Posted on 12/01/2004 9:35:51 PM PST by DoctorZIn
Top News Story
Arms Inspectors Said to Seek Access to Iran Sites
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER
and ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: December 2, 2004
his article is by William J. Broad, David E. Sanger and Elaine Sciolino.
VIENNA, Dec. 1 -International inspectors are requesting access to two secret Iranian military sites where intelligence suggests that Tehran's Ministry of Defense may be working on atomic weapons, despite the agreement that Iran reached this week to suspend its production of enriched uranium, according to diplomats here
The inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency base their suspicions on a mix of satellite photographs indicating the testing of high explosives and procurement records showing the purchase of equipment that can be used for enriching uranium, the diplomats said. Both are critical steps in the development of nuclear arms.
The suspicions were aired here as an Iranian opposition group was preparing to release what it called new information that Iran was secretly developing a nuclear-capable missile whose range is significantly greater than what the Iranians have publicly acknowledged to date. [Page A19.]
Iran has insisted that its uranium enrichment program is entirely for civilian nuclear energy production, but the areas the I.A.E.A. wants to visit are all in secure military bases. Traditionally, such facilities are considered off limits to the agency, whose primary mandate is to monitor civilian nuclear programs, unless there is strong evidence of covert nuclear activity at the military sites. Weapons experts cautioned that the equipment purchases and other activities could have nonnuclear purposes.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in an interview here on Wednesday that he had repeatedly asked Iran for access to the two sites, but that it had not yet been granted.
"We are following every credible piece of information," he said. Understanding the exact significance of what is happening at the two military sites is "important," he added. "We still have work to do, a lot of work." He estimated that even with full Iranian cooperation, it would take at least two years to resolve all of the outstanding questions surrounding the country's nuclear program.
"We're not rushing," he said. "It takes time."
The deal the Europeans signed with Iran, which the United Nations atomic agency blessed on Monday, was designed to defuse the most urgent problem, Tehran's enrichment of uranium at civilian sites, which could have given it quick access to the raw material for making bomb fuel.
With that problem at least temporarily under control, inspectors and the United States are now turning to the question of whether Iran has a parallel military nuclear program that it has not declared. Last year, the country admitted to inspectors that it had hidden critical aspects of its civilian program for 18 years.
The inspectors now want to examine the military sites to see whether secret nuclear work is under way. Much of the equipment needed for centrifuges - which spin at supersonic speeds to purify uranium for reactors and bombs - is "dual use," meaning it could be used for peaceful purposes as well.
Some officials close to the atomic agency said a last-minute disagreement over centrifuges in Iran's civilian program, which emerged before this week's accord was signed, may have been designed as a diversion by Tehran to take attention away from the agency's request for access to its military bases.
An Iranian official who was one of the negotiating delegation dismissed the idea of opening up the military sites, saying Tehran had no responsibility to do so. "There is nothing required for us to do," he said.
"They should have evidence that there are nuclear activities, not just 'We heard from someone that there is dual-use equipment that we want to see.' "
Diplomats and weapons experts here said in interviews that the intelligence on Iran's military activities came from several sources, including nations that are members of the United Nations nuclear agency.
One of the suspect military sites under investigation by the I.A.E.A. is a huge, decades-old facility southeast of Tehran, the Parchin military complex. Inspectors believe Iran's military may be testing conventional high explosives at the site, of a type used to detonate nuclear weapons.
If their suspicions are correct, inspectors say it could explain what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was referring to nearly two weeks ago when he disclosed new American intelligence suggesting that Iran is working to shrink a nuclear device to a size that could fit atop the country's missiles.
While the United States has declined to discuss the intelligence Mr. Powell saw, the American representative to the I.A.E.A.'s board of governors, Jackie W. Sanders, at a meeting of the board on Monday, raised questions about Iranian efforts to obtain equipment "in the nuclear military area" and demanded a specific list of Iran's purchases "so we can make our own decisions about Iran's intentions."
But because there is no hard evidence now of actual nuclear material at Parchin, the international agency is left in the awkward position of asking Iran to admit its monitors to the site voluntarily, to prove what one European diplomat called "the absence of nuclear material."
The second site is a relatively new facility, called Lavisan II, built in northeastern Tehran, near the site of an older facility that was dismantled within the past year. The existence of the new facility was highlighted last month by an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance, the political front for the People's Mujahedeen. Even though the State Department has called the group a terror organization, American officials have been intrigued by the intelligence it has gathered on Iran's program.
Inspectors say they now possess procurement records showing that the military ordered a long shopping list of high-tech equipment for the Lavisan facilities - including specialized power supplies that smooth electrical currents to meet the exacting requirements of centrifuges.
A European diplomat who is dealing with the Iranian government on nuclear issues, said of the array of ordered equipment, "We believe it's related to enrichment and uranium conversion." He added that "it's something they need to explain for us."/P>
The diplomat called the equipment orders "a little bit of everything" short of actual centrifuges. Each of the technologies on the order list, the expert said, had plausible uses both for nuclear and nonnuclear programs, making them "dual use" items.
"But when you combine them all together," he said, "it looks like a shopping list for an enrichment program."
He said it would make no sense for the military to buy the equipment on behalf of a civilian program. The more likely explanation, he said, was that the military itself "did the experiments," which would undercut Iran's argument that it has solely civilian nuclear projects under way.
The Parchin military complex has hundreds of bunkers, buildings and test sites scattered over a vast area about 20 miles southeast of Tehran. For decades, it has developed and made such things as ammunition, rockets and high explosives.
In September, the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington, issued a report claiming that Parchin contained "an isolated, separately secured site which may be involved in developing nuclear weapons."
The European expert on the Iranian program said that Parchin had helped develop Iran's long-range missiles and that evidence from satellite photographs and other sources suggested that some of its explosives work now centered on perfecting nuclear arms.
"If you go for nuclear weapons development, you need those places at a fairly early stage of your program," he said. International inspectors, he said, need to inspect the site rule out such work and "assure the absence of nuclear material."
Iran has so far refused to allow access to the military sites, even while denying that it has any hidden military program to develop nuclear arms.
European experts and diplomats said they remained hopeful that the Iranians might eventually permit access to the disputed military sites, citing past cooperation.
In October, 2003, they noted, Iran let the I.A.E.A. visit three locations at an industrial complex in Kolahdouz in western Tehran that the military controls. Despite rumors to the contrary, the inspectors found no work at those locations that could be directly linked to the enrichment of uranium. Moreover, the results of environmental sampling showed no signs of any use of nuclear materials.
One European official said the Iranians might be stalling for time to clean up the sites and remove all evidence of nuclear research.
Iran Hard-liners Mark 1983 Attack on U.S. Marines
Thu Dec 2, 2004 10:59 AM ETTEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian hard-liners erected a monument Thursday to commemorate a suicide bombing which killed 241 U.S. servicemen in Lebanon in 1983, witnesses said.
A group called the committee of the "Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign" held the event at Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery to praise the attack 21 years ago against the United States, Iran's arch-foe.
"The bombing was a great achievement of Muslims in their fight against America," said its spokesman Ali Mohammadi.
More than 100 others were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives at a U.S. Marines barracks at Beirut's international airport. The United States accused the Iran-backed Hizbollah guerrilla group for the bombing.
The Americans were taking part in a multinational effort to halt Lebanon's civil war, although many Lebanese saw the U.S. forces as actively shoring up a pro-Israel, right-wing Christian presidency.
About 200 men and women gathered at the cemetery in southern Tehran. Some dressed as suicide bombers chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" as the stone monument was unveiled.
The group, which has no links to official organizations, in September also placed a symbolic gravestone at the cemetery for two Palestinian suicide bombers who carried out a twin bus bombing that killed 16 Israelis earlier this year.
It announced its existence in June when it started registering volunteers prepared to carry out suicide attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq. Iran has strongly condemned the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
The group said more than 25,000 "martyrdom seeking" volunteers have so far signed up and one of its members said the registration drive would continue.
"We have been ordered to cover the faces to avoid being recognized when traveling abroad to carry out the attacks," a masked volunteer said at the cemetery.
But the group has said it will only carry out attacks if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gives the green light.
Iran's deputy interior minister for security affairs, Ali Asghar Ahmadi said Sunday the volunteers would not be allowed to cross Iran's borders. "Such groups are illegal. Such measures will be strongly confronted by Iran," he said.
QUESTION: Can I take you back to what you were saying about Iran, and the latest accusations? The group that has made this has sometimes been right with the facts and has sometimes been wrong. You also talked about verification, so what's the US attitude to this? Is this something that looks credible, or do you need to look into it further?
SECRETAERY POWELL: I have seen intelligence which would corroborate what this dissident group is saying. And it should be of concern to all parties.
December 02, 2004, 10:00 a.m.
The Heart of Darkness
A quick tour of the evil we face.
As the war on terror continues, it is vital to pause occasionally and remind ourselves how truly horrific an enemy civilization confronts. In militant Islam, America and its allies — and even some nations that have sidestepped this conflict — face a breathtakingly evil foe. In recent weeks, this Coalition of the Wicked has reconfirmed its barbarism.
Until liberation, Fallujah was an Islamist house of horrors. U.S. soldiers discovered up to 20 blood-stained homes in which innocent hostages were detained and killed, often on videotape. Amid guns, rockets, and an unfinished car bomb, terror master Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s headquarters included computer and audio-visual gear for disseminating al Qaeda’s hateful missives and real-life snuff films.
-Iraqi forces found a reputed toxic-weapons laboratory featuring poisonous chemicals and anthrax recipes.
-Roughly half of Fallujah’s mosques doubled as military outposts. Their minarets became sniper’s nests. American GIs found artillery shells, machine guns, and anti-tank mines at the Saad Bin Waqas Mosque on November 24. The Sunni shrine also housed a suspected mobile bomb factory inside a truck, rocket-propelled grenades, surface-to-air missile parts, and, a military spokesman told the Associated Press, “documents that detailed insurgent interrogations of recent kidnap victims.”
-Dublin-born Margaret Hassan, 59, married an Iraqi, converted to Islam, and spent 30 years bringing Iraqis medicine, clean water, and other relief. She also denounced the Iraq war. Impossible-to-please Islamic extremists kidnapped her in October. A mid-November videotape showed an unidentified terrorist fatally shooting a blindfolded captive believed to be Hassan.
-James Mollen, 48, cheerfully spent 16 months improving Iraq’s beleaguered schools and linking some to the Internet. Nonetheless, a Zarqawi-tied assassin fatally shot Mollen in the head as he drove through Baghdad November 24.
-A Sunni communiqué promised, as NBC News’s Richard Engel reported November 18, “to kill all organizers of coming elections here, and anyone who votes.” Not since the Ku Klux Klan’s glory days in the 1950s and ‘60s have hooded villains threatened lethally to disenfranchise those who aim to cast and count ballots.
-An Iranian group, seemingly with government supporters, is training 20,000 volunteers for suicide operations, the AP reports. The Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement (HCMGIM) recently let 300 applicants choose among preparing for suicide attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, similar assaults in Israel, or assassination attempts on Salman Rushdie, the British author of The Satanic Verses against whom the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa. (Although Tehran later backed off of this death warrant, Khomeini died before rescinding it, so it technically remains in force.)
“This group spreads valuable ideas,” Iranian lawmaker Mahdi Kouchakzadeh told the AP. “Iran’s foreign policy makers have to take the dignified opinions of this group into consideration.” Kouchakzadeh, a former Revolutionary Guardsman, attended HCMGIM’s initial meeting, as did Revolutionary Guard General Hossein Salami.
“We will have to step up measures to track down hate preachers and remove their residency rights,” Interior Minister Otto Schily told Reuters November 16. Schily also advocated padlocking radical mosques.
Addressed to Somali-born Dutch legislator Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who worked on Van Gogh’s movie, the letter spewed death threats against Ali, plus Koranic passages, and anti-Semitic rants. “Hair-raising screams will be squeezed from the lungs of the non-believers,” warned the Dutch- and Arabic-language letter.
Bouyeri grew more fervent after leaving a relatively tame Islamic center for a more radical one. Amsterdam’s Al-Tawheed mosque sold books that advised dropping gay people head first from tall buildings. Any who survived were to be stoned to death.
Dutch police first noticed Bouyeri while investigating Samir Azzouz, 18, another Dutch-Moroccan. Azzouz and a Dutch Islamist were caught in Ukraine bound for Chechnya. After searching Azzouz’s apartment, Dutch cops found detailed maps of Holland’s parliament, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, and the Borssele atomic power plant.
As Andrew Higgins chillingly related in the November 22 Wall Street Journal, two days after Van Gogh’s death, Islamists aimed their knives at Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, a critic of open immigration. They posted his picture on line beside this message: “The punishment is beheading, and the reward for doing it is paradise.”
Moderation against such fanaticism is inconceivable. Fundamentalist Islam must be transcended from within while militant Islam must be vanquished from without. Victory cannot come too soon.
Until then, Geert Wilders grasps the stakes. “Bush was totally correct,” he phoned Higgins while dashing between safe houses on the advice of police. “This is war, a world-wide war.”
UN Lacks Authority For Comprehensive Iran Inspections Regime
In a blow to the entire concept of inspections regimes, UN diplomats admitted to Reuters that the UN lacks any authority to inspect areas not explicitly declared by Iran as nuclear sites. While nations collect intelligence detailing Iranian nuclear activities at new locations and the stripping of those facilities that have been declared by Iran, the UN can do little but ask Iran for permission to see for themselves:
Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog would like to visit a secret military site in Iran that an exile group said was a nuclear weapons site, but they lack the legal authority to go there, U.N. diplomats told Reuters. ...The New York Times reported Thursday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes satellite photographs show that high explosives are being tested and that procurement records show equipment has been bought that can be used for making bomb-grade uranium, citing unnamed diplomats. The intelligence came from several sources, including nations that are members of the IAEA, the Times reported.
But the military sites the inspectors would like to inspect -- the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran and Lavizan II in northeastern Tehran -- are legally off limits to the IAEA, which only has the right to monitor civilian nuclear programs.
"The IAEA simply has no authority to go to sites that are not declared nuclear sites," a diplomat close to the IAEA inspection process told Reuters. He said that the IAEA had not asked to inspect Lavizan II, although they would like to.
This demonstrates the problem with inspection regimes in general: they only work when confirming compliance by a nation which disarms willingly. Unless the UN implements an inspections regime in Lichtenstein or The Vatican, nations are too large for inspectors to confirm disarmament with any confidence under existing rules. Saddam played this shell game with the UN inspectors for years, and the UNSCOM teams had more latitude than the IAEA has with Iran. If anyone feels safer because the IAEA has the right to inspect only those facilities that the Iranian mullahs designated as nuclear research sites, raise your hand.
No one? No one?
Inspections work in Libya because Libya wants to show that they've disarmed, and for good reason. Moammar Gaddafi saw what happened when the Anglo-American coalition lost patience with Saddam and decided to conduct final inspections in force. The Western nations, prior to that, had spent the better part of two decades trying to convince Gaddafi to renounce terrorism and drop development of WMD, but he only took it seriously when he saw the consequences of further defiance: getting pulled out of a spider hole is not Gaddafi's retirement plan.
If the West wants to convince the Iranians to comply with the nonproliferation treaty, then the EU has to step aside and allow the process to move quickly through the rest of the nonproductive steps -- like the UNSC -- so that the threat of action can be made clear to the mullahcracy. Just as in Iraq, the delay only allows Iran to build its defenses and stockpile its weapons. Given the US and Israeli viewpoint that Iran cannot be allowed to go nuclear, allowing Iran to stall the West only makes war more likely, not less.
Iran "making missiles that could hit Europe"
Thu 2 December, 2004 15:13
By Madeline Chambers
LONDON (Reuters) - Iran is working on long-range missiles capable of hitting European capitals, as well as nuclear and chemical warheads, an exile group has said.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which has in the past given accurate information on some of Iran's nuclear facilities, said Tehran was working on missiles with a range of 2,500 to 3,000 km (1,600 to 1,900 miles), capable of hitting cities such as Berlin.
Iran denies any intention of making long-range ballistic missiles and says its existing medium-range missiles are purely for deterrence.
The NCRI told reporters on Thursday Iran was carrying out research, testing and making the Ghadr 101 and Ghadr 110 missiles, comparable to advanced Scud E missiles, at the Hemmat Missile Industries Complex.
Ghadr means value or merit in Farsi and Shab-e Ghadr refers to the night the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
The NCRI is a coalition of exiled opposition groups fiercely opposed to Iran's clerical rulers. The U.S. State Department lists the NCRI and its armed wing, the People's Mujahideen, as a terrorist organisation.
The exiles also said Tehran had in August tested a Shahab-4 missile with a range of 1,900 to 3,000 km (1,200 to 1,900 miles), depending on the weight of the warhead. Shahab means meteor in Farsi.
Iran has acknowledged it can make large numbers of medium-range Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, capable of hitting Israel or U.S. bases in the Gulf, but has repeatedly denied Israeli accusations it is developing Shahab-4.
"Militarily speaking, by obtaining long-range and medium-range missiles, the clerics are trying to put many regions of the world, including all of Europe, within their range," NCRI's Ali Safavi told reporters.
The NCRI acknowledged that the missile programmes did not contravene international law. It provided site maps and detailed explanations but had no blueprints of the work.
Safavi also said Iran's Shahid Karimi Industrial Group was pursuing nuclear and chemical warheads, but he gave few details.
Last month U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested Iran was working to fit missiles with nuclear warheads but Iran says its atomic plants are solely for power generation.
Earlier this week the United Nations' nuclear watchdog decided against referring Iran to the Security Council after Tehran agreed to freeze all activities which could be used to make bomb-grade material.
UN report: World threatened by 'cascade of proliferation'
Endorses preemptive strikesSPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Thursday, December 2, 2004A report submitted to the United National today called the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction a leading threat and endorsed the preemptive strike option.
UN member states have the right to defend themselves, including preemptively, when an attack was deemed imminent, the report said. The panel also urged the Security Council to be prepared to "act earlier, more pro-actively and more decisively than in the past."
The report sounded a note of alarm, suggesting that the world is on the verge of losing control over the spread of WMD.
"We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the nonproliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation," the report said.
The report came amid an effort by the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect suspected Iranian nuclear weapons sites, Middle East Newsline reported. IAEA director-general Mohammed El Baradei told the New York Times on Thursday that Iran has refused to allow inspections of sites in northern and southern Iran.
"The international community does have to be concerned about nightmare scenarios combining terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and irresponsible states, which may conceivably justify the use of force, not just reactively but preventatively," the panel said in a 95-page report.
A 16-member panel concluded a study for the United Nations that warned that unidentified states and groups deemed terrorists could launch a WMD attack anywhere in the world.
"The question is not whether such action can be taken: it can, by the Security Council as the international community's collective security voice, at any time it deems that there is a threat to international peace and security."
The panel, created by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2003, submitted 101 recommendations to improve international security. The recommendations included stricter controls meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and a definition of terrorism that would prevent states from sponsoring insurgency groups that target civilians.
Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a document the UN panel said must be strengthened. The report said the NPT has lost much of its effectiveness.
"[The NPT] is not as effective a constraint as it was previously because of the lack of compliance, threats to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a changing security environment and the diffusion of technology," the report said.
"The case for collective security today rests on three basic pillars," the panel said. "Today's threats recognize no national boundaries, are connected, and must be addressed at the global and regional as well as the national levels. No state, no matter how powerful, can by its own efforts alone make itself invulnerable to today's threats."
The panel said the UN Security Council or individual states must be prepared to eliminate WMD threats before they could be carried out.
The report called on the UN to undergo reforms that would allow the world body to direct campaigns against terrorism and WMD proliferation. The recommendations, requiring approval by member states, would include "a more proactive" Security Council. The panel also urged the council to expand to 24 members.
The panel offered a definition of terrorism that unlike several Arab and Islamic states does not refer to efforts at national liberation. The panel's definition of terrorism comprised "any action ... that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government..." to take a specific action.
"There is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians," the report said.
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