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The U.N. nuclear watchdog planned a major report on Iran that might have revealed more of its suspected atomic bomb research, but held off as Tehran's relations with the outside world thawed, sources familiar with the matter said. Such a report - to have been prepared last year - would almost certainly have angered Iran and complicated efforts to settle a decade-old dispute over its atomic aspirations, moves which accelerated after pragmatic President Hassan Rouhani took office in August.

Why is Morsi committing to an investment of billions of dollars when it is embroiled in economic crisis that is fueling unrest in an already explosive political environment? Earlier this week, Egypt announced that it is seeking Russian assistance to revive its nuclear program. Why is the government of Mohamed Morsi committing itself to an investment of billions of dollars when it is embroiled in economic crisis that is fueling unrest in an already explosive political environment? It seems to be a move by the Muslim Brotherhood-led government to solidify the country’s position as a regional power, as well as...

Russia will help Egypt develop its nuclear power program, Trade and Industry Minister Hatem Saleh said on Monday, signaling that the Islamist-led state will press ahead with its quest for atomic energy. Egypt froze its nuclear program after the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, but in 2006, the government of deposed President Hosni Mubarak announced it would revive the program. … Mursi met Russian President Vladimir Putin last week during an official visit to Russia. Saleh denied that Egypt had sought financial support from Russia to ease a severe economic crisis, which saw its foreign reserves drop to a critical...

Exclusive: North Korea tells China of preparations for fresh nuclear test By Benjamin Kang Lim BEIJING | Fri Feb 15, 2013 8:31am EST (Reuters) - North Korea has told its key ally, China, that it is prepared to stage one or even two more nuclear tests this year in an effort to force the United States into diplomatic talks with Pyongyang, said a source with direct knowledge of the message. Further tests could also be accompanied this year by another rocket launch, said the source who has direct access to the top levels of government in both Beijing and Pyongyang....

A former chief of Israeli military intelligence says Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within the next four to six months. Amos Yadlin says Iran already has all the necessary components needed to build a nuclear bomb. … Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Iran could pass the threshold Israel could no longer tolerate by this spring or summer. …

The UN atomic watchdog made clear on Tuesday it had seen no sign of any explosion at one of Iran's most sensitive nuclear plants, backing up Tehran's denial that such an incident had taken place last week. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in an unusual move, made a brief statement following media reports at the weekend of significant damage at the underground Fordo uranium enrichment site. ....

As previously reported, in resolution GOV/2011/69, the Board stressed that it was essential for Iran and the Agency to intensify their dialogue aimed at the urgent resolution of all outstanding substantive issues for the purpose of providing clarifications regarding those issues, including access to all relevant information, documentation, sites, material and personnel in Iran. In that resolution, the Board also called on Iran to engage seriously and without preconditions in talks aimed at restoring international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. In light of this, from January 2012 onwards, Agency and Iranian officials held several rounds...

The Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereidoun Abbasi, said this week that Iran is completing its nuclear activities, the Fars news agency reported. Asked about recent media reports on Iran's new centrifuges in the Fordow uranium enrichment facility, Abbasi told reporters at the end of a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday that Iran is completing its nuclear activities as scheduled “regardless of the negative western media speculations and reports.” "We are doing our job according to our specified timeline and we are accomplishing them. Our response to such reports is working harder," Abbasi was quoted as...

A top Iranian official says that Iran will be able to annihilate Israel within a day. According to The Jerusalem Post, Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Shirazi, representative to Iran’s Qods Force for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claims that all they need is “24 hours and an excuse” to attack the Jewish state. “If such a war does happen, it would not be a long war, and it would benefit the entire Islamic umma [the global community of Muslims],” Shirazi said, according to the Post. “We have expertise in fighting wars of attrition and Israel cannot fight a war of attrition.”...

IRAN has returned to the front pages after a summer hiatus. Negotiations aimed at preventing the dreaded Persian Bomb have resumed their desultory course. Iran, although suffering from the international sanctions choreographed by the Obama administration, keeps adding new arrays of centrifuges while insisting the program is strictly nonmilitary. Israel is — or maybe isn’t — edging closer to a unilateral strike..... This strikes me as a good time to address an unnerving question that confronts any concerned student of this subject: Can we live with a nuclear Iran? [....] Now imagine that Iran succeeds in making its way into...

Using unusually pointed language, the International Atomic Energy Agency said no progress had been made in the meeting aimed at sealing a deal on resuming the IAEA’s long-stalled investigation.

World powers are close to overcoming their differences on what message the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will send to Iran when its board of governors meets Thursday, diplomats told AFP on Wednesday. According to the reports, diplomats to the IAEA in Vienna were “close, but not there yet” to agreeing on a resolution amenable to all the main powers, including Russia and China. One diplomat told AFP that the resolution “will call on Iran to intensify dialogue with the agency and comply fully with its obligations. It also calls on the director general to report in March on the...

Atlas called it years ago. How surprising that Mohamed is an Islamic supremcist agent covering for the Islamic Republic of Iran so that the genocidal annihilationist Islamic regime can secure a nuclear weapon with which to destroy the West. For years and years we have been exposing this jihadi at Atlas, and all this comes out after the fact -- after Iran is nuclear and they have their stooge in the White House. Mohamed ElBaradei. 'History may judge him' YNET News (hat tip Armaros) Israeli officials: ElBaradei an Iranian agent Senior state officials accuse former IAEA chairman of covering up...

-Excerpt- The IAEA’s findings are not only an indictment of Iran, however. They also reveal the fundamental corruption of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian diplomat who was the IAEA’s director general from December 1997 to November 2009. While his job was to administer a technocratic agency, ElBaradei repeatedly intervened to distort the inspectors’ findings. Rather than confront the Islamic Republic on its cheating, he coached Iranian officials on their public diplomacy. He also repeatedly ignored mounting evidence of secret Iranian facilities until these were publicly exposed by other means. -excerpt- The IAEA report should also embarrass Thomas Fingar, Vann H. Van...

VIENNA — Iran is suspected of conducting secret experiments whose sole purpose can only be the development of nuclear weapons, the U.N. nuclear atomic energy agency said for the first time in a report released Tuesday. While some of the suspected secret nuclear work can have peaceful purposes, "others are specific to nuclear weapons," according to the report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. A 13-page attachment to the report details intelligence and IAEA research that shows Tehran working on all aspects of research toward making a nuclear weapon, including fitting a warhead onto a missile. "Iran," the report...

A diplomatic source in the IAEA says this is 'the most damning report ever published by the IAEA and the conclusion arising from it is one: Iran is working to acquire a nuclear weapon.' Iran has been working toward building a nuclear weapon since 2003, according to a report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency and obtained by Haaretz. The IAEA report says Iran is working toward building a nuclear weapon. The report, which was handed over to the 35-member states of the IAEA Board of Governors, details a series of tests, acquisition of materials, and technology which reveals...

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings. Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to...

Iran has already acquired the knowledge, technology, and resources to create a nuclear bomb within months, according to Western experts who were briefed on the intelligence information due to be released in this week's report by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency. According to the experts, Iranian scientists acquired the knowledge with the help of weapons scientists from Russia, Pakistan and North Korea. Haaretz reported last week that other experts also estimated that Iran could assemble a nuclear bomb within months and carry out an underground nuclear experiment if it wishes to do so. (snip) New disclosures in the...

CNN’s Nick Robertson speaks with some of the Egyptian protesters who, according to Mohamed AlBaradei, will establish a “moderate” and pro-American “democracy” after the fall of Mubarak.

Any mention of an Iranian nuclear weapon is taboo in the Islamic Republic, which insists that its nuclear programme is entirely for peaceful, civil purposes. So it is remarkable, to say the least, that an article has appeared on the Gerdab website, run by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, anticipating the day after Iran's first test of a nuclear warhead. Here is a translation of the text: The day after Iran's first nuclear test is a normal day. The day after Islamic Republic of Iran's first nuclear test will be an ordinary day for us Iranians but in the eyes of some...