Middle East News | Iran ready for immediate nuclear talks.

Iran’s atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi says Iran is ready to start negotiations over nuclear fuel swap (File)

TEHRAN, BEIJING (Agencies)

Iran said on Friday it was ready for immediate talks with the United States, Russia and France over an exchange of nuclear fuel and added that it was also against stockpiling higher enriched uranium.

The comments by the Islamic republic’s atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi came as Washington decided to fan out across Asia, Middle East and the United Arab Emirates asking its partners to levy tighter sanctions against Tehran.

“We are ready even in the next few days to start negotiations with the other parties” over the fuel swap, Salehi was quoted as saying by Mehr news agency.

He said talks on this issue with the so-called Vienna group comprising the United States, Russia and France will be held in Vienna, where the UN atomic watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based. The Vienna group has raised questions about a proposal forwarded by Iran, Brazil and Turkey concerning a fuel swap. The May 17 proposal, known as the Tehran Declaration, stipulates that Tehran send 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey in return for 20 percent high-enriched uranium to be supplied at a later date. The 20 percent enriched uranium, when converted into fuel plates, will be used as fuel for a Tehran-based research reactor. Salehi said Iran has already responded to the questions raised by the Vienna group, but that any other “technical” queries can be answered during another meeting. The Tehran Declaration was Iran’s counter-proposal to an earlier plan drafted by the IAEA for a fuel swap deal. After that plan hit deadlock, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered Salehi to produce 20 percent enriched uranium inside the country, in defiance of world powers which want Tehran to stop the sensitive process. Enriching uranium is at the heart of controversy over Iran’s nuclear program because the material can be used to power nuclear reactors as well as to make atom bombs. Experts say that by enriching uranium to 20 percent, Iran has theoretically come closer to enriching it to the 90 percent purity required for making nuclear weapons. Tehran denies that its uranium enrichment program has any military goals. But the world powers which dismiss Tehran’s arguments have gone ahead and levied new sanctions against Iran. “We need 20 percent fuel for the Tehran research reactor at the moment,” Salehi said. “We have said before that we are producing 20 percent only for our needs. We do not want to stockpile 20 percent fuel.”

China disapproves of EU sanctions against Iran China said on Friday that it did not approve of tougher new sanctions imposed by the European Union on Iran, and welcomed Tehran’s offer to return to negotiations on a nuclear fuel swap without conditions. EU foreign ministers agreed tougher sanctions on Iran on Monday, including action to block oil and gas investment. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said that China still hoped to solve the thorny issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear ambitions through negotiations. “China does not approve of the European Union’s unilateral sanctions on Iran,” Jiang said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website. “We hope that all relevant parties can support a diplomatic solution and appropriately resolve the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations.” China also denounced the United States earlier this month for imposing its own sanctions on Iran, saying Washington should not unilaterally take such steps outside of U.N. resolutions. Jiang said in her statement that she welcomed a new Iranian offer to discuss a fuel swap for a Tehran reactor and hoped it would be helpful to efforts to solve “the Iran nuclear issue through talks and negotiations”. Iran was reported this week to have handed a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saying that it would return without conditions to talks about a nuclear fuel swap for the Tehran reactor, which makes medical isotopes. A deal struck in principle with Russia, France and the United States would have seen Iran send some of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad in exchange for specially processed fuel rods needed to keep the Tehran reactor running. Meanwhile, Israel, which won’t confirm or deny whether it has atomic weapons, sees a potentially nuclear armed Iran as a threat to its existence and has not ruled out a pre-emptive strike. Washington has also said military action is not ruled out.

Israel to lodge complaint with UN about Gaza rocket attack on Ashkelon – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Grad-type rocket explodes near apartment building in coastal city just after 8:30 A.M., causing no casualties but some damage to structure and parked cars; two mortar shells hit western Negev hours later.

By Barak Ravid and Haaretz Service

The Foreign Ministry on Friday said that Israel would lodge a protest with the United Nations for a Grad rocket attack on Ashkelon earlier in the day.

The Foreign Ministry said that attack clearly targeted civilians and was a grave violation of international law.

	Police sapper extracts a Grad rocket that struck near an apartment building in Ashkelon on July 30, 2010.
	Photo by: Ilan Asayag

A Grad-type Katyusha rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip struck close to an apartment building in a residential area of Ashkelon on Friday morning, while two mortar shells exploded in the western Negev just a few hours later.

The Katyusha rocket hit the populated neighborhood just after 8:30 A.M., causing some damage to the nearby building and to a number of parked cars. There were no casualties in the incident, but at least two people were treated for shock. Residents said that the Color Red rocket alert sounded prior to the explosion.

At around 12:30 P.M., two mortar shells hit the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council.

The Israeli military believes that Hamas was not responsible for the Grad attack and that the Islamist organization which controls the Gaza Strip is not interested in escalating tensions in the area, Army Radio reported.

The attack on Ashkelon was one of the first to strike the southern city after months of quiet since Israel launched a three week military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in late 2008, called Operation Cast Lead in Israel.

“No doubt this is the most serious event that happened since Operation Cast Lead,” Ashkelon mayor Benny Vaknin told Israel Radio. The city is located about 12 km (7 miles) up the coast from the Gaza Strip and has some 125,000 residents.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement from his office: “Israel takes the firing on Ashkelon very seriously.”

While rocket fire has continued since the devastating war, much of it has targeted smaller towns closer to the border. Four Qassam rockets and two mortar shells were fired at Israel last weekend, none of them causing any casualties as they hit open areas of the western Negev.

Israel often carries out strikes against smuggling tunnels or outposts of Hamas after such attacks.

No group in Gaza claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. Hamas has said it is trying to stop militants from firing at Israel, but smaller groups have continued the attacks.

Something’s Up With Iran – Swampland – TIME.com.

Charles Krauthammer – Iran starts feeling heat.

Friday, July 30, 2010

“They [the United States and Israel] have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months.”

— Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, July 26

President Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony, as when last weekend he denounced Paul the Octopus, omniscient predictor of eight consecutive World Cup matches, as a symbol of decadence and purveyor of “Western propaganda and superstition.”

But for all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless calculating and dangerous. What “two countries” was he talking about? They seem logically to be Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon has armed itself with 50,000 rockets and made clear that it is in a position to start a war at any time. Fighting on this scale would immediately bring in Syria, which would in turn invite Iranian intervention in defense of its major Arab clients — and of the first Persian beachhead on the Mediterranean in 1,400 years.

The idea that Israel, let alone the United States, has the slightest interest in starting a war on Israel’s north is crazy. But claims about imminent attacks are serious business in that region. In May 1967, the Soviet Union falsely told its client, Egypt, that Israel was preparing to attack Syria. These rumors set off a train of events — the mobilization of Arab armies, the southern blockade of Israel, the hasty signing of an inter-Arab military pact — that led to the Six-Day War.

Ahmadinejad’s claim is not supported by a shred of evidence. So what is he up to?

It is a sign that he is under serious pressure. Passage of weak U.N. sanctions was followed by unilateral sanctions by the United States, Canada, Australia and the European Union. Already, reports Reuters, Iran is experiencing a sharp drop in gasoline imports as Lloyd’s of London and other players refuse to insure the ships delivering them.

Second, the Arab states are no longer just whispering their desire for the United States to militarily take out Iranian nuclear facilities. The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Washington said so openly at a conference three weeks ago.

Shortly before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Pat Buchanan famously said that the “only two groups” that wanted the United States to forcibly liberate Kuwait were “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.” That was a stupid charge, contradicted by the fact that George H.W. Bush went to war leading more than 30 nations, including the largest U.S.-led coalition of Arab states ever assembled.

Twenty years later, the libel returns in the form of the scurrilous suggestion that the only ones who want the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities are Israel and its American supporters. The UAE ambassador is, as far as ascertainable, neither Israeli nor American nor Jewish. His publicly expressed desire for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities speaks for the intense Arab fear, approaching panic, of Iran’s nuclear program and the urgent hope that the United States will take it out.

Third, and perhaps even more troubling from Tehran’s point of view, are developments in the United States. Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden suggested on Sunday that over time, in his view, a military strike is looking increasingly favorable compared to the alternatives. Hayden is no Obama insider, but Time reports (“An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table,” July 15) that high administration officials are once again considering the military option. This may reflect a new sense of urgency or merely be a bluff to make Tehran more pliable. But in either case, it suggests that after 18 months of failed engagement, the administration is hardening its line.

The hardening is already having its effect. The Iranian regime is beginning to realize that even President Obama’s patience is limited — and that Iran may actually face a reckoning for its nuclear defiance.

All this pressure would be enough to rattle a regime already unsteady and shorn of domestic legitimacy. Hence Ahmadinejad’s otherwise inscrutable warning about an Israeli attack on two countries. (Said Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Fox News: “Who is the second one?”) It is a pointed reminder to the world of Iran’s capacity to trigger, through Hezbollah and Syria, a regional conflagration.

This is the kind of brinkmanship you get when leaders of a rogue regime are under growing pressure. The only hope to get them to reverse course is to relentlessly increase their feeling that, if they don’t, the Arab states, Israel, the Europeans and America will, one way or another, ensure that ruin is visited upon them.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Iran nuclear Israeli helicopter crash

Israeli Air Force helicopter in Romanian search area

The six airmen who died in a Sikorsky “Yasour” CH-53 helicopter crash over the Romanian Carpathian Mountains Monday, July 26, were flown home Friday, July 30, for burial with full military honors.

debkafile‘s military sources report: The Israeli Air Force had been drilling high-risk attacks on precipitous cliff caves similar to the mountain tunnels in which Iran has hidden nuclear facilities. The crash occurred in the last stage of a joint Israeli-US-Romanian exercise for simulating an attack on Iran. Aboard the helicopter were six Israeli airmen and a Romanian flight captain.
Thwarted by Moscow’s refusal to sell them S-300 interceptor missiles, Iran has given up on adequate air and missile defense shields for its nuclear sites and in the last couple of years has been blasting deep tunnels beneath mountain peaks more than 2,000 meters high for housing nuclear facilities. There, they were thought by Tehran to be safe from air or missile attack.
The American and Israeli air forces have since been developing tactics for evading Iranian radar and flying at extremely low-altitudes through narrow mountain passes so as to reach the tunnel entrances for attacks on the nuclear equipment undetected. The drill in Romania took place at roughly the same altitude and in similar terrain that a US or Israeli air attack would expect to encounter in Iran.
For such strikes, special missiles would be used that are capable of flying the length of a tunnel, however twisty, and detonating only when its warhead identifies and contacts its target.
The entire maneuver is extremely hazardous. The pilots must be exceptionally skilled, capable of split-second timing in rising from low-altitudes to points opposite the high tunnel entrances without crashing into the surrounding mountain walls.
The Israeli helicopter is reported to have flown into a cloud patch hanging over its simulated target and crashed into a steep mountainside, while the second helicopter flying in the formation avoided the cloud and continued without incident.  Israeli and American Air Force pilots are instructed, when encountering cloud cover of the target, to go around it. At all times, they must have eye contact with their target.

The accident revealed to military observers that the Israeli Air Force is practicing long-distance flights not only by bombers, but also heavy helicopters, such as the “Yasour” CH-53, which would require in-flight refueling. These practice flights have been taking place in cooperation with Greece and Bulgaria as well as Romania, whose distance from Israel of 1,600 kilometers approximates that of Iran. American air bases in Romania and Bulgaria participate in the drills. The latest exercise with Romania, known as Blue Sky 2010, followed up on the five-day US-Israeli Juniper Stallion 2010 war game held off the coast of southern Israel from June 6-10.

In that exercise,  60 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet bomber jets took off from the decks of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group several times around the clock to strike at simulated targets at Nevatim, the main Israeli Air Force firing range in the Negev.
Squadrons of American F-16 fighter jets taking off from bases in Germany and Romania landed at Israeli air bases, refueled and took off with Israeli air force bomber squadrons for simulated long-range bombing missions over the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Along the way, they practiced air-to-air combat encounters.

The US Air Force has established its Romanian facility at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu Air Base on the Black Sea shore near the city of Constanta. And in Bulgaria, the Americans have the use of Bezmer Air Base, 50 kilometers from the southern sector of the Black Sea. debkafile‘s military sources say the two facilities are placed for swift US Air Force responses in the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East.

This week’s Stakelbeck on terror.

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Legislation Introduced to Support Israel Against Threat from Iran (Includes interview).

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Washington – Representatives in the U.S. House have sponsored legislation aimed at confronting the potentially mounting nuclear threat from Iran.

Known officially as H.Res. 1553, the legislation, sponsored and introduced by Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), expresses support, “for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.” The bill has garnered 46 co-sponsors to date. When asked about his hopes for the resolution, Congressman Gohmert responded, “Those of us who have sponsored H.Res. 1553 are hoping that enough cosponsors will sign on to put pressure on the Speaker to bring it to the floor for a vote. The sanctions have not stopped and will not stop the centrifuges. Russia is still going to supply Iran with the most advanced anti-aircraft weaponry. Other nations continue to make agreements with Iran. Iran sees the U.S. as a paper tiger and it is time to correct this impression before they do something irrevocable and reprehensible.” Gohmert is a member of the newly-formed Tea Party caucus in the House as are several other co-sponsors of H.Res. 1553. Gohmert addressed suggestions that this bill is the Tea Party’s foray into foreign policy, saying, “The resolution has nothing to do with the Tea Party caucus, but does have everything to do with national and international security and stability. Members of the Tea Party caucus can and do speak for themselves, but most if not all members have strong beliefs that we should not turn on our backs on our best friends and reward those bent on our destruction. This resolution was borne out of concern for the threat, not merely to Israel, but also to the United States. News sources say that Iran may have enough material at this very moment for two nuclear weapons. How many nukes would it take to be an existential threat to the U.S.?” Another of the bill’s co-sponsors, Congressman John Culberson (R-TX) added, “Israel is a democratic nation and our closest ally, and it faces a perpetual security threat from its hostile neighbors. I believe that Israel has the sovereign right to confront any nuclear threats posed by Iran if peaceful solutions fail.” The resolution has critics on both the political right and left. In a post on Huffington Post, Jamal Abdi, Policy Director of the National Iranian American Council, reasserted the organization’s concerns over the measure and urged others sharing their concerns to call on House Republican Leader John Boehner to denounce the resolution. Abdi also cited a report from an Oxford Research Group warning that an Israeli attack would be disastrous, unlikely to stop Iran’s nuclear program and might instead serve as a catalyst for an even more aggressive pursuit to develop nuclear weapons on the part of Iran. From the right, the bill faces detractors who charge that the bill will not achieve any change in Iran policy but will drain the U.S. of additional monies and soldiers should it lead to another war in the region. H. Res. 1553 has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Bashar Assad

When Saudi King Abdullah visited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Wednesday, July 28, at the start of his grand tour for the promotion of Arab unity, he found his host as adamant as ever about boycotting Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Five months ago, when Assad wanted to come to Cairo to wish Mubarak a speedy recovery from the cancer surgery he has just undergone in Germany, he was told by the Egyptian presidential palace that his presence was not wanted, an expression of the Egyptian president’s deep revulsion and contempt for Assad’s close ties with Tehran.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Middle East sources confirm that, no matter how many times Mubarak snubbed the Syrian president, King Abdullah was adamant about going through with his plan to visit Damascus Thursday, July 29 and have Assad accompany him to Beirut the next day, along with Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa al-Thani.
There, they have arranged to meet Lebanese President Michel Suleiman.
The ambitious Saudi octogenarian has embarked on two tough ventures backed by the Obama administration: to end the war in Afghanistan (see the preceding item in this issue) and promote amity among Arab rulers.
Both were approved when the king and President Barak Obama met at the White House on June 29 for the overriding objective of dislodging Iranian footholds from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon by the following steps:
Lebanon’s Saad Hariri accepts Syrian domination after Saudi arm-twisting
1. The Obama administration will secretly accept the restoration of Syria’s political and economic influence in Lebanon and go so far as to actively promote it.

2. To lay the foundation for this step, Abdullah had to persuade Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri to go to Damascus on July 18 and come to terms with Assad on ground rules for renewed Syrian involvement in Lebanon.
The official photos of that encounter portray two leaders in friendly discourse but, according to our intelligence sources, it was tough going and might have failed were it not for the unpublicized presence of King Abdullah’s younger son Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, 46, who was standing by to save the day.
Recently appointed as the king’s special envoy on complicated and delicate intra-Arab issues, Prince Abdullah made sure that Assad and Hariri were clear on their commitments and assured them of a Saudi guarantee to underwrite their accords.

A day of exhausting wrangling ended with the Syrian and Lebanese leaders signing 17 cooperation pacts covering security and economic issues.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources report that the content of these documents makes Assad the real sovereign of his little neighbor Lebanon – not president Suleiman or the prime minister.
To rule the roost in Beirut and Baghdad, Assad must cool his ties with Tehran
3. In Damascus, King Abdullah confronted Assad with the following challenges:
– He is required to pay for US-Saudi support for his restored domination of Lebanon with steps of his own – as Prince Abdullah reported to the king and the CIA’s No. 2 Michael J. Morell when they in at the king’s summer palace in Casablanca Monday, July 26, in Casablanca?
(Other aspects of the Casablanca meeting are described in the preceding item.)
– The Syrian ruler is obligated to gradually reduce his ties with the Lebanese Hizballah extremists. This entails a freeze on the massive supplies of Syrian weaponry to Hizballah and the phasing out of Syria as corridor for Iranian arms to reach the Lebanese Shiite militia.
Whereas Assad has consistently backed Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah and championed his political ambitions in Beirut, from now on, the Syrian ruler is committed by the 17 cooperation accords he signed with Hariri to side with the Lebanese prime minister against Hizballah.
– Assad is also required to cooperate with Saudi Arabia in establishing a coalition government in Baghdad consisting of Iyad Allawi‘s secular Shiite Al Iraqiya movement and supporters of the Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who has gone to live in the religious city of Qom.
Just as Mubarak despises Assad, the Saudi king looks down at the incumbent Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom he calls “an Iranian agent,” and is willing to do whatever it takes to remove him from Baghdad once and for all.
Saudis oil the wheels with the usual – petrodollars
To oil the wheels of his plan, King Abdullah’s agents are spending lavishly to persuade lawmakers who are members of Maliki’s State of Law Party to change their loyalties.
Assad, for his part, organized a three-way meeting with Allawi and al-Sadr in Damascus Monday, July 19, the day after Hariri’s visit, and struck deals with them for consolidating Syrian influence in Baghdad as well.
The Obama administration and the Saudi royal house have therefore set in motion steps for making the Syrian president the most powerful force in two Arab capitals, Beirut and Baghdad – provided he keeps up his end of the bargain and begins to distance himself from Iran and Hizballah.
As seen from the White House, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources in Washington report, the Saudi steps in Afghanistan and the Arab world are modular in the sense that if one initiative falls apart, the other should stay afloat.
But to succeed, the entire new package requires that Taliban, Assad and the Hizballah see their roles from the same viewpoint as the Americans, the Saudis and the Pakistanis.
If they don’t, the Obama administration is in for more of the disappointments and setbacks it has sustained in both arenas in the last eighteen months.