WarSclerotic

U.S.: Iran reply to nuclear deal is inadequate – Haaretz – Israel News.

Iran has formally rejected key parts of a deal to send abroad for processing most of its material that could be used to make nuclear arms, diplomats said, a response the United States rejected as inadequate

Diplomats said Iran’s position, given in writing to the International Atomic Energy Agency, echoed two months of verbal calls for amendments to the deal that Western powers dismissed as non-starters but said did not amount to a final response.

Under the deal, Iran would transfer stocks of low-enriched uranium abroad and in return receive fuel for a medical research reactor. The deal aimed to minimize the risk of Iran refining the material to a grade suitable for a weapon.

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In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Iran’s response was inadequate.

“I am not sure that they have delivered a formal response but it is clearly an inadequate response,” he told reporters. “I am not sure that whatever they have done, perhaps today, is any different than what they have done previously.”

Iran’s failure to meet an effective U.S. deadline of Dec. 31 to accept the plan devised in October by then-IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has prompted six world powers to start considering possible tougher sanctions against Tehran.

“This written position is a non-event because it’s nothing new, it just makes official what the Iranians have been saying (through the media),” said a Western diplomat, who like others asked for anonymity due to political sensitivities.

Another Vienna-based diplomat said Iran had conveyed a written answer to the IAEA and the United States, France and Russia, the other parties to the draft deal, earlier this month after three months of delay.

Officials at the UN nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna had no immediate comment. Iran’s IAEA envoy could not be reached.

The fuel plan was meant to allay suspicions Tehran wants to develop atomic bombs, rather than generate electricity, from uranium enrichment by having Iran ship around 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium stockpile abroad for further refinement and conversion into fuel to keep a medical reactor running.

The United States and its Western allies have been pushing for a fourth round of UN sanctions. But with Russia, and especially China, skeptical of any new UN penalties, they have to tread carefully to maintain six power unity on how to deal with the Islamic Republic.

A meeting Saturday of senior diplomats from the six powers focused on possible new sanctions but participants said it reached no agreement.

Concerns include Iran’s refusal to heed UN Security Council demands that it freeze its enrichment program; fears that it may be hiding more nuclear facilities after its belated revelations that it was building a secret fortified enrichment plant, and its stonewalling of an IAEA probe of alleged programs geared to developing nuclear arms.

Did the long arm of Iran reach the Dead Sea Highway? | Iranian – Iran News | Jerusalem Post.

The revelations of possible Iranian involvement in the attack on Israeli diplomats earlier this month in Jordan appear to offer the latest evidence of direct engagement by Teheran in subversion and paramilitary activity across national borders.

Rescue workers search rubble of AMIA bombing.
Photo: Esteban Alterman/Bloomberg

SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region |  World

The Jordanian investigation is still in its early stages. But the suggestion by sources close to the well-respected Jordanian General Intelligence Department that the explosives used for the attack may have been brought into the kingdom by Iranian diplomats is certainly plausible. It would conform to similar incidents on which the fingerprints of Iran were later unmistakably identified. It would also fit the current pattern of Iranian support for destabilizing its regional enemies.

The Quds Force – the wing of the Revolutionary Guard which deals with activities outside of Iran – is known to maintain a presence in all Iranian delegations abroad. Representatives of this force have been identified with a number of high-profile attacks on Israeli, Jewish and US targets.

Most famously, the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires was found by Argentinean investigators to have been carried out under the direction of then-commander of the Quds Force’s Special Operations unit Ahmed Vahidi, and with the knowledge of then-Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The attack killed 85 people and wounded 151.

On October 25, 2006, Argentina’s state prosecutor issued arrest warrants for Rafsanjani, Vahidi, Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezai and a number of other officials in connection with the bombing.

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The issuing of the warrants has done little to harm the careers of those concerned. In a testimony to the growing strength of the Revolutionary Guards within the regime, Ahmed Vahidi, director of the AMIA attack, is now the Iranian Defense Minister.

The 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia offers further proof of the Iranian track record in this area. The bombing, in which 19 American servicemen were killed, was “sanctioned, funded and directed” by the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, according to then-FBI director Louis Freeh.

The discovery last year of a large Hizbullah-led and Revolutionary Guard-directed network planning acts of terror in Egypt indicates that this Iranian pattern of behavior has not changed. It is noteworthy that the latest revelations regarding the attack in Jordan suggest that the operatives on the ground were Sunni Arabs, supporters of al-Qaida type ideology. In Egypt, too, the 100-person network led by Revolutionary Guard-trained Hizbullah official Muhammad Mansour consisted of Sunni Arabs – Palestinians and Egyptian Beduin. It has even been suggested that the men in question initially believed they were working for a Palestinian organization.

The Shi’ite-Sunni divide has never prevented Iran from making use of Sunni proxies against the common enemy.

But while the latest evidence from Jordan contains few surprises, it nevertheless carries serious implications from the Jordanian point of view. Jordan is particularly vulnerable to Iranian subversion.

The small and fragile kingdom is separated from Iran only by Iraq – a particular focus of interest for the Revolutionary Guard.

According to Iranian opposition sources, the staff at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad includes at least five senior Revolutionary Guard officers. The embassy is considered to constitute an important center for coordinating intelligence and military activity against coalition forces in Iraq.

The US will, of course, soon be withdrawing from Iraq. A weak, chaotic, Shi’ite-dominated Iraq, heavily penetrated by the Revolutionary Guard, would be a nightmare scenario for Jordan. It would bring Iran, its influence, its ambitions and its methods right up to the borders of the kingdom.

The means used for last week’s attack – a roadside bomb – carried disturbing echoes of Iraq.

Against this background, King Abdullah has been among the regional leaders most vociferously seeking to warn the world of the dangers of Iran’s drive for regional hegemony.

The king has spoken of the possibility of a “terrible conflict” within Islam – between a “Shi’ite crescent” and the Sunni Arab states. He identified Iran, an Iran-influenced Iraq, Syria and Hizbullah as the core components of a future “political-strategic alliance,” which may foment a larger confrontation in the Middle East.

The signs of an Iranian hand behind the bombing last week suggest that the scenario envisaged by the king is already coming to pass.

A cold war is on in the region – pitting Islamist Iran and its allies against pro-Western states. Like other such phenomena in the past, this cold war has a number of fronts, and a number of faces.

There is an overt military aspect, visible for example in Israel’s fight against Hamas and Hizbullah, and in the recent clashes between Saudi forces and Shi’ite rebels in north Yemen.

There is a political-diplomatic and propaganda front. Iran and its allies invest vast resources and efforts in disseminating their message, and seeking to ignite regional and world public opinion against their enemies.

There is also a clandestine-warfare aspect, in which the Revolutionary Guard and its many regional clients seek to destabilize and subvert rival states and regimes. This is a side of the conflict which only occasionally and fleetingly reveals itself to the public eye.

The latest revelations suggest that the roadside bombing on January 14 on the Dead Sea Highway from Amman may well have formed an engagement on this front of the ongoing regional contest.

The writer is a senior researcher at the Global Research in International Affairs Center, IDC, Herzliya.

Iran vows to hit back if attacked by Western ship in Gulf – Haaretz – Israel News.
Iran’s defense minister warned on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic could strike back at Western warships in the Gulf if it were attacked, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

“The Westerners know well that the existence of these warships in the Persian Gulf serve as the best operational targets for Iran if they should want to undertake any military action against Iran,” Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said.

Iran’s parliament speaker said last week, a day after the assassination of a university scientist, that the country had received early warning days ago that Israeli and U.S. intelligence intended to carry out terrorist acts in Tehran.

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Washington has rejected as “absurd” an accusation that it was involved in a blast that killed nuclear physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi last Tuesday.

Israel has made no comment. Iran on Sunday vowed to avenge Israel over the murder.

Iran, which is at the center of an international row over its contentious nuclear program, declared last month that it would consider any military action against its nuclear facilities as the beginning of a war.

Speculations abound that Israel or the U.S. would carry out such an attack, but both say that while all options are still on the table, they prefer to exhaust the diplomatic route before taking military action.

Review: Iran never halted nuke work in ’03 – Washington Times.

By Bill Gertz

U.S. intelligence agencies now suspect that Iran never halted work on its nuclear arms program in 2003, as stated in a national intelligence estimate made public three years ago, U.S. officials said.

Differences among analysts now focus on whether the country’s supreme leader has given or will soon give orders for full-scale production of nuclear weapons.

The new consensus emerging among analysts in the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community on Iran’s nuclear arms program is expected to be the highlight of a classified national intelligence estimate nearing completion that will replace the estimate issued in 2007.

The unclassified summary of the 2007 document said the U.S. intelligence community had “moderate confidence” that Iran’s nuclear weapons work had halted in 2003. In a footnote, it stated that weapons development was defined as warhead design and not the enrichment of uranium, which has continued unabated contrary to the Iranian government’s agreement not to develop uranium enrichment techniques outside International Atomic Energy Agency controls.

A senior U.S. military officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity last week revealed that the new argument among analysts is over Iran’s decision to move forward with weaponization.

“There is a debate being held about whether the final decision has been made. It is fair to argue that the supreme leader has not said, ‘Build a nuclear weapon.’ That actually does not matter, because they are not at the point where they could do that anyway.”

The officer, who is knowledgeable about operational matters and intelligence on Iran, said Iran’s nuclear program is well-advanced and moving toward the point at which a weapon could be built.

“Are they acting as if they would like to be in a position to do what the supreme leader orders if he gives the thumbs up at some point down the road? The answer to that is indisputably yes,” the officer said.

Newsweek magazine first reported Saturday that the new estimate was being drafted and may be released as soon as next month.

The new estimate is under debate as the Obama administration seeks to gain international backing for more sanctions against Iran, and amid growing political opposition to the Tehran government from Iran’s “green movement” in recent months.

Iran’s government has repeatedly denied that its uranium enrichment is part of a nuclear weapons program.

The new estimate also is expected to update testimony by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, who told Congress in March that Iran “has not decided to press forward” with work to put a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.

Since his testimony, however, Iran was forced to disclose a new parallel uranium enrichment facility near Qom after U.S. and allied intelligence agencies discovered the previously undisclosed site at a military base.

In addition, an internal document from the International Atomic Energy Agency made public last fall concluded that Iran at least had the know-how needed for weaponization, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The 2007 national intelligence estimate prompted harsh criticism from U.S. allies and some members of Congress and the Bush administration, who said the document had been “politicized” to undermine any policy that would authorize a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview that “they wrote a political document in 2007 to embarrass President Bush which everyone uniformly agrees was a piece of trash.”

The congressman added, “I am glad the intelligence community is redoing it. They were wrong in 2007 when they were doing it, they were wrong by a significant degree. Why would I take the one in 2010 they are doing any more seriously, just because I like the outcome?”

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, also said the 2007 estimate was flawed. “I think the idea Iran has not restarted with moderate confidence, it is a little like debating whether the glass is half full or half empty. Moderate confidence does not mean much and many intelligence agencies, such as the ones in Britain, France and Germany, disagreed that the weaponization did not exist in 2007,” Mr. Albright said in an interview.

Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, declined to comment.