would go against the need to position their country in Afghanistan in any regional rearrangement that might involve its main rival India as well as Russia, China and Iran once America begins to draw down its troops starting in July 2011 under the Obama strategy. In that scenario, the support of Haqqani and his fighters who control substantial regions of Afghanistan would be vital....
Pakistan nixes going after Taliban

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
by Staff Writers
Islamabad, Pakistan (UPI) Dec 22, 2009
U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has spared no effort to publicly laud the vital role of Pakistan for the success of its Afghanistan strategy, but what is happening behind the scene tells a different story.

Pakistan, going by recent reports, is making no secret of its resentment of U.S. policy, which in essence wants its military to do more to crack down on the Taliban and other militants using its territory as sanctuaries to launch attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

That was in evidence last week when the Pakistani military refused to go along with a U.S. demand it go after Taliban commander Siraj Haqqani, who uses his North Waziristan hideout in Pakistan to plan attacks by his warriors across the border.

The Pakistani military argued it is already heavily involved in a counterinsurgency campaign in South Waziristan and that its resources cannot be further extended into North Waziristan. But the criticism against Pakistan is that its two-month old South Waziristan campaign has only targeted domestic militants who threaten the country's security and not against the Afghan Taliban using its territory as sanctuaries. The offensive also has only helped many of the militant leaders to escape to North Waziristan and other areas.

A senior Pakistani security official told The Times of London any confrontation with Haqqani could create more problems for the army and that "we cannot fight on so many fronts."

The Obama administration wants Pakistan, set to receive $1.5 billion of U.S. civilian aid a year for five years, to dismantle the Taliban sanctuaries in return for a long-term strategic bilateral partnership.

U.S. officials also say that besides Haqqani, top Taliban leaders including Mullah Mohammed Omar are using Quetta, capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, as their base, and that the United States may decide to go after these militants on its own through expanded Predator drone strikes if Pakistan doesn't cooperate.

As for Haqqani, The Times of London reported, American intelligence officials suspect Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency uses him for its interests in Afghanistan.

A New York Times report, quoting officials, said Pakistanis feel the U.S. demand would go against the need to position their country in Afghanistan in any regional rearrangement that might involve its main rival India as well as Russia, China and Iran once America begins to draw down its troops starting in July 2011 under the Obama strategy. In that scenario, the support of Haqqani and his fighters who control substantial regions of Afghanistan would be vital.

"If America walks away, Pakistan is very worried that it will have India on its eastern border and India on its western border in Afghanistan," Tariq Fatemi, former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, told The New York Times.

The need to dismantle the Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries in Pakistan was stressed by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, during his recent visit to Afghanistan.

Noting the insurgency in Afghanistan has grown "more violent, more pervasive and more sophisticated," Mullen told reporters in Kabul: "I remain deeply concerned by the growing level of collusion between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida and other extremist groups taking refuge across the border in Pakistan.

"Getting at this network, which is now more entrenched, will be a far more difficult task than it was just one year ago."

Pakistan's resentment of U.S. AFPAK policy is also manifesting in other unlikely areas.

In what is seen as harassment, U.S. officials told The New York Times the Pakistani military and intelligence services are yet to clear visas for more than 100 Americans and that they are subjecting U.S. diplomatic vehicles to constant searches in major Pakistani cities. These problems have impacted personnel including development experts, junior-level diplomats and others, thereby affecting aid and other programs.

Pakistani officials did not deny the problems but blamed them on Americans taking photographs in sensitive areas or showing a lack of understanding of divisions within Pakistan about the United States. A U.S. Embassy official said the report on the photography incident was false.

"Unfortunately, the Americans are arrogant," a Pakistani security official said. "They think of themselves as omnipotent. That's how they come across."

CNN quoted U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood as saying that the delay in granting visas has raised enough official concern and been taken up at "very senior levels" in the Pakistani government.

These developments come on top of other issues currently affecting U.S.-Pakistan relations. Among them are the recent arrests in Pakistan of five young Muslim Americans on suspicion of seeking to pursue jihadist training in that country and the cases of David C. Headley and Tahawwur Hussein Rana.

Headley, a Pakistan-raised U.S. national, was arrested in Chicago in October and is accused of conspiring with an extremist Islamic group in Pakistan to plot attacks in Denmark and India. Rana, identified by U.S. authorities as a Pakistani native and a Canadian citizen, is now in jail in Chicago as a terrorism suspect.

Enemies lurk on friendly Facebook

Social networking sites fall prey to cyberbullies who steal identities

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Nicole Baute Living reporter
Published On Tue Dec 22 2009
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Social networking website Facebook claims to have a user base of 67 million around the world.

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Tips to avoid getting hacked or phished:

Check with senders before following links in emails, which may lead to fake websites asking for logins and passwords for various online accounts.

Don't use proper names in passwords. "Any English-language proper-spelling name, that's an easy target," says Glen Falkiner, director of network services for IT firm Quartet Service. Make your password more complex by swapping some letters for others, or adding symbols.

Do not use the same password for all your online accounts, and change your passwords regularly.

Companies should tell employees to leave peer-to-peer file sharing and social networking at home to limit the risk of infections.

Mike Brown was late to join Facebook's swelling ranks. When he finally did, he kept his security settings high, used perfect punctuation and was careful about what he posted.

His friends couldn't believe he would post a "very, very vulgar" pornographic picture on his Facebook profile last April. As they suspected, he didn't.

His account had been hacked.

Users of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are learning they are vulnerable to online bullies, who use malicious programs to snatch identities.

Perpetrators access accounts by figuring out passwords or by "phishing" – sending links to fake websites masquerading as trusted ones, which ask for and collect login and password information.

Once into an account, these cybervillians use the online identity to ask friends for money, promote products or just cause trouble.

On Twitter, this might mean offering followers a $500 Victoria's Secret gift card or encouraging them to click on a link to get 100 followers. Even celebrities have been hit, including CNN's Rick Sanchez, Britney Spears and Barack Obama, who unknowingly asked his followers to take a survey in January and possibly win $500 in free gas.

Mark Federman, a researcher at the University of Toronto, says hackers play on the reputation individuals have among their friends and contacts. It's identity theft in the purest sense of the term.

"It's not the pseudo-identity that is our financial records. It's actual identity," he says.

Brown, a recent graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University, isn't sure how someone hacked into his Facebook, but he suspects they may have got in through his email account, which was also hacked.

When he notified Facebook that his account had been taken over, they dealt with the problem within a week.

Bryan Rutberg, 47, was the victim of a much more serious hack. He was reading a book in his Seattle home one night when his Facebook status mysteriously changed to "Bryan Rutberg IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!"

His teenage daughter was the first to spot it.

While Rutberg tried to get his account back, the hacker sent messages to his "friends," one by one as they came online, posing as Rutberg and saying he was robbed at gunpoint in London and was in desperate need of money to get home.

"Literally dozens of people I had connected with on Facebook, some of whom I had no way of connecting with other than via Facebook, friends from high school, college, grad school, old jobs, were being solicited by the person who had hacked my page trying to get money from them."

Most of Rutberg's "friends" were suspicious of the call for help, but one took the bait and wired $1,200 to the imposter. When Rutberg told the friend that he had been scammed, he responded with "a popular four-letter word."

Rutberg isn't sure how the hacker got into his account, but he suspects he might have clicked on a fake link that asked for his account information.

Facebook now has a list of frequently asked questions about money scams, phishing and fake notifications and emails, including steps to take if you're targeted.

Stephen Hockema, a professor in the faculty of information at the University of Toronto, thinks people don't realize how valuable information about social networks is to spammers.

"You can target a specific group that you know has something in common," he says. "You can actually send a message to somebody that looks as if it's coming from a friend. You're much more likely to get their attention. That's what advertisers are paying for, is attention."

Hockema says people need to take their password security seriously, even for social networking sites used primarily for pleasure.

"You have to understand that once someone gets into your Facebook account they can impersonate you, send messages to anyone in your contact list, which often includes co-workers.

"It can actually escalate pretty quickly."

Iran rejects uranium swap deadline

December 22, 2009

(JTA) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected a year-end deadline to accept a deal to trade low-grade enriched uranium for nuclear fuel.

Ahmadinejad rejected the United States-imposed deadline on the United Nations-brokered deal Tuesday during an appearance in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz that was broadcast on state television, according to reports.

"The West can give Iran as many deadlines as they want, we don't care," Ahmadinejad reportedly said. "They say we have given Iran until the end of the Christian year. Who are they anyway? It is we who have given them an opportunity."

Iran has said its nuclear program is strictly for civilian purposes, though Western governments believe Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon.

In November, Iran also rejected a plan brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations, in which the Islamic Republic would send its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France in order to be converted into nuclear fuel to be used for medical purposes.

Suicide bombings mark jihadist advance

Mainly Christian Ethiopia, which sent its army into Somalia in December 2006 to prop up the TFG, does not want to see an Islamist regime installed in its northern Muslim neighbor. Photo courtesy AFP.

Blast kills two at suspected Qaeda camp in south Yemen
Al-Maajala (AFP) Dec 21, 2009 - Two people were killed and nine wounded on Monday in two explosions at the site of a suspected Al-Qaeda training camp in southern Yemen which was hit by an air strike last week that also killed 49 civilians. The two explosions went off after a protest by thousands of southern tribesmen demanding an investigation into the attack in the village of al-Maajala, in Abyan province, a local authority official said. Dozens of protesters had visited the site to inspect the aftermath of the raids, when the two explosions took place, the official told AFP requesting anonymity. The source of the explosion was not immediately clear, but the provincial governor was quick to blame the militants. "The Al-Qaeda terrorists mined the ground targeted in Thursday's raid... in the expectation that the security forces would inspect the site as part of their investigation," Ahmed al-Muyasari told the official Saba news agency. He said two of the nine people wounded in the blasts were in a serious condition. Thursday's air raid killed 23 children and 17 women, a local official and tribal sources said. The government said it targeted a suspected Al-Qaeda training camp killing around 30 militants, some of them foreigners. The interior and defence ministers as well as the vice premier for security affairs had been due to appear before parliament on Monday to take questions about the raid but they failed to turn up.
by Staff Writers
Mogadishu, Somalia (UPI) Dec 21, 2009
A recent surge of suicide bombings in Somalia underlines the growing influence of al-Qaida in the Horn of Africa as the war-ravaged country's Islamist forces keep up pressure on the U.S.-backed transitional federal government holed up in the capital Mogadishu.

In the worst suicide attack, three government ministers were killed along with 16 other people at a graduation ceremony for medical students at Benadir University held in a Mogadishu hotel on Dec. 3. Two other ministers were wounded.

The attack was a punishing blow to the beleaguered transitional government, whose writ barely covers a few blocks of the city and its airport.

Several weeks earlier two suicide cars bombers attacked the main military base of the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu, killing 17 soldiers, including their deputy commander.

The bombings underlined the government's weakness and the ease with which the jihadists are able to strike more or less at will. They are spearheaded by the Harakat al-Shebaab al-Mujahedin, universally known as al-Shebaab, or Youth, that is linked to al-Qaida.

The only real obstacle to al-Shebaab overwhelming the TFG is divisions that plague the Islamists.

Al-Shebaab has been locked in a power struggle with its main rival, Hizbul Islam, in the south since May.

Al-Shebaab has been making some gains there against the alliance of clan-based militias. But until it can secure unfettered domination it appears that the TFG, propped up by U.S. arms and money, will be able to hold on even though it has no popular mandate.

"It is likely that President Sharif Ahmed and the TFG are actively supporting the clan-based organizations that make up the various parts of Hizbul Islam in the south," according to Texas-based security consultancy Stratfor.

The TFG, aided by Ethiopia, has another ally in the Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, a Somali militia backed by Addis Ababa.

Mainly Christian Ethiopia, which sent its army into Somalia in December 2006 to prop up the TFG, does not want to see an Islamist regime installed in its northern Muslim neighbor.

An AU peacekeeping force that deployed when the Ethiopian troops withdrew in 2008 is supposed to bolster the TFG. But the 5,250-strong force is woefully inadequate, poorly trained and under-armed.

It is also widely despised by the inhabitants of Mogadishu, whom its troops regularly slaughter indiscriminately when their bases come under fire from the jihadists.

Many of al-Shebaab's leaders are Somali veterans of the wars in Afghanistan. Their current commander, Ahmed Abdi Godane, aka Abu Zubehr, is believed to have fought the Soviets in the 1980s alongside Osama bin Laden and his Arab jihadists.

He took over the leadership in the fall of 2008 after his predecessor, Aden Hashi Ayro, was killed in a U.S. airstrike on May 1 with another important leader, Sheik Muhyadin Omar.

Ayro, aka Eyrow, is believed to have trained in Afghanistan with al-Qaida and returned to Somalia in 2003.

Another senior commander is Ibrahim Hajji Jaama, known as "al Afghani" because he spent years fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

There are reported to be scores of "foreign fighters" in the ranks of al-Shebaab who have carried with them a radical ideology of global jihad as espoused by Osama bin Laden.

Their influence is spreading among the Islamist forces, changing their outlook from a localized insurgency to a wider battle against the West. The foreign element in the leadership is exercising increasing control over the organization.

"There's a serious struggle within al-Shebaab between nationalists and the foreign jihadis who want to take the fight to another level," says Abdi Rashid, a Somali analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

The Americans are increasingly concerned that the jihadists are extending their influence across the Horn of Africa, infiltrating East Africa and the Red Sea.

The jihadists recently threatened to attack African states that have contributed troops to the peacekeeping force in Somalia.

Al-Qaida's resurgence in Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, is also causing concern, although the Yemeni government unleashed airstrikes against the jihadists on Dec. 17.

There have been reports that al-Qaida is sending veteran fighters to Yemen and Somalia.

N.Korea still wants recognition as nuclear state

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009
North Korea is still seeking recognition as a nuclear power despite trying to normalise relations with the United States, South Korea's top military officer said Monday.

"It is our assessment that North Korea has not altered its strategic goal of simultaneously securing the status of a nuclear state and the stability of its regime through the normalisation of North-US relations," General Lee Sang-Eui, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a forum.

US President Barack Obama's envoy Stephen Bosworth flew to Pyongyang last week to try to persuade the communist state to return to stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

Under a 2005 six-party joint statement, the North agreed to scrap all its nuclear programmes and weaponry in return for aid, non-aggression guarantees, diplomatic benefits and talks on a treaty formally ending the 1950-53 war.

The war ended only in an armistice.

Bosworth said Friday that the United States and North Korea have a "common understanding" on the need to implement the 2005 statement and resume the six-nation talks.

But he said it was unclear when the North would return to the forum which it quit in April, a month before staging its second nuclear test.

Bosworth said the other five negotiating partners -- the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan -- would hold further talks on a possible return date.

The United States refuses to recognise the North as a nuclear power and says a peace treaty can be discussed in the context of the six-party talks.

"Through the reinforcement of its nuclear capabilities, North Korea is strengthening its bargaining power against the US and pursuing direct talks," Lee said.

The North is also seeking to improve its relations with South Korea, he said, after more than a year of bitter hostility.

"It is our projection that Kim (North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il) will continue to tighten his control (over the country), and pursue improved ties with the US as well as a softening of sanctions for economic gains," Lee said.

South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac will visit Moscow from Wednesday to Saturday to discuss next steps, the foreign ministry said. He will meet his counterpart Alexei Borodavkin on Thursday.

earlier related report
Arms seizure shows pressure on N.Korea: S.Korea analysts
Seoul (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 - Thailand's seizure of a North Korean arms shipment after an apparent US tip-off will embarrass Pyongyang but won't derail its newly restarted dialogue with Washington, analysts said Monday.

Four Kazakhs and a Belarussian detained after flying into Bangkok on a cargo plane carrying 30 tonnes of sanctions-busting weapons appeared in court Monday and were detained for 12 days.

The cache, including missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, was found after the plane landed for refuelling on Friday. Thai media said authorities moved after receiving intelligence from the United States.

The plane began its journey in Pyongyang and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said the weapons came from a North Korean company. Its destination was unclear.

Thai officials said they were enforcing United Nations Resolution 1874 passed in June following North Korean missile and nuclear tests. It was the first known airborne arms cargo from Pyongyang to have been seized since the resolution banned all its weapons exports.

The seizure came one day after US envoy Stephen Bosworth returned from talks in Pyongyang aimed at restarting stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

"Arms Deals Highlight N.Korea's Duplicity," the conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper headlined its editorial. The North refuses to recognise the UN resolution.

Seoul analysts said the North is unlikely to overreact at a time when it seeks direct talks with the United States. Bosworth's trip was its first official contact with the Obama administration.

"The seizure of North Korean weapons in Thailand will not seriously hurt the mood for dialogue," Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-Hwan told AFP.

"Of course it reflects the US government's determination to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programme. The US will continue its policy of using pressure and dialogue.

"North Korea will be under further pressure to make a quick decision and resume six-party talks," Koh said.

"For North Korea, this is embarrassing. But it is not expected to abandon bilateral talks with the US."

Cheon Seong-Whun of the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, also said the seizure may help prompt the North back to the six-way talks, according to Yonhap news agency.

A Seoul government official told Dong-A Ilbo newspaper that Pyongyang spends most of its earnings from arms exports on developing weapons of mass destruction -- one reason why conventional weapons were included in the latest sanctions resolution.

The US State Department says the North is thought to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of missiles and other illicit activities.

"Having difficulty earning foreign currency due to continued international sanctions, North Korea seems to be diversifying its means of transporting weaponry," the unidentified official quoted by Dong-A Ilbo said in relation to the aircraft.

In the summer the US navy shadowed a North Korean freighter suspected of carrying banned cargo and believed bound for Myanmar. The ship turned back in July.

In August weapons including rocket-propelled grenades were found on a ship seized by the United Arab Emirates while travelling from North Korea to Iran.

"This case sends a clear message to North Korea that the international community, including the other five nations in the six-party talks, is adopting a two-track approach -- dialogue for dialogue and pressure for pressure," the official added.

The talks group the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia. The North quit them in April and staged its second nuclear weapons test in May.

The Korea Herald also noted the weapons seizure came on the heels of Bosworth's talks. "The incident... exposed North Korea's duplicity," its editorial said.

"Perhaps the seizure of the arms cargo will drive home the message to the leadership in Pyongyang that it really does not have much choice but to return to the aid-for-denuclearisation talks."

Iran working on nuclear bomb components

Iran does not insist on uranium swap inside the country: FM
Tehran (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 - Iran said on Monday it does not insist on exchanging its low-enriched uranium for fuel for a research nuclear reactor on its own territory after the United States bluntly dismissed the offer. "The Islamic republic does not insist on accepting its own proposal of exchanging 400 kilos of uranium on Kish" island in the Gulf, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. "This proposal, which was previously discussed in bilateral talks, was offered by Iran as a goodwill gesture." On Saturday Mottaki had proposed that such an exchange take place on the southern Gulf island, a free trade zone, saying this could be an initial step in a process that would take several years. He said the process could begin "right away" if the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany agreed. UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had already ruled out such a swap taking place on Iranian soil, however.

Washington also dismissed Mottaki's offer, with a senior US official calling it inconsistent with a deal that would allow Iran to avoid further sanctions. Tehran is already under three sets of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, a process world powers fear could be used for a covert nuclear weapons programme. Iran vehemently denies the charge, saying that its nuclear ambitions are purely peaceful. It has rejected an IAEA-brokered proposal that it ship out most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for further processing by Russia and France into fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. The world powers have been pushing for Iran to accept the proposal that it farm out its uranium enrichment work abroad. Under the IAEA-brokered deal, Iran would be supplied with 20-percent enriched nuclear fuel for the reactor in return for allaying Western concerns by shipping out most of its stocks of LEU.
by Staff Writers
London (AFP) Dec 14, 2009
Iran is working towards testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb, British newspaper The Times said Monday, citing confidential documents.

The daily said it had obtained notes describing a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb which triggers an explosion.

The Times claimed that foreign intelligence agencies dated the documents to early 2007 -- four years after Tehran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.

The technical document describes the use of uranium deuteride -- a neutron source, said the newspaper.

Uranium deuteride is thought to have no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon.

In the view of experts contacted by the newspaper, Iran's work in this field "has no possible civilian application. It makes sense only for a programme to develop a nuclear weapon," the Times said.

A picture of the document, written in Farsi, was printed inside the newspaper.

The Times said the documents detailed a plan to test whether the device works -- without leaving traces of uranium that the outside world could detect.

A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office said: "We do not comment on intelligence, but our concerns about Iran's nuclear programme are clear and based on information in the public domain.

"The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has made clear that it cannot verify Iran's nuclear programme is for exclusively peaceful purposes," he added, saying the recent revelation of a facility at Qom "was further blow to confidence and trust in Iran's intentions."

Iran, which is already enriching uranium in defiance of UN sanctions at a plant in Natanz, revealed in September it had been building a second uranium enrichment plant inside a mountain near the Shiite holy city of Qom.

The disclosure of its existence triggered widespread outrage in the West, which suspects Iran is developing technology to enrich uranium to highly refined levels to covertly build a nuclear bomb.

Tehran vehemently denies the charge, saying its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Iran is under three sets of sanctions for refusing to halt enrichment.

Mark Fitzpatrick of theInternational Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank, told the Times: "The most shattering conclusion is that, if this was an effort that began in 2007, it could be a casus belli.

"If Iran is working on weapons, it means there is no diplomatic solution.

"Is this the smoking gun? That's the question people should be asking. It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium."

earlier related report
US says six powers will not meet on Iran by year-end
Washington (AFP) Dec 14, 2009 - The six powers trying to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions will not meet by the end of the year because of China's schedule, but they might hold a teleconference call, US officials said Monday.

"It's been decided that because of a scheduling difficulty, it won't be possible this year," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

Kelly said the United States was "ready to do it" but would not say which of the US negotiating partners -- Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- could not attend such a meeting.

However, a State Department official later told reporters on the condition of anonymity that China had the scheduling problem.

"The Chinese said they couldn't work it into their schedule, they couldn't come on December 18," according to the official.

The official said the meeting had been planned for Brussels.

But the official also said that the political directors of the six countries were now discussing plans for a teleconference call on Iran, probably by next week.

President Barack Obama's administration in the last few days has been turning up the heat on Iran, warning of "credible consequences" if Tehran continues to defy international demands to curb its nuclear ambitions.

With a year-end deadline, the administration signaled that time is running out for Iran to seize its offer of diplomatic engagement for resolving nuclear and other issues.

The administration has raised the specter of a fourth round of UN sanctions, which will require the full support of Britain, France and Germany as well as Russia and China.

Russia and China have been more reluctant to impose sanctions on Iran but have recently become increasingly critical of Tehran.

Al-Qaeda behind plan to blow up Delta plane: report

Last Updated: Friday, December 25, 2009 | 8:32 PM ET Comments137Recommend51

The Associated Press
Flight 253, with 278 passengers, sits on a tarmac in Detroit on Friday after arriving from Nigeria via Amsterdam. A passenger aboard the plane apparently tried to set off an explosive device.Flight 253, with 278 passengers, sits on a tarmac in Detroit on Friday after arriving from Nigeria via Amsterdam. A passenger aboard the plane apparently tried to set off an explosive device. (J.P. Karas/Associated Press)

A Northwest Airlines passenger landing in Detroit on Friday tried to blow up the flight on behalf of al-Qaeda, but the explosive device failed, two U.S. national security officials said.

Republican Congressman Peter King identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit.

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

The passenger was being questioned Friday evening.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

The motive of the Christmas Day attack was not immediately clear.

"He appears to have had some kind of incendiary device he tried to ignite," said one of the U.S. officials.

Authorities initially believed the passenger had set off firecrackers that caused some minor injuries.

Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Susan Elliott said the passenger was subdued immediately. She had no details on the injuries. Delta and Northwest have merged.

One passenger from the flight was taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Tracy Justice said. She didn't know the person's condition, or whether the person was a man or woman. She referred all inquiries to the FBI.

An FBI spokeswoman said the incident is being investigated. It came just as the flight, an Airbus 330 carrying 278 passengers, was arriving in Detroit from Amsterdam.

Passenger Syed Jafri, a U.S. citizen who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, said the incident happened during the plane's descent. Jafri said he was seated three rows behind the passenger and said he saw a glow, and noticed a smoke smell. Then, he said, "a young man behind me jumped on him.

"Next thing you know, there was a lot of panic," he said.

Rich Griffith, a passenger, said he was seated too far back to see what happened. But he said he didn't mind being detained on the plane for several hours.

"It's frustrating if you don't want to keep your country safe,” he said. "We can't have what's going on everywhere else happening here."

U.S. President Barack Obama was notified of the incident and discussed it with security officials, the White House said. It said he is monitoring the situation and receiving regular updates from his vacation spot in Hawaii.

J.P. Karas, 55, said he was driving down a road near the airport and saw a Delta jet at the end of the runway, surrounded by police cars, an ambulance, a bus and some TV trucks.

"I don't ever recall seeing a plane on that runway ever before and I pass by there frequently," he said.

Karas said it was difficult to tell what was going on, but it looked like the front wheel was off the runway.

The Homeland Security Department said passengers may see additional screening measures on domestic and international flights because of the incident.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been briefed on the incident and officials say she is closely monitoring the situation.

The department encouraged travellers to be observant and aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behaviour to law enforcement officials.

"Friend and Ally" Pakistan refuses to go after major Taliban figure

"American intelligence officials suspect Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency uses [Siraj Haqqani] for its interests in Afghanistan."

A particularly obvious example of Pakistan's ongoing double game. "Pakistan nixes going after Taliban," from UPI, December 22:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has spared no effort to publicly laud the vital role of Pakistan for the success of its Afghanistan strategy, but what is happening behind the scene tells a different story.
Pakistan, going by recent reports, is making no secret of its resentment of U.S. policy, which in essence wants its military to do more to crack down on the Taliban and other militants using its territory as sanctuaries to launch attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
That was in evidence last week when the Pakistani military refused to go along with a U.S. demand it go after Taliban commander Siraj Haqqani, who uses his North Waziristan hideout in Pakistan to plan attacks by his warriors across the border.
The Pakistani military argued it is already heavily involved in a counterinsurgency campaign in South Waziristan and that its resources cannot be further extended into North Waziristan. But the criticism against Pakistan is that its two-month old South Waziristan campaign has only targeted domestic militants who threaten the country's security and not against the Afghan Taliban using its territory as sanctuaries. The offensive also has only helped many of the militant leaders to escape to North Waziristan and other areas.
A senior Pakistani security official told The Times of London any confrontation with Haqqani could create more problems for the army and that "we cannot fight on so many fronts."
The Obama administration wants Pakistan, set to receive $1.5 billion of U.S. civilian aid a year for five years, to dismantle the Taliban sanctuaries in return for a long-term strategic bilateral partnership.
U.S. officials also say that besides Haqqani, top Taliban leaders including Mullah Mohammed Omar are using Quetta, capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, as their base, and that the United States may decide to go after these militants on its own through expanded Predator drone strikes if Pakistan doesn't cooperate.
As for Haqqani, The Times of London reported, American intelligence officials suspect Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency uses him for its interests in Afghanistan.
A New York Times report, quoting officials, said Pakistanis feel the U.S. demand would go against the need to position their country in Afghanistan in any regional rearrangement that might involve its main rival India as well as Russia, China and Iran once America begins to draw down its troops starting in July 2011 under the Obama strategy. In that scenario, the support of Haqqani and his fighters who control substantial regions of Afghanistan would be vital....
After bomb plot, Yemen in U.S. cross hairs

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
by Staff Writers
Sanaa, Yemen (UPI) Dec 28, 2009
All the signs are that the Obama administration is cranking up its secret war against al-Qaida in Yemen.

The acknowledgement of increasing intelligence cooperation with the beleaguered Sanaa regime, which resulted in a string of attacks on the jihadists' bases in which some 50-60 operatives were reported killed or captured over the last two weeks, is a strong indication that the Americans are showing a new determination to eliminate the militants who call themselves al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

A report carried by The New York Times Monday that the United States has opened a "largely covert front" against al-Qaida in Yemen underlines how Washington perceives the organization to be a serious threat not only to the Sanaa government, battered by a plethora of crises, but to the West, and the United States in particular.

The bizarre -- and still largely unexplained -- attempt by a Nigerian engineering student, son of his country's leading banker, to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam on Christmas Day has added to U.S. unease about al-Qaeda's swelling resurgence in Yemen, ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden.

According to reports, the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has admitted that he was trained in Yemen at an al-Qaida camp and dispatched on his suicide mission from there.

But these allegations mostly appear to originate with IntelCenter, a private contractor that Antiwar.com describes as having a "dubious reputation" and "does business with the intelligence community."

Admittedly, it's still early days in the U.S. investigation, but the plot appears to get curioser and curioser.

One passenger aboard Northwest Flight 253 described how Abdulmutallab was escorted to the check-in desk at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport by a well-dressed "Indian man" about 50 years old who told the airline attendants that the younger man did not have a passport but had to get on the flight.

The two men were told to go see the airline manager. "I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn't on the flight," said the passenger, Kurt Haskell.

"It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I'm not sure whether it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager."

The same witness said that after the airliner landed safely in Detroit that the Federal Bureau of Investigation "arrested a different Indian man while we were held in customs after a bomb-sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry-on bag and he was searched Â…

"I'm not sure why this hasn't made it into a new story, but I stood about 15-20 feet away from the other Indian man when he was cuffed and arrested."

These observations, so far not disclosed let alone explained by U.S. authorities, have prompted suspicions that the whole episode was being used to demonstrate that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula poses a direct threat to the United States, not just to the corrupt regime in Sanaa, and therefore required direct action by President Barack Obama even as he cranks up the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

U.S. authorities say that the bomb Abdulmutallab failed to detonate was made of a powerful military explosive, pentaerythritol, or PETN.

This was the same explosive used by al-Qaida in an abortive attempt in August to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia's deputy interior minister and head of its counter-terrorism branch, which crushed the jihadists in the kingdom in 2007.

Most of the al-Qaida activists who survived fled to Yemen to form the core of a resurgent organization that apparently planned to renew operations against the Saudi monarchy.

Further bolstering the signals that the White House is poised to take the war to the jihadists in Yemen far more forcefully than hitherto was a September visit to Sanaa by John Brennan, Obama's counter-terrorism chief.

At the same time, Obama, in an unusually strong statement, declared the security of Yemen, which straddles the vital oil tanker routes of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, to be "vital for the security of the United States."

Any U.S. escalation there will likely involve similar action in the failed state of Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. There jihadists linked to al-Qaida are fighting a fragile U.S.-backed transitional government. Several key figures have been assassinated by U.S. teams.

NKorea built plant to make gas for uranium enrichment: report

File image of the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in North Korea.
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Dec 27, 2009
North Korea may have constructed a plant to manufacture a gas needed for uranium enrichment in a development that would indicate that Pyongyang had opened a second way to build nuclear weapons as early as the 1990s, The Washington Post reported late Sunday.

Citing a previously unpublicized account by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb program, the newspaper said North Korea may have been enriching uranium on a small scale by 2002, with maybe 3,000 or even more centrifuges.

Pakistan helped North Korea with vital machinery, drawings and technical advice for at least six years, the report said.

The Post said Khan's account could not be independently corroborated. But one US intelligence official and a US diplomat said his information adds to their suspicions that North Korea has long pursued the enrichment of uranium in addition to making plutonium for bombs.

It also may help explain Pyongyang's assertion in September that it is in the final stages of such enrichment, the paper noted.

Khan described his dealings with the country in official documents and in correspondence with a former British journalist, Simon Henderson, who said he thinks an accurate understanding of Pakistan's nuclear history is relevant for US policymaking, the report pointed out.

The Post independently verified that the documents were produced by Khan.

Khan's account of the pilot plant depicts relations between the two countries' scientists as exceptionally close for nearly a decade, the paper said.

Khan says, for example, that during a visit to North Korea in 1999, he toured a mountain tunnel, according to the report. There his hosts showed him boxes containing components of three finished nuclear warheads, which he was told could be assembled for use atop missiles within an hour.

His visit occurred seven years before the country's first detonation, prompting some current and former US officials to say that Khan's account, if correct, suggests North Korea's achievements were more advanced than previously known, and that the country may have more sophisticated weapons, or a larger number, than earlier estimated, The Post said.

But Siegfried Hecker, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory director who was allowed to see some North Korean plutonium during a visit to its nuclear facilities in January 2004, said after hearing Khan's description of the trip he remains unconvinced that the country in 1999 had enough fissile material on hand to make such weapons.

The Post quotes Hecker as saying that Khan may have tried to get himself "off the hook" by implying that his own illicit technical assistance to Pyongyang was irrelevant because "these guys already had nuclear weapons."

Israel says Iran nuclear plant immune to conventional strike

by Staff Writers
Jerusalem (AFP) Dec 28, 2009
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that Iran's recently diclosed second uranium enrichment plant is "immune" to conventional bombing.

"The new site near Qom is meant for enrichment. What was revealed by the Iranians had been built over years and is located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack," Barak told parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee.

Iran notified the UN nuclear watchdog in September that it was building a second enrichment plant near the central shrine city of Qom, after Washington accused it of covertly evading its notification responsibilities under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Confirmation of the construction work drew criticism not only from Western governments but also from the United Nations.

Enriched uranium can make the fuel for nuclear power plants but in highly extended form can also produce the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

Along with Western governments, Israel suspects Iran of seeking to develop a weapons capability under the guise of a civil nuclear programme, an accusation Tehran denies.

Along with its US ally, Israel, the region's sole if undeclared nuclear power, has refused to rule out a resort to military action to prevent Iran developing a bomb.

Barak said he feared Iran could develop a weapon by 2011.

"I believe that by early 2010 Iran will hold threshold technology (for building a bomb). That means that if it wanted, it could develop nuclear weapons within a year from obtaining threshold technology," a senior official quoted him as telling the parliamentary committee.

Al-Qaida to set up in Balkans, Israel warns

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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JERUSALEM–Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says al-Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups are trying to set up bases in the Balkans.

Lieberman said he shared his assessment and intelligence information with Macedonia's prime minister during a meeting in Jerusalem Tuesday.

In a statement, Lieberman said that current information shows the Balkan region is "the next destination" for the global jihad network to set up operations.

He cited a money trail from Muslim charities to the Balkans as evidence without elaborating.

Lieberman said the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group has infiltrated South America, and that al-Qaida is well established in Africa.

He urged the Macedonian leader not to allow militants to take root in the Balkans.

Obama fails to budge Iran, despite internal upheaval

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By Haroon Siddiqui Editorial Page
Published On Thu Jan 14 2010
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Unlike Iran, North America has an independent media. Still, the media's take on Iran is about the same as that of Washington and Ottawa.

Some skepticism is, therefore, in order over the emerging media consensus that the ayatollahs are about to get a nuclear bomb, or that their regime is imploding and a counter-revolution is underway.

No question the regime has been shaken by the prolonged protests over the stolen June 28 presidential election. Its brutal crackdown proves so. It has even stooped to intimidating the relatives of politicians, filmmakers, writers and human rights activists, including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi.

It's equally clear that the protesters are not going away. They've graduated from complaining about electoral fraud to demanding fundamental reforms. Thus the chants of "Death to the dictator," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Still, it's difficult to tell where Iran is headed.

One view is that the opposition, led by the intellectual elite and youth, does not command broad support across the country.

"How many chador-clad women have you seen in those protest rallies? How many days have the bazaaris shuttered their stores?" asks Dilip Hiro, a London-based author of 32 books, many on Iran, when we talk over the phone. "Regime change in Tehran? Don't bet on it, yet."

Nader Hashemi, an Iran expert at the University of Denver, tells me: "What's needed is less a projection of our own biases and preferences onto Iranian politics and instead a sober analysis of the internal balance of power. An obituary of the Islamic Republic is premature."

But there's Ebadi, stranded in Europe for months because she fears arrest upon return, telling Radio Free Europe Monday: "This regime is finished."

She would know, no?

But the regime has weathered internal upheavals before: in the 1980s by the terrorist Mojahideen-e-Khalq; in the 1990s by reformists and students led by moderate president Mohammad Khatami; and ever since 1979 by theological dissidents arguing that the Islamic Revolution did not mean ensconcing a clerical junta.

The only way to topple the regime is by a revolution or, more likely, by a vote of non-confidence in the supreme leader by the 86-member Assembly of Experts, which meets only intermittently.

Propitiously, it is headed by Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who supports the opposition. But there's no hint that he's about to call it into session, a sign there are not enough votes for impeachment.

What's Barack Obama to do?

His outreach to Iran has been hobbled by a host of factors:

American (and Canadian) double standards: Iran must not have nukes but we'll continue to coddle nuclear Israel, India and Pakistan; Iran must respect human rights but China need not; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't legitimate because of his tainted victory but we will go on dealing with Hamid Karzai in Kabul, even though he, too, stole an election.

Covert American activities have continued in Iran, despite Washington foreswearing regime change in Tehran.

Iran's perpetual yes/no dance on the nuclear file (there's still no knowing whether it'll ship uranium out of the country for enrichment).

Having failed to budge Iran with his Dec. 31 deadline, Obama has to do "something." Bombing Iranian nuclear bunkers is out. So on Saturday, the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany will meet to ponder some more economic sanctions.

China and Russia may balk (both do brisk business in Iran). The others will talk up "targeted sanctions" on such bad guys as the Revolutionary Guards.

The Guards protect the Islamic regime. They've been allowed to become a business empire (to keep a system of patronage going) with oil and gas concessions, a telecom monopoly, a bank, food processing companies, etc. (just like the Pakistan army but – here, again, those double standards – with which the U.S. and Canada deal regularly).

A lot is happening in Iran and about Iran abroad. But Obama has yet to change the fundamental equation: Iran remains fixated on the "Great Satan" and the latter on "the mad mullahs" – and the two go on circling each other.

Haroon Siddiqui writes Thursdays and Sundays. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

Israel can use stockpiled U.S. arms

In the 34-day 2006 war with Hezbollah, Israeli stocks of air force bombs and artillery ammunition were seriously depleted, almost to what the army deemed a critical level.
by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Jan 19, 2009
The U.S. Army is reportedly building up stockpiles of missiles, armored vehicles, artillery shells and other equipment in Israel that the Israelis will be allowed to use in an emergency.

The increase in the U.S. arsenal in the Jewish state now under way, reported by the Washington-based Defense News weekly, will reinforce support for Israel by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama in the confrontation with Iran over its contentious nuclear program.

That commitment was evidenced by a two-week joint air-defense exercise, Juniper Cobra 10, by U.S. and Israeli missile forces in October-November 2009, the largest exercise ever held by the two allies.

Some 1,500 U.S. personnel, along with 17 warships from the 6th Fleet, participated in countering simulated attacks by ballistic, medium-range and short-range missiles and rockets on Israel.

These efforts are also seen as an attempt by the Obama administration to reassure Israel that the Americans will support them in a confrontation with Iran -- though not necessarily with combat forces -- and to encourage the Jewish state not to launch unilateral air and missile strikes at Iran's nuclear facilities.

In 2008 the Pentagon also installed a strategic long-range X-band radar system at Nevatim air base in the Negev Desert south of Tel Aviv. It can detect incoming missiles from hundreds of miles away.

At the time Juniper Cobra was being held, there were reports that the Americans would leave several Patriot PAC-3 air-defense systems behind once the maneuvers ended.

It is not clear whether they are included in the reported increase in U.S. stockpiles.

The expansion of these stockpiles emerged amid a heightening of tension with Iran, as a U.S.-led dialogue with Tehran appeared to flounder after four months of tortuous negotiations that have failed to produce any concrete agreement by Iran to curb its nuclear program.

The Israelis view a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat and have said they will launch unilateral military strikes against the Islamic Republic if it believes Tehran is close to acquiring nuclear weapons.

Israel's leadership believes Iran is using the talks to buy time to push forward with its program and that 2010 will be the year of decision regarding military action.

This has led to reviews of Israel's strategic position in the event of hostilities.

Any conflict that erupts will probably not be a swift exchange of airstrikes and missile salvoes, as many expect, but will probably drag on for weeks or months.

According Amos Harel, an analyst with the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, a key Israeli Defense Ministry researcher, Moshe Vered, has concluded that "the ideology of the Iranian regime will dictate a prolonged war."

Harel wrote that Vered argues that the length of that war "will be measured in years, not in weeks or days" because of the Shiite perception "by which one must fight and sacrifice for the sake of justice and to correct wrongs to Islam and to Muslims."

"This outlook sees Israel's existence as a wrong that must be corrected for the sake of world redemption. Â…

"Iran's willingness to sacrifice many victims for a long period of time in a conflict with Israel will dictate a prolonged war between the two states that will be difficult to end."

If that is the case, U.S. military stockpiles in Israel may be increased further.

Israeli forces ran critically short of ordnance and military equipment in the October 1973 war when the Jewish state was attacked by Egypt and Syria and was nearly overwhelmed.

Only a major U.S. airlift ordered by President Richard Nixon saved the day.

In the 34-day 2006 war with Hezbollah, Israeli stocks of air force bombs and artillery ammunition were seriously depleted, almost to what the army deemed a critical level.

According to Defense News, the current buildup "is the final phase of a process that began over a year ago to determine the type and amount of U.S. weapons and ammunition to be stored in Israel."

That, it added, was "part of an overarching American effort to stockpile weapons in areas in which its army may need to operate, while allowing American allies to make use of the ordnance in emergencies."

The United States began stockpiling $100 million in military equipment in Israel in 1990.

Iran threatens to hit Western warships in Gulf if attacked

Six-power talks on Iran constructive: US
Washington (AFP) Jan 19, 2010 - The latest talks by six world powers on the nuclear standoff with Iran were constructive, US officials said Tuesday. "We are moving on both tracks," said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, referring to diplomacy and the threat of further sanctions. "We believe we are making progress." Crowley, however, said Iran's response to the international community's demands for assurances about its nuclear program have been inadequate. The five permament members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, France, Germany, Russia and China -- plus Germany met Saturday in New York but reached no decision on further sanctions against Iran. China in particular has resisted sanctions. Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday welcomed the "realistic approach" taken by the six powers, while China called on the sides to "show flexibility" and to stick with diplomacy despite the impasse. "We continue our conversations in terms of options that are available to us, both in terms of the Security Council going forward but also steps that can be taken in a coordinated way on a national basis," Crowley said. US senators have drawn up a bill that if adopted would impose sanctions on companies that export fuel to Iran. The sanctions imposed so far by the United Nations principally target Iran's proliferation activity, having little real economic impact. The United States, Britain, France, Russia and Germany want them to be enhanced to target the revenues of the Iranian regime.
by Staff Writers
Tehran (AFP) Jan 19, 2010
Iran's Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Tuesday that Western warships stationed in the Gulf are "best targets" for the Islamic republic if its nuclear sites are attacked, Fars news agency reported.

Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened to deliver a "crushing response" and hit US targets, including its bases in the Gulf and neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan, if Iran's nuclear sites are attacked.

"Why are there so many warships there? The Westerners know that these warships are the best target for operation by Iran if they do anything against (us)," Vahidi told a conference entitled "Persian Gulf" in Tehran.

He also criticised the building of US bases in the region and Washington's "unofficial presence in Yemen."

The United States and its regional ally Israel, which accuse Iran of seeking atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, have never ruled out a military option to thwart Tehran's nuclear drive.

Iran denies the charges and has continued to expand its nuclear programme despite UN sanctions.

earlier related report
Iran welcomes West's new 'realism' on nuclear drive
Tehran (AFP) Jan 19, 2010 - Iran on Tuesday welcomed what it called the West's newfound "realism" on Tehran's controversial atomic programme after world powers failed to decide on new sanctions.

The United States, meanwhile, said Iran's response to the international community's demands for assurances about its nuclear programme was inadequate while Britain warned of punitive financial measures.

But China, one of six world powers with Washington and London involved in talks on Iran, urged flexibility in the standoff over Tehran's nuclear drive and a return to talks.

However, Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi renewed a warning that Tehran'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.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made similar positive comments.

"We are ready to help with the realistic approach and at the same time we will wait for public and backstage developments in Iran's nuclear case," Mottaki told reporters.

US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said recent talks by six world powers on the nuclear standoff with Iran were constructive. "We are moving on both tracks," he said, about diplomacy and the threat of further sanctions.

But Iran's response to demands for assurances about its nuclear program remains inadequate, he said.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said financial sanctions could help bring the Islamic state into line.

"We believe that financial sanctions... have an important role to play in exerting pressure at the appropriate points in the (Iranian) regime and not affecting the Iranian people," Miliband told lawmakers.

World powers made up of the UN Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany met in New York on Saturday but failed to reach an agreement about new sanctions.

The six are concerned about Tehran's rejection of a UN-brokered deal under which most of Iran's low enriched uranium (LEU) stockpile would be shipped abroad to be further enriched into reactor fuel.

Iran has come up with its own counter-proposal of a staged and simultaneous swap of LEU with nuclear reactor fuel. This has been largely rejected by world powers, insisting Tehran accept the International Atomic Energy Agency offer.

The New York meeting brought together senior officials from Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. But China, signalling its reluctance to back tougher sanctions pushed by the West, sent a lower-level diplomat.

In Beijing, Mehmanparast's opposite number, Ma Zhaoxu, also at a press conference on Tuesday, said: "China has all along proposed the proper settlement of the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and consultation ...

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

Ma said his country was aware of the proliferation concerns of the Western nations but insisted the Islamic republic had the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Iran's defence minister reiterated that his country was not cowed by the threat of military action.

"Why are there so many warships there? The Westerners know that these warships are the best target for operation by Iran if they do anything against (us)," Vahidi said.

Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened to deliver a "crushing response" and hit US targets, including its bases in the Gulf and neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan, if Iran's nuclear sites are attacked.

The United States and its regional ally Israel, which accuse Iran of seeking atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, have never ruled out a military option to thwart Tehran's nuclear drive.

Iran denies the charges.

Partial Syrian reserve call-up sparks border tension with Israel
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

22 Jan. Friday, Damascus ordered a Level 4 mobilization of Syria's army reserves for deployment to the Golan Heights on the Israeli border to meet what it calls "IDF plans of attack." In Lebanon, too, Hizballah placed "all its forces" in a state of military preparedness.
DEBKAfile: Israel gave both advance reassurance that its military movements were a war game and nothing more. Tehran's hand is detected in their moves to raise tension.
Far from being prompted by IDF war games, Syria and Hizballah are reported by our Iranian and military sources as acting out the secret military cooperation pacts they have just concluded with Tehran. The pacts were negotiated and signed during visits to Damascus by Iran's National Security Adviser Saeed Jalili on Nov. 3 and its defense minister Ahmed Vahidi on Dec. 17.
These treaties commit Syria to come to Hizballah's aid if it comes under Israeli attack, and all three signatories to respond to any Israeli military movement. Our military sources believe Hizballah and Syria acted on Tehran's advice to test their own preparedness for attack.

Rush of terror alerts on three continents plus Middle East
DEBKAfile Special Report

23 Jan. In the last three days, the governments of eleven countries have scrambled to elevate their preparedness levels for Islamist terror, or enforced extraordinarily stringent security measures. Another six governments have pursued these steps without fanfare.
Friday and Saturday, Jan. 22-23, India placed its airlines and airports and those of all of South East Asia - on alert for a possible airplane hijacking.
The UK elevated its terror threat level from "substantial" to "severe" - one below top and suspended direct British airline flights to and from Yemen.
Last week, five Britons were apprehended at Islamabad airport attempting to pass their boarding passes to five others. The British appear to fear a fresh spate of terrorism inside the country.
Although the Obama administration has not formally raised the current terror alert level, vigilance at all American airports and border posts has been radically heightened since a Nigerian terrorist tried to blow up the Northwest airliner on Christmas day. Last week, six people on the newly-expanded no-fly list were not allowed to board US-bound flights.
Saturday, US airport authorities were warned that at least two female suicide bombers of "non-Arab appearance" and bearing Western passports may have been sent to America by al Qaeda-Yemen.

Bin Laden claims Delta airline attack, threatens more
DEBKAfile Special Report

24 Jan. In a new audio message aired by Al Jazeera TV Sunday, Jan. 24, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the Dec. 25 attempt to blow up an airliner bound for Detroit and vowed there would be more attacks. In a message addressed from "Osama to Obama," he said America would have no peace unless there was "security for Palestinians."
A week earlier, Saudi Arabia disposed of three al Qaeda kingpins in Yemen by engineering a mystery explosion in one of its bastions just inside Yemen. Most likely Saudi covert operatives caused the blast after penetrating one if its strongholds. Riyadh later claimed it had the DNA of all three and identified them. One was the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's senior treasurer and must have handled the mission of the Nigerian Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab to blow up a US airliner for which bin Laden claimed responsibility.
Saturday, Jan. 23, Dep. defense minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan said captured weapons bore out Iran's support for the Houthi revolt against the Yemeni government.

Iran crosses red line, can enrich uranium up to 20 pc
DEBKAfile Special Report

25 Jan. Attaining the ability to enrich uranium up to 20 percent grade brings Iran dangerously close to "break-out" point for a nuclear weapon capability, DEBKAfile's intelligence sources report.
By announcing this, Tehran's hawkish leaders show contempt for the six world powers and their offer to trade Iran's low-grade uranium for 20 pc enriched product overseas and throw down the gauntlet for them and Israel. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "good news" was the subject of an urgent cabinet meeting in Jerusalem last week.
Our political sources predict that Tehran's provocative move will be met with more of the five months of foot-dragging with which Washington and Jerusalem have met Iran's contempt for one deadline after another for ending nuclear enrichment. The only straight talk from any Western leader has come from French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He said that France has evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons and warned that Israel "would not stand by while Iran develops nuclear weapons."

Iran to produce higher-enriched uranium

Last Updated: Sunday, February 7, 2010 | 10:41

CBC News

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, centre, listens to an explanation during a visit an exhibition of Iran's laser science in Tehran on Sunday.Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, centre, listens to an explanation during a visit an exhibition of Iran's laser science in Tehran on Sunday. (Hamid Foroutan/ISNA/AP) Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered his country's atomic energy agency on Sunday to begin the production of higher-enriched uranium.

The order from Ahmadinejad, announced during a live broadcast on state television, would raise Iran's uranium enrichment level from 3.5 per cent to 20 per cent.

Iran says it needs to refine its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to a higher purity to operate a medical research reactor in Tehran.

The United States fears Iran's nuclear program could be used to produce an atomic bomb but Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

While the 20 per cent threshold is substantially below the 90 per cent-plus needed to make fissile warhead material, any move by Iran to enrich to 20 per cent is raising concerns because it would bring Iran substantially closer to weapons capability.

Ahmadinejad's latest pronouncement on the long-running dispute coincided with a call by U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates for the international community to rally together to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear program.

"If the international community will stand together and bring pressure to bear on the Iranian government, I believe there is still time for pressure and sanctions to work," Gates said in Rome, where he met Sunday with Italian Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa.

The Iranian president said he decided to ramp up production because Western governments have balked at his proposal for a fuel exchange to keep the medical reactor operating.

Western powers see the potential swap as a means to ensure Tehran does not further enrich its uranium to make weapons, but Gates said he did not believe an agreement was close.

Iran and the West have been discussing a plan under which Iran would export its low-enriched uranium stocks for enrichment abroad.

The plan, which comes from the International Atomic Energy Agency, was first drawn up in early October at a meeting in Geneva between Iran and the six world powers. It was refined later that month in Vienna talks among Iran, the U.S., Russia and France.

Iran opens two new missile plants

File image courtesy AFP.
by Staff Writers
Tehran (AFP) Feb 6, 2010
Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi opened two new missile production plants on Saturday, just three days after Iran fired a rocket carrying live animals into space, state television reported.

The plants will produce a ground-to-air missile dubbed the Qaem (Rising) and a surface-to-surface missile dubbed Toofan 5 (Storm), the broadcaster said.

The Qaem is designed to target helicopters at low and medium altitudes, it added.

"Toofan 5 is one of the most advanced missiles. It has two warheads which can destroy tanks and other armoured vehicles," Vahidi was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.

He said the Qaem was a "missile which can destroy targets in the air travelling at low speed and at low altitude, especially assault helicopters."

Iran unveiled the new plants as part of its celebrations for the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution later this month.

On Wednesday, it launched a capsule carrying turtles, rats and worms aboard a Kavoshgar 3 (Explorer) rocket in its first experiment in sending living creatures into space.

Iran's missile and space programmes have sparked mounting alarm in the West amid fears that a command of advanced ballistics technologies combined with the nuclear know-how acquired from its declared civilian programme may enable it to produce an atomic weapon.

Iran has also regularly boasted of having missiles that can target arch-foe Israel.

In December it tested the Sejil 2 (Lethal Stone) missile, describing it as a faster version of a medium-range missile that could allow it to strike arch-foe Israel.

The United States and its regional ally Israel have not ruled out a military option to stop Tehran's controversial nuclear drive.

Tehran has in the past threatened to target US bases in the region and to block the strategic Gulf Strait of Hormuz waterway for oil tankers if its nuclear sites are attacked.

Iran is under three sets of UN sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.

Iran threat real, but Al-Qaeda danger greater: Clinton

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Feb 7, 2010
The Iranian nuclear threat is real but the United States faces an even greater danger from Al-Qaeda, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in an interview Sunday.

"In terms of a country, obviously a nuclear-armed country like North Korea or Iran pose both a real or a potential threat," Clinton told CNN's "State of the Union", making it clear the Iranians don't yet possess an atomic weapon.

"But I think that most of us believe the greater threats are the trans-national non-state networks," she said, referring to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan, North Africa, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Clinton voiced concerns about Al-Qaeda's level of "connectivity" and warned that Osama bin Laden's followers were increasing the sophistication of the attacks they were planning.

While Al-Qaeda was not getting any stronger and its capacity had been "degraded" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Clinton cautioned the terror network was evolving to become "more creative, more flexible, more agile.

"They are unfortunately a very committed, clever, diabolical group of terrorists who are always looking for weaknesses and openings and we just have to stay alert."

The US city of Detroit had a narrow escape on Christmas Day when a young Nigerian claiming allegiance to Al-Qaeda, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, botched an attempt to bring down a packed transatlantic airliner as it began its descent.

"The biggest nightmare that any of us have is that one of these terrorist member organizations within this syndicate of terror will get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction," Clinton said.

She gave the interview before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered Iran's atomic chief on Sunday to begin higher uranium enrichment, raising the stakes in its long-running dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions.

World powers are losing patience with Iran for failing to agree to a proposal brokered by the UN's nuclear watchdog that is aimed at defusing the crisis over the Islamic republic's suspect enrichment activities.

Clinton said it was "subject to some debate" how close Iran was to getting the bomb but suggested Tehran was purposefully stalling on what she described as a "very reasonable offer" from the international community.

Iran appeared to reject in October a deal proposed by the UN's nuclear watchdog for it to export low-enriched uranium to France and Russia to be further purified into fuel for a research reactor in Tehran.

Enrichment outside of Iran is a central plank of the deal Western powers are pushing for out of fears that unsupervised enrichment could feed a covert nuclear weapons program.

Enriched uranium produces fuel for a nuclear reactor but the process can also be used to make the fissile core of an atomic bomb, which Iran denies it is seeking.

The United States has not ruled out military action should Iran continue to defy the international community and Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged world powers on Sunday to stand firm on the nuclear issue.

"The international community has offered the Iranian government multiple opportunities to provide reassurance of its intentions. The results have been very disappointing," Gates said in Rome.

"If the international community will stand together and bring pressure on the Iranian government, I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work. But we must all work together."

As for North Korea, it quit six-party nuclear talks last April and tested a second atomic weapon the following month. Last year it declared willingness in principle to return, but has set conditions rejected by Seoul and Washington.

In addition to the lifting of sanctions, it says the United States must agree to hold talks about a peace pact before it comes back.

Iran calls nuclear enrichment a success

Islamic revolution also marked as security forces break up counter-protests

Last Updated: Thursday, February 11, 2010 | 8:50 AM ET Comments68Recommend25

CBC News
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greets supporters from his car as he attends a rally commemorating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Tehran.Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greets supporters from his car as he attends a rally commemorating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Tehran. (Vahid Salemi/Associated Press)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday his country has produced its first batch of a higher grade of enriched uranium, two days after the Islamic republic began the process.

Ahmadinejad told hundreds of thousands of Iranians celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that the country is now a "nuclear state," but insisted Iran has no intention of building atomic weapons.

International observers said the latest announcement from Iran is intended as much to quell dissent domestically as it is to exert its independence internationally.

"He wants to tell his people they are at the front of the technical achievements, we are achieving every month a new thing … support us," said Israeli intelligence expert Ephraim Kam.

While government supporters rallied in Iran on Thursday in central Tehran to mark the anniversary of the revolution, Iranian security forces moved across the city to break up counter-protests, opposition websites reported, with more than 1,000 arrests reported.

Opposition protests targeted

The granddaughter of the architect of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and her husband were the most high-profile opposition members arrested on Thursday, according to the pro-reform Rahesabz website.

Zahra Eshraghi and her husband, Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of a former president, were in custody Thursday for an hour, according to the report, which could not be independently confirmed.

Uranium enrichment

Natural uranium is made up almost entirely of uranium-238, which cannot be used directly as nuclear fuel. Less than one per cent of natural uranium is uranium-235, the key component in nuclear weapons.

Enriched uranium refers to uranium in which the proportion of U-235 has been artificially increased. Low-grade enriched uranium, for example, is made up of about three to four per cent U-235.

At higher-grade levels, enriched uranium can be used as fuel in reactors, and at 90 per cent enrichment it can be used in nuclear weapons.

A UN-backed proposal to Iran called for Iran's low-grade uranium to be shipped to Russia to be converted into a material usable as fuel but not for weapons. But Iran balked at the deal, instead suggesting it should be able to purchase fuel-grade uranium and maintain its own domestic enrichment program.

Dozens of militia members with batons and pepper spray attacked the convoy of senior opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi, smashing his car windows and forcing him to turn back as he tried to join the protests, his son, Hossein Karroubi, told The Associated Press.

Opposition protesters numbered in the hundreds, according to reports, far fewer than the thousands that came out to protest after the presidential elections last summer.

Ahmadinejad used his nationally televised address to say his country would not be bullied into curtailing its nuclear program.

"I want to announce with a loud voice here that the first package of 20 per cent fuel was produced and provided to the scientists," he said, referring to the recently begun process of enriching Iran's uranium stockpile to higher levels.

Iran had announced Monday that it would be enriching its uranium stockpile to 20 per cent levels, which prompted Western leaders to threaten sanctions against Iran if the country doesn't comply with an International Atomic Energy Agency plan that would see Iran's uranium shipped abroad for enriching.

West fears Iranian bomb

The United States and its allies have accused Iran of attempting to use its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build nuclear weapons, concerns fuelled by secrecy surrounding Iran's construction of a second underground enrichment facility and Ahmadinejad's frequent anti-Israel rhetoric.

Work proceeds in the fuel manufacturing plant at the Isfahan uranium conversion facility 440 kilometres south of Tehran.Work proceeds in the fuel manufacturing plant at the Isfahan uranium conversion facility 440 kilometres south of Tehran. (Caren Firouz/Reuters)

Tehran insists it wishes only to use its nuclear program for generating electricity and producing nuclear material for use in medicine.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Wednesday called on Iran to abandon its enrichment work and return to the bargaining table with the UN's atomic watchdog.

"It is time for Iran to end its defiance of the international community, suspend its enrichment activity and take immediate steps toward transparency and compliance by halting the construction of new enrichment sites, and fully co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency," Harper said in a statement.

France and the United States have said that Iran's actions have left no choice but for them to push for a fourth set of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Hillary Clinton says Iran faces military takeover threat

U.S. to impose tougher sanctions on nation's Revolutionary Guard

Published On Tue Feb 16 2010
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Hillary Clinton visits Middle East seeking support for Iran sanctions. (Feb. 14, 2010)

KARIM JAAFAR, AFP/GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTO
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Robert Burns Associated Press

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA–U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday Iran is sliding into a military dictatorship, a new assessment suggesting a rockier road ahead for U.S.-led efforts to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

At a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal in the king's desert retreat 120 kilometres outside Riyadh on Monday, Clinton also revealed the Obama administration's plan to target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with a new round of international sanctions intended to compel Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Earlier in the day, in Doha, Qatar, Clinton spoke bluntly about Iranian behaviour and what she called the administration's view of Iran as increasingly dominated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Last week the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was freezing the assets in U.S. jurisdictions of a Revolutionary Guard general and four subsidiaries of a previously penalized construction company he runs because of their alleged involvement in producing and spreading weapons of mass destruction.

The Revolutionary Guard has long been a pillar of Iran's regime as a force separate from the ordinary armed forces. The Guard now has a hand in every critical area, including missile development, oil resources, dam building, road construction, telecommunications and nuclear technology. It also has absorbed the paramilitary Basij as part of its command structure.

"The evidence we've seen of this increasing decision-making (by the Revolutionary Guard) cuts across all areas of Iranian security policy, and certainly nuclear policy is at the core of it," Clinton told reporters flying with her to Saudi Arabia.

Asked if the U.S. was planning a military attack on Iran, Clinton said "no."

 

The U.S. is focused on gaining international support for sanctions "that will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is in effect supplanting the government of Iran," she said.

U.S. experts on Iran said they agreed with Clinton's assessment.

"When you rely on the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to remain in power it is only a matter of time before the regime becomes a paramilitary dictatorship," said Fariborz Ghadar, an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Iran Fielding Improved Centrifuges, Ahmadinejad Says

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010

Iran is outfitting its Natanz facility with next-generation uranium enrichment centrifuges that would be five times as efficient as their predecessors, the Associated Press yesterday quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying (see GSN, Feb. 16).

(Feb. 17) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shown yesterday, said his country was installing a new generation of uranium enrichment centrifuges capable of running more efficiently (Atta Kenare/Getty Images).

The new machines were not yet in use, but their installation could heighten international fears that Iran might tap its enrichment program to generate nuclear-weapon material. Tehran has insisted its nuclear program is strictly civilian in nature (Associated Press I/Google News, Feb. 16).

Iran also plans to begin manufacturing uranium fuel plates within several months for use at a medical research reactor in Tehran, the nation's Press TV reported Saturday. The nation announced last week that it would begin refining uranium to the 20 percent enrichment level required for use in the medical reactor.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner expressed doubt that Iran could enrich uranium to that level, but he also decried the country's threat to do so as "blackmail."

The Middle Eastern state previously rejected an International Atomic Energy Agency plan calling for France and Russia to prepare the plates using much of Tehran's low-enriched uranium stockpile. The proposal, put forward last October, was aimed at deferring Tehran's ability to fuel a bomb long enough to more fully address the nuclear standoff (Press TV, Feb. 13).

"If Iran goes forward with this [enrichment] escalation, it would raise concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions," delegates from France, Russia and the United States said in a Feb. 12 letter to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano. "Iran's enrichment of its LEU (low-enriched uranium) stockpile to higher levels is not only unnecessary, but would serve to further undermine the confidence of the international community in Iran's actions," Agence France-Presse quoted the document as saying.

Iran's stated intention to enrich medical uranium domestically and its "subsequent formal notification to the IAEA are wholly unjustified," the letter states, adding that the actions "represent a further step toward a capability to produce highly enriched uranium."

The three nations said they "recognize the need in Iran for medical radioisotopes," but held that "the IAEA's proposal would provide Iran with the most effective and timely mechanism" to supply its medical reactor and "begin to establish mutual trust and confidence."

"If Iran does not wish to accept the IAEA offer, we note that [medical isotopes] are available on the world market and could be obtained as a responsible, timely and cost effective alternative to the IAEA's proposal," the officials said.

The powers also addressed Iran's stated concern that its uranium might not be returned under the U.N. plan.

"The IAEA agreed to take formal custody of Iran's nuclear material," the letter states. "We agreed to a legally binding project and supply agreement. We agreed to support technical assistance through the IAEA to ensure the safe operations of the research reactor."

"We expressed our willingness to have Iran's low-enriched uranium placed in escrow in a third country until completion of the fabrication process. The United States offered substantial political assurances that the agreement would be fulfilled," the authors wrote (Agence France-Presse I/Spacedaily.com, Feb. 16).

Ahmadinejad reaffirmed his call for modifications to the U.N. plan. Tehran has only formally offered to give up small quantities of its low-enriched uranium at a time in simultaneous exchanges for pre-enriched medical reactor fuel.

"The case is not yet closed ... we have already announced that we are ready for a fuel exchange within a fair framework. We are still ready for an exchange, even with America," he said, adding that the swap should take place on Iranian territory.

Turkey has developed additional proposals aimed at resolving disputes over the U.N. plan, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin told Reuters.

The U.S. State Department, though, indicated it had not been informed of new proposals and insisted that the U.N. nuclear watchdog mediate further negotiations over the proposed uranium transfer (Hafezi/Derakhshi, Reuters, Feb. 16).

Russia indicated yesterday it could support additional economic penalties against Iran if the nation fails to increase its nuclear transparency, the Xinhua News Agency reported. A new U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution would require the support of the body's five permanent member nations: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

"Russia still believes that Iran should have broader and more active cooperation with the IAEA and other countries, to which it should provide information on its nuclear program," Kremlin spokeswoman Natalia Timakova said. "The international community needs to make sure that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful. But no one can exclude the use of sanctions if these obligations are not fulfilled" (Xinhua News Agency, Feb. 16).

While China has repeatedly expressed opposition to sweeping punitive measures against Iran, Beijing could back sanctions against firms that have helped Iran acquire sensitive technologies with nuclear and missile applications, one expert told AFP.

"I'm reasonably optimistic that we will persuade the Chinese that we have to extend the list of these firms that are involved in trying to secure dual-use items," said Patrick Clawson, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (Dan De Luce, Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Feb. 16).

The State Department yesterday advanced the U.S. case for new penalties against Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The elite military entity is "currently in control" of nine of the nation's 22 Cabinet-level agencies, "an unprecedented level since the Islamic Republic was established" more than 30 years ago, spokesman Gordon Duguid said.

"The IRGC is a convenient target because it's the entity that manages Iran's nuclear program, it's the entity that liaises with extremist groups throughout the Middle East, and it's the entity which is overseeing the brutal crackdown on the Iranian people," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Spiegel/Cummins, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 17).

Ahmadinejad, though, warned Iran would lash back against further sanctions, Reuters reported.

"Iran will retaliate ... of course, if somebody acts against Iran our response will definitely be firm enough ... (to) make them regretful," Ahmadinejad said, without giving details. "Sanctions will not harm Iran," he said (Hafezi/Derakhshi, Reuters).

In Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that a nuclear-armed Iran could prompt neighboring countries to scramble for their own nuclear arsenals, AP reported.

"Then you have all kinds of opportunity for problems that can be quite dangerous," Clinton said.

"You have to ask yourself, 'Why are they doing this?'" Clinton said. Although Iran insists its atomic ambitions are peaceful, "the evidence doesn't support that," she said.

"Everyone who I speak with in the Gulf, including the leaders here and leaders elsewhere in the region, are expressing deep concern about Iran's intentions," Clinton said, calling Tehran "the largest supporter of terrorism in the world today."

"If Iran gets a nuclear weapon," then hope for a nuclear weapon-free Middle East "disappears," she said.
"Because then other countries which feel threatened by Iran will say to themselves, 'If Iran has a nuclear weapon, I better get one, too, in order to protect my people.' Then you have a nuclear arms race in the region" (Robert Burns, Associated Press II/Google News, Feb. 16).

Iran's supreme religious leader today accused Clinton of telling "lies" about his country, AFP reported.

"Those who have turned the Persian Gulf into an arms depot in order to milk regional countries for money have now dispatched their official to go around the Persian Gulf and spread lies against Iran," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said (Siavosh Ghazi, Agence France-Presse III/Google News, Feb. 17).

Elsewhere, a high-level Iranian official expressed hope that Tehran could eventually supply nuclear power reactors and fuel to neighboring states.

"This is an area where we want to invest, we want to be the one who provides nuclear power plants and fuel for other countries," said Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary general of Iran's High Council for Human Rights.

"We are ready to help Turkey, Saudis, the Emirates, Kuwait if they need. I am sure the Western countries are not going to give to these states. Egypt is dying for this electricity," he said (Agence France-Presse IV, Feb. 16).

Iranian Nuclear Program Could Spark Major Regional Arms Race, Nunn Says

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010

Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) said that Iran's nuclear efforts could lead to a major atomic arms race in the Middle East, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday (see GSN, Feb. 12).

"The governments of the world must understand what a threat it is if the Iranians get nuclear weapons because there are probably 10 other countries in the Middle East over the next 10 to 20 years that would follow down the road," he said.

"You're not going to have a Shiite government controlling nuclear weapons and not have Sunni governments respond. We think verification is pretty clear on the Iranian situation, but we've got to be willing to enforce," Nunn added (see related GSN story, today).

Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) established the Cooperative Threat Reduction program that has secured and eliminated weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union and beyond (see GSN, Jan. 28). He, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and former Defense Secretary William Perry have more recently joined to push for global nuclear disarmament. The four statesmen are featured in a new documentary, "Nuclear Tipping Point."

Nunn cited Pakistan as the greatest threat to the global nuclear order. "I would probably put Pakistan at the top of the list. I would say Pakistan, Iran and North Korea, sort of in that order," he told the newspaper. Pakistan's mix of a sizable number of nuclear weapons and government instability creates a "dangerous combination, he said.

The threat of nuclear terrorism also looms, according to Nunn.

"As I view the threat, we have a perfect storm. We have weapons of mass destruction-type material spread in at least 40 countries around the globe," he said. "We have technological know-how that is spread very wide now. It was formerly thought that only a state could make a bomb; nobody that’s informed on the subject believes that any more. We’ve got an increasing number of terrorists who would not hesitate to use a nuclear weapon if they were able to get one."

He outlined a "worst-case" scenario in which terrorists detonate a crude nuclear weapon in a city, resulting in mass casualties, only to announce that additional weapons had been deployed in other cities across the world.

"That would have [a] huge devastating impact, certainly on the people who were the original victims, but also the whole world economy. You'd have people dumping out of cities all over the world like nothing we've ever seen," Nunn said.

The news is not all bad, Nunn said, citing the removal of all nuclear weapons from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine and other nonproliferation efforts (Tom Sabulis, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 15).

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sam Nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]

Nasrallah throws down the gauntlet

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Feb 18, 2009
Amid growing fears of another Middle East war, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has thrown down the gauntlet for Israel by vowing to hammer Ben-Gurion Airport if Beirut's Rafik Hariri International is hit, as it was in their last conflict in 2006.

That was not likely an idle boast. Nasrallah was unusually specific in what targets Hezbollah would hit, thus signaling its capabilities.

"He's never been as detailed and candid," said Lebanese political scientist and Hezbollah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb of the American University of Beirut.

According to Israel's military intelligence, Hezbollah has in excess of 42,000 rockets and missiles stashed away, including weapons capable of hitting Tel Aviv, Israel's largest metropolis, and even the Dimona nuclear reactor further south in the Negev Desert.

Nasrallah's warning in a speech Tuesday night took the warlike rhetoric that has been coming from both sides in recent weeks to new heights. "If you hit our ports, we will hit your ports," he declared.

Israeli leaders have warned that in any new war their forces will be merciless, sparing nothing and no one in Lebanon, because Hezbollah is now in the government.

Khaled Saghiyeh, editor of Beirut's al-Akhbar newspaper, declared that Nasrallah's threat elevated this enmity to a new level by vowing not only to retaliate but to inflict equal damage.

This appeared to be a deliberate move by Nasrallah to portray Hezbollah's guerrillas as a conventional army on a par with Israel's vaunted military, which it fought to a standstill in the 34-day war of 2006, not just a feckless Arab militia.

The impact of his speech was somewhat reduced by the fact that he delivered it by closed-circuit video from the bunker where he has been forced to hole up because of at least two Israeli attempts to assassinate him.

But even so, Nasrallah, seen in public only once since 2006, skillfully touched a raw Israeli nerve.

Israel's nightmare is that if hostilities do break out once more, most likely if it launches pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, the Jewish state's cities will come under an unprecedented bombardment from Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south, Syria in the east, as well as Iran.

That would be the first time that Israel had to fight an all-out war, in which its long-held military superiority would be of little value because the conflict would be fought at long range, not with tanks and infantry.

Its air force and Jericho ballistic missiles would go into action and would undoubtedly do much damage. But Israeli civilian casualties would likely be extremely heavy.

Israel would have its nuclear option. But dropping nuclear bombs or unleashing nuclear-tipped Jerichos would leave Israel open to a maelstrom of global condemnation and international isolation.

"Either intentionally or unintentionally, Nasrallah hit a very sensitive chord by mentioning by name the Beirut and Tel Aviv airports," Saghiyeh wrote in Wednesday's al-Akhbar.

"It was as if instead of just putting an airport (up against) another airport, he put a Lebanese symbol up against an Israeli symbol."

Rafik Hariri, five times Lebanon's prime minister and the architect of its reconstruction after the 1975-90 civil war, was assassinated Feb. 14, 2005, in Beirut. The killing of this iconic figure was widely blamed on Syria, which had dominated Lebanon for nearly 30 years. Syria denies that but withdrew its army from Lebanon in the storm of outrage that ensued.

David Ben-Gurion is a giant figure in Israel's history. He led the struggle for the creation of the Jewish state and was its first prime minister.

Saghiyeh concluded, "Nasrallah's new equation is not intended to merely overcome Israel's military advantage and arrogance but above all else to (reverse) Arab and Lebanese defeatism."

Nasrallah was undoubtedly exploiting the international outcry over the assassination of a Hamas chieftain in Dubai in January, a messy affair for which Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, is suspected.

The occasion of his speech was also telling: the second anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah's much-revered military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus, another killing blamed on the Mossad.

Nasrallah vowed Hezbollah would take revenge by hitting "a target as big as Imad Mughniyeh," who until Osama bin Laden came along was the world's most wanted fugitive.

Israel is bracing for that, too.

Nasrallah throws down the gauntlet

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Feb 18, 2009
Amid growing fears of another Middle East war, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has thrown down the gauntlet for Israel by vowing to hammer Ben-Gurion Airport if Beirut's Rafik Hariri International is hit, as it was in their last conflict in 2006.

That was not likely an idle boast. Nasrallah was unusually specific in what targets Hezbollah would hit, thus signaling its capabilities.

"He's never been as detailed and candid," said Lebanese political scientist and Hezbollah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb of the American University of Beirut.

According to Israel's military intelligence, Hezbollah has in excess of 42,000 rockets and missiles stashed away, including weapons capable of hitting Tel Aviv, Israel's largest metropolis, and even the Dimona nuclear reactor further south in the Negev Desert.

Nasrallah's warning in a speech Tuesday night took the warlike rhetoric that has been coming from both sides in recent weeks to new heights. "If you hit our ports, we will hit your ports," he declared.

Israeli leaders have warned that in any new war their forces will be merciless, sparing nothing and no one in Lebanon, because Hezbollah is now in the government.

Khaled Saghiyeh, editor of Beirut's al-Akhbar newspaper, declared that Nasrallah's threat elevated this enmity to a new level by vowing not only to retaliate but to inflict equal damage.

This appeared to be a deliberate move by Nasrallah to portray Hezbollah's guerrillas as a conventional army on a par with Israel's vaunted military, which it fought to a standstill in the 34-day war of 2006, not just a feckless Arab militia.

The impact of his speech was somewhat reduced by the fact that he delivered it by closed-circuit video from the bunker where he has been forced to hole up because of at least two Israeli attempts to assassinate him.

But even so, Nasrallah, seen in public only once since 2006, skillfully touched a raw Israeli nerve.

Israel's nightmare is that if hostilities do break out once more, most likely if it launches pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, the Jewish state's cities will come under an unprecedented bombardment from Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south, Syria in the east, as well as Iran.

That would be the first time that Israel had to fight an all-out war, in which its long-held military superiority would be of little value because the conflict would be fought at long range, not with tanks and infantry.

Its air force and Jericho ballistic missiles would go into action and would undoubtedly do much damage. But Israeli civilian casualties would likely be extremely heavy.

Israel would have its nuclear option. But dropping nuclear bombs or unleashing nuclear-tipped Jerichos would leave Israel open to a maelstrom of global condemnation and international isolation.

"Either intentionally or unintentionally, Nasrallah hit a very sensitive chord by mentioning by name the Beirut and Tel Aviv airports," Saghiyeh wrote in Wednesday's al-Akhbar.

"It was as if instead of just putting an airport (up against) another airport, he put a Lebanese symbol up against an Israeli symbol."

Rafik Hariri, five times Lebanon's prime minister and the architect of its reconstruction after the 1975-90 civil war, was assassinated Feb. 14, 2005, in Beirut. The killing of this iconic figure was widely blamed on Syria, which had dominated Lebanon for nearly 30 years. Syria denies that but withdrew its army from Lebanon in the storm of outrage that ensued.

David Ben-Gurion is a giant figure in Israel's history. He led the struggle for the creation of the Jewish state and was its first prime minister.

Saghiyeh concluded, "Nasrallah's new equation is not intended to merely overcome Israel's military advantage and arrogance but above all else to (reverse) Arab and Lebanese defeatism."

Nasrallah was undoubtedly exploiting the international outcry over the assassination of a Hamas chieftain in Dubai in January, a messy affair for which Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, is suspected.

The occasion of his speech was also telling: the second anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah's much-revered military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus, another killing blamed on the Mossad.

Nasrallah vowed Hezbollah would take revenge by hitting "a target as big as Imad Mughniyeh," who until Osama bin Laden came along was the world's most wanted fugitive.

Israel is bracing for that, too.

US voices concern after Iran 'warhead' report

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Feb 18, 2010
The United States voiced renewed concern Thursday about Iran's nuclear program after a report by the UN's atomic watchdog suggested Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead.

US President Barack Obama's spokesman said the latest reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues "to demonstrate the failure of the Iranian government to live up to its international obligations."

"The president has on a number of occasions talked about engagement, talked about the benefits of living up to those international obligations," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"We always said that if Iran failed to live up to those international obligations that there would be consequences."

The Vienna-based IAEA said earlier Thursday in a restricted report obtained by AFP that Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead and had begun enriching uranium at higher levels.

"We have ongoing concerns about Iran's activities," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.

"We cannot explain why it refuses to come to the table and engage constructively to answer the questions that have been raised," he said.

The 10-page document, which is to be discussed by IAEA governors at a meeting next month, also confirmed Tehran had begun enriching uranium to higher levels, theoretically bringing it closer to the levels needed for an atomic bomb.

But a senior US official said that the report also showed that Iran was enriching uranium at a level which would take it "years" to produce a nuclear weapon.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity also added that the IAEA assessment demonstrated the "significant" technical problems that were hampering the Iranian nuclear program.

He also added that the report showed an "increasing pattern of non-cooperation with the IAEA" on the part of Iran.

Iran has previously reached uranium enrichment levels of no more than five percent at its facility at Natanz, in defiance of UN orders for it to cease and despite three rounds of UN sanctions.

Earlier this month, Iran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent, ostensibly to make the fuel for a research reactor that makes medical radioisotopes.

On Wednesday the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, warned that Iran was "becoming a nuclear weapons capable country and that is very dangerous," although he stressed that the Obama administration's priority was to initiate dialogue and engagement with Iran.

The report was the first assessment on Iran under the oversight of new IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

Amano sees his job as "just the facts," the official said, adding that he had a more technical approach than former IAEA director general Mohamed El Baradei.

IAEA 'concerned' Iran working on nuclear weapon

by Staff Writers
Vienna (AFP) Feb 18, 2010
The UN atomic watchdog is concerned that Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead, according to a restricted report obtained by AFP Thursday.

"The information available to the agency ... raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," the watchdog's chief Yukiya Amano wrote in his first report to its board of governors.

The language of the report was much more blunt than that used by Amano's predecessor Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei, who stepped down as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the end of November.

The Vienna-based IAEA has been investigating for a number of years intelligence reports claiming Iran was involved in weapons research.

These so-called "alleged studies" included uranium conversion, high explosives testing and the adaptation of a ballistic missile cone to carry a nuclear warhead.

A US intelligence report in 2007 said Iran halted such research in 2003, but Amano's report gives credence to the belief held by some western countries that the programme continued.

The information was "extensive ... broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved," the report said.

The 10-page document, which is to be discussed by IAEA governors at a meeting next month, also confirmed Tehran had begun enriching uranium to higher levels, theoretically bringing it closer to the levels needed for an atomic bomb.

Iran has previously reached uranium enrichment levels of no more than five percent at its facility at Natanz, in defiance of UN orders for it to cease and despite three rounds of UN sanctions.

Earlier this month, Iran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent, ostensibly to make the fuel for a research reactor that makes medical radioisotopes.

Iran insists its intentions are peaceful, but western powers suspect Tehran is enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons, as the material in high purity form can be used in the core of a atomic bomb.

The report said while the Islamic republic officially informed the IAEA of its intentions, it started feeding nuclear material into the uranium-enriching centrifuges before IAEA inspectors arrived in the plant to oversee the process.

The report said Iran had moved most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium -- 1,950 kilograms from an estimated total of 2,065 kilograms -- for processing to higher levels.

Amano complained that Iran was continuing to stall agency requests to clear up the alleged weapons research.

"Since August 2008, Iran has declined to discuss the above issues ... or provide any further information and access to locations and people to address these concerns," the report said.

Iran has simply dismissed such allegations as "baseless" and the intelligence on which they were based as "forged".

IAEA inspectors verified that none of Iran's declared nuclear material had been diverted, the report said.

But it also said: "Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

The IAEA urged Iran to cooperate fully and allow its inspectors access to all relevant sites, equipment, documentation and personnel "without further delay."

Only by doing so would the IAEA be able to make progress.

Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, ignored Amano's concerns, insisting that the report "confirms Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful and that there is no deviation of material and programme for military purposes."

"In reality he (Amano) has once again confirmed all of the past six years (of IAEA's) reports that Iran's nuclear activities have been a peaceful one," Soltanieh was quoted by IRNA news agency as saying.

The United States voiced renewed concern about Iran's nuclear programme, with State Department spokesman P.J.Crowley telling reporters: "We cannot explain why it (Iran) refuses to come to the table and engage constructively to answer the questions that have been raised."

IAEA 'concerned' Iran working on nuclear weapon

by Staff Writers
Vienna (AFP) Feb 18, 2010
The UN atomic watchdog is concerned that Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead, according to a restricted report obtained by AFP Thursday.

"The information available to the agency ... raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," the watchdog's chief Yukiya Amano wrote in his first report to its board of governors.

The language of the report was much more blunt than that used by Amano's predecessor Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei, who stepped down as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the end of November.

The Vienna-based IAEA has been investigating for a number of years intelligence reports claiming Iran was involved in weapons research.

These so-called "alleged studies" included uranium conversion, high explosives testing and the adaptation of a ballistic missile cone to carry a nuclear warhead.

A US intelligence report in 2007 said Iran halted such research in 2003, but Amano's report gives credence to the belief held by some western countries that the programme continued.

The information was "extensive ... broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved," the report said.

The 10-page document, which is to be discussed by IAEA governors at a meeting next month, also confirmed Tehran had begun enriching uranium to higher levels, theoretically bringing it closer to the levels needed for an atomic bomb.

Iran has previously reached uranium enrichment levels of no more than five percent at its facility at Natanz, in defiance of UN orders for it to cease and despite three rounds of UN sanctions.

Earlier this month, Iran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent, ostensibly to make the fuel for a research reactor that makes medical radioisotopes.

Iran insists its intentions are peaceful, but western powers suspect Tehran is enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons, as the material in high purity form can be used in the core of a atomic bomb.

The report said while the Islamic republic officially informed the IAEA of its intentions, it started feeding nuclear material into the uranium-enriching centrifuges before IAEA inspectors arrived in the plant to oversee the process.

The report said Iran had moved most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium -- 1,950 kilograms from an estimated total of 2,065 kilograms -- for processing to higher levels.

Amano complained that Iran was continuing to stall agency requests to clear up the alleged weapons research.

"Since August 2008, Iran has declined to discuss the above issues ... or provide any further information and access to locations and people to address these concerns," the report said.

Iran has simply dismissed such allegations as "baseless" and the intelligence on which they were based as "forged".

IAEA inspectors verified that none of Iran's declared nuclear material had been diverted, the report said.

But it also said: "Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

The IAEA urged Iran to cooperate fully and allow its inspectors access to all relevant sites, equipment, documentation and personnel "without further delay."

Only by doing so would the IAEA be able to make progress.

Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, ignored Amano's concerns, insisting that the report "confirms Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful and that there is no deviation of material and programme for military purposes."

"In reality he (Amano) has once again confirmed all of the past six years (of IAEA's) reports that Iran's nuclear activities have been a peaceful one," Soltanieh was quoted by IRNA news agency as saying.

The United States voiced renewed concern about Iran's nuclear programme, with State Department spokesman P.J.Crowley telling reporters: "We cannot explain why it (Iran) refuses to come to the table and engage constructively to answer the questions that have been raised."

US voices concern after Iran 'warhead' report

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Feb 18, 2010
The United States voiced renewed concern Thursday about Iran's nuclear program after a report by the UN's atomic watchdog suggested Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead.

US President Barack Obama's spokesman said the latest reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues "to demonstrate the failure of the Iranian government to live up to its international obligations."

"The president has on a number of occasions talked about engagement, talked about the benefits of living up to those international obligations," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"We always said that if Iran failed to live up to those international obligations that there would be consequences."

The Vienna-based IAEA said earlier Thursday in a restricted report obtained by AFP that Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead and had begun enriching uranium at higher levels.

"We have ongoing concerns about Iran's activities," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.

"We cannot explain why it refuses to come to the table and engage constructively to answer the questions that have been raised," he said.

The 10-page document, which is to be discussed by IAEA governors at a meeting next month, also confirmed Tehran had begun enriching uranium to higher levels, theoretically bringing it closer to the levels needed for an atomic bomb.

But a senior US official said that the report also showed that Iran was enriching uranium at a level which would take it "years" to produce a nuclear weapon.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity also added that the IAEA assessment demonstrated the "significant" technical problems that were hampering the Iranian nuclear program.

He also added that the report showed an "increasing pattern of non-cooperation with the IAEA" on the part of Iran.

Iran has previously reached uranium enrichment levels of no more than five percent at its facility at Natanz, in defiance of UN orders for it to cease and despite three rounds of UN sanctions.

Earlier this month, Iran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent, ostensibly to make the fuel for a research reactor that makes medical radioisotopes.

On Wednesday the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, warned that Iran was "becoming a nuclear weapons capable country and that is very dangerous," although he stressed that the Obama administration's priority was to initiate dialogue and engagement with Iran.

The report was the first assessment on Iran under the oversight of new IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

Amano sees his job as "just the facts," the official said, adding that he had a more technical approach than former IAEA director general Mohamed El Baradei.

Nasrallah throws down the gauntlet

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Feb 18, 2009
Amid growing fears of another Middle East war, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has thrown down the gauntlet for Israel by vowing to hammer Ben-Gurion Airport if Beirut's Rafik Hariri International is hit, as it was in their last conflict in 2006.

That was not likely an idle boast. Nasrallah was unusually specific in what targets Hezbollah would hit, thus signaling its capabilities.

"He's never been as detailed and candid," said Lebanese political scientist and Hezbollah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb of the American University of Beirut.

According to Israel's military intelligence, Hezbollah has in excess of 42,000 rockets and missiles stashed away, including weapons capable of hitting Tel Aviv, Israel's largest metropolis, and even the Dimona nuclear reactor further south in the Negev Desert.

Nasrallah's warning in a speech Tuesday night took the warlike rhetoric that has been coming from both sides in recent weeks to new heights. "If you hit our ports, we will hit your ports," he declared.

Israeli leaders have warned that in any new war their forces will be merciless, sparing nothing and no one in Lebanon, because Hezbollah is now in the government.

Khaled Saghiyeh, editor of Beirut's al-Akhbar newspaper, declared that Nasrallah's threat elevated this enmity to a new level by vowing not only to retaliate but to inflict equal damage.

This appeared to be a deliberate move by Nasrallah to portray Hezbollah's guerrillas as a conventional army on a par with Israel's vaunted military, which it fought to a standstill in the 34-day war of 2006, not just a feckless Arab militia.

The impact of his speech was somewhat reduced by the fact that he delivered it by closed-circuit video from the bunker where he has been forced to hole up because of at least two Israeli attempts to assassinate him.

But even so, Nasrallah, seen in public only once since 2006, skillfully touched a raw Israeli nerve.

Israel's nightmare is that if hostilities do break out once more, most likely if it launches pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, the Jewish state's cities will come under an unprecedented bombardment from Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south, Syria in the east, as well as Iran.

That would be the first time that Israel had to fight an all-out war, in which its long-held military superiority would be of little value because the conflict would be fought at long range, not with tanks and infantry.

Its air force and Jericho ballistic missiles would go into action and would undoubtedly do much damage. But Israeli civilian casualties would likely be extremely heavy.

Israel would have its nuclear option. But dropping nuclear bombs or unleashing nuclear-tipped Jerichos would leave Israel open to a maelstrom of global condemnation and international isolation.

"Either intentionally or unintentionally, Nasrallah hit a very sensitive chord by mentioning by name the Beirut and Tel Aviv airports," Saghiyeh wrote in Wednesday's al-Akhbar.

"It was as if instead of just putting an airport (up against) another airport, he put a Lebanese symbol up against an Israeli symbol."

Rafik Hariri, five times Lebanon's prime minister and the architect of its reconstruction after the 1975-90 civil war, was assassinated Feb. 14, 2005, in Beirut. The killing of this iconic figure was widely blamed on Syria, which had dominated Lebanon for nearly 30 years. Syria denies that but withdrew its army from Lebanon in the storm of outrage that ensued.

David Ben-Gurion is a giant figure in Israel's history. He led the struggle for the creation of the Jewish state and was its first prime minister.

Saghiyeh concluded, "Nasrallah's new equation is not intended to merely overcome Israel's military advantage and arrogance but above all else to (reverse) Arab and Lebanese defeatism."

Nasrallah was undoubtedly exploiting the international outcry over the assassination of a Hamas chieftain in Dubai in January, a messy affair for which Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, is suspected.

The occasion of his speech was also telling: the second anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah's much-revered military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus, another killing blamed on the Mossad.

Nasrallah vowed Hezbollah would take revenge by hitting "a target as big as Imad Mughniyeh," who until Osama bin Laden came along was the world's most wanted fugitive.

Israel is bracing for that, too.

N.Korea vows not to swap nuclear weapons for aid

Let them starve instead.

S.Korea on alert against possible N.Korea firepower display
Seoul (AFP) Feb 20, 2010 - South Korea's military was on high alert Saturday after North Korea declared no-go zones near its disputed sea border with the South, sparking fears the reclusive state could begin firing weapons. "We've deployed anti-artillery firefinder radar systems in Baengnyeong island and Yeonpyeong islands," a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman told AFP. "However, there is no unusual military activity detected in the North," he said. Yonhap news agency said the South had also stepped up air and naval surveillance along the inter-Korean border. As of late Friday, the North has declared a total of eight no-sail zones: four in the Yellow Sea and four others in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) off its northeast coast, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. They will be effective for three days from Saturday. The no-sail zones raised the prospect of a further display of firepower after a North Korean artillery barrage in late January heightened tensions on the divided peninsula. The Yellow Sea border was the scene of deadly naval battles in 1999 and 2002 and of a firefight last November which left a North Korean patrol boat in flames. Since that clash the North has positioned dozens of rocket launchers at its coastal bases near the maritime frontier, Yonhap said. The North said it was staging a routine exercise but South Korea and the United States described the firing as provocative. Since then the North has again declared no-sail zones but not gone ahead with any exercises.

N.Korea declares firing zones near disputed border: Seoul
Seoul (AFP) Feb 19, 2010 - North Korea has declared naval firing zones near its disputed sea border with South Korea, Seoul's military said Friday, while a news report said it has deployed multiple rocket launchers close to the frontier. The "no sail" zones raised the prospect of a further display of firepower after the North's artillery barrage in late January heightened tensions on the divided peninsula. The communist state declared four exclusion zones in the Yellow Sea -- including two near the border -- and two in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) off its northeast coast, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. They will be effective for three days from Saturday.

"Currently, there is no unusual military activity detected in the North," a JCS spokesman told AFP. The Yellow Sea border was the scene of deadly naval battles in 1999 and 2002 and of a firefight last November which left a North Korean patrol boat in flames. Since that clash the North has positioned dozens of the rocket launchers at its coastal bases near the maritime frontier, Yonhap news agency said. It said defence ministry officials gave the information Friday to a closed meeting of a parliamentary defence committee.

"North Korea has deployed multiple rocket launchers in the western coastal bases since the naval clash in November," a military official was quoted as telling Yonhap. Officials could not immediately confirm the report on the rocket launchers, which have a maximum range of 60 kilometres (37.5 miles). After declaring two "no sail" zones, the North in late January fired 370 shells into the sea near the border over three days. The North said it was staging a routine exercise but South Korea and the United States described the firing as provocative. Since then the North has again declared "no sail" zones but not gone ahead with any exercises.
by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Feb 19, 2010
North Korea, under international pressure to return to nuclear disarmament talks, vowed Friday never to give up its atomic arsenal in return for economic aid.

The communist state's official news agency instead demanded an end to what it called US hostility -- apparently restating a call for a formal peace treaty on the Korean peninsula.

Seoul's military said separately the North had declared live-fire zones near its disputed sea border with South Korea, raising the prospect of a further display of firepower after shelling in late January heightened tensions.

The North has also moved some multiple rocket launchers to bases along its west coast, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) told AFP. It was unclear whether this was part of a military drill or a permanent move.

Chinese and North Korean negotiators held talks in Beijing last week about restarting the six-party nuclear forum, which the North quit last April.

The two sides also discussed possible economic assistance, South Korea's Yonhap news agency has reported. Some analysts believe the North will eventually have to return to dialogue given its worsening economy and acute food shortages.

The North has developed atomic bombs for its own defence, "not to threaten anybody or receive economic favours or rewards", the Korean Central News Agency said in a commentary.

It is a "misjudgement" if the outside world thinks it will dump nuclear bombs in return for economic benefits, the agency said.

"Unless (the US) terminates its hostile policy and nuclear threats towards our republic, our abandonment of nuclear weapons will not happen even if the earth breaks."

Pyongyang, which tested atomic weapons in October 2006 and May 2009, has set two conditions for resuming the nuclear dialogue: the lifting of UN sanctions and a US commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty.

The 1950-53 war ended only in an armistice.

The North says it developed nuclear weapons to defend itself against a potential US attack, and it must have a peace treaty with Washington before it considers handing them over.

Pyongyang has previously spurned Seoul's offer of massive economic aid in return for denuclearisation.

In late January, after declaring two "no sail" zones, the North fired 370 artillery shells into the Yellow Sea near the contested border over three days.

It said it was staging a routine exercise but South Korea and the United States described the firing as provocative.

The North has now declared four exclusion zones in the Yellow Sea -- including two near the border -- and two in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) off its northeast coast, South Korea's military said.

They will be effective for three days from Saturday. "Currently, there is no unusual military activity detected in the North," a JCS spokesman said.

The Yellow Sea border was the scene of deadly naval battles in 1999 and 2002 and of a firefight last November that left a North Korean patrol boat in flames.

Since that clash the North has positioned dozens of the rocket launchers, with a range of 60 kilometres (37 miles), at its coastal bases near the maritime frontier, Yonhap news agency said.

The JCS spokesman gave no figure for the number of rocket launchers deployed.

US voices concern after Iran 'warhead' report

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Feb 18, 2010
The United States voiced renewed concern Thursday about Iran's nuclear program after a report by the UN's atomic watchdog suggested Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead.

US President Barack Obama's spokesman said the latest reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues "to demonstrate the failure of the Iranian government to live up to its international obligations."

"The president has on a number of occasions talked about engagement, talked about the benefits of living up to those international obligations," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"We always said that if Iran failed to live up to those international obligations that there would be consequences."

The Vienna-based IAEA said earlier Thursday in a restricted report obtained by AFP that Tehran may be working on a nuclear warhead and had begun enriching uranium at higher levels.

"We have ongoing concerns about Iran's activities," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.

"We cannot explain why it refuses to come to the table and engage constructively to answer the questions that have been raised," he said.

The 10-page document, which is to be discussed by IAEA governors at a meeting next month, also confirmed Tehran had begun enriching uranium to higher levels, theoretically bringing it closer to the levels needed for an atomic bomb.

But a senior US official said that the report also showed that Iran was enriching uranium at a level which would take it "years" to produce a nuclear weapon.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity also added that the IAEA assessment demonstrated the "significant" technical problems that were hampering the Iranian nuclear program.

He also added that the report showed an "increasing pattern of non-cooperation with the IAEA" on the part of Iran.

Iran has previously reached uranium enrichment levels of no more than five percent at its facility at Natanz, in defiance of UN orders for it to cease and despite three rounds of UN sanctions.

Earlier this month, Iran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent, ostensibly to make the fuel for a research reactor that makes medical radioisotopes.

On Wednesday the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, warned that Iran was "becoming a nuclear weapons capable country and that is very dangerous," although he stressed that the Obama administration's priority was to initiate dialogue and engagement with Iran.

The report was the first assessment on Iran under the oversight of new IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

Amano sees his job as "just the facts," the official said, adding that he had a more technical approach than former IAEA director general Mohamed El Baradei.

Iran Has Rejected Diplomacy on Nuclear Standoff, U.S. Says

Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010

Iran's announcement of plans to build new uranium enrichment facilities exhibits the nation's lack of commitment to diplomatically addressing disputes over its nuclear activities, the U.S. State Department asserted yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 22).

(Feb. 23) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, shown yesterday, urged governments to block all Iranian petroleum imports and exports (Emil Salman/Getty Images).

The United States and other Western powers suspect Iran's uranium enrichment program is aimed at producing highly enriched material for nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran has consistently denied.

"This is further evidence that Iran refuses to engage cooperatively and constructively with the" International Atomic Energy Agency, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, according to Agence France-Presse.

"Adding ... more potential enrichment sites adds to the questions, rather than resolves the questions that the international community has," the spokesman said.

The five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany are working "to identify potential targets for sanctions," Crowley added. "And we will, I think, be advancing specific proposals ... to the U.N. in the coming weeks," he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report on Iran's nuclear program "represents one of the clearest denunciations of what the Iranians have been working on," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added.

According to the IAEA assessment, Iran appears to have conducted work aimed at preparing a nuclear warhead that could be placed on a missile (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Feb. 22).

The Middle Eastern nation has installed 8,745 uranium enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz complex, the report states, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The document adds that the nation has prepared its first supply of 20 percent-enriched uranium, ostensibly for operating a medical research reactor in Tehran (Xinhua News Agency I, Feb. 23).

"I wished that [IAEA chief Yukiya Amano] would have been more independent" in preparing the report, Iranian Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi said yesterday, according to Kyodo News.

"In his last report, he did not show that he is independent. I'm sorry to say this," Salehi said, adding that Amano was "relenting to the pressure of the U.S." (Kyodo News/Breitbart.com, Feb. 22).

Tehran today reaffirmed its willingness to purchase 20 percent-enriched uranium from abroad or to simultaneously exchange low-enriched uranium for pre-enriched medical reactor fuel within its borders, AFP reported.

Iran previously rejected an IAEA plan calling for France and Russia to enrich much of the Middle Eastern nation's stockpiled uranium to the 20 percent level required to fuel the medical research reactor in Tehran. The proposal, put forward last October, was aimed at deferring Iran's ability to fuel a bomb long enough to more fully address the nuclear standoff.

"Iran is still seeking to purchase the required fuel in cash," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, stated in a Feb. 18 letter to Amano.

"If the agency is not able to fulfill its duty ... then Iran is ready to exchange the required fuel assemblies with the LEU (low-enriched uranium) material produced at Natanz, simultaneously in one package or several packages in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran," the letter states (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Feb. 23).

"In order to bring about a constructive interaction, we have declared our readiness for fuel swap, provided it is done within the country (Iran)," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast added, according to Reuters. "We are prepared for a fuel swap even though we do not regard this condition of supplying fuel to the Tehran research reactor through a swap as correct," he said (Ramin Mostafavi, Reuters I, Feb. 23).

Meanwhile, 30 U.S. legislators urged the Obama administration to publicly identify and penalize companies linked to Iran by an initial State Department probe, AFP reported yesterday.

"If firms are violating U.S. law, there must be consequences," says the letter, dated Thursday and submitted to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Given Iran's intransigence and the support these companies provide to the Iranians, we urge you to fully enforce the Iran Sanctions Act and levy appropriate sanctions against companies who have violated U.S. law."

The Iran Sanctions Act permits sanctions of foreign firms with more than $20 million invested in Iran's energy industry (Agence France-Presse III/Google News, Feb. 22).

The European Union yesterday called on the Security Council to assume leadership in addressing the nuclear dispute, the Associated Press reported.

"We are pursuing the Security Council as being the best and most appropriate way of taking forward issues with Iran," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

The statement suggested that the European Union would not penalize Iran independently, according to AP (Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press/Taiwan News, Feb. 22).

Beijing today reaffirmed its call for a negotiated resolution to the nuclear dispute, Xinhua reported. China, which wields veto authority over Security Council decisions as a permanent member of the body, has repeatedly expressed opposition to a fourth U.N. sanctions resolution targeting Iran.

"China holds that the parties should continue to step up diplomatic efforts in a bid to maintain and promote the process of dialogue and negotiations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. "China hopes the parties demonstrate more flexibility and create conditions conducive to a comprehensive and proper solution to the Iran nuclear issue through diplomatic means."

Beijing is aware of the latest IAEA report on Iran and hopes "the Iranian side continues to cooperate with the IAEA on related issues," Qin said (Xinhua News Agency II/People's Daily, Feb. 23).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday called for countries to block all oil shipments moving in and out of Iran, even if the Security Council does not permit such a move, AFP reported.

"We must prohibit Iranian oil exports and imports to Iran of refined oil products. No other sanctions will be effective," Netanyahu said.

"It is uncertain that these measures will suffice, but at least we will have tried. If the U.N. Security Council does not agree, they could be imposed separately, outside the U.N. What is certain is that these sanctions must be applied, and now," he said (Agence France-Presse IV/Google News, Feb. 22).

Israel plans to dispatch senior officials to China later this month in an effort to win its support for economic penalties against Iran, China Daily reported today.

The visit is unlikely to affect Beijing's position against new sanctions, though, Chinese analysts said (China Daily, Feb. 23).

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is expected to discuss the Iranian nuclear dispute during meetings in the United States later this week with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and U.N. Director General Ban Ki-moon, Xinhua reported (David Harris, Xinhua News Agency III/People's Daily, Feb. 23).

Elsewhere, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen warned his country could not deal a "decisive" military blow to Iran.

"No strike, however effective, will be in and of itself decisive," Mullen said.

He added, though, that the military has drafted plans on the Middle Eastern state.

"Let me be clear: We owe the (defense) secretary and the president a range of options for this threat. We owe the American people our readiness," he said.

"But, as I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action," Mullen added. "For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are and ought to be, the levers first pulled" (Agence France-Presse V/Spacewar.com, Feb. 22).

Iran would "cut off the hands" of any attacking power, the nation's president said today, according to Reuters.

"No power can harm Iran. ... The Iranian nation will chop off the hands from the arm of any attacker from any part of the world," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech (Reuters II, Feb. 23).

"Iran certainly will not start a war. But if we are attacked, we will respond strongly," Croatia's Vecernji List quoted Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Ahani as saying, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse VI/Google News, Feb. 22).

Experts Pessimistic on North Korea’s Willingness to Give Up Nukes

Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010

By Stephanie Palla

Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- Even if North Korea agrees to resume negotiations on its nuclear program, it is unlikely to ever prove willing to give up its strategic deterrent, experts on East Asia's role in international security argued last week (see GSN, Feb. 24).

(Feb. 25) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, shown in an undated photo, examines the output of a shoe factory in his country. China has reportedly pressed Pyongyang to stop demanding that outside powers lift economic penalties as a precondition to resuming multilateral denuclearization talks (Getty Images).

During a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute, speakers addressed the obstacles the United States faces in trying to jump-start the denuclearization process in Pyongyang.

Upon taking office in January 2009, the Obama administration made clear its willingness to engage directly with Pyongyang but also that it wanted to push ahead with the six-party talks intended to shutter the regime's nuclear-weapon program. The North responded with an apparent ballistic missile test in April and its second nuclear test in May, and was hit with stronger U.N. sanctions for its efforts.

Pressure and heated rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang have eased since then, according to Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. North Korea has expressed a willingness to participate in denuclearization negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, which were last held in December 2008 - but only after being freed from sanctions and beginning peace talks with the United States.

Experts voiced their pessimism over the chance of progress in any talks, based on failures by Washington and the other governments to deter North Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons even after giving Pyongyang numerous incentives.

"I don't think that this administration or any future administration can promise more," Cha, a former negotiator to the talks, said at the Feb. 18 event.

Diplomatic efforts by prior U.S. presidential administrations differed in approach but have offered North Korea the same basic incentives going back to the administration of President George H.W. Bush, Cha said. These promises included energy and economic support, normalization of relations between the Pyongyang and Washington, supporting a civilian nuclear energy program in the North, and consideration of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.

Under the most recent agreement, in 2007, the Bush administration removed North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and joined several other six-party states in providing heavy fuel oil for isolated state. Pyongyang took steps toward disabling its plutonium-producing Yongbyon complex, but never followed through on its pledge to dismantle the site. It has since ejected international monitors and resumed operations there.

In previous agreements with the North, the other states "put all the hard requirements down later on in the agreement just so you can get the negotiations going," said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. "It's classic confidence building. The problem with that is every time we've done this, it's placed these sort of agreements at risk later on and they fall apart when there's anything serious about to be done."

North Korea has conducted two nuclear test blasts and is believed to have sufficient plutonium for several weapons. However, its ability to actually delivery any warhead remains in doubt.

The fundamental question underlining the years-long process of the six-party talks was the possibility North Korea could be persuaded to eliminate its nuclear program if given the right incentives.

Pyongyang, though, has continually cited the need for nuclear weapons in the face of "external threats," and numerous U.S. pledges of its nonhostile intentions have not quelled that mistrust. This standoff is evidence that no U.S. assurances or incentives would curb North Korean doubts and persuade it to take meaningful steps toward denuclearization, according to Cha.

"It is very difficult for me to see this particular regime ever denuclearizing because even if you got rid of every potential external threat to North Korea -- even if you surrounded North Korea with five Costa Ricas -- this regime would still feel insecure," he said. "It's the nature of the regime; its inability to fulfill at least their version of the socialist contract with their people. This is the primary insecurity to the regime."

Cronin was similarly downbeat.

"I hate to be an additional realist and skeptic on this," he said. "Are we asking and expecting too much from six-party talks?"

The United States should not expect the regime's "calculus" to change through negotiations, he added. Instead, the Obama administration should use the talks to maintain and strengthen partnerships with allies South Korea and Japan, according to Cronin.

An additional obstacle to North Korean nuclear disarmament is the program's international notoriety, according to one speaker.

"I just don't see that the government in Pyongyang has much reason -- or much incentive -- to give away the one thing that has caused the rest of the world to pay them any significant attention whatsoever since the end of the Cold War," said Christopher Ford, director of the Center for Technology and Global Security at the Hudson Institute.

Current U.N. economic sanctions, including a prohibition on weapons exports, restrict North Korea's nuclear proliferation, but fall short on deterring development and testing, Cha said.

Speakers, however, said diplomacy and economic pressure appear to be the only realistic options at this point.

Since security options are limited with the United States unable to "stomach" overthrowing North Korea's current regime, "[the Obama administration] can hold your nose and try to negotiate with them," Cha said.

North Korea is not serious in engagement, according to Cronin. The United States should "be ready for the six-party talks, but not [give] away anything."

The United States and the other nations should not compromise the negotiations by being too lenient, Ford said.

"I worry that new concessions would simply encourage future misbehavior by rewarding it which, of course, has happened all too ... frequently in the past," he said.

Syria Rejects IAEA Visit to Nuclear Reactor

Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010

Syria rejected a request by the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an inspection of a nuclear research reactor in Damascus this week, Reuters reported (see GSN, Feb. 22).

Damascus apparently responded to the request by letter on Feb. 18, the day on which the U.N. nuclear watchdog released another safeguards report on Syria's nuclear activities. In that report, the agency affirmed for the first time Western concerns that a plant destroyed in a 2007 Israeli air strike housed an unfinished nuclear reactor. The United States suspects the site was intended to produce weapon-grade uranium, but Syria said the site was a nonatomic military installation and that the government has no nuclear weapons program.

The U.N. agency wants to know if there is any connection between the research reactor and the former facility at Dair Alzour, Reuters reported. It had hoped Tuesday to study "relevant source documents related to the experiments" at the reactor.

However, the letter only arrived in Vienna that day. Damascus indicated it was too busy preparing for the next IAEA Board of Governors meeting, which is scheduled to begin Monday.

The agency hopes to resolve the scheduling issue, diplomats were told (Sylvia Westall, Reuters, Feb. 25).

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