No 2 Ahmadi

Protest Against This Tyrant!

September 22, 2011

New York

Confused on Iran

The Washington Post - DEFENSE SECRETARY Robert M. Gates was the focus of one of those curious Washington kerfuffles over the weekend in which a senior official makes headlines by saying what everyone knows to be true. According to the New York Times, Mr. Gates dispatched a secret memo to the White House in January pointing out that the Obama administration does not have a well-prepared strategy in place for the likely eventuality that Iran will continue to pursue a nuclear weapon and will not be diverted by negotiations or sanctions. Mr. Gates quickly denied that his memo was intended as a "wake-up call," as one unnamed official quoted by the Times called it. And that's probably true: It is evident to any observer that the administration lacks a clear backup plan.

President Obama's official position is that "all options are on the table," including the use of force. But senior officials regularly talk down the military option in public -- thereby undermining its utility even as an instrument of intimidation. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered more reassurance to Iran on Sunday, saying in a forum at Columbia University that "I worry . . . about striking Iran. I've been very public about that because of the unintended consequences."

Adm. Mullen appeared to equate those consequences with those of Iran obtaining a weapon. "I think Iran having a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. I think attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome," he was quoted as saying. Yet Israel and other countries in the region would hardly regard those "outcomes" as similar.

We are not advocating strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. But the public signs of the administration's squishiness about military options are worrisome because of the lack of progress on its two-track strategy of offering negotiations and threatening sanctions. A year-long attempt at engagement failed; now the push for sanctions is proceeding at a snail's pace. Though administration officials say they have made progress in overcoming resistance from Russia and China, it appears a new U.N. sanctions resolution might require months more of dickering. Even then it might only be a shell intended to pave the way for ad hoc actions by the United States and European Union, which would require further diplomacy.

And what would sanctions accomplish? Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Financial Times last week that "maybe . . . that would lead to the kind of good-faith negotiations that President Obama called for 15 months ago." Yet the notion that the hard-line Iranian clique now in power would ever negotiate in good faith is far-fetched. More likely -- and desirable -- would be a victory by the opposition Green movement in Iran's ongoing domestic power struggle. But the administration has so far shrunk from supporting sanctions, such as a gasoline embargo. that might heighten popular anger against the regime.

All this probably explains why Mr. Gates, in his own words, "presented a number of questions and proposals intended to contribute to an orderly and timely decision making process."
"There should be no confusion by our allies and adversaries," he added, "that the United States is . . . prepared to act across a broad range of contingencies in support of our interests." If allies and adversaries are presently confused, that would be understandable.

Gates Says U.S. Lacks a Policy to Thwart Iran

By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

The New York Times, WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.

One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as “a wake-up call.” But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

In an interview on Friday, General Jones declined to speak about the memorandum. But he said: “On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don’t announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn’t mean we don’t have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies — we do.”

But in his memo, Mr. Gates wrote of a variety of concerns, including the absence of an effective strategy should Iran choose the course that many government and outside analysts consider likely: Iran could assemble all the major parts it needs for a nuclear weapon — fuel, designs and detonators — but stop just short of assembling a fully operational weapon.

In that case, Iran could remain a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty while becoming what strategists call a “virtual” nuclear weapons state.

According to several officials, the memorandum also calls for new thinking about how the United States might contain Iran’s power if it decided to produce a weapon, and how to deal with the possibility that fuel or weapons could be obtained by one of the terrorist groups Iran has supported, which officials said they considered to be a less-likely possibility.

Mr. Gates has never mentioned the memo in public. His spokesman, Geoff Morrell, declined to comment on specifics in the document, but issued a statement on Saturday saying, “The secretary believes the president and his national security team have spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort considering and preparing for the full range of contingencies with respect to Iran.”

Pressed on the administration’s ambiguous phrases until now about how close the United States was willing to allow Iran’s program to proceed, a senior administration official described last week in somewhat clearer terms that there was a line Iran would not be permitted to cross.

The official said that the United States would ensure that Iran would not “acquire a nuclear capability,” a step Tehran could get to well before it developed a sophisticated weapon. “That includes the ability to have a breakout,” he said, using the term nuclear specialists apply to a country that suddenly renounces the nonproliferation treaty and uses its technology to build a small arsenal.

Nearly two weeks ago, Mr. Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, was asked about whether he saw a difference between a nuclear-capable Iran and one that had a fully developed weapon. “I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said. But he noted that North Korea was considered a nuclear-capable state until it threw out inspectors and, as he said, “became a self-professed nuclear state.”

Mr. Gates has alluded to his concern that intelligence agencies might miss signals that Iran was taking the final steps toward producing a weapon. Last Sunday on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” he said: “If their policy is to go to the threshold but not assemble a nuclear weapon, how do you tell that they have not assembled? I don’t actually know how you would verify that.” But he cautioned that Iran had run into production difficulties, and he said, “It’s going slow — slower than they anticipated, but they are moving in that direction.”

Mr. Gates has taken a crucial role in formulating the administration’s strategy, and he has been known over his career to issue stark warnings against the possibility of strategic surprise.

Some officials said his memo should be viewed in that light: as a warning to a relatively new president that the United States was not adequately prepared.

He wrote the memo after Iran had let pass a 2009 deadline set by Mr. Obama to respond to his offers of diplomatic engagement.

Both that process and efforts to bring new sanctions against Iran have struggled. Administration officials had hoped that the revelation by Mr. Obama in September that Iran was building a new uranium enrichment plant inside a mountain near Qum would galvanize other nations against Iran, but the reaction was muted. The next three months were spent in what proved to be fruitless diplomatic talks with Iran over a plan to swap much of its low-enriched uranium for fuel for a medical reactor in Tehran. By the time Mr. Gates wrote his memo, those negotiations had collapsed.

Mr. Gates’s memo appears to reflect concerns in the Pentagon and the military that the White House did not have a well prepared series of alternatives in place in case all the diplomatic steps finally failed. Separately, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote a “chairman’s guidance” to his staff in December conveying a sense of urgency about contingency planning. He cautioned that a military attack would have “limited results,” but he did not convey any warnings about policy shortcomings.

“Should the president call for military options, we must have them ready,” the admiral wrote.

Administration officials testifying before a Senate committee last week made it clear that those preparations were under way. So did General Jones. “The president has made it clear from the beginning of this administration that we need to be prepared for every possible contingency,” he said in the interview. “That is what we have done from day one, while successfully building a coalition of nations to isolate Iran and pressure it to live up to its obligations.”

At the same hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the military’s most experienced officers on nuclear matters, said that Iran could produce bomb-grade fuel for at least one nuclear weapon within a year, but that it would probably need two to five years to manufacture a workable atomic bomb.

The administration has been stepping up efforts to contain the influence of Iran and counter its missiles, including placing Patriot anti-missile batteries, mostly operated by Americans, in several states around the Persian Gulf. The Pentagon also is moving ahead with a plan for regional missile defense that reconfigures architecture inherited from the Bush administration to more rapidly field interceptors on land and at sea.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/world/middleeast/18iran.html?pagewanted=all

Iran's Ticking Bomb

Solana, Straw, Fischer, and de Villepin have a lot to answer for since their policy bought Tehran crucial time.

By ALEJO VIDAL-QUADRAS

Wall Street Journal Europe - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted last week that the regime would install 60,000 new, "third-generation" centrifuges to enrich uranium. As world leaders met in Washington this week to discuss how to prevent nuclear terrorism, there was little doubt that time is running out to deal with Iran's nuclear weapons threat.

It is now eight years since the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran blew the lid on the mullahs' secret atom program and disclosed the existence of a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz and a heavy water plant for the production of plutonium in Arak. The NCRI also blew the whistle on the secret enrichment site in Qom back in 2005, a fact that was confirmed by world powers only last September. And yet, during all that time, Tehran has been allowed to make steady progress toward developing nuclear weapons.

Iran has had a lot of help along the way from what can only be described as appeasing policymakers who offered concessions and incentives, while telling the world that they could get the regime to change its behavior. And the regime did change its behavior: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei replaced the supposedly moderate President Mohammad Khatami with the fanatical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while Iranian officials continuously vowed not to back down one "iota" from their nuclear projects.

Regrettably, the European Union was one of the main culprits in facilitating Iran's nuclear progress. Particularly the EU's former high representative for foreign policy, Javier Solana, as well as the former British, French and German foreign ministers—Jack Straw, Dominique de Villepin and Joschka Fischer—have a lot to answer for. It was they who devised this policy of "constructive engagement" and thus bought the regime many of the eight years they have had to advance their nuclear program.

The most popular excuse for the failure of their Iran policy was that U.S. reluctance to negotiate directly with Iran supposedly prevented a breakthrough with the mullahs. When President Obama took office, there was much hope in Europe. Last year, he extended his hand to the Iranian leadership and set a number of deadlines for a negotiated settlement of the dispute. Iran, though, quickly repelled Mr. Obama's hand. The President's deadlines came and went without any Iranian "engagement."

Now it was Washington that bought the regime additional time. The White House failed to quickly gather a coalition of the willing to implement the "biting" sanctions it had threatened. Instead, more than three months after the end of the last deadline the U.S. administration had set, "biting" sanctions are not even on the horizon. At best we can expect that after weeks of haggling in the United Nations Security Council, there will eventually be much watered-down sanctions that won't be able to stop Tehran.

Engagement with Iran has been based on the false premise that the mullahs would respond to carrots and somehow act in Iran's national interest. In diplomacy, there is only one thing more dangerous than failing to respond firmly to threats to international security, and that is threatening to respond firmly, but failing to follow through. The Iranian regime knows now, if it had any doubts before, that the international community lacks the courage or conviction to confront its nuclear program.

One reason why our leaders pursued a policy of appeasement toward Iran over the past decade was that they argued, falsely, that the only alternative was a military attack on Iran. Biting sanctions, though, could have and still could work. Of course, a military confrontation with Iran would be devastating for its 70 million people. But allowing the regime to gain weapons of mass destruction could in the end be even more devastating for Iran and the entire region if it triggered a wider war. Engaging the mullahs only had the effect of legitimizing them and extending their brutal reign.

It is time for Europe and the United States to redouble their efforts for winning as broad a coalition as possible for biting sanctions that stand a chance of changing the regime's behavior. Equally important will be to politically support the opposition and the millions of brave Iranians marching on the streets and demanding change and democracy. Summits in Washington are fine, but Iran is moving much faster than that. So we'd better catch up.

Mr. Vidal-Quadras, a professor of nuclear physics, is vice president of the European Parliament.

Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303828304575179683031919088.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

An unsettled alliance

 By Daniel Dombey and Tobias Buck

Financial Times, London- The world clustered around Barack Obama yesterday - with one very notable exception. Leaders of some 40 countries, from Argentina and Armenia to China and India, gathered in Washington to attend the nuclear security summit convoked by the US president. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, stayed away.

Israeli diplomats attribute Mr Netanyahu's last-minute cancellation to Turkish and Egyptian plans to discuss Israel's nuclear arsenal. But his absence from an event intended to show US allies and partners rallying around the American president's agenda was, at the very least, deeply symbolic.

The US-Israeli alliance, for decades the cornerstone of Middle East power politics, is in rocky shape. The Obama administration is angry about Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. Mr Netanyahu's government is recoiling at what it depicts as Mr Obama's unreasonable demands.

The tension between the two sides has become a story of personal snubs and policy differences even as the US and Israel profess their devotion to each other. As George Mitchell, Washington's Middle East envoy, prepares to return to the region, US officials are considering eventually issuing outlines of their own for an Israeli-Palestinian deal - a turn of events Israel is desperate to avoid.

But at root, the differences stem from the two countries' contrasting reactions to an issue seen by both as crucial to their national interest, and, in Israel's case, to its national survival: Iran.

"The principal difference between now and previous administrations is the Iran problem," says a senior US official as he discusses the current US-Israeli stand-off. "From our perspective, it increases the urgency of Israel keeping the international community focused on that problem and not on other problems. And the Israelis need all of us to be working together on the common goal of keeping the pressure on the Iranians to back off."

Still, as diplomats and analysts study the underlying causes of the US-Israeli rift, there can be little doubt that the poor personal and political chemistry between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu plays a part. Their relationship is clearly much more confrontational than that between President George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime ministers.

Washington officials say Mr Obama was infuriated by Israel's announcement of the expansion of a settlement in occupied East Jerusalem during a fence-mending visit last month by Joe Biden, the vice-president. Little more than a week later, Mr Netanyahu paid one of the most ignominious visits to the White House of any major ally in recent years - out of sight of the media, left to confer with his team in the Roosevelt room while Mr Obama dined without him, and exiting the building without any agreement despite two meetings with the president in a matter of hours.

Mr Netanyahu also presides over perhaps the most rightwing coalition in Israeli history, while Mr Obama is widely perceived as among the most liberal presidents in decades. The Israeli leader is seen in Washington as obstructionist, while many Israelis regard Mr Obama as naive, inexperienced and - worst of all - the architect of a US policy of appeasement.

Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu share the view that Tehran must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons capability, a scenario both maintain would destabilise the wider Middle East and embolden Israel's most committed foes. But there is a fundamental, and increasingly visible, rift on how best to respond. Crudely put, the Americans view Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as the key ingredient in building an Arab coalition to curb Iran. Israel, by contrast, argues that a lasting Middle East peace is only attainable once the world has dealt with the threat from Tehran.

Speaking to more than 7,000 people at last month's annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the powerful pro-Israel lobby group, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, highlighted the propaganda value of images of the occupied Palestinian territories, calling for Israel to help change "the facts on the ground" to "refute the claims of the rejectionists and extremists and in so doing create the circumstances for a safe, secure future for Israel".

She added: "Behind these terrorist organisations and their rockets, we see the destabilising influence of Iran. Now, reaching a two-state solution will not end all these threats . . . but failure to do so gives the extremist foes a pretext to spread violence, instability and hatred."

The US is also stepping up work with Arab states to contain Tehran. But as General David Petraeus, head of US central command, said last month: "If you go to moderate leaders in the Arab world they will tell you that the lack of progress in the Middle East peace process causes them problems."

Mr Netanyahu's government treats the rise of Iran - and its nuclear ambitions - as an issue so urgent it leaves the peace talks in the shade. On his last trip to Washington he told members of Congress that the Palestinians were not presently a willing partner for peace. He also encouraged the passage of unilateral US sanctions legislation against companies investing in Iran - despite the Obama administration's objections.

The White House was not happy. "The more you resort to throwing your weight around in someone else's backyard the less compunction they will have about doing the same," says Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator now at the New America Foundation think-tank in the US.

In his own speech to Aipac, the Israeli prime minister brushed aside any suggestion that the broader conflict between the Muslim world and the west was linked to Israel: "Militant Islam does not hate the west because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the west - because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom and democracy that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East."

This is not a view widely shared outside Israel. "We are all saying to Israel that if the main threat in the area is indeed Iran then they are not on the right road for a solution," says a senior western diplomat, stressing European and Russian support for Mr Obama's position.

The logic sketched out by the US and its allies goes as follows: containing Iran requires an Arab coalition; an Arab coalition requires an Israeli-Palestinian peace process; an Israeli-Palestinian peace process requires Israeli concessions; and the Israeli concession required right now is a halt to new settlement building in occupied East Jerusalem. In her Aipac speech, Mrs Clinton also argued that, in the absence of a peace deal, demographic trends and other factors put Israel's long-term survival as a democratic Jewish state at risk.

"They can stick to their position of principle on East Jerusalem but just because they can doesn't mean they have to," the senior US official says of the Israeli government. "And that's what we are suggesting, just out of their own self interest - some forbearance there to make it possible for the Palestinians to be more forthcoming."

Israeli analysts close to the Netanyahu government see things differently. "President Barack Obama capitalised on a minor Israeli glitch [the announcement during Mr Biden's visit] . . . to fabricate a crisis in USIsraeli relations," says Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Affairs. "This appears to fit Obama's overall foreign policy approach of estranging democratic allies while appeasing anti-American dictators."

Yet to other Israelis the fighting talk of the country's political right masks a dangerous complacency. They note that Israel has become even more dependent on US military and diplomatic support than in the past.

"If you look at the threat perception in Israel, the threat is mainly considered to be coming from Iran. But it is also quite evident that Israel cannot deal with the Iranian threat on its own," says Shlomo Brom, a senior analyst at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and the former director of the army's strategic planning division.

It is a view widely shared among US analysts. Israel, they say, is likely to need US assistance for any effective military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities - and to deal with the backlash certain to follow such an attack.

Meanwhile, there is considerable discomfort in Washington about some of Mr Netanyahu's language on Iran, which he has likened in the past to Nazi Germany. "I don't think it is in America's interest or of anybody else who is a friend of America to encourage America into a collision with Iran," says Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser. "The issue really is how can one achieve an outcome which is going to be good for the American national interest, ensure Israel's indefinite well-being and security, and some measure of genuine justice for the Palestinians?"

Many people maintain that Israel and the US will ultimately be able to patch up their differences and resume their traditional close relations. Powerful forces in Washington feel uncomfortable with the current tensions. Many conservatives view Israel as an ally unlike any other, a fellow democracy in a sea of authoritarian states. The administration's stance has found opposition or only muted support on Capitol Hill, where Aipac remains a formidable force despite increasing divisions among Jewish-Americans themselves. Leading Republicans have voiced sharp criticism of the tougher line on Israel.

That kind of support leads some Israelis to believe Mr Netanyahu can, and should, defy US pressure. As Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs and a former Netanyahu adviser, says: "The relationship between the US and Israel is not restricted to their governments . . . The people of the US are with us and Congress is certainly with us."

One thing is clear: even as the diplomatic tensions mount, no one in Washington is questioning the American commitment to Israel's security, a pledge described by Mrs Clinton as "rock-solid, unwavering, enduring and for ever". She boasted in her Aipac speech that Washington was increasing the $3bn military assistance the US delivers to Israel each year. Nor does the Obama administration see much scope in reducing other subsidies to Israel. All the same, some officials are looking at one possible source of pressure: eventually issuing US "parameters" or guidelines for a peace deal.

The Obama administration is, in other words, shaping a policy more nuanced than its predecessors': it seeks to blend a cast-iron commitment to Israel's security with a much more critical stance on settlement building and the peace process. As Iran continues its progress towards nuclear capability, it is a distinction that seems unlikely to disappear. For Mr Netanyahu and his government, uncomfortable times lie ahead.

Disputed territories

There are today more than 280,000 settlers living in 121 settlements in the occupied West Bank. There are at least another 180,000 settlers in occupied East Jerusalem. Their presence - in growing numbers - is widely considered one of the main obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians because the settlements are located on land the Palestinians want to become part of an independent state. Though some settlers say they are ready to leave their homes should a peace deal ever emerge, others have vowed to fight any attempt to evict them - even by the Israeli government.

The quiet suburb at the centre of the dispute over Israeli settlements

Ramat Shlomo does not look like the centre of a major international dispute, write Tobias Buck and Daniel Dombey . Sitting on a steep hill just a short drive from downtown Jerusalem, the settlement's quiet streets are lined with modern buildings in cream-coloured stone. The residents belong almost entirely to Israel's ultra-orthodox religious minority.

To most Israelis, it is no more than a suburb of Jerusalem. To the rest of the world, however, it is an illegal Jewish settlement built on occupied Palestinian land. That is why a plan, revealed last month, to build an additional 1,600 homes there for settlers sparked a global outcry, as well as a crisis in US-Israeli relations yet to be resolved.

Many Israelis are angry at the sudden focus of US president Barack Obama's administration on settlement-building in East Jerusalem. After all, it follows years in which the US appeared to neglect the issue, and a face-off last year in which Washington was widely perceived to have backed down.

Along with the wider international community, every US administration for more than 40 years has held that Israel is an occupying power in East Jerusalem and the West Bank - the lands conquered, along with the Gaza Strip, during the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbours.

As a result, Washington regards all Israeli settlements on these territories as illegal. East Jerusalem, however, is particularly sensitive: the Palestinians want it as the capital of a future independent state; the Israeli government, in contrast, is committed to maintaining all of the city as the "undivided capital" of the Jewish state.

The Obama administration started with a very different stance from that of George W. Bush, which muted its criticism of settlement-building in the area. Last May, Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, called for building in all occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, to be halted. Eventually, however, she praised as "unprecedented" a 10-month Israeli freeze that covered the West Bank alone.

Today, US officials acknowledge two errors in that confrontation, which they say they will learn from: making explicit demands for a formal freeze, so reducing room for manoeuvre; and failing to plan their response to Israeli resistance to those demands. This time, Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are pushing for a halt in announcements about East Jerusalem as opposed to a formal freeze. The Israeli leader, however, under intense pressure from rightwing allies to stand up to Washington, has yet to respond formally to the US on how he will handle future construction plans in the contested city.

Source:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7bef087e-4696-11df-9713-00144feab49a.html

Support Iran's opposition movement

By Roger Gale, MP

LONDON, March 2 (UPI) -- The United States is pursuing a "pressure track" to halt Iran's nuclear program given its continued rejection of a U.N. proposal on its disputed uranium enrichment activities, top U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus said last week.

A new report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog says Iran may be working to develop a nuclear-armed missile and has begun enriching uranium to 20 percent purity, producing the nuclear fuel needed for an atomic bomb. Iran announced last week that it would build two new uranium enrichment sites hidden in the mountains later this year.

Yet, a new U.N. Security Council resolution imposing biting sanctions looks a long way off.

China is stalling on its promise to support a new set of Security Council sanctions now that Iran has formally rejected the United Nations-brokered deal to ship its enriched uranium abroad for processing, which would have eased concerns that it could use it to build a bomb.

Though China might still be persuaded to change track, the West now has very limited options to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear-armed.

One that has not been tried is to support Iran's internal opposition movement, which is targeting the regime, in tandem with efforts to win over China and other nations to back tougher Security Council sanctions.

The opposition movement may prove to be an indispensable lever against the mullahs.

Iran is currently facing its greatest domestic crisis in 30 years and young Iranians are openly calling for regime change in major anti-government rallies, the most recent on the anniversary of the Islamic revolution on Feb. 11. Critically, Iran has an organized resistance movement that is not an enemy of the West.

In a strange twist, the United States has blacklisted the main Iranian opposition group People's Mujahedin (MeK), which was the first to expose Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment sites.

The MeK was designated a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 by the Clinton administration in a bid to establish friendly ties with the Iranian government of the time, which the United States thought was more "moderate." But the mullahs have used the ban to execute political opponents, including those arrested in recent months, under the guise of combating terrorism.

With Iran shunning the Obama administration's efforts to reach out to it, and time increasingly running short, the United States needs to lift the MeK's designation and allow it to operate freely.

This would signal to ordinary Iranians that the United States is on their side. It would also sow further disunity among the regime's leaders, many of whom are already questioning Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's ability to successfully repress the wave of popular protests and fend off international action against his regime.

Isolating Ayatollah Khamenei would encourage Iranians to call with greater force for an end to clerical rule. The Iranian Resistance would be able to dedicate its full potential and resources to campaigning for a democratic government instead of having to take part in legal battles in the West to have its designation removed.

At the very least, lifting the ban on the MeK would allow the United States and its partners to negotiate with the regime from a position of strength if ever an opportunity did arise. And it would be a cost-free opportunity for the Obama administration to show some teeth to a pariah regime that understands only the language of force.

--

(Roger Gale is a member of Parliament in the United Kingdom and a former vice chairman of the Conservative Party.)

Source: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2010/03/02/Outside-View-Support-Irans-opposition-movement/UPI-89361267532100/

Seven Myths About Iran

How long will it take for the lesson to stick?

By BRET STEPHENS

The Wall Street Journal -  'We have been trying to negotiate [with the Iranians] for five, six years. We've tried everything. We have met every Iranian. We have tried to open every possible channel. We've had new ideas and the result is this: nothing."


Thus did a senior Western diplomat recently describe to me his country's efforts to reach a negotiated settlement with Tehran over its nuclear programs. In doing so, he also finally disposed of the myth, nearly a decade in the making, that Iran was ready to abandon those programs in exchange for a "grand bargain" with the West.

Let's dispose of a few other myths—and hope it doesn't take years for the lesson to stick:

(1) Military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities would accomplish nothing.
That's the argument made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who last year told a Senate Committee that "a military attack will only buy us time and send the program deeper and more covert."

Maybe so, but what's wrong with buying time? Israel's 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor also bought time while driving Saddam's nuclear programs underground. But it ensured that it was a non-nuclear Iraq that invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia nine years later, a point recognized by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney when he thanked the Israeli commander of the Osirak operation for making "our job much easier in Desert Storm."

(2) A strike would rally Iranians to the side of the regime.
The case would be more persuasive if the regime had any remaining claims on Iranian patriotism. It no longer does, if it ever did. It also would be more persuasive if the nuclear program were as broadly popular as some of the regime's apologists claim. On the contrary, one of the more popular chants of the demonstrators goes, "Iran is green and fertile, it doesn't need nukes."

Yet even if the nuclear program enjoyed widespread support, it isn't clear how Iranians would react in the event of military strikes. Argentine dictator Leopoldo Galtieri whooped up a nationalist fervor when he invaded the Falklands in 1982, but was ousted from office just a week after Port Stanley fell to the British. When a regime gambles its prestige on a single controversial enterprise, it cannot afford to lose it.

(3) Sanctions don't work, and usually wind up strengthening the regime at the expense of its own people.
That's only true when the sanctioned regimes have strong internal controls, relatively pliant populations, and zero interest in international respectability. It's also true that sanctions alone are never a silver bullet. But as Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies points out, they can be "silver shrapnel," particularly when the target country is as politically vulnerable as Iran is now, and when it is also critically reliant on the consumption of imported gasoline.

That's why the House was right when it overwhelmingly approved the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act in December, and when the Senate unanimously passed a similar bill (against the administration's objections) last Thursday. Over time, the regime will surely find ways to skirt the sanctions, which prohibit companies that do business in Iran's energy sector from also doing business in the U.S. But in the critical short term, these sanctions might provoke the kind of mass unrest that could tip the scales against the regime.

(4) The world can live with a nuclear Iran, just as we live with other nasty nuclear powers.
Assume that's true. (I don't.) Can we also live with nuclear Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey? The problem with the "realist" view is that it fails to take account of the fears a nuclear Iran inspires among the status quo regimes in its neighborhood. Containment was complicated enough during the Cold War. Now imagine a four- or five-way standoff among Arabs, Persians, Turks and Israelis, some religiously fanatic, in the world's most volatile neighborhood.

(5) The Iranian regime is headed for the ash heap of history. The best policy is to do as little as possible until it crumbles from within.
Communist regimes were also destined for the ash heap. Unfortunately, it took them decades to get there, during which they murdered tens of millions of people. It matters a great deal to Iran's people, and its neighbors, that the regime go quietly. But it also matters that it go quickly, and waiting on events is not a policy.

(6) The more support we show Iran's demonstrators, the more we hurt their cause.
This was the administration's view after the June 12 election, as it walked on tiptoes to avoid the perception of "meddling." The regime accused the U.S. of meddling all the same.

But protest movements like Iran's (or Poland's, or South Africa's) are sustained by a sense of moral legitimacy that global support uniquely conveys. When will American liberals get behind Iranian rights, as they have, say, Tibetan ones? Maybe when President Obama tells them to.

(7) Israel will ultimately dispose of Iran's nuclear facilities.
The more policy makers fall for the first six myths, the less mythical the seventh one becomes.

Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204575038971915808294.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular

Iran Shielding Its Nuclear Efforts in Maze of Tunnels

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: January 5, 2010

The New York Times - Last September, when Iran’s uranium enrichment plant buried inside a mountain near the holy city of Qum was revealed, the episode cast light on a wider pattern: Over the past decade, Iran has quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.

In doing so, American government and private experts say, Iran has achieved a double purpose. Not only has it shielded its infrastructure from military attack in warrens of dense rock, but it has further obscured the scale and nature of its notoriously opaque nuclear effort. The discovery of the Qum plant only heightened fears about other undeclared sites.

Now, with the passing of President Obama’s year-end deadline for diplomatic progress, that cloak of invisibility has emerged as something of a stealth weapon, complicating the West’s military and geopolitical calculus.

The Obama administration says it is hoping to take advantage of domestic political unrest and disarray in Iran’s nuclear program to press for a regimen of strong and immediate new sanctions. But a crucial factor behind that push for nonmilitary solutions, some analysts say, is Iran’s tunneling — what Tehran calls its strategy of “passive defense.”

Indeed, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has repeatedly discounted the possibility of a military strike, saying that it would only slow Iran’s nuclear ambitions by one to three years while driving the program further underground.

Some analysts say that Israel, which has taken the hardest line on Iran, may be especially hampered, given its less formidable military and intelligence abilities.

“It complicates your targeting,” said Richard L. Russell, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at the National Defense University. “We’re used to facilities being above ground. Underground, it becomes literally a black hole. You can’t be sure what’s taking place.”

Even the Israelis concede that solid rock can render bombs useless. Late last month, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Parliament that the Qum plant was “located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack.”

Heavily mountainous Iran has a long history of tunneling toward civilian as well as military ends, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has played a recurring role — first as a transportation engineer and founder of the Iranian Tunneling Association and now as the nation’s president.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of big tunnels in Iran, according to American government and private experts, and the lines separating their uses can be fuzzy. Companies owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, for example, build civilian as well as military tunnels.

No one in the West knows how much, or exactly what part, of Iran’s nuclear program lies hidden. Still, evidence of the downward atomic push is clear to the inquisitive.

Google Earth, for instance, shows that the original hub of the nuclear complex at Isfahan consists of scores of easily observed — and easy to attack — buildings. But government analysts say that in recent years Iran has honeycombed the nearby mountains with tunnels. Satellite photos show six entrances.

Iranian officials say years of veiled bombing threats prompted their country to exercise its “sovereign right” to protect its nuclear facilities by hiding them underground. That was their argument when they announced plans in November to build 10 uranium enrichment plants. Despite the improbability and bluster of the claim, Iran’s tunneling history gave it a measure of credibility.

“They will be scattered in the mountains,” the chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Iran’s Press TV. “We will be using the passive defense so that we don’t need to have active defense, which is very expensive.”

Mr. Gates, along with other Western officials, has dismissed that line of argument as cover for a covert arms program.

“If they wanted it for peaceful purposes,” he said of the Qum plant on CNN, “there’s no reason to put it so deep underground, no reason to be deceptive about it, keep it a secret for a protracted period of time.”

Iran denies that its nuclear efforts are for military purposes and insists that it wants to unlock the atom strictly for peaceful aims, like making electricity. It says it wants to build many enrichment plants to fuel up to 20 nuclear power plants, a plan many economists question because Iran ranks second globally in oil and natural gas reserves.

Ploy or not, any expansion seems unlikely to zoom ahead. After a decade of construction, Iran’s main enrichment plant, at Natanz, operates at a tiny fraction of its capacity. The Qum plant is only half built. Nuclear experts say the new plants, if attempted, may not materialize for years or decades. Even so, they note that tunnels would be the easiest part of the plan and may get dug relatively soon.

Despite the questions about whether the West can credibly threaten to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, analysts insist that the United States, Israel and their allies will never rule out that option. The Pentagon, in fact, is racing to develop a powerful new tunnel-busting bomb.

“Deeply buried targets have been a problem forever,” said Greg Duckworth, a civilian scientist who recently led a Pentagon research effort to pinpoint enemy tunnels. “And it’s getting worse.”

A Tunnel Expert

Mr. Ahmadinejad began professional life as a transportation engineer with close ties to the Revolutionary Guards and an abiding interest in tunnels.

He helped found the Iranian Tunneling Association in 1998, according to the group’s Web site. That year, the Tehran subway began a major expansion, and Iran, in secret, accelerated its nuclear program.

In early 2004, while mayor of Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad served as chairman of the Sixth Iranian Tunneling Conference. He praised the leaders of ancient Persia for creating networks of subterranean waterways and called for the creation of new “tunnels” between the government, universities and professional groups.

“I ask God to help us all,” he said in a paper. Such tunneling conferences, held regularly in Tehran, draw global manufacturers of tunnel-boring machines — giant devices as big as locomotives that dig quickly through rocky strata. Terratec, an Australian maker, noted early last year that Iran had recently become “one of the most active markets in the world.”

Many of the companies keep offices in Tehran. Herrenknecht, a German firm considered the market leader, lists three. Engineers say Iran has hundreds of miles of civilian tunneling projects under way, including subways in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz, highway tunnels across the country and water tunnels to irrigate the dry interior.

By all accounts, the seeds of the downward military shift were planted during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Iraq hit Tehran and other Iranian cities with waves of missiles. Constructing shelters, bunkers and tunnels became a patriotic duty.

An Opposition Watchdog

In 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group, revealed that Iran was building a secret underground nuclear plant at Natanz that turned out to be for enriching uranium. Enrichment plants can make fuel for reactors or, with a little more effort, atom bombs.

Satellite photos showed the Iranians burying two cavernous halls roughly half the size of the Pentagon. Estimates put the thickness of overhead rock, dirt and concrete at 30 feet — enough to frustrate bombs but not to guarantee the plant’s survival.

The disclosure of Natanz set off the West’s confrontation with Iran. Two years later, the International Atomic Energy Agency found to its surprise that Iran was tunneling in the mountains by the Isfahan site, where uranium is readied for enrichment. “Iran failed to report to the agency in a timely manner,” an I.A.E.A. paper said in diplomatic understatement.

Then, in late 2005, the Iranian opposition group held news conferences in Paris and London to announce that its spies had learned that Iran was digging tunnels for missile and atomic work at 14 sites, including an underground complex near Qum. The government, one council official said, was building the tunnels to conceal “its pursuit of nuclear weapons.” The council further charged that Mr. Ahmadinejad and the tunneling association were providing civilian cover for military work and acquisitions.

The council’s assertions got little notice. Some Western experts saw them as overstated. Some questioned the council’s objectivity because it sought the government’s overthrow. Perhaps the biggest impediment was a suspicion of defectors at a time when the American invasion of Iraq was proving to be based in part on Iraqi dissidents’ false claims about Saddam Hussein’s unconventional weapons.

United Nations atomic inspectors did check out a few of the tunnels at Isfahan, but not at Qum because the plant was on a military base and thus off limits for inspection without strong evidence of suspicious activity.

“We followed whatever they came up with,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the recently departed head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said of the council in an interview. “And a lot of it was bogus.”

Frank Pabian, a senior adviser on nuclear nonproliferation at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, strongly disagreed. “They’re right 90 percent of the time,” he said of the council’s disclosures about Iran’s clandestine sites. “That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, but 90 percent is a pretty good record.”

In 2007, the council announced that Iran was tunneling in the mountains near Natanz, the sprawling enrichment site. Satellite photos confirmed that.

And Qum became a vindication, though belatedly, in late September, when President Obama, flanked by the leaders of France and Britain, identified “a covert uranium enrichment facility” being constructed there.

Military Warrens

In December, the opposition group capitalized on its new stature to issue a report on Iranian military tunneling. It said Iran had dug tunnels and bunkers for research facilities, ammunition storage, military headquarters and command and control centers. “A group of factories” in the mountains east of Tehran, it said, specialize in “the manufacturing of nuclear warheads.”

Over all, the report raised to 19, from 14, the number of locations where it said tunnels — often multiple tunnels — were hiding military bases and work on arms.

American war planners see Iran’s tunnels — whatever their exact number and contents — as a serious test of military abilities. Most say there is no easy way to wipe out a nuclear program that has been well hidden, widely dispersed and deeply buried.

Among the difficulties, military experts say, are decoy tunnels and false entrances, the identification of which requires good intelligence. The experts add that Iran’s announcement about new enrichment plants may simply produce a blur of activity meant to confuse Western war planners.

David A. Kay, a nuclear specialist who led the fruitless search for unconventional arms in Iraq, said the hiding of a plant or two among the rocky labyrinths could pose a particular challenge for Israel. “They have limited intelligence for targeting,” Dr. Kay said, adding that the United States was better equipped to map out Iran’s nuclear terrain.

Raymond Tanter, an Iran expert at Georgetown University who served in the Reagan White House, agreed. “So far, the tunneling has not succeeded to the point that the American technology couldn’t get to it,” he contended. “But it makes Israel’s options more problematic, because they have less of a military edge.”

Doubts notwithstanding, the Obama administration has been careful to leave the military option on the table, and the Pentagon is racing to develop a deadly tunnel weapon.

The device — 20 feet long and called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator — began as a 2004 recommendation from the Defense Science Board, a high-level advisory group to the Pentagon.

“A deep underground tunnel facility in a rock geology poses a significant challenge,” the board wrote. “Several thousand pounds of high explosives coupled to the tunnel are needed to blow down blast doors and propagate a lethal air blast.”

The bomb carries tons of explosives and is considered 10 times more powerful than its predecessor. It underwent preliminary testing in 2007, and its first deployments are expected next summer. Its carrier is to be the B-2 stealth bomber.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters in October that budget problems had delayed the weapon but that it was now back on track. Military officials deny having a specific target in mind. Still, Mr. Whitman added, war planners consider it “an important capability.”

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/world/middleeast/06sanctions.html?pagewanted=all

UN nuclear agency (IAEA) censures Iran's illegal nuclear activities

Free Iran - The IAEA's Board of Governors resolution, that has censured the illegal nuclear activities of the regime after a four year pause, was approved by all permanent members of the UN Security Council - the Unite States, Britain, France, China and Russia - as well as Germany. Only Venezuela, Malaysia and Cuba rejected the resolution. This is while the mullahs' regime was trying hard over the past week to prevent adoption of this resolution but it faced strong international reaction.

In this resolution that was adopted on Friday November 27, the IAEA's Board of Governors censured Iranian regime for its secret nuclear activities and defying its obligations towards the Agency. The resolution urges Iran to stop activities related to building of Uranium enrichment site in Qom expeditiously. This site, which was disclosed by the Iranian Resistance in 2005, was kept secret until past September by the Iranian regime.

Mrs. Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, said: The developments of past few months and negotiations of the P5+1 with religious fascism ruling Iran on nuclear issue show that pinning hope on negotiations with this regime is only a mirage and will provide the mullahs more time to acquire nuclear bomb.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, welcoming the resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, urged the United Nations Security Council to immediately impose comprehensive military, technological, diplomatic and oil sanctions on the Iranian regime.

Iran tested advanced nuclear warhead design – secret report

Guardian Exclusive: Watchdog fears Tehran has key component to put bombs in missiles

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor

The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.

Documentation referring to experiments testing a two-point detonation design are part of the evidence of nuclear weaponisation gathered by the IAEA and presented to Iran for its response.

The dossier, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program", is drawn in part from reports submitted to it by western intelligence agencies.

The agency has in the past treated such reports with scepticism, particularly after the Iraq war. But its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said the evidence of Iranian weaponisation "appears to have been derived from multiple sources over different periods of time, appears to be generally consistent, and is sufficiently comprehensive and detailed that it needs to be addressed by Iran".

Extracts from the dossier have been published previously, but it was not previously known that it included documentation on such an advanced warhead. "It is breathtaking that Iran could be working on this sort of material," said a European government adviser on nuclear issues.

James Acton, a British nuclear weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "It's remarkable that, before perfecting step one, they are going straight to step four or five ... To start with more sophisticated designs speaks of level of technical ambition that is surprising."

Another western specialist with extensive knowledge of the Iranian programme said: "It raises the question of who supplied this to them. Did AQ Khan [a Pakistani scientist who confessed in 2004 to running a nuclear smuggling ring] have access to this, or is it another player?"

The revelation of the documents comes at a time of growing tension. Tehran has so far rejected a deal that would remove most of its enriched uranium stockpile for a year and replace it with nuclear fuel rods which would be much harder to turn into weapons. The Iranian government has also balked at negotiations, which were due to begin last week, over its continued enrichment of uranium, in defiance of UN security council resolutions.

There are fears in Washington and London that if no deal is reached to at least temporarily defuse tensions by the end of December, Israel could set in motion plans to take military action aimed at setting back the Iranian programme by force, with incalculable consequences for the Middle East.

Iran has rejected most of the IAEA material on weaponisation as forgeries, but has admitted carrying out tests on multiple high-explosive detonations synchronised to within a microsecond. Tehran has told the agency that there is a civilian application for such tests, but has so far not provided any evidence for them.

Western weapons experts say there are no such civilian applications, but the use of co-ordinated detonations in nuclear warheads is well known. They compress the fissile core, or pit, of the warhead until it reaches critical mass.

A US national intelligence estimate two years ago said that Iran had explored nuclear warhead design for several years but had probably stopped in 2003. British, French and German officials have said they believe weaponisation continued after that date and may still be continuing.

In September, a German court found a German-Iranian businessman, Mohsen Vanaki, guilty of brokering the sale of dual-use equipment with possible applications in developing nuclear weapons. The equipment included specialised high-speed cameras, of the sort used to develop implosion devices, as well as radiation detectors. According to a report by the Institute for Science and International Security, the German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, testified at the trial that there was evidence that Iran's weapons development was continuing.

The IAEA is seeking to find out what the scientists and the institutions involved in the experiments are doing now, but has so far not been given a response. The agency's repeated requests to interview Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whose name features heavily in the IAEA's documentation and who is widely seen as the father of the Iranian nuclear programme, have been turned down.

The agency has also asked Iran to explain evidence that a Russian weapons expert helped Iranian technicians to master synchronised high-explosive detonations.

The first implosion devices, like the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, used 32 high-explosive hexagons and pentagons arrayed around a plutonium core like the panels of a football. The IAEA has a five-page document describing experimentation on such a hemispherical array of explosives.

According to a diplomat familiar with the IAEA documentation, the evidence also points to experiments with a two-point detonation system that represents "a more elegant solution" to the challenges of making a nuclear warhead, but it is much harder to achieve. It is used in conjunction with a non-spherical pit, in the shape of a rugby ball, or explosives in that shape wrapped around a spherical pit, and it works by compressing the pit from both ends.The IAEA has expressed "serious concern" about Iran's failure to give an account of the research its scientists have carried out.

Descriptions of "two-point implosion" warheads designs have occasionally appeared in the public domain (there are extensive descriptions on Wikipedia) and they were first developed by US scientists in the 1950s, but it remains an offence for American officials or even non-governmental nuclear experts with security clearance to discuss them.

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/05/iran-tested-nuclear-warhead-design/print

European Parliament adopts urgent resolution on Iran

The European Parliament adopted an urgent resolution on the situation of human rights in Iran on Thursday in Strasbourg. The MEPs called for the release of prisoners arrested in the demonstrations that followed the June 2009 sham elections, the abolition of the death penalty and respect for press freedom.
Number of MEPs recalled the late July attack by Iraqi forces on members of the Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/ MEK), in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, which was carried out upon the order of Khamenei, mullahs’ Supreme Leader. They called for implementation of the April 24, 2009 European Parliament resolution on the rights of Ashraf residents.

Iran

MEPs call for the release of prisoners arrested in the demonstrations that followed the June 2009 elections, the abolition of the death penalty and respect for press freedom, in a resolution on the human rights situation in this Islamic republic.


The resolution condemns the massive and excessive use of force, arbitrary arrests and possible torture to repress protest movements since Iran's controversial presidential election. MEPs ask that the International Committee of the Red Cross be permitted to see all prisoners, without exception.

MEPs reiterate their call for the death penalty to be abolished. (6). They condemn death sentences and executions in Iran, and in particular those passed or enforced on juvenile delinquents or minors. MEPs protest against the execution in Iran, on 11 October, of minor Behnood Shojaee, who was hanged in breach of recognised international legal guarantees in this area.

The resolution deplores the systematic restriction of freedom of information by blocking internet sites, which are prevented from reporting on unauthorised demonstrations, and the creation of new restrictions, which require journalists to obtain an authorisation before reporting on any event. MEPs call for the immediate release of Fariba Pajooh, a young Iranian-Canadian journalist and celebrated blogger, who was arrested at home in Teheran on 24 August 2009.

Iran nuclear talks with US, other powers stall in Vienna

Iran in a new round of talks on its nuclear program in Vienna, spinning the merry go round where the US and other powers were hoping to nail down a deal.

Some diplomats had been hoping for a breakthrough, with a deal sealed to send a large portion of Iran's nuclear fuel abroad for further processing. Instead, Iran appeared to shift the playing field again.

The Ahmadinejad’s delegation objected to French participation in the plan to ship nuclear fuel out of the country -- something that Iran had agreed to at the start of October. This trick delayed the formal meeting all day.

Finally in the evening, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed Elbaradi managed to coax Iranian officials to a set of intensive talks with the US, and later on they met with all of the delegations for another round of negotiations that remained inconclusive by 10 pm.

Mr. Elbaradi, . on Tuesday said only that nuclear negotiations were "making progress" and that a deal is still "possible." He didn't elaborate further.

The Vienna negotiations are part of the Obama administration's strategy to give Iran a chance to abide by international rules designed to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The White House has given Iran a finite amount of time to show "good faith" following a historic Oct. 1 Geneva meeting that saw the US and Iran meet directly for the first time in decades, as a senior US diplomat put it.

Former United Nation's Ambassador John Bolton have called the talks "naïve" and charge that Iran is only playing for time, with no interest in acquiescing to additional safe-guards on its nuclear program.

There was definitely some foot dragging. Delegates from Russia, Iran, the US and France entered the main meeting room at the IAEA center in Vienna at 10 am, but they walked out shortly thereafter, with the delegations retreating to the warren of rooms underneath the main hall, signalling an impasse. Talks were set to reconvene at noon, then 1 pm, then 4:30, then 7, and then 8 – and did not resume until 8:30.

In the Geneva agreement, Russia would reprocess most of Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) into a highly enriched form that could power a nuclear reactor. The material would then be shipped to France, which would convert it into fuel rods that Iran says it needs to run a reactor in Tehran that was built in the 1970s.

Iran's top diplomat in Tehran also attempted to stake out the high ground by claiming that Iran's presence in Vienna is itself proof that Iran is a responsible power, and that it will "never abandon its legal and obvious right" to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear power.

On Monday, Tehran said that if talks failed Iran would begin to reprocess on its own – and also accused the US and UK of having a hidden hand in the bloody suicide attack on its Revolutionary Guard in western Iran that killed over 30 people.

Some diplomats in Vienna felt that neither the Iranian nor the Russian delegates were senior enough to warrant a final deal. While the Obama team includes deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, the Iranian team is made up of its Vienna based UN diplomats, led by Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh. This does not mean a binding agreement can't be achieved, said IAEA officials, "but there is at least one further step that would be required," said one.

"The level of the Iranian team is not high," said a Western diplomat associated with one of the teams.

Iranian analyst Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington argues there is not yet enough "internal consensus" in Tehran "on significant divides" between different factions to make substantial progress.

Iranian Resistance unveiled mullahs' nuclear site in Qom in 2005 but IAEA ignored

NCRI - Revelation of two secret nuclear sites east of Tehran by the Iranian Resistance on Thursday and concealment of nuclear facilities near the city of Qom by the Iranian regime which were exposed by leaders of the United States, France and Britain on Friday heightened the need to impose immediate comprehensive sanctions against the regime. Any delay would pave the way for the regime to acquire nuclear bomb.

The underground nuclear facilities near Qom were first unveiled in a press conference in Paris by the Iranian Resistance on December 20, 2005. Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee disclosed information about four underground complexes comprised of tunnels and installations serving the regime’s nuclear programs. He said: “The first complex is located near Qom close to the salt lake. This is comprised of several tunnels and underground buildings. Construction of the complex started in year 2,000.”

It was revealed in this conference that these tunnels are used to hide the nuclear facilities, laboratories and workshops, and to conceal various sub-sections of the regime’s nuclear and missile programs, in particular nuclear and missile research and command centers.

A special lead lining is used in the tunnels, which extend to tens of thousands of square meters, to stop leakage of radiation to the surrounding environment and prevent detection through soil or other environmental samplings on the ground.

The Khatam al-Anbiya Garrison of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is responsible for construction of these underground tunnels and facilities.

The Iranian Resistance informed the IAEA of the details of the site and called for inspection of the site and probe into its details, but regrettably, in the framework of the policy pursued by the Secretary General of the IAEA at the time, it received no attention.

If a timely attention had been paid to the issue, the world would have learned about the mullahs’ deceptions earlier.

On September 24, the National Council of Resistance of Iran revealed the information about two secret nuclear sites involved in mullahs’ nuclear program.

Mr. Mehdi Abrishamchi, Chair of the Peace Committee of the NCRI said: “Resistance’s sources have managed to obtain information about two nuclear centers that are directly involved in research and production of blast systems, which is one of the most important part of a nuclear bomb. The body responsible for this is called “Research Center for Explosion and Impact.” It is widely known with its Farsi abbreviation as METFAZ. The person in charge of the center is Brigadier General Javad Al-Yasin, a veteran member of the IRGC, working under the supervision of Mohsen Fakhri Zadeh.

The command center is located in Tehran- Pars area in east Tehran. The academic research and computerized simulations using special software is carried out here.

METFAZ plans are put into practice in east Tehran along Jajeroud river near Sanjarian village on the edge of a military road. In order to conceal the activities inside the site it is surrounded by tall pre-fabricated concrete walls. 

Source:
http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/7215/1/