WarSclerotic

FOXNews.com – IAEA report on Iran likely to boost West’s opposition to Tehran’s fuel swap offer.

VIENNA (AP) — Iran has amassed more than two tons of enriched uranium, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday in a report that heightened Western concerns about the country developing the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.

Two tons of uranium would be enough for two nuclear warheads, although Iran says it does not want weapons and is only pursuing civilian nuclear energy.

The U.S. and the four other permanent U.N. Security Council members — Russia, China, Britain and France — have tentatively backed a draft fourth set of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium.

Separately, the International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. nuclear watchdog — said Syria continues to stonewall agency reports to follow up on U.S. assertions that a facility destroyed three years ago by Israeli warplanes was a secretly built reactor meant to produce plutonium.

“Syria has not cooperated with the agency since June 2008” on most aspects of its investigation, according to the IAEA’s Syria report. But it noted that Syria has admitted to small-scale nuclear experiments that it had previously not owned up to.

Syria denies allegations it was being helped by Iran and North Korea in developing a covert program.

But diplomats familiar with the Syria probe told The Associated Press of a visit to Syria in January by a high-ranking Iranian nuclear delegation led by Mahdi Kaniki, a deputy to Ali Akhbar Salehi, an Iranian deputy president and head of his country’s nuclear program. The two diplomats asked for anonymity because their information was confidential.

For seven months, Iran refused to accept a deal brokered by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency that foresaw Iran exporting 2,640 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium to Russia and France to be turned into fuel for Tehran’s research reactor.

The West backed that offer because it would have committed Iran to exporting most of the enriched uranium it had produced and left it with less than the 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of material needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb.

Iran rejected the offer then but now says it is ready to ship out the same amount of material and has enlisted the backing of Turkey and Brazil in trying to reach a compromise and derail the new sanctions push.

Iran insists it has no interest in nuclear weapons. But its refusal to stop enrichment — which can create both nuclear fuel and warhead material — and its stonewalling of IAEA efforts to investigate suspicions it is interested in developing such arms have increased international worry.

The restricted International Atomic Energy Agency report said that the IAEA “remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities, involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

On enrichment, the report made available to the AP shortly after release to the U.N. Security Council and the IAEA’s 35-nation board said Iran had now enriched 2,427 kilograms to just over three percent level.

That means shipping out 2,640 pounds (1,200 kilograms) now would still leave Iran with more than enough material to make a nuclear weapon. That makes the deal unattractive to the U.S and its allies

The report confirmed that Iran continues a separate program of small-scale enrichment of uranium, using 3.5 percent feedstock and enriching to near 20 percent — another hurdle for the West. Iran could produce weapons grade uranium much more quickly from the 20 percent level, making the separate program another hurdle to any fuel swap deal.

The U.S. and its allies view Tehran’s insistence on continuing higher enrichment even as it offers to accept the swap deal with suspicion since it originally said it had to enrich to 20 percent as the first step in making fuel for the Tehran research reactor.

The IAEA also said that equipment had been removed from a laboratory it was investigating, confirming a report last week to the AP from diplomats familiar with the issue.

At issue is pyroprocessing, a procedure that can be used to purify uranium metal used in nuclear warheads.

In January, Iran told the agency that it had carried out pyroprocessing experiments, prompting a request from the nuclear agency for more information — but then backtracked in March and denied conducting such activities.

IAEA experts last month revisited the site — the Jabr Ibn Jayan Multipurpose Research Laboratory in Tehran — only to establish “that the electrochemical cell had been removed” from the unit used in the experiments, said the report.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Israel-Greece Pro-Hamas flotilla Turkey

Turkish Chief of Staff Gen. Ilker Basburg

DEBKAfile‘s military sources report Israeli concerns that Turkey may not confine itself to strong diplomatic retaliation for the Israel Navy’s seizure Monday, May 31, of the Marmora, the Turkish vessel leading the flotilla for breaking the Gaza blockade and resort to military action along with the Iranian-backed Hizballah and Hamas. A statement from Ankara threatened “unprecedented and incalculable” reprisals, following which the Turkish chief of staff Gen. Ilker Basbug was recalled urgently to Ankara from a visit toEgypt. Greece has since halted its joint exercise with Israel in protest against the naval action.
DEBKAfile reports from Ankara that the Turkish government is planning to continue pounding the Israeli blockade with more flotillas and have them escorted by Turkish warships and fighter jets. Israel merchant vessels moored outside Ashdodport have been instructed to sail into port and take shelter in case of missile attacks from the Gaza Strip against Ashdod and Ashkelon.
Monday morning, Israeli warplanes headed west over the Mediterranean in support of the still ongoing Israeli commando operation aboard the Turkish Marmora, the scene of violent clashes between Israeli troops and the 600 “peace activists,” some of them armed. Ankara later reported 15 dead aboard the vessel.
Israeli army spokesman, Col. Avi Beneyahu, called the incident “an act of terror on the high seas.” Far from being a humanitarian mission, the flotilla was sponsored personally by Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza and permit arms supplies and terrorists to reach the Strip unrestricted. It aimed at provoking a widely publicized international incident with fatalities and showing Israel using strong-arm tactics against unarmed peace-lovers.

Its leaders and the nations involved therefore refused to heed warnings that the vessels would be prevented from entering Gaza Port and rejected Israeli offers to ferry their aid cargo overland to the Gaza Strip. Population within missile range of Gaza advised to take shelter in secured areas.
Nine activists were killed battling with Israeli troops, and dozens injured. Ten Israeli soldiers were wounded, two critically. They were all ferried to Israeli hospitals by helicopter.

The pro-Hamas passengers were described as mobbing the Israeli commandos as they were dropped onto the Marmara’s deck, using knives and iron bars to beat them and shooting with a sidearm snatched from a soldier and at least two other pistols recovered empty from two of the bodies.

Israeli security forces are preparing for the Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas to go back to shooting missiles and rockets against Israeli towns, in support of the seaborne attack on Israeli commandos. The police are also on special alert in and around Israeli Arab communities, after Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyah called them out on a general strike, and the Holy Places, especially in Jerusalem.

Egypt will face pressure to end its joint embargo on Gaza with Israel at the Arab League Council meeting urgently Tuesday, June 1.  Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas demanded the session.
Demonstrations against Israel were staged in Syrian and Lebanese towns. Jordan hands stiff complaint to head of Israeli diplomatic mission in Amman.

DEBKA.

Barack Obama

For ten days, the US and Israel improbably joined forces with Syria, Lebanon and South Korea for a mighty effort to conceal the mammoth figure of 800 Scud missiles held ready for Hizballah in custom-built Syrian bases a 15-20-minute drive from the Lebanese border.
This effort was exhaustive enough to magic away the only media reference; an item in the Japanese Sankei Shimbun of Sunday, May 23; vanished overnight from the paper’s Web site and the Internet.
But DEBKA-Net-Weekly managed to pin it down. Here is the quote:

North Korea has agreed to Syria’s shipment of long-range Scud missiles to the militant Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Syria is reportedly obliged to receive approval from North Korea the technology provider when handing over missiles to a third party. Citing unidentified sources, Japan says the North Korean embassy in Syria said it has “no intention to object to Syria’s transfer of Scud missiles to Hezbollah.” We speculate that the model Syria plans to provide the Lebanese militant group with is the Scud D with a range of 700 kilometers.”

The Japanese item included the disclosure that the Syrian president needed North Korean approval for transferring the Scud Ds to Hizballah. Given the structure of the ruling regime in Pyongyang, the handover would have necessitated a nod from Kim Jong-il in person.

Red faces in Washington

All the parties concerned one way or another found the Japanese disclosure embarrassing enough to kill it.
The United States, for one, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington and military report, was not prepared to own up to the failure of its every effort (going back to the Clinton and Bush administrations) to curb the massive proliferation of nuclear and missile weapons technology originating in North Korea – most damagingly to the Middle East. Worse still, for the first time, the North Korean ruler actually authorized their transfer to a militia officially listed by the UN and the US as a terrorist organization.
As long as this level of nuclear and other dangerous weapon proliferation goes on unchecked, questions must be asked about the point of the “bold and pragmatic” program President Barack Obama submitted to the Washington summit of 47 world leaders on April 13, asking for their commitment to eliminate or lock down their nuclear materials within four years.
With US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Beijing this week (May 23-25) for discussions centering Iran’s nuclear program and a bid for Chinese support for UN sanctions, Washington could not afford to let it be known that the world’s top nuclear violator Kim Jong-Il had more leverage over war and peace in the Middle East than any other Asian, or even European, leader.
There might also have been quite a few red faces if the presence of 800 Scud D missiles under Hizballah’s hand had been discovered during Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri‘s first White House visit Monday, May 24. It would have signaled the collapse of the Obama administration’s policy of wooing Assad and exposed a US intelligence fiasco, to boot.

How would Netanyahu and Barak explain how it happened?

In any case, no sooner was Hariri home to Beirut when he lined up behind Syria and Hizballah in boosting his southern units against “a war emergency,” despite his promise to the US president to try and abate rising war tensions.
Israeli leaders would also have been seriously discomfited by this discovery (see the separate item on the debate over Israel’s restraint in the missile threat), because the public would demand answers to at least three questions:
1. How did North Korea, a country far from Israeli consciousness, manage to grab a leading role in the schemes for its destruction for the second time in three years? The first time was in 2007, when Pyongyang helped construct the Syrian plutonium reactor at A-Zur which Israel destroyed before it was up.
2. How could Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak let 800 Scud missiles pile up on the Syrian-Lebanese border for no purpose other than to destroy Israel’s cities without stepping in to destroy them? That many Scuds imperils Israel’s very existence no less than the plutonium Syria would have produced had the Israeli Air Force not bombed its reactor in 2007.
3. Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah makes no secret of his plan to devastate Israel’s population centers with hundreds of missiles and rockets while at the same time fighting to capture sections of northern Israel. (See Issue no. 430 of DNW from January 22 – Iran-Hizballah Mark out Patches of Northern Israel for Capture). So is the Netanyahu government sitting on its hands and letting it happen?
Lebanon’s leaders President Michel Suleiman and the prime minister had an obvious interest in keeping the 800 Scuds hidden from sight. Their discovery would have shown them up as the stooges of Syrian president Bashar Assad and Iran’s surrogate Hizballah who are free to manipulate Lebanon according to their interests.

Assad capitalizes on the secrecy for buck-passing on the impending war

As for Bashar Assad, who built up the Scud stockpile, he is exploiting the missile controversy to pass the buck for the flare-up of hostilities he is engineering to the United States and Israel.
In an interview with the Rome newspaper La Repubblica on Monday, May 24, the Syrian ruler said the United States had lost its influence in the Middle East by failing to contribute to regional peace. In his view, US President Barack Obama had “raised hopes” in the region but failed to follow through with substantive peace moves.
Assad also boasted about a new world order which, he said, had cut the United States down in the world by refusing to wait for roles to be handed out by Washington. He was referring to the bloc formed by Turkey, Brazil, Syria and Iran and sponsored on the outside by Russia and aiming a side swipe at Obama’s White House welcome for Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, by showing that Damascus calls the shots in Lebanon – not Washington.
By keeping the 800 Scud D stock poised for handover to Hizballah dark, the United States and Israel played into Assad’s hands and let him get away with engineering the elements of an impending Middle East war while pinning them blame on them.

David Harris: Strutting from Tehran to Damascus, from Beirut to Gaza.

You can practically picture them strutting.

In Tehran, for example.

Initially shaken by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the awesome display of military prowess, Iran, with American soldiers on its border, had to wonder if it might be the next target.

Seven years later, the Iranians believe they’ve turned the tables on Washington.

Seven years of more and more centrifuges. Seven years of nuclear deception. Seven years defying UN Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions and reports. Seven years of dividing the international community. Seven years of buying time. Seven years of business as usual with much of the world. Seven years of unrestricted participation in the UN, Olympic Games, World Cup, World Economic Forum, and, this year, the Munich Security Conference. Seven years of calling for a world without Israel, interfering in Iraqi affairs, and baiting the United States. Seven years of trampling on the human rights of its own people.

And in Damascus, too.

Like Iran, Syria in 2003 had to be sweating bullets. After all, U.S.-led coalition troops were just across the border in Iraq and the possibility of active measures against Syria must have crossed the mind of President Assad and his handlers at least once or twice.

Not long ago, Syria faced isolation for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, and for allowing jihadist mercenaries to cross the border into Iraq to wage war against U.S. troops, conspiring with North Korea to build a secret nuclear plant, cozying up to Tehran, providing hospitality for Hamas, and shipping arms – its own and Iranian – to Hezbollah.

Today, by contrast, Syria can’t find enough hotel space for all the Western guests rushing to engage the Assad regime. Of course, each of those guests proclaims an earnest desire to “turn” Syria from hostile to harmonious behavior, even as business deals are being discussed. But the lack of success until now – other than the “apparent” willingness, at long last, of Damascus to acknowledge Lebanon’s sovereign independence – hasn’t put a brake on the traffic.

And in south Beirut, home of Hezbollah.

Things didn’t look so good in 2006. Hezbollah triggered a war with Israel. But when the war ended, Hezbollah was still on its feet, despite the battering it took.

Since then, UNIFIL forces notwithstanding, Hezbollah has not only rebuilt its military arsenal and then some, but has also worked its way back into the Lebanese government, with a virtual veto on decision-making. So, Hezbollah gets to be an integral part of the state, while, simultaneously, running a state-within-a-state, threatening Israel at every turn and operating its sleeper cells throughout Latin America and beyond. And it has avoided inclusion on the EU terrorism list, thanks to certain European countries that argued such a move would be counterproductive (to what?).

Add to that Lebanon’s current seat on the UN Security Council, where it deals with issues like Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict. It simply boggles the mind to think about Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s direct and indirect influence on the exercise of power.

Yet, as with Iran and Syria, there are those infinitely hopeful Westerners who believe that engaging Hezbollah can yield benefits. To date, however, the only beneficiary is Hezbollah, which acquires legitimacy from such contacts without earning it.

And, not least, in Gaza.

As I write these words, several members of the “Free Gaza Movement” have been killed on the high seas after provoking a violent confrontation with Israelis seeking to board one of the six ships. It was tragic. Families and friends are mourning their deaths. It was also entirely avoidable.

By its own admission, the flotilla was making a political, not a humanitarian, statement. Israel had offered to transport the supplies over land, but that didn’t serve the organizers’ purpose. Nor did a request to carry a message to kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by his captors in Gaza for nearly four years. Nor, it turns out, were all the passengers exactly Mother Teresa wannabes or Gandhi’s disciples.

The goal was to break the Israeli blockade and thereby enable the free shipment of anything – yes, anything, including weapons – to the terrorist enclave.

For ruthless, cynical Hamas, the more bloodshed, the better. There may be crocodile tears in public from Hamas leaders for the fatalities, but down deep it’s something else. After all, once again the situation puts Israel, not Hamas, in the hot seat.

Think about it.

Here is Hamas, an Iranian-funded, jihadist group anchored in the Muslim Brotherhood. Through its blood-curdling Charter, available for anyone to read, it calls for the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic, Shari’a-based state.

Hamas has been declared a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union. Apropos, FBI director Robert Mueller testified before Congress about its active – and dangerous – presence in the United States.

Hamas poses a clear menace to Egypt, which has closed its own border with Gaza and is now building a 10-kilometer steel wall there.

Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in June 2007, after bloody clashes then, and earlier, resulted in several hundred fatalities.

It runs summer camps for children that teach jihad, martyrdom, and martial skills, and condemns UN-run summer camps for mixing boys and girls and allegedly allowing kids, well, to be kids.

That very same Hamas, which brought isolation to Gaza by sticking to its guns, so to speak, and refusing the three conditions for engagement set by the Quartet, has now become the object of sympathy and concern, as evidenced by the flotilla and its admiring backers, including, most notably, Turkey.

And yet it is Israel, seeking to exercise its right of self-defense against a group bent on its destruction, and not the group itself, which today provokes howls of protest. This is also precisely what happened after Israel’s patience wore thin in December 2008, and it decided it could no longer accept daily missile and mortar strikes from Hamas-controlled Gaza.

A world gone wobbly at the knees – increasingly incapable, it seems, of distinguishing between the arsonist and the fireman, the despot and the democrat, the provocateur and the victim, or simply fearful of the consequences of obvious truths – once again reveals itself.

Where is the Winston Churchill for our time – the leader who, with clarity and courage, lifts the fog, shines the spotlight, defines the stakes, and summons us to our senses?