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National Security: An unclassified Defense Department report says an Iranian missile could strike the U.S. by 2015. If only we were working as hard to defend ourselves as they are to destroy us. In any discussion of the Iranian nuclear threat, the assumption is always that Tehran's target is Israel. Iran's quite mad president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has pledged to wipe Israel off the map as part of his grand scheme to usher in the age of the 12th Imam. Tehran may have a bigger fish that it wants to fry, namely us. "With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could probably develop...

Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have expressed support for Iran's nuclear program and stated that Israel should be forced to dismantle its nuclear weapons. Speaking at the nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran on Saturday, the foreign ministers of the three countries insisted that Iran has the right to develop nuclear technology meant for peaceful purposes, just like every other country. They also called for a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program. "We support Iran's pursuit of peaceful nuclear technology," the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) quoted Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem as saying. Lebanese Foreign Minister Ali al-Shami...

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that "all options" remained on the table to deal with Iran and North Korea despite a new US policy restricting use of nuclear weapons. "If there is a message for Iran and North Korea here, it is that if you're going to play by the rules, if you're going to join the international community, then we will undertake certain obligations to you," Gates said. "But if you're not going to play by the rules, if you're going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we...

TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran said on Sunday it will host a nuclear disarmament conference this month to be attended by China, which has been resisting new sanctions against Tehran over its atomic ambitions. "This is an international conference and Iran, which advocates nuclear disarmament, is calling on all nations to disarm," Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili told the official IRNA news agency. Jalili said "the Chinese have welcomed the initiative... and will participate" in the April 17-18 conference. The conference -- called "Nuclear Energy For All, Nuclear Weapons For No-one" -- would come soon after an international nuclear security...

new report by the CIA states that North Korea is continuing to make progress with its nuclear arms program and now has the capability to produce nuclear weapons with a yield of a "couple of kilotons" — or the equivalent of 2,000 tons of TNT. “The North’s nuclear test in May 2009 — apparently more successful than its 2006 test — suggests the North has the capability to produce nuclear weapons with a yield of roughly a couple of kilotons TNT equivalent,” the annual report to Congress for 2009 on arms proliferation states. Additionally, the report said North Korea had...

Iran is building a new rocket launch site a short distance from an existing complex in the north of the country, and seems to be working with North Korea, information group IHS Jane's has said. Construction visible from satellite imagery of the new site, near the city of Semnan east of Tehran, seems to suggest that Tehran has been collaborating with Pyongyang, said the London-based defence intelligence group. Iran unveiled the Simorgh space-launch vehicle (SLV) on February 3, but had not yet publicly revealed the location of the rocket's launch complex, it reported on Friday. But Jane's said it had...

JERUSALEM, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday said that the United States should take unilateral moves against Iran like its embargo on Cuba in order to curb the Islamic republic's nuclear pursuit. Dubbing Iran "the main threat to world peace," Lieberman told his visiting New Zealand counterpart Murray McCully that "he believes that from now on Israel must change its policies concerning Iran, and should request that the United States adopt the Cuban sanctions model that has already proven its effectiveness and is strong enough to strangle and overthrow the Iranian regime," according to a...

Syria has improved defense and energy relations with Venezuela. ShareThis A report said the regime of President Bashar Assad has enhanced strategic ties with Venezuela over the last year. They said the improved relations with Caracas were coordinated with Iran, Syria's leading ally. "Syria-Venezuela relations became closer after Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998," the report by the Middle East Media and Research Institution said. "As part of his anti-American policy, Chavez tightened relations with countries such as Syria and Iran." In a report by research fellow N. Mozes, MEMRI said Chavez supported Syria during an Arab and Western...

Violence feared as security forces threaten to crush protests Internet connections attacked in Tehran as regime tries to foil opposition Iran is now a 'nuclear state', President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced this morning. He spoke as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Tehran to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution. There are fears of violence as opposition and pro-government supporters are expected to meet at rallies in a show of popular strength unmatched since the revolution itself. Today Ahmadinejad told scores of cheering Iranians that the Islamic Republic is capable of producing weapons-grade uranium. Iranian...

Italy said dozens of members of Iran's hardline religious Basij militia had tried to attack its embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, but Iranian media described the incident as a student protest and did not mention any violence. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told a Senate hearing: "About a hundred Basij dressed as civilians tried to assault the embassy shouting 'Death to Italy' and 'Death to (Prime Minister) Berlusconi'."

President Obama said Tuesday that he's "bent over backwards" to engage Iran in "constructive" dialogue and said the U.S. will move to sanction the country, which has begun enriching uranium to levels capable of making an atomic bomb. Obama told reporters during a rare press conference Tuesday that the U.S. is developing a "significant regime of sanctions" in response to the Islamic Republic's move to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity level in defiance of world powers. "That indicates to us that despite their posturing that their nuclear power is only for, for civilian use that they in fact continue...

BBC Ex-USSR: Iran aiming to provoke regional military conflict - Russian exper 91) ☆ By enriching uranium to a higher grade, Iran is embarking on a deliberate course of provoking a military conflict in the Middle East due to its unstable domestic situation, Aleksey Arbatov, head of the International Security Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said in a live interview to Russian Defence Ministry-controlled Zvezda TV on 9 February. He also said that Tehran will suddenly announce it has developed a nuclear weapon, and noted that 20 per cent-grade uranium was...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran began enriching uranium to a higher level on Tuesday over the vociferous objections of the U.S. and its allies who fear the process could eventually be used to give the Islamic republic nuclear weapons. Even before the announcement U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he believed the U.N. should slap new sanctions on Iran in "weeks, not months," according to his spokesman Tuesday. France and the U.S. said Monday Iran's action left no choice but to push harder for a fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions to punish Iran's nuclear defiance. Russia, which has close...

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran began enriching uranium Tuesday to the threshold at which it could set off a nuclear reaction, following through on a warning it had issued a day before, state media said. The enrichment was taking place at its Natanz facility under the surveillance of U.N. nuclear watchdog inspectors, Tehran said. An official with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that a team of inspectors was on site. The United States and its allies fear Iran intends to build a nuclear bomb, while Tehran says its nuclear program is for civilian energy and medical use. On Monday,...

shipment of weapons from North Korea seized by Thai authorities last month were headed for Iran, according to a confidential report the Thai government sent to a U.N. Security Council committee. Thai authorities seized more than 35 tons of arms from a cargo plane they said had come from North Korea, and arrested its five crew members after the aircraft made an emergency landing at a Bangkok airport in December. The report to the Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee, seen by Reuters on Saturday, said the shipment included rockets, fuses, rocket launchers and rocket-propelled grenades. The cargo plane departed...

The question of whether the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai earlier this month was carried out by Israel or not is insignificant with regards to the impact his demise will likely have on Hamas and its ability to continue smuggling long-range rockets into the Gaza Strip. Mabhouh, 50, was found dead in his Dubai hotel on January 20. On Friday, Hamas announced the murder, which the group said was carried out by the Mossad, either by electrocution, suffocation or poison. The timing of the assassination comes almost exactly two years after Hizbullah’s military commander Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated in...

Reports say Washington distancing itself from earlier intelligence assessment suggesting Tehran had suspended work on weapons designs. The key sources of new intelligence are likely to include two recent Iranian defectors – Ali Reza Asgari, a Revolutionary Guards general who vanished in Istanbul in 2007, and Shahram Amiri, a leading Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Mecca last summer. The Iranian government has blamed the US for their disappearance. However, the Obama administration believes there is still time to try sanctions as a means of stemming Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran confirmed Saturday that its forces had taken over East Maysan oil field, located on the Iran-Iraq border. The move caused a 2.4% spike in oil prices. "The Iranian forces are on Iranian soil, as defined by known international borders. This oil field is Iran's" said an Iranian armed forces statement quoted by the Islamic Republic Arab-language television station, al-Alam. Proprietary of the East Maysan oil field had been the center of a dispute between Tehran and Bagdad for a lengthy period of time. Iraq's Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji said the move was the latest in a series...

Thai security forces seized more than 35 tonnes of arms from a cargo plane and arrested five crew members after the aircraft made an emergency landing to refuel at a Bangkok airport, officials said on Saturday. Monthon Sutchukorn, a deputy spokesman for the Thai air force, said the plane had departed from North Korea but had no further details. An air force official involved in the inspection, who declined to be named, said the Thai authorities had been asked by the United States to investigate the plane and its cargo. "We were approached by the United States, seeking our cooperation...

Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight. Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop,...