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Defense: As the failure of engagement with Iran grows more apparent, the administration that has talked very softly may be getting the mother of all sticks ready. Guess we need high-tech Cold War weapons after all.Western intelligence sources have told London's Times that Iran has perfected the means to develop and detonate a nuclear bomb and is merely awaiting word from its supreme leader to produce its first one. Should the order be given, it would take just six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead. Time's up. Recently, and perhaps not coincidentally, Defense...

In Iran's main Friday sermon today, Hujjat Al-Eslam Kazem Sadeqi said that Saeed Jalili, the Iranian representative at the Geneva talks, had presented Iran's package of proposals and that it had been discussed at the meeting. He said that the arrogance (i.e. the U.S.) had now found a new subject (that is, the Qom enrichment facility) to lock horns with Iran over. While this matter was nothing new, he added, the Americans want to use it to raise a furor. He called the new Qom enrichment facility a facility of Iran's nuclear pride. Sadeqi said that Iran had always declared...

January 26, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/January/09-nsd-064.html Former Oak Ridge Complex Employee Pleads Guilty to Unlawful Disclosure of Restricted Atomic Energy Data WASHINGTON – Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, a resident of Harriman, Tenn., pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, to count one of an indictment charging him with unlawful disclosure of Restricted Data under the Atomic Energy Act, in violation of 42 U.S.C., Section 2274(b). The guilty plea was announced today by Matthew G. Olsen, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and James R. Dedrick, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of...

KNOXVILLE, TN—On Thursday, June 18, 2009, in U.S. District Court in Knoxville,Tenn., U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan, Jr., sentenced Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, of Harriman, Tenn., to six years in prison for trying to sell parts of uranium enrichment equipment that he had stolen from a U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) facility in Oak Ridge. Oakley had illegally taken this equipment while employed at a building formerly known as the K-25 plant. The K-25 building, now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), was operated by DOE as a facility to produce highly enriched uranium used in the...

The US should consider making concessions to Russia on the placement of a missile-defense shield in Europe, in order to get Moscow to back "crippling" concessions against Iran if the time comes, a leading US congressman said Thursday. Howard Berman, the powerful Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview that one reason for a limited dialogue with the Iranians to get them to suspend uranium enrichment would be to encourage other countries to "buy into crippling" sanctions if Teheran failed to do so. Berman said the US-Iran talks should be of a set duration, somewhere...

via translation - ALERT - Nuclear: Iran has 5,000 to 6,000 centrifuges TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Iran had 5,000 to 6,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment activities, confirming that the Islamic Republic has expanded its controversial nuclear programme, reported state radio.

Iran was given a fortnight to agree to freeze its uranium enrichment programme yesterday or face further international isolation. After a day of inconclusive talks in Geneva, a six-nation negotiating team warned the Iranian delegation that it had run out of patience and demanded a 'yes or no' answer to a proposal it put forward five weeks ago.

A former maintenance worker at the East Tennessee Technology Park pleaded not guilty in federal court Thursday to charges of attempting to sell potentially sensitive components used for uranium enrichment to the French government. Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, of Harriman, faces a two-count indictment charging that he stole pieces of equipment from October 2006 to Jan. 26, 2007 at the Oak Ridge site, for the purpose of selling them. More seriously, he is charged with offering the material to France “to injure the United States and secure an advantage to a foreign nation.” He is free on $25,000 bond and...

Nuclear Secrets Allegedly Stolen From Tenn. Lab First On WNBC.com POSTED: 10:12 am EDT July 19, 2007 UPDATED: 10:50 am EDT July 19, 2007 NEW YORK -- WNBC.com's Jonathan Dienst has learned a contract worker is accused of stealing nuclear secrets from the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. Investigators said the worker wanted to sell the secrets to a "foreign country." Investigators are calling the theft a serious breach of security at one of the country's most important nuclear research labs. Officials said there was serious concern the documents could have fallen into the hands of enemy states or...

/begin my translation N. Korea Digging New Tunnels Where Nuclear Tests Are Possible 5 Tunnels in the valley of Mu-myong Mountain... could also be missile bases Kim Jong-tae Intelligence agencies have learned that N. Korea is digging five new tunnels suspected to be a missile base in the valley of Mu-myong Mountain(2851 ft), Shi-jung County, Jagang Province, N. Korea. They are looking into it carefully. In particular, they do not rule out the possibility that the tunnels could be used for nuclear test. Furthermore, they also received intelligence that there are uranium-enrichment facilities at Hwa-pyong County, Jagang Province, and now...

By UPI Staff United Press International WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The United States Wednesday said Iran's proposal for nuclear negotiations fell short of United Nations demands that it stop enriching uranium. Spokesmen for the White House and State Department said the United States was consulting with other members of the U.N. Security Council to determine the next steps in the process aimed at ending Iran's nuclear program. Iran's response "falls short of the conditions set by the Security Council, which require the full and verifiable suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said. "We are closely...

<p>It didn’t take long to start pooh-poohing the significance of eliminating Zarqawi. MSNBC/al-Reuters headline: ‘Zarqawi more myth than Man.’ And of course, the hate-America crowd hinted the ‘timing’ was peculiar (Bush needed a boost in the polls). Zarqawi was a very important man in the terror network and welcomed by the radical Shiite regime in Tehran. he was more than a leader of one faction in a religious war; he promoted religious conflict as a tactic to destabilize Iraq and drive out the Coalition. He and his Iranian backers/masters promoted all kinds of internal Iraqi conflict: Kurds against Arabs, Turkamen against Kurds, anything that worked. The terror masters put aside their differences and made a war plan in which Sunni and Shia, Syrian and Saudi, Iranian and Iraqi cooperated against their common satanic enemy, the United States. Another important fact emerged from the accounts of the attack on Zarqawi: we killed two women in the same house. because they were his key intelligence officers in the jihadist terror organizations, despite endless citations from the Koran demanding their subservience. Theywere important components of the terror headquarters. And second, when our soldiers enter terrorists’ quarters and kill women in the ensuing firefight, it is highly probable the women may be terrorists also. Zarqawi played on a global scale. Reports from Canada recount contacts between the ‘home-grown’ terrorists arrested by the Mounties and Zarqawi: ‘Mississauga News,’ June 7: ‘The arrest of 17 suspects...is said to be the latest stage in dismantling a terrorist network that’s linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...’).and seem linked to FBI arrests in Atlanta and others in Sarajevo, England, and Denmark. The public announcement a few months ago that Zarqawi was no longer the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, that henceforth the Iraqi Sunni ‘community’ would run the terror war there stated Zarqawi would devote his efforts to the international jihad.</p>

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, traded barbs during bad- tempered talks at a foreign ministers' summit in New York on Iran's nuclear program a week ago. The exchanges provided a candid introduction to diplomacy for Margaret Beckett, Britain's new foreign secretary, who attended the tetchy session at the end of her first full day in the job. The row, which further undermines hopes of a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis, reflects deepening rifts between the United States and Russia. Tension surfaced at a private meeting hosted by Rice in the Waldorf Hotel...

The IAEA discovers in Iran of new enriched uranium traces VIENNA - the IAEA discovered uranium traces highly enriched on an Iranian nuclear site where Teheran contradicted in the past to have carried out this kind of experiment, to AFP diplomats Friday in Vienna indicated. These uranium particles highly enriched were discovered in taking away carried out by the inspectors of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the research center of Lavizan, close of Teheran, shaved in 2004 by the Iranian authorities, one specified same sources.

The US will conduct a high-explosives test in June at the U16B complex on the Nevada Test Site to determine how effectively a massive conventional bomb would perform against fortified underground targets. Codenamed 'Divine Strake', the test will not involve a conventional bomb as such, but will detonate a vast pile (amounting to 700 tonnes) of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO) with 136 kg of C-4 explosive - the US equivalent of Semtex - as the initiator. As part of a series conducted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the explosion will be equivalent to more than half...

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Thursday that Iran won't back away from uranium enrichment and said the world must treat Iran as a nuclear power. the comments were made as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing tensions over Iran's nuclear program.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranians will hear "good news" on their country's atomic programme on Tuesday night, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. "After hearing all the good news tomorrow (Tuesday) night, Iranians should prostrate themselves before almighty God," he said in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Monday night. A conservative newspaper close to key officials has speculated the news would be that Iran had enriched uranium to the 3.5 percent level needed for fuel to run nuclear power stations. A reporter for the Arabic-language Al Arabiya satellite channel said Iran had...

UNO gives 30 days to Iran to suspend the uranium enrichment New York (the United Nations) - the Security Council of the United Nations gave Wednesday 30 days to Iran to suspend his activities of uranium enrichment, in an unanimously adopted declaration of his fifteen members. In this declaration, the Council calls Iran has "to take the measurements required by the Council of the governors of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (...) who are essential to establish confidence (international community) in the exclusively peaceful character of his nuclear program". It "underlines, in this respect, the particular importance of a...

TEHRAN. Feb 25 (Interfax) - The beginning of Russian nuclear fuel deliveries to Iran for the initial core fuelling of the nuclear power plant under construction in Bushehr will be discussed during Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko's visit to the plant's construction site on Sunday, a source from the Russian delegation accompanying Kiriyenko on the trip said. Russia's offer to establish a joint venture for uranium enrichment on Russian territory was not discussed at Saturday negotiations between Kiriyenko and Iranian Vice President for Atomic Energy Qolam-Reza Aqazadeh, although they discussed fuel supplies, the source said. The...

Iran is now operating a 10-centrifuge cascade for uranium enrichment as it makes progress on its nuclear program, diplomats told AFP Friday ahead of a key UN nuclear report next week. The upcoming report from the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "will confirm that Iran is now running 10 centrifuges" with a feedstock gas used to manufacture enriched uranium, a diplomat said. Enriched uranium can be fuel for nuclear power reactors or the raw material for atom bombs.