WarSclerotic

‘NATO seizes Iranian arms smuggling en route to Taliban’.

NATO forces intercepted the most powerful Iranian-made rockets ever smuggled to the Taliban in Afganistian, The Associated Press sited an international intelligence official as saying Wednesday. The rockets were to be used for the Taliban’s spring campaign.

NATO troops captured a three-truck convoy carrying 50 122 millimeter rockets in Southern Nirmuz, near the Iranian and Pakistani borders, the official said.

The Associate Press reported rockets are capable of being fired up to 13 miles away from the target, and have an 80 foot explosion, a figure double that of what was previous provided to the Taliban from Iran since 2006, the official said.

In December 2010, Shin Bet reported that Iran had smuggled into the Gaza Strip about 1,000 mortar shells, hundreds of shortrange rockets and a few dozen advanced anti-tank missiles throughout the year.

Iran has continued to be Hamas’s chief arms provider, smuggling through Sudan and Sinai.

Yaakov Katz contributed to this report.

Ebadi: Arab-style revolt certain to erupt soon in Iran.

GENEVA, March 9 (Reuters) – Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said on Wednesday an Arab-style popular revolt would come soon to her country, driven by poverty and the fierce oppression of critics by its Islamic rulers.

But Ebadi, a defense lawyer for Iranian dissidents who has lived outside Iran since 2009 but has close family still there, said human rights campaigners wanted the transition to happen peacefully and avoid a Libyan-style bloodbath.

“With the slightest breeze, there could be a conflagration,” she told a news conference on the fringes of a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council, at which Western countries want an investigation into Iran to be set up.

“As to what will spark that fire and when, it is difficult to predict. But I can say with certainty that it won’t be long in coming,” she said.

Reports from Iran — OPEC’s second biggest oil producer after Saudi Arabia — say the authorities have acted firmly to head off any repetition of the popular protests that have swept presidents from power in Tunisia and Egypt and pushed Libya close to outright civil war.

Security forces fired teargas in Tehran on Tuesday night to disperse anti-government protesters, and the two major reformist opposition leaders — Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi — have disappeared, according to their families.

The government denies they have been moved from their homes, but Ebadi — who maintains close contact with rights activists inside the country — said they and their wives had been deprived of all outside contact.

The lawyer, who has been traveling around the world to urge foreign governments to freeze assets of Iranian leaders and bar them from entry, said the economic situation in her country was dire. “People are getting poorer every day,” she added.

WANTS TO AVOID BLOODBATH

She pointed to the protest movement in Tunisia, which began in January when a street merchant set himself on fire and snowballed into a revolt that sent shock waves across the Arab world.

“That is the sort of scenario that could be repeated in Iran,” declared Ebadi, who was on a lecture tour in Europe when the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 led to widespread unrest across the country.

She said she was told by others in the human rights movement, many of whose leaders were arrested after the disturbances and jailed for long terms, to stay outside the country and promote the movement’s cause at the United Nations.

“We are trying to ensure that whatever happens in Iran, it is without bloodshed. We don’t want Iran to turn into another Libya. We don’t want street fighting and civil war. We are doing our utmost to ensure that whatever happens is peaceful.”

Ebadi, whose husband and sister have both been detained in Tehran and then freed after being barred from leaving the country, said she had been threatened with reprisals by the Iranian government if she did not stop her activities.

“But I am not going to stop,” she added.

She said she was disappointed with European governments — including those of Germany and Austria — that maintained strong trade ties with Iran and were suggesting sanctions might be eased if Tehran made concessions over its nuclear program.

“Does that mean you forget about human rights if you get a nuclear agreement?” she asked. “My message to European governments is: do not help dictators.”

U.S. official: Iran moving to brink of nuclear weapons capability – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

World powers tell Islamic Republic that the ‘door remain open’ for dialogue, urges Iran to cooperate with UN nuclear watchdog.

By News Agencies

ran is moving to a point where it will have the ability to produce nuclear weapons, the U.S. State Department’s senior adviser for non-proliferation and arms control said on Wednesday.

“We believe Iran is moving to the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability,” Robert Einhorn said in response to a question at a Washington think-tank event.

	A worker in the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran.
	Photo by: AP

Still, Einhorn said, the United States does not  “see breakout as imminent at this stage.”

Earlier Wednesday, world powers told Iran on Wednesday that “the door remains open” for dialogue on its disputed nuclear program, urging the Islamic Republic to cooperate with the United Nations atomic watchdog to resolve concerns it may have military aims.

The six powers issued a rare joint statement at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a bid to show unity and to step up pressure on Iran after their talks with the Islamic state in December and January failed to make progress.

It was issued after IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano on Monday, the first day of a meeting of the agency’s board, said information his office recently received added to concerns about possible military aspects to Iran’s atomic activities.

Amano voiced growing frustration at what the Vienna-based body sees as Iran’s failure to address allegations it may be working to develop a nuclear-armed missile.

The statement from the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and China said: “We call on Iran to cooperate fully with the Agency … Outstanding issues need to be resolved in order to exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

It was the first joint statement by the big powers at the IAEA since March 2009.

Iran denies Western accusations it is seeking nuclear weapons capability, saying its atomic activities are aimed at generating electricity so it can export more of its oil and gas.

For several years, the IAEA has been investigating Western intelligence reports indicating Iran has coordinated efforts to process uranium, test explosives at high altitude and revamp a ballistic missile cone so that it can take a nuclear warhead.

Iran, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, says the allegations are based on forged documents.

The powers’ statement said two rounds of talks with Iran in Geneva in December and in Istanbul in January did not reach any substantive result, despite their “constructive spirit” and practical ideas aimed at building confidence.

“We expect Iran to demonstrate a pragmatic attitude and to respond positively to our proposals and to our openness toward dialogue and negotiations,” the statement, read out by Russian Ambassador Grigory Berdennikov at the closed-door meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation governing board, said.

“The door remains open,” the statement said.

The U.S. envoy to the IAEA, Ambassador Glyn Davies, made a separate statement to the board, about the “increasingly apparent military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, including efforts by Iran to develop a nuclear warhead”.

He urged Amano to report “promptly to the board his best assessment of whether there have been military dimensions to nuclear activities in Iran and, if so, whether he is in a position to verify they have stopped”.

The UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Tehran since 2006 for refusing to freeze its uranium enrichment program, which can have both civilian and military purposes.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 9, 2011, 5:30 PM (GMT+02:00)

First diplomatic approach to Muammar Qaddafi

Following Muammar Qaddafi’s military successes Tuesday, Western-backed parties Wednesday, March 9 discreetly solicited him on the Libyan rebels’ behalf for diplomatic understandings to stop his forces short of marching further rebel-held Cyrenaica in the east, debkafile‘s exclusive sources report.
The contacts are led by head of the ruling Egyptian military council, Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and a group of diplomats based in Vienna. Under the deal they have offered Qaddafi in return for saving Cyrenaica and Benghazi, the rebels would lay down arms in western and eastern Libya, discontinue protest demonstrations and allow the oil facilities in their terrain go back to normal operations. The agreement would be monitored by Egyptian military observers.

Qaddafi’s pre-condition for diplomacy was a prior NATO pledge that its members would refrain from military intervention in the Libyan conflict.  NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen accordingly went on British TV Wednesday afternoon to state that NATO would not intervene in Libya because it had no UN authorization to do so.
Shortly before the broadcast, three Libyan executive jets were sighted flying towards Cairo, Athens and Vienna. debkafile reports that the first carried the Libyan logistic supplies authority’s chief Maj. Gen. Abdel Rahman Ben Ali al-Sayyid al-Zawy. He handed Tantawi a message from Qaddafi. Officials in Cairo declined to divulge the contents of the message or of the conversation between the Libyan envoy and the Egyptian field marshal.

The identities of the passengers aboard the other two flights are unknown.

According to debkafile‘s exclusive sources, the subject under urgent discussion in all three capitals is the means of persuading the Libyan ruler to accept the rebels’ offer of an unofficial  ceasefire and undertake a commitment to stop his forces advancing any further on the rebel strongholds in Cyrenaica, including Libya’s second largest town, Benghazi.
The Libyan ruler is being offered Egyptian and Greek guarantees that the rebels will order their followers to desist from attacks and protests against Qaddafi and let all of Libya’s oil facilities return to normal operation.
Our sources add that if the Libyan ruler accepts this deal, the relevant parties in Vienna will consider lifting some of the restrictions on Libyan commerce with Austrian banks and the release of some of his frozen assets in those institutions.
The exchanges in Cairo centered on assigning Egyptian military observers to keeping the combatants apart and monitoring their compliance with the informal ceasefire.

The general lines of this deal arose from the latest Western military intelligence update of the state of play on the Libyan battlefield, whereby Qaddafi lacks the combat manpower to wrest Benghazi from rebel hands but is capable of laying its million inhabitants to siege and keeping them under an unrelenting pounding from the air. The US and other NATO nations would be forced to run emergency air and sea lifts of humanitarian aid to Benghazi, a step which no one, including Qaddafi, wants to see.
For now, the informal negotiations are at an early stage. The Libyan ruler has come up with a list of far-reaching demands. They include international recognition of his regime as the only legitimate rulers of Libya and the lifting of the arms embargo and UN Security Council sanctions against him. He may tone down some of his conditions as the talks get fully underway.

The Associated Press: US envoy backs UN view on Iran nuke arms program.

VIENNA (AP) — A senior U.S. envoy on Wednesday backed United Nations assessments that Iran may be continuing secret work on developing nuclear weapons, indirectly contradicting American intelligence estimates in the public domain that such activities stopped eight years ago.

The comments by envoy Glyn Davies played off recent remarks by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, whose attempts to follow up on allegations that Iran had conducted such clandestine experiments have been rebuffed by Tehran.

In a confidential report late last month, Amano expressed concern about the possible existence of “current undisclosed nuclear related activities … related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile” and other work directly linked to a weapons program.

The comments were significant because they differed from what has been publicly said by American intelligence agencies. The latest information in the public domain is a summary of a National Intelligence Agency Estimate from 2007 that says Tehran apparently abandoned attempts to develop nuclear weapons in 2003.

U.S. officials said last month that a newly drawn up National Intelligence Estimate concludes Iran’s leaders are split over whether to use their nuclear program to develop atomic weapons. But they did not specify whether the new document revised the 2007 conclusion that Iran had stopped direct work on its arms program.

Davies would not be drawn into comparing the two assessments, saying he could not discuss intelligence issues. But he said Washington stands “fully behind the Director General’s assessments,” adding: “The D.G. is on to something.”

He spoke to reporters outside a 35-nation IAEA board meeting focusing on suspicions that both Iran and Syria are hiding past or present nuclear activities that could be used in a weapons program.

Iran is under four sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions, primarily for defying council demands to stop uranium enrichment but also because of a record of nuclear secrecy and its stonewalling of an IAEA probe on whether it has worked on a nuclear arms program.

Syria, too, is resisting an IAEA probe, denying agency requests to revisit a site hit in 2007 by Israeli warplanes. The U.S. later said the building destroyed by Israel was a nearly ready reactor that would have been able to produce plutonium once finished.

Both plutonium and enriched uranium can be used to arm nuclear warheads. While Iran says it is enriching only to make fuel for an envisaged reactor network, its defiance of the Security Council and nuclear secrecy have led to fears it might be expanding the technology for its weapons potential.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief IAEA envoy, on Wednesday repeated Tehran’s determination to continue enriching, telling reporters: “Neither the sanctions nor resolutions nor the threat of attack, nothing could stop this (peaceful) enrichment.

In separate comments to the board, he accused the U.S. and its the European Union of unfoundedly “questioning the exclusive peaceful nature of our nuclear activities without presenting any authenticated evidence.”

Davies, the U.S. chief delegate, in turn warned of “increasingly apparently military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, including efforts by Iran to develop a nuclear warhead.”

“Iran continues to act very much like a state with something to hide,” he told the board.

Comments on behalf of the five U.N. Security Council members and Germany by chief Russian delegate Grigory Berdennikov were much more low-key. Iran’s compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions is “mandatory,” he said, alluding to Council demands that Iran stop enrichment.

But the fact that they were delivered by Russia, which along with China is generally reluctant to directly criticize Iran, were significant. With the last six-power statement at the IAEA dating back to 2007, China’s and Russia’s agreement to join in new joint criticism, however oblique, was also noteworthy in reflecting Moscow’s and Beijing’s impatience with Tehran.

Six powers tell Iran “door open” for atom talks.

VIENNA – World powers urged Iran on Wednesday to cooperate fully with the UN atomic agency to help resolve concerns about possible military aspects of the Islamic state’s disputed nuclear program.

In a joint statement issued at a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the six powers made clear they remained ready for talks with Iran to find a diplomatic solution to the row over its nuclear work.

“The door remains open,” the statement said.

The statement was an apparent bid to underline unity between the six powers — the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Britain and China — on the issue after their talks with Iran in December and January failed to make any progress.

It was issued two days after IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, on the first day of the board meeting, said information the agency recently received added to concerns about possible military aspects to Iran’s atomic activities.

Amano voiced growing frustration at what the Vienna-based body sees as Iran’s failure to address allegations it may be working to develop a nuclear-armed missile.

The statement by the six powers said: “Outstanding issues need to be resolved in order to exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

Iran denies Western accusations it is seeking nuclear weapons capability, saying its atomic activities are aimed at generating electricity so it can export more of its oil and gas.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 8, 2011, 9:51 PM (GMT+02:00)

Libyan oil town of Ras Lanuf

Tuesday, March 8, Col. Muammar Qaddafi reached the tipping point of his offensive against rebel forces and his troops are advancing toward Ajdabiya, their first destination in the rebel-held eastern region of Cyrenaica, debkafile‘s military sources report. Seriously outgunned, the anti-Qaddafi militias appeared to have folded and are no longer able to post a defense line to stop the government advance.

It took Qaddafi three weeks of savage warfare to reverse the tide against him. More and more rebel voices were heard Tuesday appealing desperately for international or Arab aid to rescue them from the oncoming Qaddafi war machine.

For now, no help is seen to be on the way.

President Barack Obama has not yet reached a decision about US military intervention in Libya and British Prime Minister David Cameron has backed away from his high rhetoric about a British military role in the war against Qaddafi and is now saying the British will go in only if the Americans do.

Not a single Arab ruler or government is willing to dip a toe into the Libyan cauldron. In the last few hours, Egypt’s military rulers have notified Washington that they have no intention of helping the Libyan opposition, even by sending arms.

Qaddafi’s commanders turned the tide of battle in their favor by the following tactic: At the start of the week, they concentrated around the key town of Sirte (Sidra) two armored battalions of T-72 tanks, three battalions of special forces, beefed up by an extra 3,000 tribal fighters flown in from the Sahara, and a fleet of dozens of helicopter gunships.
Our sources report that Qaddafi paid out many millions of petrodollars to the heads of the Saharan tribal federation to hire fighting manpower form the various tribes.

This force was split in two: One column advanced south along the Sidra Gulf coast towards the refinery town of Ras Lanuf and the second struck southeast toward the big oil town of Brega and Ajdabia. Both rolled forward behind a wall of fire of BM-21 Katyusha rockets and helicopters firing missiles and heavy machine guns as T-72 tanks mowed down everything in their path.
Against the only rebel position west of Tripoli in the town of Zawiya, dozens of tanks crushed building after building before pulling out and then returning.

At the same time, the reports of Libyan air force bombardments of rebels have been exaggerated. Our military sources report that the fighter jets were used to sow panic in rebel ranks.

The ferocity of the pro-Qaddafi onslaught in the east and the west caught the Libyan opposition forces without the weapons to fight it off. By Tuesday night, they had paid the price with scores of dead and hundreds of injured.