| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 7:57 pm Post subject: EU Accuses Iran of Having Nuke Documents |
| EU Accuses Iran of Having Nuke Documents
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 24 minutes ago
The European Union accused Iran on Thursday of having documents that serve no other purpose than showing how to produce nuclear warheads. It and the United States warned of U.N. Security Council action, even while Iran suggested it was considering a compromise meant to reduce tensions.
Britain, in a statement on behalf of the European Union, offered new negotiations meant to lessen concerns over Tehran's insistence that it must be in full control of uranium enrichment — a possible pathway to nuclear arms.
"But Iran should not conclude that this window of opportunity will remain open in all circumstances," said a statement read by Peter Jenkins, the chief British delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, outside a closed meeting of the agency's 35-nation board. Diplomats described the statement as a veiled threat of Security Council referral.
An earlier statement made available to The Associated Press was even more direct.
"Failure to make progress" on easing international concerns about Iran's nuclear program "will hasten the day when the board decides that a report to the Security Council must be made," said that statement, which was toned down before being delivered to the media.
In separate comments, the United States said that Iran cannot avoid referral to the Security Council for violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but added that Washington and its European allies were delaying such a move to give Tehran a chance to defuse fears it wants to make nuclear arms.
"Iran must understand that the report to the Council is required and will be made at a time of this board's choosing," Gregory L. Shulte, the chief U.S. representative to the Vienna-based IAEA, told the agency's board.
But Washington, he said, is ready to wait in hopes that "Iran will reverse course and demonstrate" cooperation both with an IAEA probe of its nuclear activities and an international attempt to re-engage it in talks meant to reduce fears about its intentions.
In comments both to media and inside the closed board meeting, Jenkins focused on new revelations contained in a report drawn up for the board meeting by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, including a finding showing the Iranians in possession of what appeared to be drawings of the core of an atomic warhead.
In his statement to the board, also made available to the AP, Jenkins said that the documents have "no other application than the production of nuclear warheads."
"This reinforces earlier concerns aroused by possible indications of Iranian weaponization activity," he told the board, alluding to a series of findings over the past three years by IAEA experts suggesting that Iran may have experimented with procedures meant to make nuclear weapons.
The main issue is Iran's refusal to give up its right to enrichment, which can be used to generate power but also to make weapons-grade material for nuclear warheads. Iran says it wants only to make fuel, but international concern is growing that the program could be misused.
A plan floated in recent weeks foresees moving any Iranian enrichment plan to Russia. There, in theory, Moscow would supervise the process to make sure enrichment is only to fuel levels.
But Iran insists it wants to master the complete fuel cycle domestically. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters in Tehran on Wednesday that, while his country was willing to resume formal talks with key European powers on its nuclear program, "naturally we aim to have enrichment on Iran's territory."
On Thursday, however, a senior Iranian diplomat appeared to soften his country's stance.
"We are considering it," Mohammed Mehdi Akhounzadeh Basti, the chief Iranian delegate to the IAEA, told The AP when asked about the plan to move Iran's enrichment program to Russia.
A separate Iranian statement prepared for the board meeting accused the "U.S. and terrorist groups" of fabricating "false allegations against Iran" in suggesting it was interested in nuclear arms.
It described the find of the warhead documents as a "minor issue" that should not detract from the "tremendous progress achieved by (the) joint cooperation of (the) IAEA and Iran" in clearing up questions about Tehran's nuclear program. | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:41 am Post subject: Rumsfeld says military force an option against Iran |
| Rumsfeld says military force an option against Iran
AFP
Mon Feb 6, 8:35 AM ET
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States does not rule out using military force against Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
"All options, including the military one, are on the table," Rumsfeld said in an interview with Monday's edition of German financial newspaper Handelsblatt.
"Today, biological, chemical and radiological weapons are available which could kill tens of thousands of people," Rumsfeld said, in comments in German.
"There is a genuine possibility that these weapons could fall into the hands of people who behead innocent people and blow up children.
"The people of the free world must realize that they have been warned."
Rumsfeld said Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon.
"We know that terrorists are desperately seeking ever more deadly weapons.
"Iran is the main sponsor of terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," he told Handelsblatt.
The Iranian nuclear crisis escalated on Saturday when the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, voted to report the Islamic republic to the UN Security Council over its atomic programme.
Iran said on Monday that large-scale uranium enrichment work, which is the the focus of fears that it is seeking nuclear weapons, would begin in "due course" in response to the IAEA decision
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More war for Israel coming with the bombing of Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/01/14/more-war-for-israel-coming-with-bombing-of-iran.php | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:11 pm Post subject: Iran and the jaws of a trap |
| http://www.atimes.com
SPEAKING FREELY
Iran and the jaws of a trap
By Paul Levian
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
Judging from the rather frantic behind-the-scenes efforts of Russia and China in Iran, they seem to appreciate that the Iranian leadership is in for a big and probably deadly surprise. The Bush administration has not only handled its Iran dossier much more skillfully than Iraq, but also managed to set up Iran for a war it can neither win nor fight to a draw.
If the Iranian leaders think they can deter an attack because the
US is bogged down in Iraq they are already between the jaws of a well-set trap. Though a Western war against Iran will be a big geopolitical defeat for Russia and China, they cannot but resign themselves to this outcome if they are unable to convince the Iranians to accept the Russian proposal - ie uranium enrichment in Russia.
The Russians saw the writing on the wall when France, Germany and Britain began to march in lockstep with the United States. In particular, the widely but wrongly discounted nuclear belligerence of President Jacques Chirac last month implied that France was ready to accept the US use of nuclear weapons in a war against Iran if they saw fit to do so.
The Iranian leadership's obvious confidence in its ability to deter the US, Britain and Israel seems to rest on mainly four assumptions. Iran is militarily much stronger than Iraq, much larger, its terrain more difficult, its society more cohesive - thus more difficult to defeat, to occupy and to pacify. In addition, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad seems to take particular comfort from the widely anticipated wave of popular outrage and anti-Western attacks in the wider Middle East if Iran should be attacked.
Moreover, the economic costs of a war against Iran in terms of the price of oil and the interruption of the Iranian supply would propel the world economy into a tailspin. And finally, Iranian leaders seem to accept at face value the US moans over its overstretched military forces and the demoralization of US forces in Iraq.
Certainly, Iranian misconceptions are helped mightily by the defeatism of the Western debate about such a war. "No good options" has become something like the consensus view: an airborne and special forces "surgical strike" (as well as a massive attack) against the Iranian nuclear industry and military targets could at best delay its nuclear program and will be followed by retaliation in Iraq, Lebanon etc; a ground attack is out of the question because most of deployable US ground forces are desperately busy in Iraq.
If such things could be planned, one might be persuaded to consider this debate as an aspect of strategic deception. In fact, the US and British forces in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf as well as the forces in Afghanistan are quite able to redeploy on short notice, for example during the days of an initial air campaign against Iran for large-scale operations against the remaining Iranian forces and can be reinforced during the war. The US military infrastructure at the borders of Iran has a very substantial capability to deal with surge requirements.
The somewhat standard scenario for this war - as indicated by Chinese and Russian war games - has the following features:
An initial Israeli air attack against some Iranian nuclear targets, command and control targets and Shahab missile sites. Iran retaliates with its remaining missiles, tries to close the Gulf, attacks US naval assets and American and British forces in Iraq. If Iranian missiles have chemical warheads (in fact or presumed), the US will immediately use nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian military and industrial infrastructure. If not, an air campaign of up to two weeks will prepare the ground campaign for the occupation of the Iranian oil and gas fields.
Mass mobilization in Iraq against US-British forces will be at most a nuisance - easily suppressed by the ruthless employment of massive firepower. And Israel will use the opportunity to deal with Syria and South Lebanon, and possibly with its Palestinian problem.
The character of this war will be completely different from the Iraq war. No show-casing of democracy, no "nation-building", no journalists, no Red Cross - but the kind of war the United States would have fought in North Vietnam if it had not had to reckon with the Soviet Union and China.
Paul Levian is a former German intelligence officer.
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Rumsfeld says military force option against Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/02/07/rumsfeld-says-military-force-option-against-iran-for-israel.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:35 pm Post subject: Another Neocon publication making case to bomb Iran for Isra |
| Another Neocon publication making case to bomb Iran for Israel
From: rbleier@igc.org
To: "rbleier" <rbleier@igc.org>
Subject: E.Luttwak: US could easily take out Iran's nukes -- in a single night
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 12:11:29 -0500
Most reader s of these lists understand that there is little to prevent a US/Israeli attack on Iran which is not unlikely to happen this year, perhaps in a month or two. Luttwak's article argues that such strikes are likely to be effective, and that Iran's military retaliatory capability is virtually non existent.
Luttwak doesn't address the possibility raised by some that Iran could retaliate in Iraq by setting the Iraqi Shiite community against US forces there. But an Iraqi Shiite uprising against US forces could simply play into the hands of the Bush administration (and the Israelis too?) giving them the rationale for intensifying and expanding the war. --Ronald
Note: There may be copyright restrictions in connection with distributing this material.
February 8, 2006
COMMENTARY
DOW JONES REPRINTS
• See a sample reprint in PDF format.
• Order a reprint of this article now.
In a Single Night
By EDWARD N. LUTTWAK
February 8, 2006; Page A16
Many commentators argue that a pre-emptive air attack against Iran's nuclear installations is unfeasible. It would not be swift or surgical, they say, because it would require thousands of strike and defense-suppression sorties. And it is likely to fail even then because some facilities might be too well hidden or too strongly protected. There may well be other, perfectly valid reasons to oppose an attack on Iran's nuclear sites. But let's not pretend that such an attack has no chance of success. In fact, the odds are rather good.
The skeptics begin sensibly enough by rejecting any direct comparison with Israel's 1981 air attack that incapacitated the Osirak reactor, stopping Saddam Hussein's first try at producing plutonium bombs. Iran is evidently following a different and much larger-scale path to nuclear weapons, by the centrifuge "enrichment" of uranium hexafluoride gas to increase the proportion of fissile uranium 235. It requires a number of different plants operating in series to go from natural uranium to highly enriched uranium formed in the specific shapes needed to obtain an explosive chain reaction. Some of these plants, notably the Natanz centrifuge plant, are both very large and built below ground with thick overhead protection.
It is at this point that the argument breaks down. Yes, Iraq's weapon program of 1981 was stopped by a single air strike carried out by less than a squadron of fighter-bombers because it was centered in a single large reactor building. Once it was destroyed, the mission was accomplished. To do the same to Iran's 100-odd facilities would require almost a hundred times as many sorties as the Israelis flew in 1981, which would strain even the U.S. Air Force. Some would even add many more sorties to carry out a preliminary suppression campaign against Iran's air defenses (a collection of inoperable anti-aircraft weapons and obsolete fighters with outdated missiles). But the claim that to stop Iran's program all of its nuclear sites must be destroyed is simply wrong.
An air attack is not a Las Vegas demolitions contract, where nothing must be left but well-flattened ground for the new casino to be built. Iran might need 100 buildings in good working order to make its bomb, but it is enough to demolish a few critical installations to delay its program for years -- and perhaps longer because it would become harder or impossible for Iran to buy the materials it bought when its efforts were still secret. Some of these installations may be thickly protected against air attack, but it seems that their architecture has not kept up with the performance of the latest penetration bombs.
Nor could destroyed items be easily replaced by domestic production. In spite of all the claims of technological self-sufficiency by its engineer-president, not even metal parts of any complexity can be successfully machined in Iran. More than 35% of Iran's gasoline must now be imported because the capacity of its foreign-built refineries cannot be expanded without components currently under U.S. embargo, and which the locals cannot copy. Aircraft regularly fall out of the sky because Iranians are unable to reverse-engineer spare parts.
The bombing of Iran's nuclear installations may still be a bad idea for other reasons, but not because it would require a huge air offensive. On the contrary, it could all be done in a single night. One may hope that Iran's rulers will therefore accept a diplomatic solution rather than gamble all on wildly exaggerated calculations.
Mr. Luttwak is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113937026599968085.html | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
