Free Republic

Britain will face a serious energy crisis unless plans to build new nuclear power plants are speeded through without having obstacles placed in their way, the Government will warn next week. Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will give the go-ahead for a new generation of power stations and explain how new planning guidelines will speed up the time it takes for them to come into operation. In a major series of policy statements on Monday Mr Miliband will say that “saying no” to nuclear is no longer an option.The move is certain to arouse opposition in Labour...

TEHRAN, Iran – Senior Iranian lawmakers rejected on Saturday any possibility of Tehran shipping uranium abroad for further enrichment, intensifying pressures on the government to reject the U.N.-backed plan altogether. Prominent conservative lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iran won't ship its low enriched uranium abroad in a single batch or in several shipments, a compromise suggested by some government officials, under any circumstances.

http://money.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/49044.html CNN poll halfway down on right. 1. What should U.S. nuclear power policy be? It's a safe, clean alternative right now...77% More safety testing is needed...11% We shouldn't use it...11%

Iran has been accused of playing games after attempting to renegotiate a deal on its nuclear programme. Tehran responded to an International Atomic Energy Agency offer to send its uranium abroad for enrichment by submitting a counterproposal. Britain and other European Union nations were preparing to reject the new plan last night, raising the threat of a protracted confrontation and new sanctions. Iran presented its response to the deal drawn up by the United States, Russia and France on and Germany on Thursday. It came as European Union foreign ministers were meeting in Brussels and they were last night thrashing...

Tehran should love the U.S. offer on enrichment. One sign that an adversary isn't serious about negotiating is when it rejects even your concessions. That seemed to be the case yesterday when Iran gave signs it may turn down an offer from Russia, Europe and the U.S. to let Tehran enrich its uranium under foreign supervision outside the country. The mullahs so far won't take yes for an answer. Tehran had previously looked set to accept the deal, which is hardly an obstacle to its nuclear program. A Democratic foreign policy shop called the National Security Network heralded the expected...

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...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran declined on Friday to endorse proposals by the U.N. nuclear watchdog to help reduce Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium. It said it was awaiting a "positive and constructive" response from world powers to its proposal on providing nuclear fuel for a Tehran reactor producing medical isotopes, state television reported.

Predictably, the Vienna talks on Iran's Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) stockpile have already stalled. Iran is using all the rules in the book and any trick on the margins to delay and gain more out of the talks. First, they dispatched a low-level delegation to the talks — something guaranteed to delay a decision even if a deal is struck in Vienna. Second, they torpedoed a critical element of the deal. According to what was supposedly agreed on already, the LEU would be enriched in Russia to higher levels (20 percent, well below weapons' grade) but further processed into fuel...

If only the world matched President Obama’s rosy image of it. Perhaps then pre-emptive concessions to other nations, in the hope of prompting reciprocation, might make sense. Alas, the world doesn’t work that way. And nothing demonstrates this more than Moscow’s increasingly problematic position on Iran, despite the White House’s “goodwill.” This sorry lesson began last month, when the president unilaterally scrapped plans to deploy an Eastern European missile-defense shield meant to take out incoming Iranian missiles. The decision broke a Bush administration pledge to US allies in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Obama officials spun it as a...

Recent defections of noted Iranians mirror those from the old U.S.S.R. Someone is stealing Iran's nuclear experts. Physicist Shahram Amiri, a researcher at Tehran's Malek Ashtar University, went missing in June on the third day of a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. His family says the medical isotope specialist, who worked in an institution identified by the European Union as a possible secret nuclear weapons lab, phoned home when he first arrived but hasn't been heard from since. The pro-government Iranian newspaper Javan (Young) said this week Saudi immigration officials questioned Mr. Amiri extensively when he first arrived for...

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday that it had rejected a design by Westinghouse for a new reactor because a key component might not withstand events like earthquakes and tornadoes. The rejection raises the possibility of delays in building 14 planned reactors in the United States, including two twin-reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina that are leading the pack. ~~~SNIP~~~ In a conference call on Thursday with reporters, David Matthews, director of the division of new reactor licensing in the commission’s Office of New Reactors, said staff members were not convinced that a crucial part of the...

Vlad "the poisoner" Putin isn't such a tough guy after all. He's a sucker for Russian power and glory. That is why he has just proclaimed that it's OK for Ahmadinejad and the Twelver Suicide Cult of Tehran to have nuclear weapons. Putin is a fool. Like all the Soviet leaders, he is going to end up harming his nation to pursue his own grandiosity. The Russian inferiority complex is a cliché of European history. It has always existed, but it is often dated back to Peter the Great, who tried desperately to bring Imperial Russia into the 17th century....

Yes, I wish that this was a satire piece, but unfortunately it appears that this is real. President Obama's Administration is going to allow Russia to inspect our nuclear facilities-- within the United States. This is an unprecedented move that damages US national security. Not only does it lift the veil of secrecy, but if Russia decided to sell the secret information to terrorists or rogue states, attacks could follow. This is a disgrace.

Obama's Remarks About Talks With Iran Concerning Nuclear Programs. At about 2:00 into this presser Obama proclaims the Iranians have agreed to "fully and immediately" cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency including IAEA inspections of the facility at Qom. The press heralded this as a masterful breakthrough but today we learn that MAYBE Iran will be okay with a Russian visit at some later date. What gives? Was there an agreement? did Obama make it all up? Or did his team get played (again)?

Threatening Iran with more sanctions would be counterproductive, Russia's foreign minister declared Tuesday, resisting efforts by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to win agreement for tougher measures if Iran fails to prove its nuclear program is peaceful. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke as Clinton visited Moscow, her first trip since becoming America's top diplomat

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - North Korea interrupted moves toward dialogue on its nuclear program Monday by reportedly test-firing five short-range missiles off its east coast. A South Korean official, briefing the Korean media, said two short-range KN-02 missiles were fired in the morning and three more in the afternoon. The missiles, with a range of 75 miles, were shot from mobile launch pads near where North Korea fired a long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5. The timing of the tests, the North's first in three months, is particularly significant since North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il has shown clear interest in...

North Korea fired five short-range missiles off its east coast on Monday, a news report said, even as South Korea proposed working-level talks with its communist neighbor. Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified South Korean government official, said the North test-fired the missiles on Monday afternoon from its eastern coastal launch pad. ,P. Yonhap said the North has issued a no-sail zone in an area off the east coast Oct. 10-20... Calls to the South Korean Defense Ministry seeking comment on the report were not immediately answered Monday. Earlier Monday, South Korea proposed working-level officials of the two sides meet...

LONDON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the latest militant attack in Pakistan shows an "increasing" threat to the state, but voiced confidence Islamabad was in control of its nuclear arsenal. Clinton told reporters in London that the militants' brazen bid to storm the Pakistani military headquarters in Rawalpindi on Saturday highlighted the scale of the threat. The attack brought renewed US focus on Pakistan, which has won praise from Washington for its new crackdown on militants, just as the Obama administration tries to revise its strategy in neighboring Afghanistan. "Yesterday was another reminder that extremists...

OSLO — President Barack Obama on Friday won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation...

Its interesting that today it was reported that the United States knew about Iran's secret second site to enrich uranium for three years now. In fact the White House has admitted it has been "carefully observing and analyzing this facility for several years." That isn't even the strange part,it was less than two years ago a National Intelligence Estimate report on Iran's nuclear programs reported with "high confidence" that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. So while while we were reporting that all Iranian Nukes stopped in 2003, we were spying on a second Iranian enrichment plant. The...

North Korea wants to placate key benefactor China by offering to return to disarmament talks and it is unclear whether it really intends to give up its cherished nuclear deterrent, analysts said Tuesday. Leader Kim Jong-Il told visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao late Monday the North is willing to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations -- on condition it first holds talks with the United States to improve "hostile relations". Some analysts expressed scepticism about the North's conditional offer to return to six-party dialogue, almost six months after it quit the forum and announced it would restart its bomb-making programme....

Hugo Chávez asks mining minister during televised cabinet meeting: 'How's the uranium for Iran? For the atomic bomb?' Telling somewhat less than tasteful jokes about weapons of mass destruction has been an occasional pastime of a number of senior US Republican politicians. George W Bush, at a 2004 press dinner, showed a series of photos of him searching the Oval Office while telling guests: "No they're not here". Ronald Reagan, during a sound check for a regular radio broadcast, joked he had signed legislation to outlaw Russia and that the "bombing will begin in five minutes". And John McCain, at...

Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities? The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes. First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need"...

Obama administration officials at a Senate hearing Tuesday refrained from backing proposed Iran sanctions legislation or giving a deadline for Teheran to halt uranium enrichment during its negotiations with the US and other world powers. Yet US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said that "we would be prepared to move ahead swiftly and effectively with additional [sanctions] measures" if the talks, which he stressed were not open-ended, failed to bear fruit. He expressed skepticism over Iran's intentions, saying the administration was "realistic" about the prospects of engagement; he later said that Iran's initial gestures are "the first concrete evidence...

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." - Chief Justice John Marshall The US tax code is a marvelous and impressive intellectual structure. As an engineer I took a business class in taxation for corporations while getting my MBA. Engineering is the art of extracting utility from first principles of science and combining it with hard-won practical experience. I found, to my frustration, that taxation is not like that. Taxes are whatever Congress and the IRS say they are, logic or principle be damned. Tax codes are often written to support national goals, above and beyond mere revenue...

SEOUL, Oct 6 (Reuters) - North Korea is close to restoring its Yongbyon nuclear facility, South Korea's Yonhap news agency on Tuesday quoted an official in Seoul as saying. The report followed North Korea's pledge to return to international nuclear disarmament talks as long as it first holds negotiations with the United States. The following is a look at destitute North Korea's decades-long pursuit of nuclear arms: YONGBYON FACILITIES The Yongbyon complex is at the heart of the North's plutonium weapons programme. It consists of a five-megawatt reactor, whose construction began in 1980, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium...

When in doubt, blame Isreal. That’s right, Israel – which everyone assumes has nuclear weapons – is the threat to be concerned with in the Middle East. At least that is what the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei said during a visit to Iran this past weekend. Never mind that Israel has had plenty of nuclear bombs for about 40 years and has not shown any interest in using them proactively.

No sooner than a leaked IAEA report – anemically entitled “Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program” – states that Iran has “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” nuclear weapon, does the outgoing head of the IAEA then conversely announce that “Israel is [the] number one threat to [the] Middle East.“ Nothing can be more revealing as to the dysfunction, inadequacy and impotence of the IAEA. The efforts of the international community over the past six years have amounted to precisely nothing. The Bush administration ceded leadership of this issue to the EU3 (France, Germany...

Several people who traveled from New York to Pakistan last year with a man accused of plotting a terrorist attack have since returned to the United States, sources close to the investigation told CNN. Najibullah Zazi, 24, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring with others to detonate explosives in the United States. Prosecutors allege that on August 28, 2008, Zazi and others flew to Peshawar, Pakistan, a city with a strong Taliban and al Qaeda presence. Those currently under surveillance in the United States include members of Zazi's travel group, according to one source familiar with the investigation. Another...

Departing United Nations Nuke Watchdog, IAEA director Dr. Mohammed El-Baradei has a history of appeasing terrorist powers looking to become nuclear, for example the Wall Street Journal described El-Baradei this way: The IAEA director seems intent on undercutting Security Council diplomacy. Just weeks after President George Bush toured the Middle East to build Arab support for pressure on Tehran, Mr. ElBaradei appeared on Egyptian television on Feb. 5 to urge Arabs in the opposite direction, insisting Iran was cooperating and should not be pressured. And as he grows more and more isolated from Western powers intent on disarming Iran, Mr....

London, Oct. 4 (ANI): Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has handed over a list and evidence to Moscow, showing that some Russian scientists have been helping Iran to develop a nuclear bomb. Netanyahu’s revelation came during his secret Moscow visit where he held urgent talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev. “We have heard that Netanyahu came with a list and concrete evidence showing that Russians are helping the Iranians to develop a bomb,” Times Online quoted a Russian defence ministry source, as saying. “That is why it was kept secret. The point is not to...

I can't seem to embed the video here with YouTube's code; here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjbfQz4Nte8 Copying and distribution of the following lyrics is encouraged (due credit to Jefferson Airplane for the original; "White Rabbit" is obviously about the kind of mind-altering drugs one has to take to reach Barack Obama's world without nuclear weapons). Go Ask Barry (recommended music: "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane") The red pill makes you larger And the blue pill makes you small And the pain pill that Barry will give you Won't do anything at all Go ask Barry When he's ten feet tall...

OCTOBER 2, 2009 Springtime for Mullahs The Geneva Talks Rehabilitate Iran's Beleaguered Regime. From Geneva yesterday come all kinds of good diplomatic vibrations. Iran may allow U.N. inspectors into a recently unveiled uranium-enrichment plant "within two weeks." Another meeting will be held before month's end. A "freeze" on sanctions was bruited about. In an appearance at the White House, President Obama sounded sober but hopeful, calling the direct American talks with the Islamic Republic "a constructive beginning" toward "serious and meaningful engagement." Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was presumably in even better spirits at his remarkable change of fortune. A month ago, Iran's...

I suppose it’s a tribute to the president’s tenacity, or perhaps his inability to think outside the box of conventional wisdom, but he seems to be totally unwilling to accept a Divine gift. He’s facing some terrible foreign policy decisions, decisions he doesn’t want to make, and he’s right to want to avoid them, because whichever way he tilts, it’s going to be bad for him. Take Afghanistan. McChrystal and Petreus have told him that if he doesn’t go all in, to the tune of forty thousand or so additional American fighters, he’s likely to see the war there go...

The best of Bomb, Bomb Iran video sing-a-longs.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's policy of engaging Tehran received a fillip after talks between Iran and six world powers in Geneva on Thursday produced some tentative deals on its nuclear enrichment program. In various capitals, there was a wave of "cautious optimism," a phrase rarely heard in Iran's protracted nuclear stand-off with the West. DO GENEVA TALKS MEAN OBAMA'S OUTREACH TO IRAN IS WORKING? It is too early to say. Given Iran's track record in past nuclear talks, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both sounded cautious after the meeting. Obama called it a "constructive beginning",...

According to TIME online, Obama has made headway with the leaders of Iran. Do they really expect us to buy this nonsense? The Iranians have given a positive response on the meeting. That says it all right there. Iran Nuclear Talks in Geneva: So Far, So Good By TONY KARON – Thu Oct 1 President Barack Obama's strategy of engaging Iran finally got under way in earnest on Thursday with a positive response from Tehran to at least some of the concerns about its nuclear program. At a meeting in Geneva with officials from Western powers, Russia and China, Iranian...

This site has been giving great coverage of political events, great videos, and great commentaries. Check it out FR...

Iran Unmasked by: Sarah Carlsruh, October 01, 2009 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke in front of the United Nations General Assembly on September 21st, a fact that brought protestors together in cities across the United States. Just a few days later, on September 25th, President Barack Obama announced at the G-20 summit that Iran has a second uranium-enrichment facility under construction, once again violating the non-proliferation agreements. When on September 21st the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) hosted the D.C. rally to protest Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic speech to the U.N., members of the JCRC said they promote the passing 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...

Iran's traditional emblem has been the Persian lion. Russia's should be a vulture: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin intends to feed on the carcass left by any confrontation with Iran. For Moscow, this crisis isn't about Tehran's acquisition of nukes. It's about Russia's acquisition of a stranglehold on global energy markets. Putin's playing with fire -- but he's sure we'll be the ones burned. As for the Obama administration's desperate (and stunningly naive) hope that economic sanctions can deter President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his fellow thugs-for-Allah from pursuing nuclear weapons, forget it.

Obama’s Islamic advisor (Dahlia Mogahed) no doubt has told him that Islam is a “religion of peace” and all of Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s bravado about a new, previously untold underground uranium enrichment plant is just a bunch of saber rattling to gain attention. I’m sure Obama’s also been told that the recent test of Iran’s Sahib-3 missiles with 1,200 mile range (enough to strike Israel) is just a routine test . . .

Tomorrow, U.S. diplomats and their Russian, Chinese and European counterparts will join Iranian officials to discuss the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. The meeting follows new Iranian missile tests and exposure of a second covert Iranian nuclear enrichment facility. Iran enters the negotiations defiant. "The announcement of the enrichment facilities will be Iran's winning card," Kayhan newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Supreme Leader, editorialized last Sunday. The meeting will be a nail in the coffin of the Obama doctrine. Throughout his campaign, President Obama preached unconditional diplomacy. "We need a President who'll have the strength and courage to go toe-to-toe with...

The Obama administration's talks with Iran—set to take place tomorrow in Geneva—are accompanied by an almost universally accepted misconception: that previous American administrations refused to negotiate with Iranian leaders. The truth, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said last October at the National Defense University, is that "every administration since 1979 has reached out to the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed." After the fall of the shah in February 1979, the Carter administration attempted to establish good relations with the revolutionary regime. We offered aid, arms and understanding. The Iranians demanded that the United States...

The international community has treated the recent disclosure of another secret uranium enrichment facility in Iran the way it has treated Tehran's previous violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—with calls for yet more "dialogue." The continued pursuit of fruitless diplomacy at tomorrow's talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany is based on an incorrect understanding of international law, one that was spearheaded by the Europeans and is now unfortunately shared by the U.S. president. "Any nation—including Iran—should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power," Barack Obama declared in his famous Cairo...

The revelation of an Iranian uranium-enrichment facility buried in a mountain at an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base near the religious city of Qom might seem ominous. If, that is, the Iranians were determined to develop a nuclear weapon. Fortunately, we are advised that they are not. In November 2007, US intelligence agencies wrote a National Intelligence Estimate concluding, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” The intelligence community appears to be sticking by its judgment, which means — cue the sighs of relief — that the Qom facility may be only...

It's a sad day for America when you realize the French President has more brass than our Commander in Chief. Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.” Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

In Western Europe, they have a strategic culture which views military action as something anachronistic, a thing of the past," Inbar says. "Maybe [the] Obama administration has changed somewhat its tone, but I must say that in the Middle East, Obama is still viewed as very weak — very good at words but not very good at deeds — and I don't think that another Obama speech will impress very much the Iranian elite." Some analysts say Israel on its own doesn't have the capacity to carry out a sustained military campaign against Iran's facilities. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert...

Barbara Slavin makes the same horrendous mistake concerning the Iranian Islamist regime: Judging what the Iranian regime would do through the filter of Western culture and values. Barbara Slavin is a managing editor at the Washington Times and appeared on C-Span's Washinton Journal this weekend. The subject matter of course was Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. In response to a caller's question, Slavin very self-confidently declared that- "Iran will not attack Israel with a nuke".   Those comments by Slavin appear at about the 6:47 minute mark in the video clip.Throughout the program Ms. Slavin never once mentioned the "Hidden Iman" Messiah that Ahmadinejad and the mullahs want to see return. And...

(excerpt) Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program. The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time. (excerpt) At the heart of the problem is not simply the nuclear program. It is the Iranian regime, a regime that has, since 1979, relentlessly waged war against the U.S. and its allies. From Buenos Aires to Herat, from Beirut to Cairo, from...