Free Republic

Shortly after announcing that it had begun the process of dismantling centrifuges at its Fordow and Nantez nuclear facilities, the Iranian government has reversed itself and says it is no longer dismantling anything. Under intense criticism from hard-line members of Iran's Parliament, Iranian president Rouhani called for the dismantling process to stop. The cessation put an end to what was largely a symbolic process in any case. Iran was not disassembling working centrifuges, but only decommissioned ones. It has approximately ten thousand older centrifuges that are no longer in operation. Dismantling these was an easy way for the regime to...

The U.S. Navy said it launched a second -- and final -- missile in a planned exercise Monday afternoon from a submarine off the Southern California coast. The second test launch of the Trident II (D5) missile from a ballistic submarine in the Pacific Ocean took place Monday afternoon, the Navy said. The blast-off took place to far less fanfare than Saturday night's launch, which provoked residents from San Francisco to Mexico to take to social media, posting photos of an eerie-looking bluish-green plume smeared above the Pacific...

The U.S. Navy said it launched a second -- and final -- missile in a planned exercise Monday afternoon from a submarine off the Southern California coast. The second test launch of the Trident II (D5) missile from a ballistic submarine in the Pacific Ocean took place Monday afternoon, the Navy said. The blast-off took place to far less fanfare than Saturday night’s launch, which provoked residents from San Francisco to Mexico to take to social media, posting photos of an eerie-looking bluish-green plume smeared above the Pacific. Speculations were wide-ranging, including rumors of an otherworldly alien UFO visit. In...

Still, when you're the face of The Pentagon, you've got to champion the narrative and that narrative now revolves around two things, i) a resurgent Russia, and ii) the rise of China. So, against that backdrop, and with Russia's dramatic intervention in Syria in mind, Ash gave a keynote speech during the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in southern California, on Saturday. Below, we present the "highlights" as documented by the DoD and the video clip courtesy of AP. Enjoy your Sunday evening US foreign policy briefing and please do note that Carter suggests Putin wants to nuke America: “In...

US Navy say "light in the West Coast sky" was a Trident II (D5) missile test at sea from the submarine "Kentucky" www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xLmB81v-BI

MEMRI head Yigal Carmon: Not one centrifuge has been removed. Iranian worshipers in Tehran chant slogans during a protest against Saudi Arabia after Thursday's crush that killed 131 Iranians at the haj pilgrimage. The mainstream media are misleading the world into believing that Iran has accepted and is implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was agreed upon on July 14, a prominent Middle East expert who served in military intelligence and was an adviser to two prime ministers told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday. “The recent phenomenon in the Western media saying that Iran has accepted the nuclear deal...

The slogan "Death to America" is not aimed at the American people, but rather American policies, Iran's supreme leader said in comments reported on his official website Tuesday. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei discussed the slogan while meeting with Iranian students ahead of the anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. Militant students stormed the compound and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. ...

An elderly man from the United Kingdom has been held in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison for the last four years on charges of spying, according to his family, who is pushing for his release based on concern about his age and health. Kamal Foroughi, an engineer by training, was working as a consultant in the capital city of Tehran for the Malaysian national oil and gas company Petronas when Iranian authorities took him into custody in May 2011, taking him from his apartment without any warrant for his arrest, according to his family. "My dad is 76-years-old and gets no...

The Iranian government is denying an Internet rumor that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s son was the best man at the wedding of Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter. The denial by the Iranian-controlled Fars News Agency comes hot on the heels of allegations over the weekend on the website of former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) that purported a "frightening" link between the negotiators of the nuclear deal. According to West’s website, Zarif’s son was the best man at the 2009 wedding of Kerry’s daughter Dr. Vanessa Kerry to Dr. Brian Nahed. Nahed is of Iranian descent but was born...

Iran considered pursuing a nuclear deterrent when it began its nuclear program in the 1980s, during an eight-year war with Iraq, a former president has been quoted as saying. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s comments comes at a sensitive moment, as Iran implements an agreement reached with world powers in July aimed at curbing its nuclear program, to allay Western fears it was trying to build an atomic bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, is investigating whether Iran’s nuclear program ever had a military application. It is due to issue a report by Dec. 15....

A video of Sunday's explosions that preceded a fire in a state-owned radioactive waste trench at the US Ecology site 10 miles south of Beatty shows white smoke emanating from the soil before the ground erupts, shooting debris and more white smoke into the air. The 40-second cellphone video, released Thursday by the Nevada Department of Public Safety two days after the Las Vegas Review-Journal had requested it, was taken from a berm atop Trench No. 11 overlooking the soil cap of Trench No. 14. Trench No. 14 is where containers of low-level radioactive waste were buried in part of...

The U.S. closely monitored Israel’s military bases and eavesdropped on secret communications in 2012, fearing its longtime ally might try to carry out a strike on Fordow, Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility. Nerves frayed at the White House after senior officials learned Israeli aircraft had flown in and out of Iran in what some believed was a dry run for a commando raid on the site. Worried that Israel might ignite a regional war, the White House sent a second aircraft carrier to the region and readied attack aircraft, a senior U.S. official said, “in case all hell broke...

In an explosive report we learn that ever since 2012, the United States has been spying on Israel in order to prevent the Jewish State from attacking suspected Iranian nuclear sites, according to Friday’s Wall Street Journal. The White House had sent an additional aircraft carrier to the region after learning that Israeli aircraft had flown into Iranian airspace in what U.S. officials feared was a test run for an attack on Iran’s Fordow plant. The carriers had attack aircraft on board prepared to respond to any Israeli attack on Iran. If that wasn’t enough to strain the conceit that...

In preview of interview to be published in full Friday, US Senator and presidential contender issues scathing rebuke of Obama administration's handling of the Mideast conflict. Ahead of Secretary of State John Kerry's meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, US Senator and presidential contender Ted Cruz gave an interview to The Jerusalem Post in which he issued a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration's handling of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Below are highlights of the interview. The full interview will be published Friday. Senator Cruz, How would you characterize the Obama administration's stewardship...

I probably got this from an old Clancy novel or a political thriller. I think each batch of fissionable material from say breeder reactor, all have their own spectroscopic signature. In the event of a unknown nuclear event I think the signature can be had and thus the material traced back to last known origin, and they can even go further and match the base material to known geographical locations of Uranium material. Anybody fill in the blanks there and give us a short lesson? Even if countries don't submit samples to whatever world agency supposedly governs such things --...

There they go again. New England authorities are passively accepting the closing of the Pilgrim Nuclear Reactor, one of the region’s four remaining reactors, which Entergy announced it will shutter up by 2019. The loss is 685 megawatts or 5 percent of New England’s electricity. Once again a reactor has been deemed too expensive to operate because nuclear gets absolutely no credit for delivering clean, emissions-free energy. As it happens, Pilgrim was delivering 84 percent of the clean energy in the state of Massachusetts. The closing leaves only the Seabrook reactor in New Hampshire and Connecticut’s two Millstone reactors, which...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid fears of an atomic arms race in the Middle East, a senior United Arab Emirates official has told a top U.S. lawmaker that it too might seek the right to enrich uranium that Iran has asserted under the recently signed nuclear deal. The landmark Iran accord to curb its nuclear weapons in exchange for economic sanctions relief allows Tehran to enrich uranium. In barely noticed testimony last month, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the UAE’s ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, had informed him in a telephone call that the...

Dr. Bill Forstchen The United States is now the top energy producer in the world. For that, we are thankful. But all the shale gas, crude oil, coal, nuclear energy and renewables on earth are of little benefit if we do not have a secure means of delivering energy to our homes, our hospitals, schools and even our military. For this reason, we must focus on securing the U.S. electrical grid, the means of delivering our energy, at all costs. Throughout history, literature has played a key role in educating and inspiring the public to “think beyond” to a world...

TEHRAN,Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ensured that sanctions would be removed in one or two months, in case all parties start implementing JCPOA. In a televised interview carried on the national Channel One in late Tuesday, President Rouhani introduced general dimensions of his new economic policies package, prospects over sanction removal, development of relations with foreign countries and security in the region. Given the issue of sanctions and their removal, the President ensured the sanctions would be removed, in case all parties start implementing JCPOA. “One or two months later, sanctions will be lifted leading to new situations in the country,”...

The owners of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth have announced that they will close the plant by June 2019. Entergy Corp. said Tuesday it is closing the only nuclear power plant in Massachusetts because of "poor market conditions, reduced revenues and increased operational costs."... ...The plant needs millions of dollars in safety improvements. The plant was relicensed in 2012 for 20 years....