WarSclerotic

Top White House official arrives… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

At least 21 killed in Syria as mass protest erupts close to Assad’s palace in Damascus.

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Thousands of protesters proceeded with demonstrations in Damascus against the Syrian regime during a funeral procession for three protesters killed on Friday. (Reuters)

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Iran reportedly building up nuclear site near Qom days ahead of IAEA visit.

Sunday, 19 February 2012

A group of scientists are seen near the control room area at the Tehran Research Reactor. Iran appears to be poised to install thousands of new centrifuges at an underground site in the northern city of Qom just days ahead of a visit by U.N. nuclear inspectors. (Reuters)

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Iran may be preparing to expand its nuclear program at an underground plant near the city of Qom, a diplomat has told the BBC, just days ahead of a visit by United Nations nuclear inspectors.

Iran appears to be poised to install thousands of new centrifuges at the underground site in the northern city, a Vienna-based diplomat told the British broadcaster late Saturday.

The BBC said the centrifuges could speed up the production of enriched uranium, which can be used both for generating nuclear power and to manufacture atomic weapons.

Meanwhile Israel said later on Saturday that it will ultimately decree on an Iranian strike on its own, as a senior U.S. official arrived for talks on the Islamic Republic.

“Israel is the central guarantor of its own security; this is our role as army, the State of Israel should defend itself,” military chief of staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz told state-owned Channel One TV.

“We must follow the developments in Iran and its nuclear project, but in a very broad manner, taking into account what the world is doing, what Iran decided, what we will do or not do,” he said.

Tensions between Iran and Israel have been simmering with Iranian warships entering the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal in a show of “might”, a move Israel said it would closely monitor.

On Wednesday, Iran said it had installed another 3,000 centrifuges to increase its uranium enrichment abilities and was stepping up exploration and processing of uranium yellowcake.

And Israel blamed a recent wave of attacks targeting Israeli diplomats on agents of Tehran, allegations Iran denies.

U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon will on Sunday begin talks with Israeli officials on a range of issues including Iran, two weeks ahead of a Washington visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for White House talks with U.S. President Barak Obama on the same topic.

A recent article in the Washington Post said that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta thinks Israel may strike Iran’s nuclear installations in the coming months.

According to Gantz, whose interview was conducted prior to the Saturday developments, Iran was not only an “Israeli problem”, but also “a world and regional problem”.

On Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called on the world to tighten sanctions on Iran before the country enters a “zone of immunity” against a physical attack to stop its nuclear program.

China supports Arab League’s proposals for Syria – CBS News.

(AP)

BEIJING – China said Saturday that it supports the Arab League’s proposals for ending the violence in Syria, a striking show of support just two weeks after Beijing vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution backing the league’s plans.

The seemingly contradictory stances on the Arab League’s proposals appear to reflect Beijing’s desire for mediation but aversion to U.N. involvement that could lead to authorizing force, as happened with Libya.

China conveyed its support for the Arab League’s proposals in a statement posted late Saturday on the Foreign Ministry’s website. That followed a meeting earlier in the day in Damascus between Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The statement quoted Zhai as telling Assad that China was willing to work with the Syrian government and opposition, the Arab League and Arab countries to find a solution.

Chinese envoy calls on Syrians to stop acts of violence

“China supports all the mediation efforts by the Arab League to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis and calls upon relevant parties to increase communication and negotiations to find a peaceful and appropriate solution to the Syrian crisis within the framework of the Arab League and on the basis of the Arab League’s relevant political solution proposals,” Zhai was quoted as saying.

Also Saturday, a ruling party newspaper said in an editorial that China courageously defied the West when it opposed a nonbinding resolution in the U.N. General Assembly condemning human rights violations in Syria.

The vote against the resolution, which was overwhelming approved Thursday, indicates China’s rising influence in world affairs, the Global Times said.

“The country’s courage to truly express itself and to calmly stand its ground is worthy of merit,” the paper said.

“It is wrong to blindly come down on the side of the West in each vote,” it said.

Global Times is published by the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper and its editorials generally reflect the more pugnacious, jingoistic side of government opinion.

China, which carried out a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989, has refused to condemn Syria over the violence.

Beijing’s authoritarian leaders generally oppose any moves that could lead to humanitarian interventions, such as last year’s NATO air campaign in Libya, and have themselves used overwhelming force against anti-government protests in Tibet and the traditionally Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Syria has seen one of the bloodiest crackdowns in the Arab uprisings that began a year ago. The U.N. says more than 5,400 people were killed in Syria last year, and the number has risen daily. In addition, 25,000 people are estimated to have sought refuge in neighboring countries and more than 70,000 are internally displaced.

Dempsey: Israeli strike won’t achieve objectives – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey says Israeli military action in Iran would be ‘destabilizing’ but admits Washington yet to convince Jerusalem on this view

Ynet

The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey said Saturday that an Israeli strike on Iran“wouldn’t achieve its long-term objectives” and would be “destabilizing.”

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Dempsey said that taking military action against the Islamic Republic would not be not “prudent.”

The US general claimed that the economic sanctions imposed on Iran together with international pressure are beginning to have an effect. “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor. We also know, or we believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided to make a nuclear weapon.”

Addressing the possibility of the US arming the Syrian opposition, Dempsey said “I think intervening in Syriawould be very difficult.” He explained that international actors like Turkey, Russia and Iran all have an interest in Syria.

Earlier on Saturday British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Iran is clearly trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability, and if it succeeds it will set off a dangerous round of nuclear proliferation across the Middle East.

News from The Associated Press.

VIENNA (AP) — Iran is poised to greatly expand uranium enrichment at a fortified underground bunker to a point that would boost how quickly it could make nuclear warheads, diplomats tell The Associated Press.

They said Tehran has put finishing touches for the installation of thousands of new-generation centrifuges at the cavernous facility – machines that can produce enriched uranium much more quickly and efficiently than its present machines.

While saying that the electrical circuitry, piping and supporting equipment for the new centrifuges was now in place, the diplomats emphasized that Tehran had not started installing the new machines at its Fordo facility and could not say whether it was planning to.

Still, the senior diplomats – who asked for anonymity because their information was privileged – suggested that Tehran would have little reason to prepare the ground for the better centrifuges unless it planned to operate them. They spoke in recent interviews – the last one Saturday.

The reported work at Fordo appeared to reflect Iran’s determination to forge ahead with nuclear activity that could be used to make atomic arms despite rapidly escalating international sanctions and the latent threat of an Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities.

Fordo could be used to make fissile warhead material even without such an upgrade, the diplomats said.

They said that although older than Iran’s new generation machines, the centrifuges now operating there can be reconfigured within days to make such material because they already are enriching to 20 percent – a level that can be boosted quickly to weapons-grade quality.

Their comments appeared to represent the first time anyone had quantified the time it would take to reconfigure the Fordo centrifuges into machines making weapons-grade material.

In contrast, Iran’s older enrichment site at Natanz is producing uranium at 3.4 percent, a level normally used to power reactors. While that too could be turned into weapons-grade uranium, reassembling from low to weapons-grade production is complex, and retooling the thousands of centrifuges at Natanz would likely take weeks.

The diplomats’ recent comments came as International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are scheduled to visit Tehran on Sunday. Their trip – the second this month – is another attempt to break more than three years of Iranian stonewalling about allegations that Tehran has – or is – secretly working on nuclear weapons that would be armed with uranium enriched to 90 percent or more.

Diplomats accredited to the IAEA expect little from that visit. They told the AP that – as before – Iran was refusing to allow the agency experts to visit Parchin, the suspected site of explosives testing for a nuclear weapon and had turned down other key requests made by the experts.

Iranian officials deny nuclear weapons aspirations, saying the claims are based on bogus intelligence from the U.S. and Israel.

But IAEA chief Yukiya Amano has said there are increasing indications of such activity. His concerns were outlined in 13-page summary late last year listing clandestine activities that either can be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons.”

Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high explosives testing and detonator development to set off a nuclear charge, as well as computer modeling of a core of a nuclear warhead. The report also cited preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran’s Shahab 3 intermediate range missile – a weapon that could reach Israel.

Iran says it is enriching only to make nuclear fuel. But because enrichment can also create fissile warhead material, the U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions on Tehran in a failed attempt to force it to stop.

More recently, the U.S., the European Union and other Western allies have either tightened up their own sanctions or rapidly put new penalties in place striking at the heart of Iran’s oil exports lifeline and its financial system.

The most recent squeeze on Iran was announced Friday, when SWIFT, a financial clearinghouse used by virtually every country and major corporation in the world, agreed to shut out the Islamic Republic from its network.

Diplomats say the choke-holds are being applied in part to persuade Israel to hold off on potential military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities – among them Fordo, a main Israeli concern because it is dug deep into a mountain and could be impervious to the most powerful bunker busting bombs.

Diplomats told the AP earlier this month that Iran had added two new series or cascades of old-generation IR-1 centrifuges to its Fordo operation, meaning 348 centrifuges were now operating in four cascades.

Olli Heinonen, who retired last year as the IAEA’s chief Iran inspector, recently estimated that these machines, and two other cascades at Natanz can produce around 15 kilograms (more than 30 pounds) of 20-percent enriched uranium a month, using Iran’s tons of low-enriched uranium as feedstock.

The low and higher enriched uranium now being produced “provides the basic material needed to produce four to five nuclear weapons,” Heinonen said.

But he suggested “an altogether different scenario” – a much quicker pace of enrichment to levels easily turned into weapons-capable uranium if Iran starts using newer, more powerful centrifuges at Fordo. That, said the diplomats, is exactly what Iran appears to be on the verge of doing by finishing preparatory work recently for new centrifuge installations.

Just three days ago Iran’s semiofficial Fars agency reported that a “new generation” of Iranian centrifuges had gone into operation at Natanz, in central Iran.

A diplomat accredited to the IAEA, which monitors Iran’s known nuclear programs, said the “new generation” of centrifuges appeared to be referring to about 65 IR-4 machines that were recently set up at an experimental site at Natanz.

Fordo, which can house 3,000 centrifuges, was confidentially revealed to the IAEA by Iran in 2009, just days before the U.S. and Britain jointly announced its existence.

Iran announced last year that it would move its 20-percent uranium production to Fordo from Natanz and sharply boost capacity. It started making higher grade material two years ago saying it needed it to fuel a research reactor.

But the U.S. and others question the rationale, pointing out that Iran rejected offers of foreign fuel supplies for that reactor and is making more of the higher-enriched material than that small reactor needs.

U.S. official: Signs pointing to increasing likelihood of Israeli strike on Iran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

As senior U.S. security adviser Tom Donilon arrived in Saturday night to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue with top Israeli officials, a U.S. official has told Haaretz that all the messages from Israel in recent months pointed to the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran.

U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon is set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and advisers on Sunday, as part of preparations for Netanyahu’s scheduled visit to Washington, D.C. next month, which will include a meeting with President Barack Obama.

	An IAF jet refueling an F-15, above Tel Aviv.
	Photo by: IDF Spokesperson

That visit is also expected to focus on Tehran’s nuclear program, and U.S. concerns that Israel is planning to attack Iranian atomic facilities within a few months.

Speaking to Haaretz off the record, a senior U.S. official said that in the past six months the messages reaching Washington from Jerusalem have increasingly pointed to the likelihood of an Israeli strike.

The U.S. administration wants Israel to wait a few months in order to give the international sanctions against Iran a chance before deciding on an attack. A few days ago, officials in Tehran expressed a readiness to resume negotiations with the six main powers.

Israeli officials have expressed some satisfaction with the latest anti-Iran sanctions. On Friday the Belgium-based SWIFT, which provides banks with a system for moving funds around the world, bowed to international pressure and said it was ready to block Iranian banks from using its network to transfer money. But Jerusalem does not believe that even these measures will lead Tehran to reevaluate its nuclear plans.

On Sunday, Netanyahu is expected to tell Donilon that the only test of the sanctions is a positive outcome. “Any measure that doesn’t stop Iran’s nuclear program is inadequate,” a senior Israeli government aide said recently.

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo on Saturday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israeli military action against Iran is not on the table for now, and called for “crippling and consequential” sanctions against Iran.

The Israeli government source said U.S. and Israeli teams will work together during Donilon’s visit. The Israeli team is headed by national security adviser Yaakov Amidror, with representatives from the defense, foreign and strategic affairs ministries, as well as from army intelligence.

Donilon will leave Israel tomorrow. His entourage includes senior White House, State Department and Department of Defense officials such as Gary Samore, White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, and White House Middle East Adviser Steve Simon.

Donilon is scheduled to meet with Barak and will presumably also speak with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and Mossad chief Tamir Pardo. The White House said in a statement that talks will also include the situation in Syria.

In other news affecting the region, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned on Friday of the dangers facing the United States in the Middle East. Speaking at a “town hall meeting” with officers and soldiers at a U.S. Air Force base in Barksdale, Louisiana, Panetta recited a long list of challenges facing the United States military establishment in an era of deep government cutbacks.

“We face the whole issue of rising turmoil in the Middle East,” Panetta said. “I mean, God, any one of those countries in the Middle East could blow on us – from Syria, which is already in turmoil, to Egypt, to Yemen, to a number of others.”

Panetta’s warning came just days after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, failed, in a visit to Egypt, to dissuade Cairo from going ahead with criminal proceedings against 19 Americans affiliated with prodemocracy organizations in the country.

Officially, U.S. military authorities said that Dempsey’s trip “was planned long before this situation developed and caused tension between the two nations.”

Speaking to a reporter with the American Forces Press Service on his flight from Cairo to Washington, Dempsey said: “We discussed that [situation] very professionally,” adding, “I expressed the fact that it caused us concern, not only about the particular NGOs and individuals currently unable to leave the country, but rather more broadly.”

Dempsey’s relationship with his Egyptian counterpart, Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan, as well as Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, began in 2007 when Dempsey was deputy commander of U.S. Central Command and continued after he became acting commander in 2008.

Dempsey said he asked the defense leaders, “What signal should I take from this in terms of how you see Egypt’s future? Are you going to become isolated? Are you going to preserve individual freedoms or deny them?” He noted that “they don’t have the answers right now.”

Dempsey said he found the Egyptian military “quite eager” to get out of the country-running business.

Meanwhile, on Friday it was reported that two Iranian naval ships sailed through Egypt’s Suez Canal into the Mediterranean.

“Two Iranian ships crossed through the Suez Canal following permission from the Egyptian armed forces,” a source in the canal authority said, adding that the destroyer and a supply ship could be on their way to the Syrian coast. Iran and Syria agreed to cooperate on naval training a year ago, and Tehran has no naval agreement with any other country in the region.