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Iran, West Approaching ‘turning Point’ In 2012, Officials Warn | Fox News.

War games. Threats to close a key oil passageway and block a U.S. aircraft carrier from returning to the Persian Gulf. An American sentenced to death in Tehran, accused of spying. And now a breakthrough in Iran’s nuclear program.

The developments portend what officials see as a momentous year ahead in the standoff between Iran and the West, as Iranian leaders appear to grow bolder despite a new round of international sanctions which, by most accounts, is taking a toll.

“There won’t be taking an eye off the ball,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations at the Defense Department told reporters on Tuesday. Greenert spoke after the second rescue in less than a week of Iranians in trouble in Gulf waters. “If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it is the Strait of Hormuz and the business that is going on in the Arabian Gulf.”

U.S. lawmakers and other officials say western nations, which already have been putting the screws to the regime in Tehran, must take additional steps in order to persuade the country not to go down the nuclear weapons path.

In a letter to the European Union released Tuesday, a group of bipartisan senators described 2012 as a “turning point in the confrontation between Iran and the international community.” They urged the organization to impose an oil embargo on Iran and follow the U.S. lead by sanctioning Iran’s Central Bank.

“We believe that both (steps) are absolutely necessary if we are to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons and thereby foreclose either a regional war or a cascade of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East,” reads the letter signed by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Mark Kirk, R-Ill.; Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and five others.

In New York, state senators on Monday passed legislation already approved by the state Assembly to prohibit state and local governments from doing business with companies that have more than $20 million in ties to Iran’s energy sector.

“The Senate’s swift action shows how important it is that we stand together to condemn tyrannical governments like Iran which sponsor terrorism, have attempted to acquire nuclear weapons and threaten U.S. allies like Israel, as Iran has repeatedly done,” Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos said on the Senate floor.

The move, which mirrors actions by Florida and California, comes after state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced $86 billion of the nearly $150 billion state pension fund has been divested from companies involved in Iran and Sudan.

The array of actions and latest warnings — particularly on the Republican presidential campaign trail — highlight the West’s effort to make tough choices on Iran, within a quickly narrowing window.

The latest alarm bell came Monday when the United Nations‘ nuclear agency confirmed that Iran had started to enrich uranium at its underground Fordo site. The level of enrichment being pursued is said to be 20 percent, far more than the 3.5 percent-level material being produced at Iran’s central enrichment site.

The State Department described the development as very bad news.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Tuesday that the enrichment activity “demonstrates the Iranian regime’s blatant disregard for its responsibilities.”

She called on Iran to stop enriching uranium and return to international talks on its nuclear program, adding that the circumstances surrounding the Fordo site are “especially troubling.”

“There is no plausible justification for this production. Such enrichment brings Iran a significant step closer to having the capability to produce weapons-grade highly enriched uranium,” she said.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also said a day earlier that, “When you enrich to 20 percent, there is no possible reason for that if you’re talking about a peaceful program.”

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador the United Nations under the Bush administration, said that if there is a strike, Israel is the most likely candidate to carry it out. But he said Israel risks a “nuclear response” in the event the country waits too long to launch one.

“Every day that goes by means that the military option gets less and less likely,” Bolton told Fox News.

Reflecting the views of the senators who wrote to the European Union, Bolton said a nuclear Iran would trigger a nuclear race in the volatile Middle East among Iran’s powerful neighbors.

“I think it’s a very dangerous period. I think Iran is drawing close to the point where it will have a nuclear weapons capability,” Bolton said.

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. is consulting with countries like India and China on ways to keep the pressure up — after both nations committed to stronger partnerships with Iran’s oil sector.

In the meantime, Carney said, “We have effectively isolated Iran to a degree that has never before been the case. And the impact of the sanctions and the efforts that we’ve implemented is profound.

He added that while the military option isn’t off the table, the U.S. is focused on “diplomatic, economic and other non-military actions that we can take to bring about the results that we and many, many countries around the world — our international partners and allies — are demanding.”

Israel has not betrayed its plans, though the country’s military chief of staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday that 2012 “will be a critical year” on the Iranian nuclear front, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank, also claimed that Israel could still attack Iran even after an Iranian nuclear test.

“The Israeli military option is likely to be a significant lever,” the group said in a report on a simulation it conducted regarding the possible responses to such a test.

The United States has not publicly signaled a shift away from the international sanctions route. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” said that while no option is off the table, the “responsible” path is “to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them,” so they don’t pursue a nuclear weapon. He said it’s important for the international community, “including Israel,” to work together.

Panetta, who said last month that Iran could develop a weapon in 2012, claimed Sunday that Iran is not currently trying to develop one.

“But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us,” he said. “And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

Panetta said “they’re going to get stopped” if they pursue a weapon.

Other U.S. lawmakers have pressed the Obama administration to do more. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement Monday that she is “deeply troubled by the sense of complacency that seems to describe the administration’s view of Iran as undecided about whether to pursue nuclear weapons.”

She said an Iran with “nuclear breakout capability” should be treated like an Iran with a nuclear weapon, and noted that Iran is making inroads into Latin America to directly threaten U.S. security.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement to FoxNews.com that “it seems apparent that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon in the face of international condemnation and sanctions.”

“While we may not yet be at risk of nuclear retaliation from Iran, the longer we wait to act, the harder it would be to destroy an Iranian nuclear arms program while keeping civilian casualties and environmental damage to a minimum,” King said.

King late last year called — to no avail — for the United Nations to expel Iran’s diplomatic officials from the U.N. mission in New York. That was after Iranian officials were tied to an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

The Republican presidential candidates meanwhile have increasingly warned about the dangers of a nuclear Iran on the campaign trail. Anti-war Rep. Ron Paul, though, has likened the rhetoric to that which poured out of Washington before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

The Case for Military Action Against Iran | Terrorism Right Side News.

Iran’s 30-year war against the United States may be reaching its decisive moment. Signs of the worsening crisis abound. Iran just announced it has begun enriching uranium at the Fordo underground nuclear site, a key step to producing more quickly fissile material for a nuclear warhead. As Europe moves closer to embargoing Iranian oil, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard Ali Ashraf Nouri threatens, “ If enemies block the export of our oil, we won’t allow a drop of oil to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. In support of this threat, the regime continues to stage war games in the area and to warn American warships from passing through the strait into the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile the U.S. and Israel have announced a joint missile defense exercise, as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits America’s enemies in Latin America, bearding the U.S. lion in its own hemisphere of influence.

Iran may be just indulging bluster and bluff. Perhaps the mullahs recall the severe punishment inflicted on its navy in 1988 during the Tanker War, an earlier attempt to disrupt oil shipments transiting the Persian Gulf. That effort ended when Ronald Reagan retaliated for a missile attack on an American warship by eventually destroying two Iranian oil platforms, two Iranian ships, and six Iranian gunboats. Yet our current president has not shown as yet any of Ronald Reagan’s guts and nerve, and the mullahs may be calculating that the bluff will work.  

And why wouldn’t they? Iran has been killing Americans for 30 years with impunity, from the 241 military personnel killed in Beirut by a suicide bomber, to the hundreds more soldiers murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian proxy terrorist outfits trained and armed by Tehran. Repeated rounds of sanctions, threats, U.N. Security Council resolutions, and deadlines for cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have been contemptuously ignored. Our citizens are arrested and held on trumped-up charges, our ally Israel is threatened with genocide, and incessant anti-American “Great Satan” rhetoric daily pours from Tehran. Just this week a former American Marine was condemned to death by an Iranian court for allegedly being a spy and a “mohareb,” or “fighter against God.” Yet Obama has answered this aggression against our security and interests with appeasing diplomatic “outreach” offered “without preconditions,” and pleas for “mutual respect” that the regime correctly interprets as a sign of weakness and failure of nerve.

Given that Iranian aggression has so far provoked appeasement and empty threats, the mullahs very well could believe that since they are the “best of nations,” as the Koran has it, in any conflict Allah will protect the Islamic Republic and render insignificant America’s overwhelming military superiority. After all, Muslims for centuries have believed in their superiority based on Allah’s special regard for them, as aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry noted in 1939: “Their [Muslims] pride was born of the illusion of their power. Allah renders a believer invincible.” The mullahs today will remember what the Ayatollah Khomeini said in 1980, after America’s ill-planned and half-hearted mission to rescue the embassy hostages was ignominiously thwarted by a sandstorm that caused two helicopters to crash and burn: “Those sand particles were divinely commissioned. . . . [President] Carter still has not comprehended what kind of people he is facing. . . . Our people is the people of blood and our school is the school of Jihad.”

Thirty years later, we still have not “comprehended” the nature of the Iranian enemy. We have continuously operated with a materialist calculus that ignores the spiritual motives that account for much of Iranian aggression. More depressing still, this is the same mistake the Carter administration made in 1979, when it ignored the religious roots of the Iranian Revolution, dismissed Khomeini as “nutty” and “a crazy man,” as Carter did, and assumed that the secular political parties and technical elites would eventually rule Iran and marginalize the mullahs, virulent Iranian hostility would wane, and “after a transition period common interests could provide a basis for future cooperation,” as an assistant to the Secretary of State reported. Similarly the West today has assumed that economic punishment, or the desire for “greater international integration,” as Obama put it, can change Iranian behavior. We still don’t believe what a member of the Revolutionary Council said a few months after the seizure of our embassy: “No individual, no official and no Muslim has the right to show forbearance or compromise toward an enemy who is not defeated and is not overthrown.”

We sophisticated modern materialists slight these religious motives, dismissing them as throwbacks to the Dark Ages, or cynical pretexts to camouflage the pursuit of the material goods we recognize, such as wealth and power. Because religion in the West has faded into a life-style choice or repository of comforting holiday rituals, we cannot fathom that for other creeds the spiritual world is a living reality in their lives. But even if those beliefs are mere ghosts, they still drive behavior in the here-and-now. As Orwell wrote in 1941 of H.G. Wells, the celebrated champion of internationalism and scientific rationalism, “He was, and is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity. Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them.”

The melancholy lesson of history is that force is the “strong magic” that compels fanatical believers to abandon their murderous ideologies or keep them within their own borders. Equivocating about the use of force, or pursuing non-lethal ways to change behavior, such as diplomatic negotiation or economic sanctions, only convinces the fanatic aggressor that he has the gods or history or destiny on his side, that his enemy is weak and lacks conviction, and that a few more blows will achieve the aggressor’s aims. Nor does it matter if the failure to retaliate actually reflects other concerns such as political expediency. There were many reasons Clinton withdrew our forces from Somalia in 1993 after the “Blackhawk Down” battle in which 18 U.S. servicemen were killed, but political self-interest and survival were clearly the most important. Yet to bin Laden, the retreat from Mogadishu was like the withdrawal from Vietnam and Beirut after the Marine barracks bombing: the result of America’s “low spiritual morale” and “cowardice and feebleness.” And that perception fed bin Laden’s certainty that the U.S. rested on “foundations of straw” and could be toppled with spectacular terrorist attacks.

Settling the conflict with Iran and keeping it from acquiring nuclear weapons, then, will in the end be achieved with mind-concentrating force that convinces the mullahs to change their ways. One place to start would be to destroy Iran’s navy and shore missile batteries in the Persian Gulf. Degrading the military assets, bases, and production facilities of the Iranian Republican Guard Corp and the paramilitary Basij might provide an opportunity for the dormant Green Revolutionaries to effect regime change. As Indiana University’s Jamsheed K. Choksy wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Once the power of the Basij and the IRGC to enforce the regime’s will upon the people has been seriously compromised, it would not be surprising to see large segments of Iran’s population casting off the theocratic yoke.” A saner regime perhaps would be more amenable to abandoning the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The time is fast running out on policies that refuse to accept the necessity of force in changing Iranian behavior. Military action obviously involves unknowable risks and costs; but allowing a rogue regime, one situated in the middle of a region that produces one-fifth of the world’s oil, to acquire nuclear weapons will likely end up subjecting our security and interests to much greater risks and much higher costs.

Philip Taubman: Examining Iranian And North Korean Nuclear Threats.

The nuclear weapons news of late has been alarming. David Sanger reported in “The New York Times” on January 9 that Iran’s top nuclear official had announced his country was near initiating uranium enrichment at a new plant. And the recent leadership change in North Korea means added uncertainty about one of the world’s most unpredictable nuclear weapons states. Both developments mean the danger is rising that nuclear weapons or the means to make them will spread in this year.

The ominous news brings to mind a comment that Robert M. Gates made a few years ago while working as President Obama’s Secretary of Defense. “If you were to ask most of the leaders of the last administration or the current administration what might keep them awake at night,” he told me, “it’s the prospect of a [nuclear] weapon or nuclear material falling into the hands of Al Qaeda or some other extremists.”

I was interviewing Gates for a book about nuclear threats. The book, “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb,” [Harper, $29.99] examines the acute state of nuclear dangers today, including the spread of nuclear materials and technology to unstable nations like Pakistan, North Korea and Iran. If a terror group like Al Qaeda is ever going to get its hands on a nuclear weapon, or more likely the fissile material needed to make one, the source is likely to be one of those three nations. North Korea and Pakistan have a frightening history of exporting nuclear weapons technology. Iran may be next.

Despite the denials of Iranian leaders, Tehran seems well on the way to building its first nuclear weapon. Iran already has enough enriched uranium to make several warheads once the uranium is raised to a higher level of enrichment. The enrichment process can move very quickly from a low level to high, bomb-grade levels. Some upgrading of known Iranian enrichment facilities are required to get there, and these changes would be visible to the outside world. Still, Iran may well have hidden enrichment programs already cranking out highly enriched uranium. If it does move openly to higher enrichment, Israel and the United States will be tempted to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

A simple but powerful nuclear weapon can be fabricated with just a small amount of highly enriched uranium. The hardest part of making a uranium bomb is producing highly enriched uranium, something that requires advanced, industrial-scale technologies beyond the reach of a terror group. But with just 60 pounds of highly enriched uranium, a small, savvy group of engineers with some basic laboratory equipment could construct a fission bomb in a garage. The bomb mechanism is so straightforward that the United States did not bother to test a uranium weapon before dropping one over Hiroshima in 1945. And it is not wildly improbable to imagine Iran giving highly enriched uranium to a terror group.

The continuation of the Kim dynasty in North Korea – now in its third generation with the recent installation of Kim Jong-un as the new supreme leader – does not augur well for more responsible behavior by North Korea. With its active nuclear weapons program, hunger for hard currency and record of selling nuclear weapons goods to Libya and Syria, North Korea is one of the most dangerous nations on earth.

While North Korea is unlikely to sell a nuclear weapon to a terror group, it could provide the materials and knowhow to make a crude but powerful bomb. The United States, for all its intelligence-gathering hardware like spy satellites, does not know a great deal about the North Korean program. Washington was surprised to learn in 2010 that North Korea had constructed a uranium enrichment plant outfitted with the latest centrifuge technology. News about the existence of the plant came from a group of American scholars who were shown the facility during a visit to the North Korean nuclear complex at Yongbyon.

The plant is not a problem if it is producing low enriched uranium to fuel a small, light water reactor. But the plant could be used to produce highly enriched uranium. The rapid construction of the plant – it was built in just 18 months – suggested that the North Koreans might have honed their techniques at another enrichment facility, as yet undetected by the United States.

I recently asked my Stanford colleague Sig Hecker, one of the scholars who visited the enrichment plant in 2010, to outline what to watch for in the North Korean weapons program in coming weeks to determine if the new leadership is planning any change in nuclear policy and/or operations. Sig served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory 1986-1997. He has been a frequent visitor to North Korea, one of the few Americans to get a first-hand look at the North Korean nuclear program.

His response:

I believe that there will be a period of quiet on the diplomatic front, both for mourning and to rethink strategy. Just before Kim Jong-il died, American and North Korean diplomats came close to an agreement of American food aid in return for some concessions on the nuclear program (some reports indicated that Pyongyang would stop enrichment – but I have yet to hear official confirmation from the United States – and we never may). What to look for is to see when North Korean diplomats are ready to re-engage with Americans in quiet bilateral talks, most likely in China.On the technical front – I would expect “normal operations” at Yongbyon. That means they will continue with the experimental light water reactor construction – although little will be seen from overheads because it is winter time. Much of the interior components will be fabricated in shops. I also expect them to continue with operations of the centrifuge enrichment facility – either to make more low enriched uranium for reactor fuel or to get the facility to operate fully (which it may not have been when we visited). Both of these operations will continue regardless of which way Pyongyang eventually decides to go with the nuclear program. I don’t see any reason why they would cut back on these operations now.

As for potential provocative actions – they could prepare for another nuclear test – but that is highly unlikely, if for no other reason than it is winter. Their tests occurred in October 2006 and May 2009. Nevertheless, the third test tunnel appears to have been dug some time ago (South Korean news reports and overhead imagery) and one should watch closely for activity at the test site (particularly come spring). We should also look for potential missile tests – the new launch site on the west coast should be watched for another potential long-range missile launch. (They have had three attempts from the old launch site in the east: 1998 over Japan, 2006 a complete failure, and 2009 two out of three stages worked.) They also have not flight-tested the Musudan road-mobile missile. (For a detailed assessment of North Korean nuclear developments in 2011 by Sig Hecker, Robert Carlin and Niko Milonopoulos, see their article in the latest edition of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

It would not surprise me if North Korea conducted another nuclear test in 2012. If Kim Jong-un is looking for a way to flex North Korean military power and remind his impoverished people that their nation matters to the rest of the world, detonating a nuclear weapon will do the trick.

Iran’s nuclear program will also likely generate news and international anxiety this year. Iranian threats to attack US naval vessels in the Persian Gulf may seem self-defeating, but a military confrontation between Iran and the United States is not out of the question.

There is no greater danger to American and global security than the spread of nuclear weapons and the means to make them.

TheSpec – Goal of Iran sanctions is regime collapse, U.S….

Clinton slams Iran nuclear move,… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday Iran’s decision to enrich uranium near the city of Qom was “especially troubling” and urged Tehran to return to serious talks with Western powers over its atomic program.

“This step once again demonstrates the Iranian regime’s blatant disregard for its responsibilities and that the country’s growing isolation is self-inflicted,” Clinton said in a statement.

Clinton’s strongly worded comments repeated US concerns over Iran’s announcement that it had started enrichment at the underground Fordow bunker near Qom, which came amid rising tensions between Tehran and western powers.

Iran denies Western suspicions that its nuclear program has military goals, saying it is for purely peaceful purposes.

“The circumstances surrounding this latest action are especially troubling,” Clinton said.

“There is no plausible justification for this production. Such enrichment brings Iran a significant step closer to having the capability to produce weapons-grade highly enriched uranium.”

Clinton rejected Iran’s assertion that it needed to enrich uranium to produce fuel for a medical research reactor, saying Western powers had offered alternatives means of obtaining such fuel but their offers had been rejected by Tehran.

The United States imposed additional sanctions on Iran last month and the European Union is expected to agree on a ban on imports of Iranian crude oil later this month.

As sanctions squeeze, Iran has threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet for 40 percent of the world’s traded oil.

At the same time, it has called for fresh nuclear talks with the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, a group known as the “P5+1,” which have been stalled for a year.

Calling on Iran to immediately halt uranium enrichment, Clinton also urged Tehran to return to talks with the P5+1 “prepared to engage seriously on its nuclear program.”

“We reaffirm that our overall goal remains a comprehensive, negotiated solution,” Clinton said.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonprofit Arms Control Association, welcomed Clinton’s fresh call for a negotiated solution.

“The United States and its ‘P5+1’ partners – China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom – should continue to prepare for and more energetically pursue additional talks with Iran and continue to highlight constructive proposals they are prepared to discuss,” Kimball said in an emailed comment.

“A near-term goal should be to test Iran’s recent publicly stated offer to halt uranium enrichment to 20 percent levels if it could have access to fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor,” he added.

“A stockpile of 20 percent would allow Iran to shorten its time frame to produce weapons, if it chose to do so,” Kimball said. “We should not forgo any realistic opportunities to reduce that risk.”