WarSclerotic

Blog: Fisking Obama’s AIPAC Speech.

Ed Lasky

Obama was not there for Israel ‘every single time’ – Right Turn – The Washington Post.

By Jennifer Rubin  |  08:30 AM ET, 03/05/2012

WPR Article | The New Rules: Assad’s Ouster Best Chance to Stave off Israel-Iran Conflict.

The debate among U.S. foreign policy analysts over the wisdom of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities — and whether or not America should allow itself to be drawn into an ensuing conflict with Iran should Israel strike — has largely taken place parallel to the debate over whether to pursue an R2P, or responsibility to protect, intervention in Syria. It bears noting, however, that forcing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s departure may be the best near-term policy for the U.S. to avoid being sucked into an Israeli-Iranian war.

Clearly the Assad ruling clan deserves our best efforts short of an all-out invasion to bring about its forcible removal. Now that Assad is perpetrating the same mass violence against innocent civilians on a town-by-town basis to which his father, Hafez, once resorted, there should be no pretense of suggesting that this is none of the world’s moral business.

That argument can’t be applied universally, of course. If the Assad regime was powerful enough, the West would naturally have to let it get away with its vicious assault against its own people. But it is not, which means we now possess both the motive and opportunity to do the right thing.

The opportunity cost here is acceptably low. Outside of leaving Russia fuming and China indignant, America’s relations with the rest of the world will suffer little damage. Instead, we’ll further strengthen our ties with Israel, Turkey and the GCC countries, which have already decided, in the form of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, to arm the Syrian rebels. For a Washington contemplating a strategic “pivot” to East Asia, buttressing all those key relations is a worthwhile goal.

And while President Barack Obama’s unstated doctrine of “leading from behind” by letting the local critical mass for intervention build before supporting it is laudable, the decision by the GCC countries to arm the Syrian rebels is firm proof that the time has now come for the president to move beyond his decidedly cautious approach. Politically, it will cost him little with his voting base, and it will further insulate him from Republican charges of “appeasement” and other such nonsense. And when Assad does fall before the U.S. presidential election in November, it will represent another brilliant notch in Obama’s ever-lengthening belt of foreign policy successes.

In short, the time has arrived for this administration to move beyond righteously castigating Moscow and Beijing for their intransigence in the United Nations. When more than 60 nations beg the U.N. to send in civilian peacekeeping troops, they’re really asking Washington to pull the military trigger — pure and simple.

Assuming our covert presence is already deep at work inside Syria concerning its large cache of chemical weapons, we ought to be able at least to match the GCC’s willingness to offer material support to the rebel forces. And when that proves not to be enough, then we ought to encourage Turkey’s invocation of its NATO membership to request alliance military operations designed to enable a Syrian rebel victory. The pattern here should mirror that of the Libyan operation, but with Turkish military forces playing the lead role wherever possible in securing sanctuary for civilians and rebel forces.

That doesn’t mean putting U.S. or NATO boots on the ground, beyond the prudent application of covert elements and special forces to target the regime’s chemical weapons and al-Qaida operatives as opportunities arise.

Let’s not kid ourselves here: Israel is making similar moves, and Iran already has personnel in country doing dirty work on behalf of the Assad regime. With Hamas already abandoning Assad, there is some hope that Hezbollah can be eventually convinced to accept the inevitability of that regime’s demise.

The larger opportunity here is maintaining the Arab Spring’s momentum, while directing it decidedly in the direction of Iran. The golden chance to knock off Iran’s prime ally in the region’s “Shiite crescent” is clear, as is the tremendous geostrategic value in doing so. What might be less clear is how making this effort will also favorably alter the dynamics surrounding Iran’s persistent reach for the Bomb.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the crisis represented by Syria’s expanding civil war doesn’t encourage Israel to contemplate provoking a second crisis in the form of an attack on Iran. Instead, history shows time and again that regional balance-of-power players focus on the game at hand, preferring to exploit its opportunities and wait out its immediate implications on the correlation of forces. Thus, the more we ratchet up the Syrian dynamic, the more we freeze both Iran and Israel on the subject of their inevitable showdown.

Plus, quite frankly, it behooves America to continue processing the Arab Spring’s “one damn thing after another” dynamic. That’s how past administrations deftly handled the sequential collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s and Yugoslavia’s similar dissolution across the 1990s. We can always argue on the speed of our responses, which are invariably too slow, but the underlying principle of accepting the sequencing — that is, as it comes — is sound. Simply put, we pull out our long knives on the Assad regime right now because we can and because it’s the next thing up.

Once Assad falls, whatever the outcome, we have isolated Iran further, lessening its bravado and increasing its desperation. If you want to stave off an Israeli attack, this is the route to go. Moreover, removing Assad will create an exit scenario for Syria short of true chaos — meaning civil war, with all the locals driving the process to deeply conflicting ends — which could easily become the trigger for direct Israeli-Iranian kinetics, first inside Syria and then beyond. Syria is simply too important an outcome for both of them, as well as for Turkey and the GCC countries, for any of them to eschew the dangers associated with interventions of some level.

With all that ambition at stake, it’s better for the West, along with Turkey, to impose an overarching and overwhelming dynamic upon the situation to steer it toward the preferred outcome of Assad’s fall. Again, Moscow and Bejing will shriek in response, but we’ll get what we want in the end — namely, Iran’s top lieutenant dethroned and the Arab Spring’s momentum extended to Iran’s doorstep. That outcome will do more to stay Israel’s hand on Iran’s nuclear program than anything else we might manage to come up with. Indeed, compared to the Western embargo of Iranian oil, which will eventually push Tehran into forcing the issue of war with Israel, Assad’s fall is far more likely to force some Iranian compromise with the West’s resolute opposition to its nuclear ambitions.

There is nothing new or fantastic about the logic tendered here. We are simply killing the chicken to scare the monkey.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is chief analyst at Wikistrat and a contributing editor for Esquire magazine. His eBook serial is “The Emily Updates: One Year in the Life of the Girl Who Lived” (September-December 2011). His weekly WPR column, The New Rules, appears every Monday. Reach him and his blog at thomaspmbarnett.com.

IAEA ‘Concerned’ as Iran Boosts Enrichment – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

Iran’s IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh smiles at IAEA meeting

Reuters

The United Nations IAEA nuclear agency, years after Israel warned not to trust Iran’s “peaceful ambitions,” now is “concerned” at a sharp increase in uranium enrichment and the possibility its scientists are hiding work for an atom bomb.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, speaking to the IAEA board, said that a tripling on the enrichment of uranium at Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site, along with Iran’s rejection of IAEA attempts to inspect nuclear facilities, point to concern that the Islamic Republic might be developing nuclear capability for other than peaceful purposes.

The timing of his remarks could not be more appropriate for Israel, with President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visiting President Barack Obama.

The uranium is 20 percent enriched, far below the 90 percent needed for a nuclear weapon, but the amount of low-grade uranium being produced can be processed further for upgrading.

“The agency continues to have serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” he told the meeting. “As Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation … the agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to concluded that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”

China and Russia have been stumbling blocks to Western efforts to pass a resolution in the United Nations Security Council criticizing Iran and also have balked at placing sanctions meant to harm Iran, where both countries have invested heavily in building its nuclear facilities.

The higher production of uranium at the Fordo plant is of great concern because the plant is built underground and protected by mountains and concrete bunkers, making it difficult if not impossible for Israel to attack.

Iran last month welcomed IAEA visitors but refused to allow them to visit its facilities.

The Islamic Republic maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful ambitions, and assuming that a nuclear warhead is on its agenda, it is locked in a race against Israel and the United States of what will come first – a nuclear weapon or economic and/or military damage that can stop its development.

The Barack and Bibi Smackdown.

When President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met this week in Washington, the main issue on their agenda was the Iranian nuclear threat. But the subtext of the debate over whether the United States will step up its own threats to use force to ensure that Iran abandons its nuclear ambitions or will stand in the way of an Israeli attack is the tense personal relationship between the two men.

The fact that Obama has little use for Netanyahu is not exactly a state secret. Though the president has boasted of his close personal relationships with other foreign leaders such as the Islamist prime minister of Turkey, Obama has complained publicly about his distaste for dealing with Netanyahu and engaged in annual fights with the Israeli over policy questions such as Jerusalem and subjected the Israeli to public dressing downs.

Indeed, Obama seemed to think at one point that he might bring down Netanyahu’s government but rather than sink him, these attacks merely strengthened the prime minister at home because Israelis regard Obama with great suspicion. These feelings are obviously reciprocated, as was proven when Netanyahu lost his patience in 2011 after being ambushed by Obama on the 1967 borders and publicly lectured the president about Israel’s security needs.

All this has rightly led to concerns among American supporters of Israel about Obama’s friendship for the Jewish state, something that could have a serious impact on the president’s chances for re-election. To this Obama and the Democrats have replied that this is all a misunderstanding. To the extent that they will admit that there is any division between the two nations, Democrats argue that it is merely a function of a personal spat between the two men.

However, attempts to rationalize this problem as the inevitable fallout from a personal spat are wrongheaded. Though a personal connection between the president and the prime minister might go a long toward smoothing over the problem, the difficulty goes a lot deeper.

Israel’s problem with the White House is not so much the fact that its current occupant doesn’t like Netanyahu as his lack of a strong affinity for the country itself. Obama’s instincts since his first day of office have led him to seek to create more distance between the U.S. and Israel and to instead conduct a failed effort toward outreach and engagement to the Muslim and Arab world. Obama pays lip service to Israel’s security needs and has denounced Iran’s nuclear ambitions loudly and often. But his reflexive backing for anti-Israel institutions such as UNESCO and open reluctance to enforce existing sanctions against Tehran or to declare “red lines” that if crossed would subject the Islamist regime to American retaliation gives the lie to the notion that he can be relied upon to back up those words with action.

Obama has rightly said that an Iranian nuclear weapon is just as much America’s problem as it Israel’s. Yet his desire to postpone any showdown on the issue while waiting for sanctions that he knows have little or no chance to succeed to resolve the impasse demonstrates that he regards the issue as more of a hindrance to his re-election campaign than a genuine threat that must be dealt with before the Iranians have gone too far to be stopped. The fact that his administration seems more worried about stopping Israel from acting in its own interests than in tangible measures that would ensure the collapse of the Iranian threat speak louder than his protestations of affection for Israel.

Though it makes for good copy, the focus on the Obama-Netanyahu relationship obscures the basic policy differences that have arisen between Israel and the United States during the past three years. Israel’s difficulty in trusting the administration to do the right thing on Iran stems from Obama’s stands on the issues not a lack of personal chemistry on the part of the president and the prime minister.

JNS columnist Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMETARY magazine and chief political blogger at http://www.commentarymagazine.com. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@commentarymagazine.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

US Fear of Recession Protects Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

$5 a gallon for gas in Washington last month

Reuters

A glance at financial markets shows the biggest obstacle to a green light from President Barack Obama to stop Iran’s nuclear project is fear of higher oil prices.

China and Russia have a vested interested in Iranian nuclear facilities, but except for them, as well as Syria and Lebanon, almost no one —  especially not the Gulf States, Israel and the United States — wants to see Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad armed with a nuclear warhead. Such a weapon would be aimed at carrying out his “dream” of  wiping Israel off the map and dominating the region with an Islamic empire.

A glance at financial markets indicates that the biggest obstacle to the Obama administration’s giving the green light to prevent Iran from getting “the bomb” is not fear of a military response but rather of an oil-driven recession.

“Israel cares much more about Iran having a bomb than the price of oil, while the West and East have an overwhelming interest in keeping the flow of oil going,” David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Fund told CBS MarketWatch this week.

Military officers and analysts have batted the question of an attack on Iran around the ballpark, with estimates of Iran’s reaction ranging from terrorist attacks on American overseas bases and Israeli targets around the world  to a raging regional Middle East war.

However, the fragile American economy in an election is perhaps the most important factor in President Barack Obama’s decision “to attack or not to attack.”

“The root of his concerns takes us back to oil prices, which are rising because of both the sanctions and the threat of military conflict, Eyal Gabbai, until recently the director of the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, recently told The Wall Street Journal.

“I’m not sure that Americans are willing to pay the price of rising prices at the pump,” he said.

Israel, which has long experience in suffering Arab terrorist attacks since before the re-establishment of the Jewish state, sees Iranian nuclear capability as a clear and present threat.

The rising price of oil has sedated the Americans’ eagerness to disable Iran.

An Israeli or US-led attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would probably be met with Iran’s closing, at least temporarily, the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway for more than 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.

Crude oil would soar at least 50 percent if not 100 percent higher than now, oil experts predict. A parallel increase in gasoline would cost American consumers a bundle, and possibly cost President Obama reelection, all of which makes oil Iran’s best protection against an attack.

The price of crude oil now is around $106 a barrel, the highest since last April when “black gold” reached the $110 a barrel level before dripping back to the low $70s.

It did not take long for the higher price to filter down to local gas station. The price at the pump has soared by 50 cents a gallon since the beginning of the year, to approximately $4 a gallon in some places. The average price now is approximately $3.75 a gallon.

The older generation has sharp memories the 1970s, when oil jumped four-fold to $12 a barrel during the Yom Kippur War and then to $40 at the end of the decade, driving the United States into a recession.

Economists point out that the United States is more energy efficient and the economy more stable, although not roaring, than before, but there is a limit to how much it can withstand.

President Obama is enjoying his highest popularity in more than year as the unemployment rate drops, but public spending is bound to drop if gasoline prices soar much past $4 a gallon.

McCain: Trust Israel’s Judgment on Attacking Iran – Matt Vasilogambros and Alexandra Jaffe – NationalJournal.com.

by Matt Vasilogambros and Alexandra Jaffe

Updated: March 5, 2012 | 9:02 a.m.
March 5, 2012 | 7:56 a.m.

If Israel deems it necessary to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, Sen. John McCain said that the U.S. should trust the country’s judgment.

“We were surprised when Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons, we were surprised when North Korea acquired nuclear weapons,” McCain said on CBS’s This Morning. “So what the president is asking the prime minister of Israel to do is to rely on his judgment as to when the force may be necessary.”

McCain’s comments come one day after President Obama took a firm position on Iran’s nuclear proliferation in his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. McCain attacked Obama on his commitment to Israel, saying the U.S. needs to back Israel in making sure Iran does not build or acquire a nuclear weapon.

“His speeches are excellent,” McCain said. “His policies are not so good.”

McCain, R-Ariz., repeated these sentiments on Fox and Friends, and said the president has “the worst relations with Israel of any recent president.”

McCain also addressed Russian elections, saying Vladimir Putin’s victory, with preliminary counts giving him 60 percent of the vote according to the BBC, was a “fraud.” He warned that Russian citizens would eventually take him down.

“Putin’s days are numbered,” he said on CNN’s Starting Point. “The Arab Spring has already come to Russia, and it will continue.”

Critics both in the U.S. and Russia contend that Putin rigged the Russian elections in his favor, as a rising tide of public frustration with his long-standing government has led to mass protests in the streets of Moscow, which McCain likened to the same protests that rocked the Arab world and brought down dictatorships in countries like Egypt and Libya. McCain cited “thousands and thousands of protesters, the blogs [and] the tweets” coming out of Russia as evidence that the Arab Spring was spreading.

“It’s a new world we’re living in now in the 21st century,” he said. “And there’s no doubt in my mind that the people of Russia are not going to stand forever for a corrupt government such as that of Vladimir Putin.”

President Obama is Israel’s worst frenemy.

Published : Monday, 05 Mar 2012, 9:11 AM EST

Woe is me. President Obama claims he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House, yet doesn’t get any respect. This is no Rodney Dangerfield act. He is deadly serious.

“Every single commitment I have made to the state of Israel and its security, I have kept,” he told The Atlantic magazine. “Why is it that despite me never failing to support Israel on every single problem that they’ve had over the last three years, that there are still questions about that?”

The question deserves an honest answer, though the truth is not likely to cut through the fog of presidential self-pity. A man who compares himself to Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Mandela and FDR isn’t the sort to welcome disagreement.

And that is the heart of his problem. Obama is certain he knows what’s good for Israel. Given his record and the Iranian threat, it’s an impossible sell.

He came into office thinking Israel was the obstacle to Middle East peace; three years later, his policies are producing more signs of war than peace. The Palestinians won’t negotiate for their own state because the president foolishly urged them to make a ban on Israeli settlements a precondition.

He was wrong from the git-go, and still is. But facts don’t stand a chance. As a Democrat who speaks to Obama about the Mideast told me, he has a “stubborn worldview.”

How stubborn will be revealed today and tomorrow during crucial meetings with Israeli leaders. The Iranian march to nukes will top the agenda, but Obama’s view on Iran is typical of how he sees the region and his role in it.

Stripped of nuance, the gist is that Israel and America are oppressors and Muslims are oppressed. He remains obsessed with the idea that all will be well if only we prove to Muslims that we’re not bigots.

The latest example is his apology to Afghans after our soldiers mistakenly burned the Koran. Six soldiers have been murdered in subsequent riots, yet he insists those involved in the burning face military charges.

His approach to Iran is similarly misguided. Despite its thugocracy, he refuses to accept that his policy of engagement has failed. The White House even says it sees Iran as a “rational actor,” and Obama told The Atlantic that military action against Iran could work to its advantage.

“At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally [ Syria] is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim?” he asked.

Huh?

This is Obama at his faculty-lounge worst. Trapped by his own prejudices and misreading of history and culture, he continues to suggest that Iran is open to persuasion if he can find the right words. It’s not. It’s an evil regime that tortures its people, kills American soldiers, sponsors terrorism and wants a nuclear bomb to use against Israel and to dominate Arab countries.

A friend who recently met with top Israeli officials says the bottom line they will explain to Obama is that there are two things no Israeli government can ever do. First, it cannot allow a mortal enemy to get a weapon of mass destruction or the ability to make one. Second, it cannot entrust its survival to a third party, including the United States.

The policy that flows from those principles is obvious. Israel will attack when it feels Iran is close to getting the bomb. And Israel is more likely to reach that conclusion sooner because it doesn’t trust Obama’s resolve or time line.

For his part, Obama will have to search someplace else for respect. Israel is too busy trying to survive.

Michael Goodwin is a Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist. To continue reading his column on other topics, click here. 

IAEA: Iran tripled higher-grade … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By REUTERS

Last updated: 03/05/2012 14:45

Amano voices “serious concern” to UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation governing board, reports on lack of progress over Syria’s “delicate” situation; Japan nears deal with US to cut Iranian oil imports.

By Reuters

VIENNA – Iran has tripled its monthly production of higher-grade enriched uranium and the UN nuclear watchdog has “serious concerns” about possible military dimensions to Tehran’s atomic activities, the agency’s chief said on Monday.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also told the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors about the lack of progress in two rounds of talks between the Vienna-based UN agency and Tehran this year.

US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were to meet shortly in Washington to discuss Iran, deeply at odds over the timing for possible last-resort military action against Iran’s nuclear program.

Even though Obama offered assurances of stiffened US resolve against Iran before the White House meeting, the two allies remained far apart over explicit nuclear “red lines” that Tehran should not be allowed to cross.

During meetings in the Iranian capital in January and February, Iranian officials stonewalled the IAEA’s requests for access to a military site seen as central to its investigation into the nature of the Islamic state’s nuclear activity.

“The agency continues to have serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme,” Amano told the closed-door meeting, according to a copy of his speech.

The IAEA “is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities,” he added.

A report by the IAEA to member states last month said Iran was significantly stepping up uranium enrichment, a finding that sent oil prices higher on fears that tensions between Tehran and the West could boil over into military conflict.

Since the IAEA’s previous report in November, Amano said Iran has tripled monthly production of uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent – well above the level usually needed to run nuclear power plants.

Though indicated by the IAEA’s confidential report last month, it was the first time Amano spoke in public about this rapid increase in Iran’s enrichment activities, which has stoked Western and Israeli suspicions about Tehran’s nuclear agenda.

Despite intensive discussions with Iran, Amano said, there had been no agreement on a “structured approach” to resolve outstanding issues with its nuclear programme during the talks held in January and February.

Iran “did not address the agency’s concerns in a substantive manner,” Amano said.

Making clear, however, that he would keep trying to engage Iran on the issue, he added: “Regarding future steps, the agency will continue to address the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and in a constructive spirit.”

Amano: Syria asked IAEA to understand ‘delicate situation’

Amano also said that Syria had asked the UN nuclear watchdog for understanding of the country’s “delicate situation” in response to requests for Syrian cooperation with an investigation into suspected illicit nuclear activity.

The Syrian comments cited by Amano were an apparent reference to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s campaign to stamp out a popular uprising, in which over 7,500 people have died by a UN count.

Amano made clear that no progress had been made in the UN agency’s almost four-year-old investigation regarding Syria. The IAEA has been seeking access to a desert site at Deir al-Zor that US intelligence reports say was a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry before Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.

The Vienna-based watchdog has also been seeking information about other sites that may have been linked to Deir al-Zor.

Amano said he had written a letter to Syria in November last year urging it to address the agency’s questions.

“I received a reply from Syria dated 20 February 2012, which asked for understanding of ‘the difficult circumstances and the delicate situation that Syria is passing through,'” Amano said, according to a copy of his speech to the closed-door meeting.

“The letter pledged that Syria would continue to cooperate with the Agency to resolve outstanding issues.”

Syria says Deir al-Zor was a non-nuclear military facility but the IAEA concluded in May 2011 that it was “very likely” to have been a reactor that should have been declared to inspectors.

In June last year, IAEA governors voted to report Syria to the UN Security Council, rebuking it for failing to cooperate with the agency’s efforts to get concrete information on Deir al-Zor and other sites. Russia and China opposed the referral, highlighting divisions among the major powers.

“The agency continues to seek full access to other locations which the agency believes are functionally related to the (Deir al-Zor) site,” Amano said. “I urge Syria to cooperate fully with the agency in connection with unresolved issues related to the Deir al-Zor site and other locations.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 5, 2012, 1:19 PM (GMT+02:00)

German and Japanese intelligence sources Monday, March 5, confirmed – and qualified – to debkafile reports in the German Der Spiegel and Welt am Sonntag that Western intelligence had known for 11 months that at least one of North Korea’s covert nuclear tests in 2010 was carried out on an Iranian radioactive bomb or nuclear warhead.
Those sources report five facts are known for sure:

1. North Korea carried out two covert underground nuclear explosions in mid-April and around May 11 of 2010 equivalent to 50- 200 tonnes of TNT.
2. Two highly lethal heavy hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium,  typical of a nuclear fission explosion and producing long-term contamination of the atmosphere, were detected and analyzed by  Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBOTO) monitoring stations in South Korea, Japan and Russia.

3. The presence of tritium in one of the tests led several intelligence agencies watching North Korea’s nuclear program and its longstanding links with Iran and Syria to examine the possibility that Pyongyang had tested the internal mechanism of a nuclear warhead on Iran’s behalf.  This strongly indicated to German and Japanese intelligence that Iran had already developed the nuclear warhead’s outer shell and attained its weaponization.
4.  Another possibility examined was that North Korea had tested an Iranian “dirty bomb” – i.e. a conventionally detonated device containing nuclear substances. Tritium would boost its range, force and lethality.

This was one of the conclusions of atmospheric scientist Larsk-Erik De Geer of the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who spent a year studying the data collected by various CTBOTO stations tracking the North Korean explosions.
On February 3, De Greer published some of his findings and conclusions in Nature Magazine. His paper will appear in the April/May issue of the Science and Global Security Journal.

5. The Japanese and German sources found confirmation of their suspicions that North Korea had abetted Iran’s nuclear aspirations in three events:

a)   Shortly after the April explosion, a large group of Iranian nuclear scientists and technicians arrived in Pyongyang. They apparently came to take part in setting up the second test in May.
b)  In late April, Tehran shipped to Pyongyang a large quantity of uranium enriched to 20+ percent – apparently for use in the May test.
c)  Straight after the May test, the Central Bank of Iran transferred $55 million to the account of the North Korean Atomic Energy Commission. The size of the sum suggests that it covered the fee to North Korea not just of one but the two tests – the first a pilot and the second, a full-stage test.

It is not by chance that this incriminating disclosure about Iran’s nuclear achievements sees the light Monday, just hours before US Barack Obama receives Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the White house for an argument over an expeditious military action to stop Iran going all the way to a nuclear weapon.
The disclosure invalidates the main point the US President made in his speech Sunday to the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC convention in Washington that there was still time for diplomatic pressure and sanctions to bring Iran’s leaders to a decision to halt their nuclear momentum before military action was called for, whether by the US or Israel.

It now appears that Western intelligence has known about the North Korean tests for Iran for eleven months. Therefore, it is too late for him to try and persuade the Israeli prime minister that there is still time to spare for cutting short a nuclear Iran.

It was announced in Washington Monday that no joint American-Israeli communiqué would be issued at the end of their talks, meaning they will have agreed to disagree: Obama, to stand by his opposition to military action against Iran; Netanyahu, to decide what Israel must do in the interests of its security.
There is no doubt he would have preferred an American initiative for – or partnership in – an operation for curtailing the Iranian nuclear threat. But that is not part of Obama’s policy.