WarSclerotic

U.S. blasts Syria’s al-Assad – CNN Security Clearance – CNN.com Blogs.

By Elise Labott

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday the Arab League monitoring mission in Syria could not continue indefinitely, as the U.S. Embassy reduced its staff in Damascus over concern about the security situation there.

In a travel warning issued Wednesday, the State Department said it has ordered a number of embassy employees to leave the country as soon as possible.

At a press conference with Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, Clinton said, “I think it’s clear to both the prime minister and myself that the monitoring mission should not continue indefinitely.”

“We cannot permit Assad and his regime to have impunity,” Clinton said, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “Syrians deserve a peaceful transition.”

The Arab League, which suspended Syria in November over its crackdown on protesters, sent an observer mission to Syria last month. It decided to delay sending more monitors after some of its observers were attacked earlier this week.

“Two weeks ago, Arab League monitors arrived in Syria to judge whether the regime was keeping its promise to end the killings, withdraw its troops, release political prisoners and follow through on the commitments that it had made,” Clinton said. “So far, the regime has not done so.”

Clinton dismissed Tuesday’s speech by al-Assad as “chillingly cynical.” In the speech he blamed foreign interference for the 10-month old protests against his regime and vowed to crush” terrorism” with an iron fist.

In his speech, al-Assad mocked the Arab League, vowed to hit “terrorists” with an iron fist and promised reforms, but with no hint that he would relinquish the power he inherited from his father in 2000.

“Instead of taking responsibility, what we hear from President Assad in his chillingly cynical speech yesterday was only making excuses, blaming foreign countries, conspiracies,” Clinton said.

The secretary of state said the United States was looking to work with the Arab League when the monitoring mission expires on January 19.

Al-Thani, who in addition to being prime minister is also foreign minister of Qatar, voiced increasing doubts that the monitors would be able to stop the bloodshed.

“I could not see up until now a successful mission, frankly speaking,” al-Thani said, adding that monitors’ final report later this month could help guide the next steps on the crisis.

“This report will be very important for us to make the right judgment,” he said. “We hope we solve it, as we say, in the House of the Arabs but right now the Syrian government is not helping us.”

Iran nuclear sites may be beyond reach of “bunker busters” – chicagotribune.com.

( An excelin6 analysis as far as it goes.  It fails to take into account the potential of a special forces strie armed with a kilometer of C4,

LONDON (Reuters) – With its nuclear program beset as never before by sanctions, sabotage and assassination, Iran must now make a new addition to its list of concerns: One of the biggest conventional bombs ever built.

Boeing’s 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), an ultra-large bunker buster for use on underground targets, with Iran routinely mentioned as its most likely intended destination, is a key element in the implicit U.S. threat to use force as a last report against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The behemoth, carrying more than 5,300 pounds of explosive, was delivered with minimal fanfare to Whiteman U.S. Air Force Base, Missouri in September. It is designed for delivery by B-2 Stealth bombers.

Would that weapon, delivered in a gouging combination with other precision-guided munitions, pulverize enough rock to reach down and destroy the uranium enrichment chamber sunk deep in a mountain at Fordow, Iran’s best sheltered nuclear site?

While the chances of such a strike succeeding are slim, they are not so slim as to enable Tehran to rule out the possibility of one being attempted, according to defense experts contacted by Reuters.

A “second best” result might be merely to block the plant’s surface entrances, securing its temporary closure, some said.

One U.S. official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, described an attack on the underground site, about 160 km (100 miles) south of Tehran near the Iranian holy city of Qom, as “hard but not impossible.”

The United States is the only country with any chance of damaging the Fordow chamber using just conventional air power, most experts say.

Israel, the nation seen as most likely to attempt a raid, has great experience in long range bombing include its 1981 raid on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq and a 2007 strike on a presumed nuclear facility in Syria.

But it lacks the air assets to reach Fordow’s depths, and has no MOP-sized bunker buster. An Israeli raid would therefore likely require other elements such as sabotage or special forces.

The vulnerability of the chamber at Fordow, believed buried up to 80 meters (260 feet) deep on a former missile base controlled by the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, came into sharper focus on Monday when the United Nations nuclear watchdog confirmed that Iran had started enriching uranium at the site.

The same day a State Department spokeswoman declared that if Iran was enriching uranium to 20 percent at Fordow this would be a “further escalation” of its pattern of violating its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions.

TURMOIL

Western powers suspect the program is aimed at developing the capacity to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says it is strictly for civilian uses.

Critics of Iran’s nuclear program tend to agree that military action against Iran’s nuclear work would be their last and worst option. Not only would this risk civilian casualties, but Iran would seek to retaliate against Western targets in the region, raising the risk of a regional war and risking global economic turmoil.

Once it had recovered it would probably decide unequivocally to pursue a nuclear bomb.

Critics of the military option further point out that non-military pressure is increasing. Apart from tools of statecraft such as sanctions and diplomacy, covert means against Iran’s nuclear work probably include sabotage, cyber attacks, measures to supply Iran with faulty parts and interception of nuclear supplies. It may also involve assassinations of nuclear experts such as Wednesday’s killing of a scientist in Tehran.

A strike, furthermore, would only delay, not destroy, an Iranian nuclear program whose known sites are widely dispersed and fortified against attack.

But Washington sees the plausibility of a U.S. strike on Iran’s main nuclear sites as a vital adjunct to the campaign of pressure. The narrow, technical question of whether such an attack is feasible is therefore central to strategy.

“You don’t take any option off the table,” U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta said on CBS’s Face the Nation television program on Jan 8.

Asked on the same program how hard it would be to “take out” Iran’s nuclear capability, U.S. chief of staff General Martin Demspey said: “Well, I’d rather not discuss the degree of difficulty and in any way encourage them to read anything into that. But I will say that our, my, responsibility is to encourage the right degree of planning, to understand the risks associated with any kind of military option, in some cases to position assets, to provide those options in a timely fashion. And all those activities are going on.”

Asked if the United States could act against Iran’s nuclear capability using conventional weapons, he replied: “Well, I certainly want them to believe that that’s the case.”

The credibility of that implicit threat got a freshening-up with the arrival of the big new bomb in the U.S. arsenal.

Military satisfaction was evident.

ENEMIES

As Air Force Brigadier General Scott Vander Hamm explained to Air Force Magazine, the MOP “is specifically designed to go after very dense targets-solid granite, 20,000 (pounds per square inch) concrete, and those hard and deeply buried complexes-where enemies are putting things that the President of the United States wants to hold at risk.”

He said MOP “kind of bridges the gap” between conventional munitions and nuclear weapons in terms of the effects that it can create. Whereas in the past, “you’d have to break that nuclear threshold” to attack such HDBT (hard and deeply buried targets), “with the MOP, you don’t have to,” the magazine reported.

Four months on from the bomb’s arrival in the U.S. arsenal, the Fordow announcement has sharpened the Western strategic focus on U.S. military capacity.

Experts differ on the extent of the challenge at Fordow, but all agree it presents greater complexity than Iran’s other underground site at Natanz, 230 km (140 miles) south of Tehran where enrichment happens in a chamber estimated to be 20 meters underground, or less than a third of Fordow’s presumed depth.

The other likely targets are Iran’s uranium ore processing plant at Isfahan, some 400 km (250 miles) south of Tehran and plutonium producing research reactor under construction at Arak 190 km (120 miles) southwest of Tehran. They are both above ground and considered vulnerable to attack.

Austin Long, an assistant professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, told Reuters the arrival of the MOP “does not solve the Fordow problem but it does make it easier”.

Many experts are skeptical.

Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran expert at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that Natanz was buried under several layers of dirt and concrete but it was “nevertheless possible to damage it with precision bombing with one sortie to create a crater and second sortie to burst through the bottom of the crater to the facility below.”

But the chamber at Fordow might be “impenetrable”, he said, due to its presumed depth.

His doubts were echoed by Robert Henson, Editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, to Reuters, who said it was likely that Fordow had been built to survive a sustained assault.

“We know for a fact – or as near a fact as possible – that you will not be able to stop this program with air strikes. There continues to be a whole lot of hysterical posturing about this. In the meantime, it keeps backing the Iranians into a corner,” he said.

“Given that it (Fordow) is a relatively recent development, it has probably been designed with a lot of attention to protecting it against conventional strikes. You don’t necessarily have to obliterate it, mind. You could block the exits, block access to power, isolate it from life outside, and then you have effectively switched it off.

DESTRUCTION, OR MERELY A SETBACK?

“But for sure it will have been designed with all of that in mind, and the Iranians will have done the best job they can to make it survivable.”

Sam Gardiner, a retired USAF colonel who runs wargames for various Washington agencies, told Reuters a major problem was simply a lack of confirmed information about the Fordow plant.

“With the Natanz facility, as it was being constructed, satellites gave us the information on where and how deep enrichment was to take place. Fordow on the other hand is an unknown. Where is the enrichment chamber? How deep? Which direction does the tunnel go?”

“For Israel, or even the United States, destruction would be very difficult. The entrance to the underground tunnel can be shut, but that would only be a temporary set back.”

Diplomats point out that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors visit Fordow and are familiar with its layout. While their work is confidential, it is widely believed that Western intelligence agencies have some knowledge of the site’s interior.

John Cochrane, a defense specialist at the London-based Exclusive Analyst risk consultancy, said he believed the bunker-busting MOP might make a difference. But he suggested Fordow was at the very limit of the bomb’s capacities, which he said could reach down to a maximum of 60 meters.

“Repeated strikes by Tomahawk cruise missiles and MOP might be effective in penetrating the site, if it is not as deep as 80m but, even then, we question whether an attack would have the same level of assurance in terms of damage as strikes on other ‘softer’ sites,” he told Reuters.

“We question from what little we have seen of open source imagery whether it is as deep as 80 meters. If it is, we don’t know for a fact but we think that is probably too deep for any form of air-delivered munitions, including MOP Cyber attack or physical assault by Special Forces may be the only attack options.”

Cochrane noted that the supply of the MOP to Israel, even if the U.S. were prepared to release it, would also require a suitable aircraft to deliver it and Israelis did not have one.

ATTACKING “THE HARD WAY”

In a 2010 study titled “Options in Dealing with Iran’s Nuclear Program,” analysts Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman of the U.S. think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, if all peaceful options had been exhausted, the U.S. was the only country that could launch a successful military strike.

Even that study predicated its finding on a strike merely blocking Fordow’s two entrances, not destroying the underground chamber.

But in a November 2011 article in Israel’s Tablet magazine, Columbia Univeristy’s Long concluded that Israel had the ability to attack the Fordow site using 75 bunker busters, each delivering a smaller explosive charge of about 1,000 pounds. However, he said it would require an unprecedented level of precision.

Long’s scenario sees Israeli jets having “to do things the hard way”, delivering 75 bunker busters on a single point to burrow through the rock.

There were two principal challenges, he said.

First, the weapons themselves, dropped from miles away and thousands of feet in the air, had to arrive at very close to the same angle to create a pathway each subsequent weapon could follow, he wrote. “Otherwise much of the penetrating power of the bombs will be wasted”.

The second unknown was the “spoil problem”, where the sides of the pathway, destroyed by previous explosions, clog the pathway for subsequent bombs.

Long subsequently told Reuters in emailed remarks the main feedback he had had from military readers was that “the kind of operation I discuss is really, really hard to coordinate.”

“I agree, though I don’t think that makes it impossible, just very difficult, as I noted.” (Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Phil Stewart in Washington and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna)

Iranians back atom drive but wary of worsening cost | Energy & Oil | Reuters.

* Iranians blame West for increasing economic hardship

* Support nuclear drive but wary of increasing economic cost

* Some would welcome ‘win-win’ compromise with West

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Iranian translator Saba Mirzai, 31, seemed oblivious when told of a bomb attack in Tehran that killed a nuclear scientist in his car on Wednesday.

“Was there a bombing? How should I know? Why care at all?” she said after thinking carefully for a moment and staring up at the ceiling of a restaurant in an upmarket Tehran district.

The scientist, who worked at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant, was killed by a magnetic bomb attached to his car by a motorcyclist. Tehran blamed his death on the United States and Israel, its arch-adversaries.

Tension between the West and Iran over its nuclear ambitions has escalated since the United States and European Union announced plans to broaden punitive sanctions against Tehran by blocking crude exports of the major oil producer.

The Islamic clerical establishment has brandished its sword by sentencing an Iranian-American citizen to death on charges of spying for the CIA, threatening to block oil shipping routes out of the Gulf if its own crude exports are embargoed, and starting to enrich uranium in a fortified mountain bunker at Fordow.

Chances for a thaw between Iran and the West look even more remote as the nuclear deadlock deepens over Iran’s refusal to halt sensitive nuclear activity and give unfettered access to U.N. nuclear inspectors and investigators.

Despite the increasing international isolation imposed by U.N., U.S. and E.U. sanctions, the capital still hums with luxury restaurants, coffee shops, high-tech electronics outlets and billboards advertising the latest European designer brands.

However, the upscale lifestyle is on offer only to a privileged small percentage of Iranians. Most others struggle to put food on the table and make ends meet because of the economic slump induced in part by sanctions.

While ordinary Iranians generally continue to support their hardline leaders’ unswerving quest for nuclear power as a matter of national pride and development, many have also become wary of the ever worsening cost to their economic well-being.

Although they cite what they see as unjustified sanctions as a major factor in Iran’s economic crunch, many Iranians also would prefer a peaceful compromise between the Tehran government and world powers to stop the rot in their living conditions.

“WIN-WIN COMPROMISE”?

Economic hardship, not the internecine geopolitics of the nuclear programme, is the main concern of Iran’s working class, where the average monthly income is $600.

“Unfortunately, lower income Iranians are being worst-hit by these sanctions. How I wish we could compromise with the West over the (nuclear) issue on a win-win basis without yielding to pressure,” said postman Mohsen Sedghi, 45, whose monthly salary is $400. “Since, otherwise, these tensions are sure to end up in war that is not in the interest of any country.”

Businessman Morteza Ghaderi said: “I back Iran’s firm nuclear stance. But I think this row should be settled peacefully and through diplomacy.”

There was no mood of conciliation among the powers-that-be. A hardline newspaper with links to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the clerical elite to exact reprisals against Israel for the scientist’s killing.

Frustrated and financially strapped, many Iranians who spoke to Reuters blamed the United States and its allies for making their lives difficult, generally siding with Tehran’s nuclear course, which the government says is for civilian energy only.

“It is our right to use nuclear technology … Why are we punished for trying to enjoy our right?” said Maryam Firouzi, 37, a mother of two. “All the economic hardship that we face is because of America’s unfair and unjust pressures.”

Taxi driver Mohammad Reza Sharifi, 45, said, “I am sorry for the family of our killed scientist. I think America and Israel were behind it. But to be honest, I have no time to think about anything but basic financial needs of my three children.”

Some Iranians privately express misgivings about the Islamic state’s uncompromising nuclear stance given the increasing economic pain it is associated with.

Inflation stands officially around 20 percent but critics say the actual figure hovers around 50 percent. The cost of many basic goods like bread, meat and transportation has increased dramatically, sometimes by over 50 percent in the past months.

Tehran denies its nuclear activity is anything but peaceful and aimed at generating electricity for a rapidly expanding population, not to develop an atom bomb as the West says.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action against Iran’s nuclear sites if diplomacy fails to defuse the dispute. Iran has warned its enemies off that course, saying it would retaliate against Israel and U.S. bases in the region.

“The situation is very tense. It is like both sides have nothing to lose and threats are answered by threats,” said journalist Dara, 37, who refused to give his surname.

“The message of Iran is simple. You mess with our economy, we will mess with yours by disrupting oil shipments.”

(Additional reporting by Hashem Kalantari; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

‘Roshan killed under authorities’ nose’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist took place less than a mile away from Iranian Intelligence’s HQ

Dudi Cohen

The area surrounding Iranian Intelligence HQ is considered highly secure, yet the motorcyclists aroused no suspicion. They were able to kill both Roshan and his bodyguard, who was driving the car.

The forces behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist and Natanz official Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in Tehran Wednesday remain unknown, but recent details about the hit reveal that the location of the assassination was rather conspicuous – just a few blocks away from Iranian Intelligence headquarters.

Iran blames Israel and the United States for the attack, and has already vowed that its retaliation “will reach beyond Iran and beyond the region,” adding that those involved “shouldn’t feel safe anywhere.”

Available details reveal that Roshan was killed by a bomb thrown at his car by two motorcyclists who sped away, in what has already been described by Iranian media a “daring terror attack.”

However, the media reports made scarce mention of the fact that the Iranian Intelligence – the very body that is supposed to thwart such attacks – is located less than a mile away from the scene of the crime.  

לום: רויטרס

Iran claims that the hit was carried out by Israeli agents but has not presented any proof to that effect.

Iranian opposition sources quoted eyewitness reports suggesting the area was “crawling with police forces” prior to the attack. Should those reports prove true, they indicate an even greater lapse in Iranian intelligence, since it suggests that Tehran’s authorities may have had an advance warning of an impending attack.

The Ministry of Intelligence and National Security is considered one of the most prominent ministries in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s regime and is in charge of intelligence and counter intelligence.

Ironically, the ministry is based on the Sawac, the Shah’s intelligence and security agency, which the Moassad advised during the 1970s.

‘Iran warns of ‘cross-border’ bo… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    Iran’s response to the assassination of a nuclear scientist in Iran Wednesday will be harsh and reach beyond borders, a website aligned with the regime in Tehran quoted a senior security source as saying Thursday.

Those who gave the order for the assassination, the source was quoted by “RajaNews” as saying, “will never feel safe,” adding that Iran has a cross-border, cross-regional strategy for striking back. He said that the West and Israel were behind the attacks in Iran.

The official added that Tehran has entered “a new era of intelligence operations against its enemies.”

In Cuba Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had done nothing to warrant enmity from its enemies but said nothing about the bomb attack.

Ahmadinejad was to meet with Cuban President Raul Castro later, but shortly after arrival in the Cuban capital he told students in veiled remarks at the University of Havana that Iran was being “punished” for no good reason.

“Have we assaulted someone? Have we wanted more than we should have? Never, never. We have only asked to speak about and establish justice,” Ahmadinejad said.

Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, in charge while Ahmadinejad travels, told Iranian state television “this terrorist act was carried out by agents of the Zionist regime (Israel) and by those who claim to be combating terrorism (the United States) with the aim of stopping our scientists from serving” Iran.

He said Iran’s nuclear program would go on.

Former inspector: Iran ‘one year… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    VIENNA – Having switched production of higher-grade enriched uranium to a new, underground site, Iran is now just a year or so away from having enough such material for a nuclear bomb, a former head of UN nuclear inspections said.

However, Olli Heinonen wrote in an article published on Thursday that building a stock of some 250 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium – a form that could within weeks be further purified to the 90-percent weapons grade – did not automatically mean Iran could deploy a bomb without further engineering work.

Heinonen, a Finn, was deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until 2010 and is now at Harvard University. He made the prediction days after Iran confirmed the start of 20-percent enrichment inside the Fordow mountain, fueling Western fears Tehran is seeking atomic arms.

Estimates on when Iran, which says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, might be able to develop such weapons are significant as they could help determine the time available for major powers to resolve the long-running nuclear row peacefully.

Iran says it needs to refine uranium to that 20-percent level of fissile purity, compared with the 3.5 percent normally needed to fuel nuclear power plants, for a medical research reactor in Tehran producing isotopes for cancer patients.

But Western diplomats and experts question the credibility of that justification and note that acquiring the ability to produce 20-percent uranium is a big step closer to potential weapons material of 90 percent, shortening the time required for any “breakout” bid to produce bombs.

“If Iran decides to produce weapons-grade uranium from 20-percent enriched uranium, it has already technically undertaken 90 percent of the enrichment effort required,” Heinonen wrote in a Foreign Policy magazine article.

“What remains to be done is the feeding of 20-percent uranium through existing, additional cascades to achieve weapons-grade enrichment … This step is much faster from earlier ones.”

‘Iran can ‘break out’ of int’l obligations very quickly’

Iran has until now produced 20-percent uranium above ground at another location but announced last year it would shift this higher-grade activity to the underground site at Fordow, offering better protection against any enemy air strikes.

It also plans to step up the work, conducted by centrifuge machines that spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope U-235. It continues to produce 3.5-percent uranium at its main enrichment site at Natanz.

The Associated Press: Iranian paper calls for retaliation against Israel.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A hard-line Iranian newspaper called Thursday for retaliation against Israel, a day after the mysterious killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran with a magnetic bomb attached to his car.

Provocative hints from Israel reinforced the perception that the killing was part of an organized and clandestine campaign to set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which the U.S. and its allies suspect are aimed at producing weapons. Iran says the program is for peaceful purposes only.

A column in the Kayhan newspaper by chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari asked why Iran did not retaliate. “Assassinations of Israeli military and officials are easily possible,” he wrote.

The attack — which instantly killed the scientist and his driver on Wednesday — was at least the fourth targeted hit against a member of Iran’s nuclear brain trust in two years. Tehran quickly blamed Israeli-linked agents backed by the U.S. and Britain.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton denied any U.S. role in the slaying, and the Obama administration condemned the attack.

However, the day before the attack, Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary panel that 2012 would be a “critical year” for Iran — in part because of “things that happen to it unnaturally.”

The blast killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the centerpiece of Iran’s expanding program to make nuclear fuel. Roshan, 32, had planned to attend a memorial later that day for another nuclear researcher who was killed in a similar pinpoint blast two years ago, Iranian media said.

Israeli military chief hints at anti-Iran activity | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

By JOSEF FEDERMAN

The Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Israeli leaders typically greet word of violent setbacks to Iran’s nuclear program with a wall of silence. Now a throwaway comment by Israel’s military chief has hinted of possible Israeli involvement in attacks like the explosion that killed an Iranian nuclear scientist Wednesday.

The car bombing in Tehran was the latest in a string of murky mishaps for Iran’s nuclear program caused by computer worms, explosions and assassinations of top experts. Israel, which has identified a nuclear Iran as an existential threat, is widely suspected of involvement.

While officials never comment on covert military activities, testimony by Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz to a closed parliamentary committee on Tuesday appeared particularly prescient.

The Israeli military leader told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday that “2012 is expected to be a critical year for Iran.” He cited “the confluence of efforts to advance the nuclear program, internal leadership changes, continued international pressure and things that happen to it unnaturally.”

Gantz’s testimony was leaked by a meeting participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the testimony was closed.

Israeli officials in the past have spoken somewhat giddily of the “unnatural” setbacks that have plagued Iran’s nuclear program. The timing of Gantz’s testimony, just hours before Wednesday’s assassination, was perhaps the strongest hint yet of Israeli involvement.

In a statement posted on Facebook, the chief military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said: “I don’t know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear.”

Hazhir Teimourian, an Iran expert at the Limehouse Group of Analysts in London, stressed it was impossible to be certain who carried out the attack. But he said Israel was a logical candidate.

“The Israelis really have the ability and the incentive,” he said.

Israeli leaders have long warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an existential threat to the Jewish state. They cite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s frequent references to Israel’s destruction, Iran’s support for the anti-Israel Hezbollah and Hamas militant groups and its aggressive missile development program. Years of Iranian run-ins with the U.N. nuclear agency have only deepened those fears.

Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes, but the international community has rejected those claims, and the U.N. Security Council has imposed four sets of financial sanctions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu routinely warns of the Iranian threat in his speeches, and he has even drawn parallels between the rise of Nazi Germany and the development of Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu has toured European capitals to personally plead the case for tougher international sanctions against Iran, and Israeli leaders frequently hint at military action if sanctions fail by saying “all options are on the table.”

Military action isn’t out of the question. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed a nuclear reactor being built in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In 2007, Israeli warplanes destroyed a site in Syria that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed to be a secretly built nuclear reactor.

Experts say that Iran has learned from these incidents, scattering its nuclear facilities throughout the country and burying key installations deep underground to help thwart a direct attack.

That has raised speculation that Israel and its Western allies would use covert means to disrupt the Iranian program.

One Israeli official said Israeli security chiefs believe covert activities are not a perfect solution. “They can impede, delay and threaten” the Iranians. “But it’s not what will stop the program,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was sharing a classified security assessment.

He said Israeli leaders remain hopeful that international sanctions and diplomatic pressure will persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

But security officials believe time is running out. They believe Iran will pass the technological threshold for producing nuclear weapons — the “point of no return” — later this year, and they will be able to develop an actual weapon within two or three years.

Iran accused Israel of carrying out Wednesday’s killing of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. The state news agency IRNA said Roshan, who died when two men on a motorcycle stuck a bomb to his car, had “organizational links” to Iran’s nuclear agency, suggesting he was an important figure.

Iran has accused the Mossad, the CIA and Britain’s spy agency of engaging in an underground campaign against nuclear-related targets, including at least three killings since early 2010.

Another key attack was the release of a malicious computer virus known at Stuxnet in 2010 that temporarily disrupted controls of some centrifuges — a key component in nuclear fuel production. All three countries have denied the accusations.

Ronen Bergman, an investigative journalist with the Yediot Ahronot daily and expert on Israeli intelligence affairs, said the Mossad has “for years” targeted enemies that include “nuclear proliferators.”

“The outcome of such assassinations are the actual neutralization of the main scientists and the intimidation of those left behind,” he said.

U.S. naval strike group arrives in Arabian Sea as tensions continue to rise with Iran | Mail Online.

• Pentagon said deployment was ‘not unusual’
• U.S. denies role in killing of nuclear scientist
  

By Lee Moran

Last updated at 8:22 AM on 12th January 2012

The move comes as Iran threatens to close the world’s most important oil shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz, if sanctions over its nuclear programme cut off its oil exports.    

The U.S. military said it will stop any blockade of the strategic strait, and the top U.S. naval officer said preparing for a potential conflict there was something that ‘keeps me awake at night’.

New arrival: The USS Carl Vinson is now in the Arabian Sea as tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to escalate

But the Pentagon denied any direct link between recent tensions and the movement of aircraft carriers.     

Spokesman Captain John Kirby said: ‘I don’t want to leave anybody with the impression that we’re somehow (speeding) two carriers over there because we’re concerned about what happened, you know, today in Iran. It’s just not the case.’

Military officials said the USS Carl Vinson arrived in the Arabian Sea on Monday to replace the outgoing USS John C. Stennis carrier strike group, which Iran last week warned not to return to the Gulf after departing in late December.

The Stennis was due to return to its home port in San Diego but the Pentagon did not say when that would happen.

Shipped out: The USS John C. Stennis left the area in December, which prompted Iran to tell it to ‘never come back’

Another carrier strike group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, concluded a port visit to Thailand on Tuesday and was now in the Indian Ocean.

It is on track to join the Vinson in the Central Command area of operations, which begins in the neighboring Arabian Sea.

A second U.S. military official added: ‘It is not unusual to have two carriers in the CENTCOM theatre at the same time.’

Killing the brains – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Killing of nuke scientists aims to ensure that Iran can’t recover following strike

The killing of nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Wednesday joins a series of assassinations that left five Iranian scientists and experts dead in the past two years. These were central “knowledge bases” in the Islamic republic’s military nuclear program and their assassination disrupted the quest for an Iranian bomb.

Uranium enrichment is the largest vital component in Iran’s program and therefore also the most vulnerable to a military strike. For that reason, Tehran recently started to operate a new, well-fortified underground enrichment facility in a Revolutionary Guards base near the city of Qom. We can assume that Professor Roshan was intimately involved in establishing the new enrichment site. Hence, his elimination will disrupt Iran’s plans and undermine the timetable of the entire nuke project.

Since January 13, 2010, five top Iranian scientists and experts in the nuclear and missile fields were eliminated. Four of them were scientists and one, Brigadier General Hassan Moghaddamm, headed the ballistic missiles project and was apparently an expert in the field. We can assume that many more lower-ranked missile experts were killed in several explosions in recent years at various Iranian sites.

The assassination of Iranian experts is meant to deter other scientists, including foreign ones, from getting involved in such projects. The eliminations also slow down these projects and force Tehran to reorganize. Moreover, killing key figures in vital projects greatly embarrasses the Iranian regime and security forces. Such operations portray the establishment as an incompetent bunch that time after time fails in safeguarding vital interests.

Mossad fingerprints?

The most important aspect of the assassinations is the killing of people who constitute “knowledge bases.” It is clear that any military strike on Iran would only thwart the nuclear and missile projects by a few years, but the elimination of key figures may extend the programs’ recovery period, if and when they’re attacked.

All indications show that a state organ is behind the assassinations. Only a state has the resources required to carry out the kind of operations executed in Iran. This includes investment in intelligence gathering that identifies the targets and prioritizes them, the investment of time and sophisticated means in preparing an operation against people or locations that are usually under heavy guard, as well as the recruitment and training of the perpetrators. National spy agencies are virtually the only ones that possess such capabilities.

For these reasons, the Iranians and the international media tend to point to the CIA or Israel’s Mossad as the parties responsible for the assassinations and blasts in Iran. However, official American and Israeli spokespeople have not claimed responsibility for such operations.

According to the Iranians and global media outlets, the method of assassinating the scientists is reminiscent of the modus operandi utilized by Mossad in targeting top Palestinian terrorists in the past 30 years. The Iranians claim that Mossad’s fingerprints are evident in two aspects at least: First, the strict focus on the elimination target, while avoiding as much as is possible collateral damage and civilian casualties. Second, the utilization of motorcycles and masked assassins, thereby hiding the killers’ faces and making the getaway easy even on crowded streets.

In a recent investigative report by the New York Times, Western intelligence experts said there is clear evidence that the blasts at Iranian sites and the elimination of Iranian experts are securing their objective. We can already see a slowdown in the pace of the projects and damage to “assets” that the Iranians have already accumulated.

Iran’s silence

The most curious question in the face of these incidents is why Iran, which does not shy away from threatening the world with closure of the Hormuz Straits, has failed to retaliate for the painful blows to its nuclear and missile program? After all, the Revolutionary Guards have a special arm, Quds, whose aim (among others) is to carry out terror attacks and secret assassinations against enemies of the regime overseas.

Moreover, if the Iranians do not wish to directly target Western or Israeli interests, they can prompt their agents, that is, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other groups, to do the job. In the past, Iran did not shy away from carrying out terror attacks in Europe (in Paris and Berlin) and in South America (in Buenos Aires,) so why is it showing restraint now?

The reason is apparently Iran’s fear of Western retaliation. Any terror attack against Israel or another Western target – whether it is carried out directly by the Quds force or by Hezbollah – may prompt a Western response. Under such circumstances, Israel or a Western coalition (or both) will have an excellent pretext to strike and destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile sites.

Moreover, Tehran fears that Israel will take advantage of an Iranian attack in order to strike the immense missile and rocket arsenals funded or built by Iran in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. The main aim of these arsenals is to serve as Iranian deterrence against a military strike.

Hence, it is no wonder that Iran does not wish to jeopardize these strategic assets only to satisfy its hunger for revenge and restore the regime’s prestige. This is also the reason why the Iranians made sure in recent years that Hezbollah would not fire rockets at Israel, carry out attacks in Israeli territory, or avenge the assassination of the group’s military commander, Imad Mugniyah.

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are apparently showing restraint and sustaining the assassinations and explosions with clenched teeth, while ensuring that Bashar Assad and Hassan Nasrallah do not act foolishly, so that the retaliatory means remain intact and are available once the major confrontation takes place.