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Syrian security forces kill 12 in biggest … JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – Syrian security forces shot dead at least 12 protesters on Friday as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country in the biggest protests so far against President Bashar Assad.

Assad, facing the greatest challenge to 40 years of Baath Party rule, has sought to crush demonstrations. But although rights groups say some 1,400 civilians have been killed since March, the protests have continued unabated and swelled in size.

“These are the biggest demonstrations so far. It is a clear challenge to the authorities, especially when we see all these numbers coming out from Damascus for the first time,” said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Police fired live ammunition and teargas in the capital Damascus, killing five people, and in southern Syria near the Jordanian border, where four people were killed, witnesses sand activists said. Three protesters were shot dead in the northern city of Idlibm, they said.

“We are in Midan and they are firing teargas on us, people are chanting,” a witness said by telephone from the centre of Damascus.

In the city of Hama, scene of a 1982 massacre by the military, live video footage by residents showed a huge crowd in the main Orontos Square shouting “the people want the overthrow of the regime”.

At least 350,000 people demonstrated in the eastern province of Deir al Zor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Syrian forces shot dead two pro-democracy protesters there on Thursday, residents said.

Despite being the center of Syria’s modest oil production, Deir is among the poorest regions in the country of 20 million. The desert area has suffered water shortages for six years which experts say have been caused largely by mismanagement and corruption, and have decimated agricultural production.

As well as police and the army, Assad has also deployed irregular militia known as shabbiha from his Alawite minority sect, a branch of Shi’ite Islam. Sunni Muslims are the biggest group in Syria.

International powers, including Turkey, have cautioned Assad against a repeat of massacres from the era of his father, the late President Hafez Assad, who crushed leftist and Islamist challenges to his rule. This culminated in the killing of up to 30,000 people in Hama in 1982.

The US and French ambassadors visited Hama in a show of support last Friday. Three days later their embassies were attacked by Assad loyalists. No one was killed in the attacks, which were condemned by the United Nations Security Council.

Iran developing centrifuge to sp… JPost – Iranian Threat – News. 

Photo by: REUTERS

  VIENNA – Iran is stepping up centrifuge development work aimed at making its nuclear enrichment more efficient, diplomats say, signaling a possible advance in the Islamic Republic’s disputed atomic program.

Two newer and more advanced models of the breakdown-prone machine that Iran now operates to refine uranium are being installed for large-scale testing at a research site near the central town of Natanz, the diplomats told Reuters this week.

If Iran eventually succeeds in introducing the more modern centrifuges for production, it could significantly shorten the time needed to stockpile material that can have civilian as well as military purposes, if processed much further.

But it is unclear whether Tehran, subject to increasingly strict international sanctions, has the means and components to make the more sophisticated machines in bigger numbers.

Iran denies Western accusations it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and says it is refining uranium for electricity generation and medical applications.

Tehran’s refusal to halt enrichment has drawn four rounds of UN sanctions, as well as increasingly tough US and European punitive measures on the major oil producer.

Iran has for years been trying to develop centrifuges with several times the capacity of the 1970s-vintage, IR-1 version it now uses for the most sensitive part of its atomic activities.

Marking a potential step forward for those plans, diplomats said work was under way to set up two units of 164 new machines each. Until now, only smaller chains or individual centrifuges of the IR-4 and IR-2m models have been tested at the R&D site.

“They are moving forward here,” said one senior diplomat, from a member state of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “This is slow and steady but notable progress they are making.”

Other diplomats confirmed that installment was taking place, but was not yet finished. There was no comment from Iran’s mission to the IAEA, the Vienna-based UN atomic watchdog.

Testing of a complete 164-centrifuge cascade has been due for a long time and it would be an “important step,” said Olli Heinonen, a former head of IAEA inspections worldwide.

UNSC gets ‘devastating briefing’ about S… JPost – International.

  UNITED NATIONS – The UN nuclear watchdog brought allegations of covert atomic work by Syria before the Security Council on Thursday, but the 15-nation body took no immediate action amid divisions among key powers.

The International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors voted in June to report Syria to the council, rebuking it for stonewalling an agency probe into the Dair Alzour complex, bombed by Israel in 2007.

Western countries said Thursday’s closed-door briefing by Neville Whiting, head of the IAEA safeguards department dealing with Syria and Iran, had made clear that Syria had a secret nuclear plant. They said the council should pursue the issue, but suggested it might not discuss it again before September.

Russia and China, allies of Damascus who can veto any council action, queried whether the council should be involved, as the Syrian complex no longer exists.

US intelligence reports have said the complex was a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry, before Israeli warplanes reduced it to rubble. Syria has said it was a non-nuclear military facility.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters Whiting had given a “devastating briefing … from which you could only draw one conclusion — that Syria did have at Dair Alzour a clandestine nuclear plant.”

Damascus had “tried to conceal the purpose of that plant … misled the IAEA about what the purpose was and … failed to cooperate effectively with the IAEA in following up the questions that the IAEA put to them,” he said.

IAEA to produce new report in September

Both Lyall Grant and German Ambassador Peter Wittig noted that the IAEA was due to produce a new report on Syria for its board of governors in September. “And then we take it from there,” Wittig said.

But Chinese envoy Wang Min said Beijing was “not very happy” about the council’s involvement. “We should not talk about something that does not exist. There are a lot of things that happened in the past — should we discuss all of them?” he asked.

Russian envoy Alexander Pankin, asked what he had learned from Thursday’s briefing, said “not much.”

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said the meeting “didn’t come to any conclusion because the Security Council considers only matters related to threats to peace and security, not to prefabricated, unfounded accusations against a member state of the United Nations.”

“The point is that there is no case for the Security Council to consider in its deliberations,” he said.

Diplomats have said council members could strive for language urging Syria to cooperate with the IAEA but that Damascus is unlikely to face UN sanctions over the issue.

Syria pledged on May 26 to cooperate with the IAEA and provide access to sites and information related to the probe, but Lyall Grant quoted the nuclear watchdog as saying cooperation had not improved since then.

In a statement, US Ambassador Susan Rice called on Syria to fulfill its pledge and that Damascus’s “positive and prompt cooperation with the IAEA would be the best way to resolve outstanding questions about its nuclear program.”

‘Iran outdoes N. Korea’s long-ra… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

  Iran has overtaken North Korea in the development of long-range sophisticated missiles, as demonstrated by the recent launch of a number of new missiles during military maneuvers in Iran, Uzi Rubin, the former head of Israel’s Homa Missile Defense Agency, said on Thursday.

According to Rubin, during the Great Prophet War Games held earlier this month, Iran displayed a new ballistic missile that has been converted to be used against ships. This is considered a significant breakthrough since most anti-ship missiles are cruise missiles that fly parallel to the water’s surface while this missile takes a ballistic course toward its target.

“This is a direct threat on the US Navy along Iran’s coast,” Rubin said. “The Iranians took a Fateh-110 rocket, which is also in Hezbollah hands, installed on it a guidance system and turned it into an anti-ship missile.”

Rubin’s remarks came ahead of a missile defense conference later this month near Tel Aviv, which will be attended by senior defense officials from around the world, including US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Defense Policy Frank Rose, US Missile Defense Agency Deputy Director for International Affairs Rob Helfant and the deputy defense minister of the Czech Republic.

“The Iranian’s missile program is running ahead and the moment they have a nuclear weapon, they will have the means to launch it,” Rubin said.

Earlier this week, diplomatic sources warned that Iran was preparing to install centrifuges for higher-grade uranium enrichment in an underground bunker.

Preparatory work is under way at the Fordow facility, tucked deep inside a mountain to protect it against any attacks, and machines used to refine uranium could soon be moved to the site near Qom, the sources said.

The Islamic republic said in June it would shift production of uranium that is enriched to 20 percent purity to Fordow from its main Natanz plant this year and triple its output capacity, in a defiant response to charges that it is trying to make atomic bombs.

Tehran only disclosed the existence of Fordow two years ago after Western intelligence detected it and said it was evidence of covert nuclear activities.

The facility has yet to start operating.

IAF hits total of six targets throughout Gaza – JPost – Defense.

  Israel Air Force aircraft carried out air strikes against a total of six targets throughout the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday, in direct response to the firing of high-trajectory projectiles by Palestinian terrorists at western Negev communities, the IDF Spokesperson announced.

Two children were reportedly lightly injured after IAF aircraft bombed two smuggling tunnels in southern Gaza and four Hamas terrorist targets in the northern and central parts of the Hamas-controlled territory, the IDF confirmed.

The ordnance used in the airs trikes struck the intended targets accurately and precisely, the IDF added.

The IDF will not tolerate attempts to harm Israeli citizens and solders and will continue to operate against any and every individual who resorts to terrorism against the state, the spokesperson vowed.

The IDF views Hamas exclusively responsible for events occurring in Gaza and placed the blame on the terror group for disrupting the peace.

Shortly before the confirmation by the IDF, Palestinian witnesses and Hamas officials reported IAF fighter jets had bombed four Hamas training camps.

Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported that aircraft bombed a target south of Gaza City, with no reports of injuries as well as targets in Khan Younis.

Earlier Thursday, five Kassam rockets fired from Gaza struck the Sha’ar Hanegev and Hof Ashkelon regional councils. No damages or injuries were caused in the attack.

Reuters contributed to this report.