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Exclusive: Watchdog fears Tehran has key component to put bombs in missiles 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known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the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...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-barack-obama-iran Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release November 03, 2009 Statement by President Barack Obama on Iran Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice. This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion,...

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that countries opposed to Iran's atomic program should give up their own nuclear weapons, and attacked as "arrogant" the sanctions imposed on Ankara's neighbor. He also said he wanted the Middle East, and then the whole world, to rid itself of nuclear weapons. During a trip to Iran this week, Erdogan said he backed Tehran's "right to peaceful nuclear energy" and called its approach in nuclear talks with Western powers "positive." The trip added to Western concern that NATO's only Muslim member may be shifting its foreign-policy focus towards the Islamic world...

In the deepening international stand-off over Iran's nuclear program, the Islamic Republic's quest for advanced air- and missile defense technologies could play a decisive role. "For years now, Tehran has been working hard to acquire sophisticated Russian antiaircraft missiles that would make it far tougher for Israeli planes to stage a successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities," Christian Caryl wrote on October 2nd in the online edition of Foreign Policy magazine. That system is the S-300, an advanced interceptor array believed to be superior to the U.S. Patriot. Russia signed a deal to deliver units of the S-300 to Iran...

Frustrated by Iran's continued defiance of demands to come clean on its nuclear program, the Obama administration is leaning toward imposing new sanctions, even if it must act alone. Administration officials acknowledged growing concern that there may not be international consensus to expand the existing U.N. sanctions, despite Tehran's apparent rejection of a confidence-building measure proposed by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog in hopes of making progress on the nuclear issue. To that end, the administration is quietly supporting legislation in Congress that would give President Barack Obama a broad new array of authority to target Iran's energy sector by penalizing...

Watching the Obama administration launch its "new era of engagement" over the past 10 months, most seasoned observers have pondered two questions: First, if engagement fails, will the Obama team ever acknowledge that it has failed? And what then? The first question is about to be answered. The main object of the "new era of engagement," Iran, has settled back into its old game-playing. The joint proposal agreed to by the United States, France and Russia, to have Iran ship 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia this year, was a compromise, as administration officials acknowledge. It might theoretically...

Iranian President Ahmadinejad OWNS Barack Obama. He understands how badly the American POTUS wants his outreach to work, and the Iranian keeps playing rope-a-dope with the Nuclear negotiations making Obama look foolish. Today was no different, for the second time since Obama's outreach began, the Iranian despot said no to a nuke deal that pretty much done. Iran told the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Thursday that it would not accept a plan its negotiators agreed to last week to send its stockpile of uranium out of the country, according to diplomats in Europe and American officials briefed on Iran’s...

Robert Kagan wondered this morning if The One will ever be prepared to play hardball with Iran or if the “plan” is, in fact, eternal negotiation while they perfect their bombmaking technique. We’ll know soon. The proposal would have depleted Iran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel below the threshold necessary for making a single nuclear bomb, possibly creating diplomatic breathing room for a broader agreement between Tehran and those worried about its atomic research program. But according to the diplomat, Iran wants to send its uranium abroad in smaller batches over an undetermined stretch of time rather than the lump transfer...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said Iran must agree to stop all uranium enrichment in any deal with world powers. The UN nuclear watchdog and world powers headed by the United States are trying to reduce Tehran's stockpile of enriched uranium in return for supplying a medical reactor. They hope the deal will build trust on the way to persuading Iran to give up uranium enrichment, which they fear is part of an atomic weapons program, even though Iran says the uranium will only fuel power stations. "The crucial thing is that the international community pressure...

As the United States and its allies haggle with Iran over its nuclear program, Moscow has fueled Western unease about its military links to Tehran by pledging to continue selling arms to the Islamic republic. This has raised speculation that it may brush aside the strident objections of the United States and Israel and supply Iran with advanced S-300PMU surface-to-air missiles that would greatly enhance its defenses against airstrikes. The Russians, who have rejected the proposed imposition of economic sanctions on Iran as "counterproductive," are keeping the waters muddied with contradictory and ambiguous statements regarding the S-300s. On Wednesday, Russia's...

TEHRAN, Iran — U.N. inspectors entered a once-secret uranium enrichment facility with bunker-like construction and heavy military protection that raised Western suspicions about the extent and intent of Iran's nuclear program. The visit Sunday by the four-member International Atomic Energy Agency team, reported by state media, was the first independent look inside the planned nuclear fuel lab, a former ammunition dump burrowed into the treeless hills south of Tehran and only publicly disclosed last month. The inspectors are expected to study plant blueprints, interview workers and take soil samples before wrapping up the three-day mission. No results from the inspection...

President George W. Bush, backed by a well-known neo-con crew as well as the gang in Tel Aviv, did all he could to formulate his war-loving foreign policy to force his successor manage a third military conflict in the Middle East. President Obama, meanwhile, has toned down the rhetoric since taking office and adopted a softer language, offering a glimmer of hope for direct diplomacy with Tehran — the two states have not had any diplomatic relations since the US Embassy take over in Tehran in 1980. Soon enough, the White House will have to come to terms with the...

Iran's nuclear programme Deadline missed Oct 24th 2009 From Economist.com Iran misses a deadline for responding to an offer for others to enrich its uranium IRAN has again failed to do deadlines. It has been evading them in the seven years since an opposition group first outed its extensive covert nuclear programme, despite five UN Security Council resolutions that have told it to halt its suspect nuclear work. After talks that ended in Vienna on October 21st, Iran and the three countries trying to strike a side-deal over new fuel for a Tehran-based nuclear reactor were told by Mohamed ElBaradei,...

Iran has delayed its response to a United Nations-backed uranium enrichment plan aimed at easing international concerns that Iran's nuclear program is being used to develop weapons. Iranian state television quoted Ali Asghar Soltanieh on Friday as saying his country is still considering various aspects of the proposal, under which Iran would ship much of its partially enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment. The uranium would then be used to fuel a research reactor. Soltanieh says Iran is looking at details and will respond to Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by the "middle...

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has fallen for Iran's line that it is not developing nuclear weapons, but only wants the ability to develop one to achieve its place in the sun among the great nations of the earth. In an interview on a Sunday show and in a leak in The New York Times that seems to have come from her (since it uses the same language), she notes that "there's a small space for doubt [about Iran's intention to build a bomb] because there are some contrary indicators. There is no doubt in my mind that they...

Talks between Iran and world powers on a uranium enrichment deal are making slower-than-expected progress, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog has said. Mohamed ElBaradei said "many technical issues" had to be analysed, but insisted they were "moving forward". The negotiations were stalled for most of Tuesday after Iran said it did not want France to be part of the deal, but briefly resumed late in the evening. Iran is considering a proposal to send uranium abroad for further enrichment. This is seen as a way for Iran to get the fuel it needs, while giving guarantees to the...

Americans strongly oppose a nuclear Iran but split on whether the U.S. itself should take military action to take out Iran nukes. A majority, however, support military action by Israel. These are key findings from the latest IBD/TIPP poll of 928 Americans completed on Oct. 10. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points. No concrete evidence exists that Iran has nuclear weapons. But Israeli and American intelligence agree Iran is "moving forward in developing a nuclear-weapons capability." Those who now believe Iran must not have nuclear weapons (79%) is little changed from the 78% in...

This Friday, the American Enterprise Institute will host an event addressing the question "Should Israel attack Iran?" The event includes, among others, Iran uberhawk Michael Rubin and infamous "torture lawyer" John Yoo, but the real star is likely to be John Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador whose right-of-Attila views left him an outcast even within the second Bush administration.

The headline on the front page made it sound like big news: UN nuclear chief sets Iran inspection. So? Another year, another inspection by the sleepiest watchdog on the planet, the United Nations' own Maxwell Smart -- the one and only Mohammed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Agency and Office of General Permissiveness. Director ElBaradei has just been to Tehran making nice with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where the two held hands for a ceremonial photograph and agreed that the UN's inspectors would soon visit Iran's latest no-longer-secret nuclear processing plant. This one is dug into a mountain outside the holy...

This interview is a first in a series of weekly interviews that former Congressman Duncan Lee Hunter will be conducting with bloggers and media types in order to help get his message out to the American people and to his former colleagues in congress. That message is that we must all fight to derail the foolishness, cowardice and socialism that is being pushed by the Obama administration, the democrats, as well as by some republicans; an agenda that threatens to undermine the very foundations of our Republic. Mr. Hunter is currently finishing up a book on Iraq and Afghanistan wars....

'Bunker buster' ready soon WASHINGTON - THE Pentagon said on Wednesday a giant 'bunker buster' bomb will be ready within months, adding a powerful weapon to the US arsenal amid tensions over Iran's nuclear programme. The 30,000-pound (13,607kg) massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) is designed to knock out fortified sites buried deep underground, like those used by Iran and North Korea to protect its nuclear work. 'It is under development right now and should be deployable in the coming months,' press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters. The Defence Department had said in August it wanted to speed up production plans for...

The Pentagon has acknowledged that it is speeding up plans to deploy a massive bomb capable of knocking out deeply buried enemy facilities. The giant "bunker buster" is believed to add fighting power to the U.S. arsenal against Iran's nuclear program, defense experts argue. U.S. officials, however, have refused to confirm the connection. The 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrator is capable of penetrating up to 60 meters of earth, or a thick layer of concrete, before exploding. It weighs more than 13 metric tons, allowing just one such bunker buster to be carried by U.S. bomber aircraft. "It is under development...

Iran will move to further enrich its uranium for a research reactor if it cannot obtain the fuel from overseas, semi-official state media reported Saturday. If talks with world powers and the United Nations nuclear watchdog fail, Iran will notify the latter that it will supply fuel for the Tehran reactor, said Ali Shirzadian, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. "The reactor is the major producer of radio medicines in Iran and its current fuel meets its needs for one-and-a-half year," he told the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency. It needs about 150 to 300 kilograms of...

Mideast: Experts say Iran now has enough fissionable material to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel has operational plans to attack Iran. We may soon have more than the stock market to worry about.The problem with kicking the can down the road is that sometimes you run out of road. The West has been fiddling while Iran pursues a nuclear weapon. Now comes word that we can stop counting centrifuges and whistling past the graveyard. Iran has enough material to build a bomb. According to a routine update issued Wednesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.'s toothless...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - U.N. experts will inspect Iran's newly disclosed uranium enrichment plant on Oct. 25, the IAEA nuclear agency chief said on Sunday, praising a shift "from conspiracy to cooperation" between Tehran and the West. The underground nuclear fuel facility near the holy Shi'ite city of Qom had been kept secret until Iran disclosed its existence last month, setting off an international furore. Iran agreed with six world powers -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- in Geneva on Thursday to allow IAEA inspectors unfettered access to the site. "IAEA inspectors will visit Iran's new...

TEHRAN, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that "Israel is number one threat to Middle East" with its nuclear arms, the official IRNA news agency reported. At a joint press conference with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran, ElBaradei brought Israel under spotlight and said that the Tel Aviv regime has refused to allow inspections into its nuclear installations for 30years, the report said. "Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses," ElBaradei was quoted as saying....

JERUSALEM, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Long strident in its calls for tougher international action over Iran's nuclear programme, Israel has fallen silent as world powers try to convert last week's talks with Tehran into a lasting deal. Israeli officials have declined comment on Thursday's meeting in Geneva, which yielded agreements to open a newly disclosed Iranian uranium enrichment site to inspection and follow-up negotiations. While experts in Israel and abroad voiced scepticism about the value of such moves, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-leaning government appeared to have adopted the "wait and see" attitude of the United States and its European...

The new Iranian uranium enrichment site will be inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on October 25, the director-general of the agency, Mohamed ElBarade, said in Tehran. (AFP)

WASHINGTON – A confidential analysis by staff of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has concluded that Iran has acquired "sufficient information to be able to design and produce" an atom bomb, The New York Times reported on Saturday. The Times report was posted on its website hours after Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks on a timetable for inspectors to visit a newly disclosed unfinished nuclear enrichment plant. Iran, which rejects Western charges that it is seeking to build nuclear weapons, held talks with six world powers in Geneva on Thursday. Western officials...

Netanyahu, has handed the Kremlin a list of Russian scientists believed by the Israelis to be helping Iran to develop a nuclear warhead. He is said to have delivered the list during a mysterious visit to Moscow.

Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb. (snip) Two years ago, American intelligence agencies published a detailed report concluding that Tehran halted its efforts to design a nuclear weapon in 2003. But in recent months, Britain has joined France, Germany and Israel in disputing that conclusion, saying the work has been resumed. A senior American official said last week that the United States was now re-evaluating its 2007 conclusions. The atomic agency’s report also presents...

This would be the same deadline that the State Department hinted yesterday that it’s prepared to back down from if ElBaradei asks them to. Allowing access within two weeks of the announcement would in effect give Tehran almost a month after its Sept. 21 acknowledgment of the plant’s existence to obscure evidence, they said. David Albright, a former international weapons inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said it would probably take Iran some time to conceal activities. But, “if you have a month, you have the time,” he said. A European official who declined...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's president hit back Saturday at President Barack Obama's accusation that his country had sought to hide its construction of a new nuclear site, arguing that Tehran reported the facility to the U.N. even earlier than required. The Iranian president defended his government's actions as the head of the U.N.'s nuclear monitoring agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, arrived Saturday to arrange an inspection of the uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom. The revelation that Iran has been building a new nuclear plant has heightened the concern of the U.S. and many of its allies, which suspect...

Deep-cover MI6 agents who have described the workings of the once-secret underground uranium enrichment plant near the Iranian city of Qom now have discovered a staggering five more similar operations, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. They, like the Qom facility, are buried deep inside the mountains of north Iran and are guarded by divisions of Revolutionary Guards. The details were sent this weekend to some G20 leaders who met in Pittsburgh when the Qom facility was revealed to the world. The MI6 agents have established that, like Qom, the new plants are staffed by nuclear scientists...

The Obama administration's positive tone following its first diplomatic encounter with Iran covers a deep and growing gloom in Washington and European capitals. Seven hours of palaver in Geneva haven't altered an emerging conclusion: None of the steps the West is considering to stop the Iranian nuclear program is likely to work... Not talks. Not sanctions, even of the "crippling" variety the Obama administration has spoken of. Not military strikes. And probably not support for regime change through the still-vibrant opposition... The Obama administration and its allies have said repeatedly that they will pursue diplomacy until the end of the...

Today's Olympic loss wasn't the first time Europeans didn't just melt in the hands of President Obama. Last week at the United Nations, French President Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Brown had a major row with President Obama over the timing of the announcement of the additional Iranian nuclear facility. The two Europeans wanted the news announced when Obama was chairing the Security Counsel or tight after. Obama got his way, which was to wait till the leaders reconvened in Pittsburgh. The narcissistic Obama did not want to "spoil the image of success" of his disarmament session, which passed a...

Binyamin Netanyahu's UN speech last week was a masterpiece. It was frank, tough, emotional and most of all, very honest. Bibi pulled no punches as he called out the UN and its members for everything from sitting through the Iranian Despot's speech to the biased Goldstone report. To Paraphrase Harry Truman, he did not give them hell, he told them the truth and they thought it was hell. Most of the Speech's coverage has described it as a shot across the bow of Iran.Nothing could be further from the truth, Bibi's speech was a shot across the bow of the...

The past two weeks have been a big success for the rulers in Tehran, despite what many in the United States and Europe may think. The Obama administration, the Europeans and the media have been obsessively focused on Iranian missile launches and secret enrichment facilities, on Russia's body language, and on the likely success or failure of Thursday's talks in Geneva. What the world has not focused on is the one thing Iran's rulers care about: their own survival. You have to give the clerics credit for keeping this grave matter off Western agendas. The fraudulent presidential election in June...

A new American Jewish Committee (AJC) survey of American Jews shows that for the first time, a majority of them would support a U.S military strike against Iran, and an even larger majority would support such a move by Israel...

A majority of American Jews support military action against Iran to prevent the Teheran regime from obtaining nuclear weapons, a new study claims. Asked if they would support American military action, 56% of American Jews said they would, while just 36% opposed it, according to the American Jewish Committee's 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. An even greater number support Israeli military action against the Iranian nuclear program, with 66% in favor and just 28% against. The survey, which polled 800 representative American Jews and was conducted by Synovate between August 30 and September 17, also dealt with US-Israeli...

LONDON – Deep-cover MI6 agents who have described the workings of the once-secret underground uranium enrichment plant near the Iranian city of Qom now have discovered a staggering five more similar operations, according to a report....

These last few weeks in the presidency of Barack Obama -- filled with missteps on health care (where nobody in the Congress fears him, and his demands to get something done go unheeded by even those in his own party) and his seeming false bravado when it comes to a nuclear-armed Iran -- has begun to prove out the notion that our current president is most likely temperamentally unsuited to handle the rigors of the presidency. Proof of such a thesis lies all around us. Jay Cost, writing in today's Real Clear Politics, says that he thinks Obama is having...

(IsraelNN.com) A top official in the Obama Administration has at last admitted what intelligence agents and Israeli government officials have been warning about for years: Iran intends to build a nuclear arsenal. In media interviews with American television news networks scheduled to air Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said bluntly, "The Iranians have the intention of having nuclear weapons."

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's nuclear chief said Tuesday his country built its newly revealed uranium enrichment facility inside a mountain and next to a military site to ensure continuity of its nuclear activities in case of an attack.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates strongly hinted on Sunday that Iran may be concealing other nuclear facilities in the country, beyond the uranium enrichment facility disclosed Friday by President Barack Obama and other leaders at the G-20 Summit. This Week host George Stephanopoulos asked Gates if the newly discovered site is "the only secret site that we know of." After a pause, Gates said, "I'm not going to get into that. I would just say that we are watching closely." Gates told Stephanopoulos there is "not a chance" the United States will heed the request of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and...

As contemptible as this is, I’ve got two good reasons to spare you a harangue about it. One: I’ve already written that harangue, and after the summer coup in Tehran and another year of cheat-and-retreat on their nuclear program, it’s truer now than it was then. And two: Thankfully, this old crank’s isolationist denialism is so fringe on the right that not even mainstreamers who are sympathetic to his broader agenda, like Glenn Beck, will go near it. It’s almost not worth bothering about. But suffice it to say, in the unlikely event that the three-percent rEVOLution ever commands the...

Note: The following text is a quote: NEWS ARTICLE ‘No Doubt’ New Iranian Nuke Facility is ‘Illicit,’ Gates Concludes By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Sept. 27, 2009 – Revelations that Iran has covertly been building an underground nuclear-fuel processing plant belie the Iranian-government’s denials that it is attempting to develop nuclear weapons, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on the Sunday TV talk show circuit today. “We’ve been watching the construction of this facility for quite some time and one of the reasons that we’ve waited to make it public was to ensure that our conclusions...

American and Israeli military planners have been examining options for an attack on Iran for almost three decades. There is no shortage of possible targets: Iran has dozens of nuclear-related sites that are known to western officials. Yet military experts in Washington and Tel Aviv acknowledge that a surprise airstrike would be likely to succeed only in delaying Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. It would also present daunting logistical and political challenges with no guarantee that even a sustained assault on known facilities would eradicate Tehran’s nuclear threat. With President Barack Obama committed to diplomatic pressure, the most likely military...