Free Republic

Explosive blasts destroyed power lines to Iran's underground nuclear facility at Fordo last month, the head of Iran's atomic agency said at a meeting of UN atomic agency member states Monday. "On ... 17th August 2012, the electric power lines from the city of Qom to the Fordo complex ... were cut using explosives," Fereydoon Abbasi Davani told the 155-nation International Atomic Energy Agency gathering in a speech. Davani did not accuse anyone of sabotage, but in the past Iran has claimed both Israel and the United States were behind the assassinations of nuclear scientists and computer viruses targetting its...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- A blackout of al-Qaida's main Web sites is in its 11th day, and officials think the forums may have been brought down in a cyberattack. While no one has claimed credit for disabling the sites..." SNIPPET: "The loss of information typically confuses and frustrates the readers of the Web sites. "It leaves the rank-and-file to guess which messages and which messengers are genuine al-Qaida, and provides undercover operators with new opportunities to disrupt the movement," said A. Aaron Weisburd, senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute."

Iran has begun enriching uranium deep inside a mountain and sentenced an American to death for spying, angering the West and undermining hopes that diplomacy could avert further sanctions or war. The start of enrichment at the Fordow bunker near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom was confirmed on Monday by an Iranian official in Tehran and by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran says its nuclear program is purely non-military but the West believes it is designed to produce nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic's decision to carry out enrichment work deep underground could eventually make it much...

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "An IRGC guy recently gifted me with a picture he took inside the CRCIS offices in Qom. Consider this post a place holder until I can get back to them"

Iran has started moving the machines that enrich uranium for nuclear fuel from its main atomic complex in the central city of Natanz to an underground bunker near the holy city of Qom, its top nuclear official was quoted as saying on Monday. "Transferring Natanz centrifuges to Fordow (near Qom) is under way with full observance of standards," Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani told state broadcaster IRIB, adding "Fordow's facilities are being prepared and some centrifuges have been transferred."

Face of evil: MOHSEN RABBANI The Islamic Shiite cleric active in Latin America since the early 1990s. Responsible for the 1992 and 1994 anti-Jewish massacres in Argentina. Wanted in that country and by the Interpol for the crimes. Called for Israel to be "wiped off," in 1994. 'Chief' Islamic operator of Hezbollah - Quds activities of: Islamizaton --including 'recruting converts for Islam'-- and terror networks in Latin America, resides in Brazil. Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil - Pages 122-3Tom Diaz, Barbara Newman - Random House Digital, Inc., 2006 - History - 272 pagesThe man directly responsible for this cell-building...

The Obama administration finally highlights Iran’s key role in supporting al Qaeda On July 28, the Treasury Department designated six al Qaeda operatives involved in shipping money and men from the Persian Gulf to senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The move targets a node of the global terror network that is critical to its overall strength, freezing any of its financial assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting any transactions with the operatives. Of the many conduits for al Qaeda funds and personnel across the world, the U.S. government believes this one is the most important. “This network...

TEHERAN, Iran — Iran's semiofficial Mehr News Agency on Friday said simultaneous blasts have struck three pipelines near the city of Qom, cutting the flow of gas. Mehr said the blasts, which occurred at 5:50 a.m. locat time (2:20 GMT) outside the town of Salafchegan, 130 kilometers south of Teheran, were felt kilometers away. Local official Majid Bojarzadeh said the blasts were not caused by technical failures, but did not elaborate if officials believed the explosions were acts of sabotage. He said operations were under way to repair the pipelines and restore the gas flow. Iran's oil and gas sector...

As the cliche goes, there are no coincidences in politics. Obama fundraiser group Code Pink just happened to have arrived in Cairo last week for the group’s ninth visit there in two years as part of its campaign to undermine the Mubarak government and help Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza. Code Pink and the media are trying to portray the leftist group's 'sudden' appearance in Cairo Wednesday as an act of courageous support for a democratic revolution. Nothing could be further from the truth.Code Pink protests the Mubarak government in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. February 2, 2011. Code...

In a rare public challenge to the Iranian regime, the country’s highest-ranking cleric has warned that prisoners’ confessions are invalid, signalling a deepening gulf between the political establishment in Tehran and clerical establishment in the holy city of Qom. “Confessions of prisoners have no validity and if a judge uses confessions for issuing verdicts that judge is no longer qualified,” Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani told students this week, according to domestic websites including Parlemannews, which is run by reformist parliamentarians. His statement is not only a religious decree that his followers must obey but a warning from the country’s...

TEHRAN — Iran's opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi was surrounded while in the house of a senior cleric in the holy city of Qom on Sunday by regime supporters who also attacked his car, an opposition website said. Karroubi had travelled to Qom in central Iran for a mourning ceremony and later called on Ayatollah Yousef Sanaei at his home when "forces linked to the power (regime) surrounded the house," Kaleme.com said.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that Iran's recently diclosed second uranium enrichment plant is "immune" to conventional bombing. "The new site near Qom is meant for enrichment. What was revealed by the Iranians had been built over years and is located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack," Barak told parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee. Iran notified the UN nuclear watchdog in September that it was building a second enrichment plant near the central shrine city of Qom, after Washington accused it of covertly evading its notification responsibilities under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Confirmation...

Discovery of Iran's secret uranium enrichment facility near Qom several months ago is a "warning sign" for anyone who thinks that the Islamic Republic's nuclear program is for civilian purposes, head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin said Tuesday. Speaking at a conference on security challenges in the 21st century at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Yadlin said that Iran is extremely close to mastering the necessary nuclear technology and will wait on the threshold until it feels that the international community is too weak to stop them to move forward towards the bomb. Iran, he...

Terror State: A dithering world has for years underestimated the costs of appeasement toward Iran. Tehran's aggressive plans for 10 new nuclear plants show they want dominance, not just a bomb or two. To any informed observer, it's no surprise that Iran is now collecting its 10-to-1 winnings in the high-stakes game Tehran's Islamofascist government has been playing with the free world for years now. There's been a United Nations censure, demands to halt the building of the newly revealed enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, and multiple rounds of economic sanctions. The U.S., Britain, France and Germany...

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Iranian Official: The U.S. Is No Longer Immune to Attack At a November 21, 2009 conference in Qom, Ali Saeedi, Khamenei's representative in the IRGC, aimed a veiled threat at the US, saying that this country is no longer immune to attack. Assaults like 9/11 have proved that its stability can be compromised, he explained. Source: Fars (Iran), November 22, 2009 Posted at: 2009-11-22

Iranian construction of a previously secret uranium enrichment site is at an advanced stage, with high-tech equipment already in place at the fortified facility ahead of its 2011 startup, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report Monday. The revelation of the existence of the underground plant known as Fordo, near the holy city of Qom, has heightened concerns of other possible undeclared Iranian facilities that are not subject to IAEA oversight and therefore could be used for military purposes. In Washington, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the IAEA report "underscores that Iran still refuses to comply fully...

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...

In a remarkable interview with Time, CIA Director Leon Panetta reveals that the U.S. has known about the secret Qom site, built into the side of a mountain, since 2006. This raises a number of questions. First, that 2007 National Intelligence Estimate looks absurd — and entirely disingenuous — in retrospect. The 2007 report led us to believe that the military program had been discontinued. The report was issued a year after we first knew of the facility. Sure there remained some questions (it could have been a dummy site to conceal another secret site someplace else), but we at...

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...