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ehran: Iran has started building its first domestically-made atomic power plant, a senior official announced yesterday, and Tehran's foreign minister said nuclear talks with the EU were likely in Spain this month. The deputy head of the atomic energy agency said the planned facility would have a capacity of 360 megawatt, in a statement underlining Iran's determination to press ahead with its nuclear programme despite Western suspicions.

WASHINGTON: Every week, a group of experts from agencies around the U.S. government - including the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Energy Department - meets to assess Washington's progress toward solving a grim problem: If a terrorist set off a nuclear bomb in an American city, could the United States determine who detonated it and who provided the nuclear material? So far, the answer is maybe. That uncertainty lies at the center of a vigorous, but carefully cloaked debate within the Bush administration. It focuses on how to refashion the U.S. approach to nuclear deterrence in an attempt...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Having repeatedly vowed to "cut off the hand" of any attacker, Iran's president shifted to the leg on Friday to underline his determination to resist Western pressure over its nuclear program. "You, the enemies of the Iranian nation, know that this nation will break the leg of anyone who wants to violate its rights," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in the southeastern province of Kerman. "We will not be harmed by your opposition and it will be you who ... will be harmed," Ahmadinejad, known for his fiery anti-Western speeches, said according to the official IRNA...

The notice, appearing worldwide, sought bids for constructing two nuclear power plants. Among the surreal events becoming ever more frequent in the nuclear showdown with Iran was the appearance of an ad last week in the International Herald Tribune, inviting bids to build "Two Large Scale Nuclear Power Plants in Iran." The ad ran in all editions of the paper, which is owned by the New York Times, and reaches more than 240,000 readers in more than 180 countries. Somehow this outrageous solicitation escaped the notice of major world media. That's remarkable, at a time when Iran has been flagrantly...

Learning To Love the Islamic Bomb Gabriel Schoenfeld - 5.1.2007 - 12:22PM As I noted in my previous post, George Tenet: CIA or CYA?, much of what is contained in the former CIA director’s new memoir is a self-serving attempt to dodge responsibility for the monumental intelligence failures that occurred on his watch. But as a matter of formal logic, just because In the Center of the Storm contains false statements—see Andrew McCarthy’s analysis at NRO for chapter, verse, hook, line, and sinker—not every statement uttered by its author is always untrue.Appearing on CBS’s Sixty Minutes to flog his book, Tenet...

World powers may be ready to consider Tehran's enrichment program Published: 04.24.07, 21:00 / Israel News The United States, Russia, China and the European Union are for the first time ready to listen to an Iranian proposal that would allow Tehran to keep some of its uranium enrichment program intact instead of mothballing it completely, government officials said Tuesday. Speaking on the eve of talks between top Iranian envoy Ali Larijani and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, the officials - some of them diplomats, others based in their capitals - said the discussions were key because for...

Iran four years from atomic bomb, say experts By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent Last Updated: 3:35am BST 24/04/2007 Iran's nuclear programme is facing such severe technical difficulties that it could take four years to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb and eight years to deploy an operational nuclear weapon, experts say. Students hold placards supporting Iran's nuclear right President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement on April 9 that uranium enrichment on an "industrial scale" had begun was "misleading" and the time-scale for success is likely to be longer than early estimates suggested. "It's very difficult to enrich uranium," said Norman Dombey,...

Friday, April 13, 2007 Washington, D.C. -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the public face of Iran's radical Islamic theocracy, has a knack for making news. His recently released "guests" -- 15 British military hostages -- had hardly traded their Tehran tailor togs for military uniforms before the tyrant was once again prancing on the world stage. This week he chose Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility as a backdrop to proclaim: "With great honor, I declare that as of today our dear country has joined the nuclear club of nations and can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale." Thumbing his nose at...

On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cheerfully announced in a televised speech that Iran has now joined the club of countries with "industrial-level" nuclear enrichment -- confirming that Iran has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges. Exactly a year ago, Monday, Iran revealed it had 164 centrifuges. Until Monday, Iran was believed to have increased that number only to 328. Experts explain that when the number of operational centrifuges reaches about 50,000, Iran can build nuclear weapons. Mr. Ahmadinejad went on to brag that world powers cannot stop Iran's nuclear drive, and that his country's atomic program is on its...

Aghazadeh: Iran plans to install 50,000 centrifuges TEHRAN, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Gholamreza Aghazadeh said on Tuesday that Iran plans to install 50,000 centrifuges, the official IRNA news agency reported. "We have plans to install 50,000 centrifuges," Aghazadeh was quoted by IRNA as saying in an interview. Asked about why he had not declared inauguration of 3,000 centrifuges at a ceremony held at Natanz on Monday to mark National Day of Nuclear Technology, he said he was concerned that mentioning numbers would cause ambiguity that Iran has plans for just 3,000 centrifuges. "When we...

AQ Khan will not be handed over to US: Pak Asian News International Islamabad, February 1, 2007|13:18 IST Disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist AQ Khan will not be handed over to Washington for questioning despite an American bill, which could force Islamabad to do so. Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam told reporters here that Islamabad is hoping that the Bush administration will intervene to make the final legislation more balanced, and added that US queries should be forwarded to the Pakistan Government, which would investigate and then respond. The proposed law called the Nuclear Black Market Counter Terrorism Act, recently...

The Cult of the Suicide Bomber Evil exists in the ...Islamists demo - nukes are on the way. www.Eurojihad.org...A Would Be Suicide Bomber Another tale of a suicid...