Free Republic

<p>No sh*t Sherlock! New sanctions = buying time for the Iranians.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.N. investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syria that bolsters suspicions that the Syrian government worked with A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to acquire technology that could make nuclear arms. The buildings in northwest Syria closely match the design of a uranium enrichment plant provided to Libya when Moammar Gadhafi was trying to build nuclear weapons under Khan's guidance, officials told The Associated Press. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency also has obtained correspondence between Khan and a Syrian government official, Muhidin Issa, who proposed scientific cooperation and a visit to Khan's...

(CNSNews.com) – North Korea’s appointment to the rotating presidency of the U.N.-linked Conference on Disarmament raised eyebrows Wednesday, but it is just the latest in a series of jarring appointments at the United Nation’s various agencies. The Conference on Disarmament (CD) position in Geneva comes because North Korea -- under its official name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea -- is next up in the alphabetical rotation for the presidency, which changes hands among the CD’s 65 member-states six times a year. The custom applies irrespective of a member state’s actual record on promoting the CD’s agenda, which covers weapons of...

The Iranian nuclear threat is much ado about nothing, says reporter Seymour Hersh. Writing in the latest issue of the New Yorker, the professional left-wing cynic ignores numerous signs that the Islamic Republic is dead set on achieving nuclear-weapons capability and claims there is “a large body of evidence … suggesting that the United States could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq eight years ago - allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimations of the state’s military capacities and intentions.” For Mr. Hersh, it’s...

Having experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis at the CIA, Langley, ion 1962, I have little enthusiasm for a repeat. But we may get one. A German newspaper is running a disturbing report: BERLIN – The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Friday edition. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is Teheran’s most important South American ally. Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm – Khatam al-Anbia – owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in...

U.S. Industry Loses Big in India: Is ITAR to Blame? (Source: National Defense Industry Association blog; posted April 28, 2011) Defense contractors and industry experts are trying to come to grips with India’s decision to exclude The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. from its $11 billion competition for a new fighter jet. No specific rationale has yet been given by the Indian government for its determination to jettison Boeing's F/A-18, Lockheed F-16 and Saab’s Gripen fighters, and proceed with a head-to-head contest only between two European offers — the Eurofighter and the Dassault Rafale. “Companies are very concerned about...

Chronicling the Events of our Times By Ari Bussel This Postcard, like all others in this series, is about a period of time in the chronology of the Jewish People. The series attempts to weave a picture from individual incidents, using bits and pieces to create a whole. Once a general frame of reference has been created, it is then time to zoom in, go into more depth, filling the rendering with sight, sound, emotion and texture. Future readers would attempt to decipher what was it like to live during these dangerous times and how they led to where they...

The control systems of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant have been penetrated by a computer worm unleashed last year, according to a foreign intelligence report that warns of a possible Chernobyl-like disaster once the site becomes fully operational. Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, also has raised the specter of the 1986 reactor explosion in Ukraine, but suggested last week that the danger had passed. The report, drawn up by a nation closely monitoring Iran's nuclear program and obtained by The Associated Press, said such conclusions were premature and based on the "casual assessment" of Russian and Iranian scientists at Bushehr.

Sarkozy, then-French FM say the choice is "between an Iranian bomb and a bombing of Iran;" France pressed EU to impose sanctions. French then-foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned that there could be a war against Iran, according to a US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks this week. The cable, dated September 18, 2007, explains that "three weeks after [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy publicly warned about the 'catastrophic choice between an Iranian bomb and a bombing of Iran'...Kouchner publicly observed that given Iran's behavior 'we must prepare for the worst, in other words, war,' and called for EU sanctions against Teheran."

JERUSALEM – The Jordanian government maintains a "powerful undercurrent of doubt" that the Obama administration knows how to deal with Iran, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks and reviewed by WND. An April 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Jordan summarized the Jordanian leadership's attitudes toward President Obama's offer of diplomacy to Iran. "Jordan's leaders are careful not to be seen as dictating toward the U.S.," read the cable, "but their comments betray a powerful undercurrent of doubt that the United States knows how to deal effectively with Iran." The cable continued: "(Jordanian) Foreign Minister Nasser Joudeh has...

Stanford physicist "stunned" by Norks' 2000+ centrifuges President Barack Obama and senior U.S. diplomats have in recent months privately shared with their Chinese and Russian counterparts growing U.S. concerns that North Korea was taking steps to enrich uranium and that the effort, unless stopped, would have serious national-security implications, according to people familiar with the matter.  But the revelation on Saturday that Pyongyang had already installed thousands of centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel at its Yongbyon nuclear facility is raising questions inside Washington's nuclear-nonproliferation community about why more wasn't done by a succession of U.S. administrations to block the North's atomic...

KIM TAE YON made the statement just now in S. Korean Parliament (budget committee) that this is due to the just released information that North Korea has been building a light water nuclear reactor at amazing speed, details just released to the world and satellite photos also revealed.Minister of Defense of South Korea Kim stated that this is to put a halt to North Korean nuclear weapons ambition, and is now being considered, which will go back on South Korea's committment in 1991 under President Roh Tae Woo to never manufacturer, house or use nuclear weapons in South Korea.

Moscow, Aug 21 (DPA) A Russian newspaper claimed Friday that suspected pirates who boarded the freighter Arctic Sea were actually agents of the Israeli secret service trying to stop it from smuggling arms into Iran. According to Russian media, the Arctic Sea may have been carrying illegal X-55 cruise missiles destined for Iran hidden among its cargo of lumber. Men acting on behalf of the Israeli Mossad secret service commandeered the ship to divert the weapons away from Israel's regional enemy, the daily Novaya Gazeta said. Citing Moscow publicist Yulia Latynina, the daily pointed to the surprise visit of Israeli...

Iran today effectively kick-starts opera tions of its Bushehr nuclear reactor -- a move hard-liners tout as defiance of President Obama's sanctions regime. This follows Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi's announcement yesterday that Iran has test-fired a new ballistic missile with advanced targeting capabilities. Yet despite it all, Washington reportedly has "assured" Israel that Iran is at least one year away from completing a "breakout" in uranium conversion into weapons-grade fissionable material. The point appears to be to delay pre-emptive Israeli military action against Iranian nuclear facilities until Obama can sweet-talk Tehran out of its bomb. Good luck with that --...

World leaders "believe absolutely" that Israel may decide to take military action against Iran to prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Saturday. “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively,” Berlusconi told reporters following talks with other Group of Eight leaders north of Toronto...

Is Kim Jong-il building a new type of weapon? On Monday Seoul announced that the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety had detected unusually high levels of xenon gas near the North Korea border on May 14. The concentration of xenon was eight times higher than normal, and the presence of the gas is indicative of nuclear activities. Because the wind was blowing south at the time, the source of the gas could not have been one of South Korea's nuclear plants. The xenon might have originated in China or Russia, but the most likely place was the land of unexplained...

North Korean spokesmen reacted furiously last week to claims by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that Pyongyang is supplying weapons technology to Iran and Syria. Representatives of the regime of Kim Jong-Il described Lieberman as an “imbecile.” The official Korean Central News Agency in a memorable phrase accused the foreign minister in an official statement of “faking up sheer lies.” The indignant denials notwithstanding, recent studies indicate that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as North Korea is officially known, is indeed playing a crucial but little remarked upon role in facilitating the arming of the Iran-led regional axis, including in...

A North Korean front company has been in the forefront of Pyongyang's efforts to supply nuclear technology to Iran and Mideast states, according to a report from Moscow. North Korea’s Second Economic Committee, which is under the command of the party's central leadership, manufactures missiles with the help of North Korea's Second Academy of Natural Sciences, the Moscow Times reported last week. Export companies under the control of Office 99 send the missiles to Iran. The report cited high-level internal Workers' Party documents brought to Japan by North Korean informants. According to the documents, a new front apparatus, called the...

Washington – There are three ways in which I believe recent decisions by the Obama administration are, unintentionally, actually fostering the proliferation of nuclear weapons rather than constraining them. When judging the various policies President Obama has put forth in recent weeks to move toward zero nuclear weapons, we should bear in mind the old dictum of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: In order to understand the law you have to look at it from the perspective of a bad man. First, the president and others have proposed to enhance nonproliferation by sequestering nuclear material into one international depository. The...

Even as momentum for Iran sanctions grows, containment seems only viable option,” reads a Washington Post headline from April 22. Leaving aside for the moment the dubious character of the first half of that assertion, is it really true that containment is now the “only” option? It is certainly true that nearly everyone in Washington — from administration officials to the permanent civil service to the foreign-policy establishment — believes that, and has believed it for at least a year, if not longer. The intellectual groundwork was laid long before President Obama came into office, in part as a way...

Negotiations grind on toward a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran's nuclear weapons program, even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York to address the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference. Sanctions advocates acknowledge that the Security Council's ultimate product will do no more than marginally impede Iran's progress. In Congress, sanctions legislation also creaks along, but that too is simply going through the motions. Russia and China have already rejected key proposals to restrict Iran's access to international financial markets and choke off its importation of refined petroleum products, which domestically are in short supply. Any new U.S....

Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin-Laden tried to obtain nuclear weapons, according to his former bodyguard, Nasser al-Bahri. “He dreamed of getting nuclear weapons, and I’m sure that had he got hold of them, he would not have hesitated to use them,” al-Bahri told Al-Quds al-Arabi on Wednesday morning. Al-Bahri, who is currently residing in Yemen, revealed to the London-based paper that he always carried bullets in order to kill Bin-Laden should the al-Qaida leader be arrested.

/being my translation N. Korea Could Have their Third Nuclear Test in May or June 2010-04-20 13:33 It is said to be likely that N. Korea could conduct their third nuclear test in May or June. As prospects dim for 6-party talks due to the sinking of Cheonan, this would further raise tension in Korean Peninsula. Kim Seung-jae reporting from Beijing [Report] According to credible diplomatic sources on N. Korea, it has been secretly preparing for their third nuclear test since last February. It is their understanding that it would conduct the third nuclear test next month or in June....

It may be too late to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapon, a former senior US defence official has warned. The official, who has long experience with several US administrations, said President Obama had waited too long to take tough action against Tehran. “Fifteen months into his administration, Iran has faced no significant consequences for continuing with its uranium-enrichment programme, despite two deadlines set by Obama, which came and went without anything happening,” the former official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Times. “Now it may be too late to stop Iran from becoming nuclear-capable.” He said...

This just in…….Russia says that Iran’s nuclear reactor that is being built with Russian help, is set to scheduled to open in August. Unbelivable! We have a President who would make President Jimmy Carter LOOK LIKE HE WAS A SUCESS, while America, the new Rome, BURNS!

The rules of the great Iranian nuclear charade are simple: We pretend to punish the Iranians for the nuclear- weapons program that they pretend doesn't exist. The Obama administration is about to go to the UN Security Council for a fourth round of sanctions. Remember the first three rounds? Models of collective international action, they passed unanimously (with the exception of an abstention by Indonesia in 2008) while Iran spun ever-more centrifuges and enriched ever-more uranium. It's a two-track process. On one track, the West feels as though it's doing something; on the other, the Iranians advance the nuclear program...

Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration is releasing a major statement on nuclear weapons policy that will herald a further shrinking of the U.S. arsenal, even as it rejects some sweeping steps advocated by arms control advocates. The statement, to be released Tuesday, will announce that the arsenal will shrink by thousands of warheads, and it will further restrict when the weapons may be used, U.S. officials say. But the administration has rejected proposals to declare that the "sole purpose" of nuclear arms is deterrence, nor will it promise that the United States won't be the first to use...

Obama Accepts a Nuclear Iran By Greg Sheridan US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation. This is the shifting tectonic plate in the Middle East. This is the giant story of the past few weeks which the world has largely missed, distracted by the theatre of the absurd of Obama's contrived and mock confrontation with Israel over 1600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem....

Over the past three months, several prominent American think tanks and academic institutions have conducted simulation games about the Iranian crisis. Although these war games have nicely covered almost all facets of the problem, they have left one aspect mostly understudied: the nature of Iran's response to a U.S. or Israeli airstrike. I recently took part in two U.S. government-sponsored games in which the participants attempted to provide a modest assessment of that crucial issue. War simulation games are certainly not a new invention in government practice. Indeed, the history of strategy and that of simulation are inseparable. Ever since...

GENEVA (AP) — A Swiss man suspected of being involved in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring claims he supplied the CIA with information that led to the breakup of the black market nuclear network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In a documentary airing Thursday on Swiss TV station SF1, Urs Tinner says he tipped off U.S. intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program. The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The 43-year-old Tinner...

WASHINGTON: Amid reports of massive 16-20 hour power outages across Pakistan causing public unrest, the Barack Obama administration has indicated it is open to Islamabad's plea for a civilian nuclear deal akin to the US-India agreement, notwithstanding continued disquiet about Pakistan's bonafides on the nuclear front. The first indication of a possible policy shift by US, which had till now rejected Pakistan's entreaties for a nuclear deal, came in an interview the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, gave to a Pakistani-American journal in which she said the two sides were going to have "working level talks" on the subject...

Anti-Aircraft Missiles Intercepted From North Korea Alarm Scientists Kurt Achin | Seoul 24 February 2010 A group of American scientists is expressing alarm at a possible attempt by North Korea to ship portable anti-aircraft missile systems abroad. The missiles were part of a an airborne cargo intercepted by authorities in Thailand in December. The Federation of American Scientists, based in Washington, is urging more vigilance by the international community after the discovery of so-called MANPADS missile systems aboard a cargo plane loaded in North Korea. The plane was intercepted during a landing in Thailand two months ago. The U.S. group...

The chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on Sunday he was concerned about the consequences of any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. "The outbreak of a conflict will be a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences of a strike," Admiral Mullen said.

The past 10 days have seen several developments connected to Iran's nuclear program. In a January 31, 2010 television interview, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced out of the blue that Iran had agreed to the uranium exchange deal that it had rejected repeatedly since October 2009. This announcement came several days after it was reported that the U.S. was deploying missile defense systems in the Gulf. However, on February 7, 2010, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would begin to enrich uranium by itself, to a level of 20%, and that it had attained laser technology for uranium enrichment. The Iranian daily...

Has Iran finally gone too far, pushing China into changing its mind about sanctions? Maybe not just yet. Tuesday, after Iran ratcheted up its uranium-enrichment program—elevating the purity of its enriched product to 20 percent—Beijing looked increasingly isolated in its calls to continue negotiations. "To talk about sanctions at the moment will complicate the situation and might stand in the way of finding a diplomatic solution," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said at a conference in Europe.Western countries have been lobbying China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, to join them in supporting increased sanctions against the Tehran...

Three strikes and you're out. Obama has blown two so far, and he's got one chance left when it comes to national security. What will happen if in the next twelve months or so the suicide-preaching fanatics of Tehran explode a nuclear bomb, as they obviously are dead-set on doing? What will happen if Israel tries a preemptive strike? What if the Saudis, Egyptians, and Gulf States then imported a Sunni bomb from Pakistan? All those countries are unstable and have sizable radical martyrdom groups trying to overthrow their regimes. If a nuclear Iran led a Shiite Axis with Syria,...

Citing a more "hopeful state of world affairs" in relation to the twin threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of its famous Doomsday Clock one minute away from midnight. It is now 6 minutes to midnight. The decision by the BAS Science and Security Board was made in consultation with the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors, which includes 19 Nobel Laureates.... In a statement supporting the decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, the BAS Board said: "It is 6 minutes to midnight. We...

NEW YORK CITY///NEWS ADVISORY///January 14, 2010///The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) will move the minute hand of its famous "Doomsday Clock" at 10 a.m. EST/1500 GMT on January 14, 2010 in New York City. For the first time ever, the event will be opened up to the general public via a live Web feed at http://www.TurnBackTheClock.org.

Last September, when Iran’s uranium enrichment plant buried inside a mountain near the holy city of Qum was revealed, the episode cast light on a wider pattern: Over the past decade, Iran has quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.

Winning on Ballistic Missiles but Losing on Cruise: The Missile Proliferation Battle Dennis M. Gormley Because Europe and the U.S. forces based there face a near-term ballistic missile threat, President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a Bush-era missile defense plan makes good sense. In contrast to President George W. Bush’s approach, which focused primarily on a few potential ICBMs, Obama’s is more suited to Iran’s growing arsenal of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The Obama decision also provides an opportunity to reflect on how the ballistic missile threat has evolved over the last 25 years. There is reason to believe...

A dramatic deterioration in Asian security could push Australia to acquire nuclear weapons, a strategy that it abandoned four decades ago, a new study says. But Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyst Dr Rod Lyons says such a decision certainly isn't close nor is it inevitable. He said the 2006 Switkowski report on nuclear power suggested it would take Australia at least 10 years and probably 15 to bring the first civil reactor into service. "It's true that Australia might be able to conduct an emergency nuclear weapon construction effort in rather less time, especially if it were to focus...

Der Spiegel: Siemens supports Iran’s nuke efforts German magazine reports customs officials seize goods meant for Iran’s nuclear program Sarah Stricker Published: 12.12.09, 22:37 / Israel News Is Siemens helping Iran? German customs officials intercepted a Siemens shipment of compressors on its way to Iran, Der Spiegel reported Saturday. According to the German magazine, the compressors sent by Siemens are worth an estimated 16 million Euros and were apparently meant to be used as part of Iran's nuclear program. The German government is now weighing its next moves vis-à-vis Siemens, which has apparently violated international commerce regulations. However, a Treasury...

Five Eastern European men were detained and their plane was impounded and grounded at Don Muang Airport on Saturday after it was found loaded with tons of war weapons. Government Spokesman Panithan Wattanayakorn declined to reveal where the plane was from and its its destination, saying Thai authorities are investigating the five men reportedly from Belarus and Kazakhstan. A TV footage showed military trucks believed to be loaded with the confiscated weapons left Don Muang Airport. The footage also showed the grounded plane. Thai TV reported that the weapons were transferred in the military trucks to a depot in Nakhon...

Iran now has the technical capability to build a nuclear bomb and the only thing separating it from the bomb is the decision to go ahead and build one, said Brig.-Gen. Yossi Baidatz, head of Military Intelligence's research division, on Monday.

A UN investigation has concluded that North Korea is continuing to export weapons, and using the hard currency obtained to import luxury items for the ruling elite of the communist police state. The UN report detailed North Korean use of false documents and the switching of cargo containers to different ships to throw off investigators. The North Koreans have also had to come up with a large array of subterfuges to get around growing restrictions on their use of the international banking system. The North Koreans are still getting the weapons out, and the money back. But they are increasingly...

Vienna - Iran will limit its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in reaction to a resolution the organization passed censuring the Islamic Republic, the country's ambassador at the IAEA said in Vienna on Friday. Iran will limit its cooperation to a legally mandated minimum and stop granting voluntary access to nuclear sites, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said. "This is the minimum consequence," he said, without elaborating on further steps Tehran might take. The IAEA Board of Governors earlier Friday censured Iran for secretly building a new enrichment plant, calling for Iran to halt construction and answer open...

The Department of Homeland Security has spent $230 million to develop better technology for detecting smuggled nuclear bombs but has had to stop deploying the new machines because the United States has run out of a crucial raw material, experts say.

Representatives from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia are scheduled to meet today in Brussels to discuss future steps to dissuade Iran from developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Our message to the world leaders: If you want peace, prepare for war.

Vilified as a nuclear bomb-seeking threat to world peace before the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq now wants access to civilian nuclear power for its economic and energy needs. Science and Technology Minister Raed Fahmi, in an interview with AFP, called for the international community to lift the Saddam-era UN resolutions which still stand in its path. "Our nuclear strategy is for civilian application of atomic energy and we believe we have the right and that certain obstacles contained in Resolution 707 should be lifted," he said. "We have a clear and transparent political strategy in close...

A nuclear power's act of proliferation Accounts by controversial scientist assert China gave Pakistan enough enriched uranium in '82 to make 2 bombs By R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 13, 2009 In 1982, a Pakistani military C-130 left the western Chinese city of Urumqi with a highly unusual cargo: enough weapons-grade uranium for two atomic bombs, according to accounts written by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and provided to The Washington Post. The uranium transfer in five stainless-steel boxes was part of a broad-ranging, secret nuclear deal approved...