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Russia Urges Restraint Over Iran Nuclear News
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has responded to revelations about a previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility by urging all sides to exercise restraint until the details have been fully analyzed.

Speaking to RFE/RL in New York, Lavrov also questioned assumptions that Tehran was hiding anything and accused Western governments of withholding knowledge of a second Iranian uranium-enrichment plant.

"As far as I understand there's no clarity regarding the legal aspects of this situation," Lavrov said. "I don't want to go into legalistic analysis -- it has to be provided by IAEA -- but don't forget that Iran did notify the agency about its intentions, about its plans to construct a new facility, and we are convinced that whatever is being constructed under the Iranian nuclear program must be brought under the monitoring of IAEA."

Lavrov's statements appeared aimed at easing pressure on Moscow to take a tougher line against Iran when the UN Security Council's veto-wielding members meet next week to discuss steps to persuade Iran to comply with UN resolutions on its nuclear activities.

The U.S., French, and U.K. leaders had already condemned what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called a "level of deception by the Iranian government."

Obama Anger

In a weekly radio and Internet address issued later, U.S. President Barack Obama called it "a serious challenge to the global nonproliferation regime and continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion." He added that the world was "more united than ever before" on the Iranian issue.

Obama said that in meetings and public statements, he and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev "agreed that Iran must pursue a new course or face consequences."

The U.S. and Russia are both members of the so-called P-5 Plus One -- the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States) plus Germany -- which has a meeting scheduled for October 1 in Geneva to discuss the nuclear issue with Iranian officials.

Obama said the recent discovery meant "international negotiations with Iran scheduled for October 1 now take on added urgency."

Operational 'Soon'

Iran notified the International Atomic Energy Agency on September 21 that it was building a second enrichment plant but that no nuclear material had yet been introduced there.

Speaking to reporters on September 25 in New York, where he attended this week's UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad denied that the existence of the plant was a "secret" and said Tehran was not obliged to tell the U.S. administration about all its uranium-enrichment facilities.

Following revelations about the new plant, Moscow issued a statement calling the construction of a second facility a violation of UN Security Council resolutions and urged Iran to quickly demonstrate that the facility is solely for peaceful purposes.

Western governments accuse Tehran of secretly seeking a nuclear bomb capability, a charge that Iranian officials repeatedly deny.

An aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Mohammadi-Golpayegani, was quoted on September 26 by semiofficial Fars news agency as saying that "this new plant, God willing, will soon become operational and will make the enemies blind."

Moscow Wary

Speaking to RFE/RL in New York, Lavrov expressed disappointment that Western partners appeared to have kept intelligence about the existence of a second enrichment facility from Moscow.

"Some of our Western partners said that they had known about this plant for quite some time," Lavrov said. "If that is the case, A) we want this information to be shared with us; [and] B) we really would prefer that this information had been shared with us earlier, when our partners with whom we work on the Iranian nuclear issue laid their hands on this information."

He cautioned that "we need first of all facts before we jump to discuss sanctions or anything else."

Obama and Medvedev on September 23 had appeared to be narrowing their differences over the possibility of further sanctions against Iran over nuclear issues.

Some have suggested that a recent U.S. decision to abandon a Bush-era plan for a European missile-defense shield was part of an understanding between Moscow and Washington whereby Russia would ease its resistance to tougher treatment of a defiant Tehran. Both sides have rejected talk of any such quid pro quo.

'No Legal Clarity'

Lavrov said he had spoken with Muhammad el-Baradei, the director-general of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

More like the UN's toothless tiger.

"As far as I understand, there's no clarity regarding the legal aspects of this situation," Lavrov told RFE/RL. "I don't want to go into legalistic analysis -- [that] has to be provided by IAEA. But don't forget that Iran did notify the agency about its intentions, about its plans to construct a new facility, and we are convinced that whatever is being constructed under the Iranian nuclear program must be brought under the monitoring of IAEA."

Lavrov said that so far the IAEA had no evidence suggesting that the nuclear-fuel-production program in Iran was being shifted to military purposes. Meanwhile, he claimed, pressure exerted on Iran through three previous rounds of UN sanctions is working.

"We want to have all the facts presented to us by professionals, and we want Iranians to engage in serious negotiations when we meet on October 1," Lavrov said. "And this is the common position of the [P-5 Plus One] group, which issued a couple of days ago a joint statement to this effect in New York."

Lavrov said that only through a consensus within the UN Security Council could sanctions against Iran be effective.

He said unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union are merely impeding negotiations with Tehran.

Israeli Alarm

Reuters quoted Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman as telling Israel Radio that the revelations over a new Iranian nuclear facility has "done away with" disagreement over Iran's nuclear intentions. He went on to call for an "unequivocal" international response.

"I spoke this weekend with experts from the East and West," Lieberman said. "No one has any doubt, according to the technical data that was published, it's a military core."

Israeli officials have issued repeated warnings over Iran's nuclear activities and refuse to rule out possible military action to preempt a threat.

Iran's previously acknowledged uranium-enrichment plant is at Natanz.

Via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Hello, American News Media. Is This Thing On?

Why is it that more and more I find myself getting my news from European sources? Our news media seems incapable of reporting the news anymore.

The headline this time?

Barack Obama Ready to Slash America's Nuclear Arsenal

To be honest with you I view the Guardian as sort of the National Enquirer of Britain, but the National Enquirer didn't do too shabby on the John Edwards love child story, did they?

Barack has made statements in the past that he wanted a nuclear free world, and it fits his kumbaya feel-good peacenik view on the world. What a sheltered life he must have lived. I am beginning to wonder if a bully ever picked on him in school or was his mommy there to pick up his slack?

Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

No need for a messy missile defense system if nobody has nukes in Barry's world. I wonder if he got a buy-in from North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran on that?

Does this surprise anyone? Not anyone who has paid to attention what Mr. Obama is on the record as saying for those that wanted to listen. Hell. even the NY Times did an article on his desire for nuclear free world back in July.

In the depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Columbia University wrote in a campus newsmagazine, Sundial, about the vision of “a nuclear free world.” He railed against discussions of “first- versus second-strike capabilities” that “suit the military-industrial interests” with their “billion-dollar erector sets,” and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads.

Once again from the European media here is a snippet of a speech he made in the Czech Republic advocating for a nuclear free world, and just like he said on his healthcare goals, he realizes it will take awhile but he is determined to strive towards that goal. He uses a lot of the same slogans in his speeches. Also notice they characterize the crowd as "warm". I wonder how warm a reception he would get now that he has thrown the Czech Republic back into the path of the Russian bear?



Sooner or later people are going to have to acknowledge that statements he made on the campaign trail and in the years leading up to his bursting onto the political scene were not mere rhetoric, but to be taken seriously.

It is time to quit excusing away his statements and darn sure it is time to quit giving this guy a pass.

Iran & The Bomb

Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for a Bomb by Year's End
New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year.

Could Iran be building an atomic bomb? When the US released a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) late last year, it seemed as though the danger of a mullah-bomb had passed. The report claimed to have information indicating that Tehran mothballed its nuclear weapons program as early as autumn 2003. The paper also said that it was "very unlikely" that Iran would have enough highly enriched uranium -- the primary ingredient in atomic bombs -- by 2009 to produce such a weapon. Rather, the NIE indicated "Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough (highly enriched uranium) for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 timeframe."

It didn't take long for experts to question the report's conclusion that Tehran was no longer interested in building the bomb. And now, a new computer simulation undertaken by European Union experts indicates that the NIE's time estimates might be dangerously inaccurate as well -- and that Iran might have enough fuel for a bomb much earlier than was previously thought.

As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the US intelligence community.

For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating at 100 percent efficiency. Were that the case, Iran could already have the 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium necessary for an atomic device by the end of this year. Another scenario assumed a much lower efficiency -- just 25 percent. But even then, Iran would have produced enough uranium by the end of 2010.

For the purposes of the simulation, the JRC modelled each of the centrifuges individually and then hooked them together to form the kind of cascade necessary to enrich uranium. A number of variables were taken into account, including the assumption by most experts that Iran isn't even close to operating its centrifuges at 100 percent efficiency. What is known, however, is that the Iranians are operating 18 cascades, each made up of 164 centrifuges. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself said last April that the country had 3,000 centrifuges in operation. At the time, most Western observers discounted the claim as mere propaganda. But the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Ahmadinejad's assertion in November.

Centrifuges from Pakistan

Another variable is the type of centrifuge Iran is using. For its simulations, the JRC assumed cascades using 2,952 P1 centrifuges -- the P stands for Pakistan, where the centrifuges were manufactured. But recent reports indicate that Iran might be in the process of installing so-called "IR2" centrifuges. These centrifuges -- the IR stands for Iran -- are made out of carbon-fiber instead of aluminium and are an estimated 2.5 times as powerful as the P1 devices.
[....]

Read it all at Spiegel International

So much for the NIE report generated by the State Department's Fifth Column.

Iran starts up advanced centrifuges

Oh goody! Of course I am sure the UN nuclear basset hound El Baredi will once again assure us their is nothing to worry about.

Iran's nuclear project has developed its own version of an advanced centrifuge to churn out enriched uranium much faster than its previous machines, diplomats and experts said Thursday.
They said that few of the IR-2 centrifuges were operating and that testing appeared to be in an early phase, with the new machines rotating without processing any uranium gas.

Of course we are all just a bunch of war mongering neocons bent on world domination and just hell bent on getting our hands on Iranian oil.
In worst case scenario the clock is ticking.

Using a hypothetical example of the efficiency of a P-2-based centrifuge compared with the P-1, Albright said 1,200 of the more advanced machines could produce enough material for a single nuclear warhead in a year, compared to 3,000 of the older model.

Well I hope whoever the next president is they address this issue. The current administration won't or can't. I have very little confidence in any of the remaining candidates having the cojones to do anything. Barack and Hillary are devoting all of their time to figuring out the quickest routes out of Iraq now, Huckabee can't be bothered with things like NIE's, (National Intelligence Brief), and I don't think McCain have the guts to confront another rogue Islamic country.

Report: West Must Be Ready for Pre-emptive Nuclear Attack

Boy, the no nukes crowd is going to freak out when they get wind of this.

As I scan the names authoring this report, I don't see a single rabid, rightwing, neocon warhawk anywhere to be found.

In fact, one of them was appointed Chair of the Joint Chiefs by (gasp!) Bill Clinton.

Maybe at the next Democrat debate the moderator could ask Clinton's boss what she thinks of this.

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

Can you just imagine the reaction from the solons at the UN over this?

Just imagine. Their cravenly feckless approach toward Iran, the years of appeasement, could simply be washed away by the civilized Western world sobering up and taking the logical approach to the nuclear proliferation of rogue Islamic nations.

The manifesto has been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April.

Such views and opinions--the desire to preserve mankind--are considered radical, and those who have such views are now afraid to even publicly express it.

"The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Read the rest.

Here are the authors:

John Shalikashvili: The US's top soldier under Bill Clinton and former Nato commander in Europe, Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw of Georgian parents and emigrated to the US at the height of Stalinism in 1952. He became the first immigrant to the US to rise to become a four-star general. He commanded Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq at the end of the first Gulf war, then became Saceur, Nato's supreme allied commander in Europe, before Clinton appointed him chairman of the joint chiefs in 1993, a position he held until his retirement in 1997.

Klaus Naumann: Viewed as one of Germany's and Nato's top military strategists in the 90s, Naumann served as his country's armed forces commander from 1991 to 1996 when he became chairman of Nato's military committee. On his watch, Germany overcame its post-WWII taboo about combat operations, with the Luftwaffe taking to the skies for the first time since 1945 in the Nato air campaign against Serbia.

Lord Inge: Field Marshal Peter Inge is one of Britain's top officers, serving as chief of the general staff in 1992-94, then chief of the defence staff in 1994-97. He also served on the Butler inquiry into Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and British intelligence.

Henk van den Breemen: An accomplished organist who has played at Westminster Abbey, Van den Breemen is the former Dutch chief of staff.

Jacques Lanxade:A French admiral and former navy chief who was also chief of the French defence staff.