WarSclerotic

Rebecca Tinsley: Why Israel Has Bombed Sudan.

Arab governments are competing to find the strongest terms with which to condemn Israel’s alleged bombing of a Sudanese weapons factory this week. Yet, no one in the Middle East should have been surprised. So long as the Khartoum regime works hand-in-hand with Iran in supporting groups like Hamas, Israel will regard Sudan as a legitimate target.

Although Tel Aviv will not admit it, this is their third attack on Sudanese soil in as many years. In 2009 they destroyed a convoy taking weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and in 2010 they killed an arms smuggler who was also thought to have been supplying Hamas.

Israel’s target on the night of October 23rd, the Yarmouk Compound, run by the Military Industry Corporation, was among Africa’s largest arms makers. In May 2010 the Sudanese newspaper Ray Al-Sha’b reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps was operating a secret weapons factory in Sudan to supply weapons to terrorist groups across Africa and the Middle East. It also suggested Iran was cooperating with Sudan to produce nuclear weapons. The Khartoum regime closed the paper immediately and arrested the deputy-editor.

This week, following the Yarmouk explosion, Sudanese opposition figures confirmed the story: the Yarmouk Compound was being used to aid Iran’s geopolitical objectives in the Holy Land (6). For this reason Israel’s vice premier, Moshe Yaalon, described Sudan as a central player in Iran’s efforts to get weapons to Hamas.

The Sudanese regime has a distinguished pedigree supporting international terrorism. In the 1990s it gave sanctuary to so many outlaws, the capital, Khartoum, was known as “the Holiday Inn for Terrorists.” Al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Carlos the Jackal all called Khartoum home. It was Khartoum’s five years playing gracious host to Osama bin Laden that earned it U.S. sanctions in 1997.

Khartoum’s National Islamic Front regime (rebranded as the National Congress Party) has a long and deep friendship with Iran. Over the years they have signed several military cooperation agreements, including deals sharing weapons technology and training. Sudanese opposition figures suggest Tehran regards Sudan as its back up weapons manufacturer in the event that Israel attacks Iran (which it expects at any moment). In effect, they say, an invisible war between Iran and Israel is being fought on Sudanese soil.

Sudan and Iran has been a marriage made in jihadist’s heaven. They share an Islamist world view, a fundamentalist ideology, and a commitment to support groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. In August this year the happy couple renewed their vows at the Non-Aligned Conference in Tehran.

For years the UK-based “Africa Confidential” has warned of the military and diplomatic implications of this partnership. Gill Lusk of Africa Confidential says the Yarmouk attack is a wake-up call for the international community:

“Khartoum’s Islamist regime has long had a close working relationship with Iran, especially on defence matters. Israel has several times deployed air strikes against weapons convoys in Sudan which were bound for Hamas in Gaza. This was confirmed by local Sudanese sources. However, this is the first time that a strike assumed to be by Israel has been directly linked to Iranian involvement. It therefore suggests that other governments may now once again take the Sudanese regime more seriously as a promoter of terrorism, as they did when it was implicated on the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.”

Moreover, Sudan is a terrorist state in its own right. The same Arab nations condemning Israel this week have been mute in the face of Khartoum’s ruthless suppression of its own Muslim citizens in Darfur since 2003, and thirty years of ethnically cleansing those within its own borders it considers insufficiently enthusiastic about its version of Islamism.

Sudan’s defenders predictably blame “Zionist,” “imperialist” or “colonialist” international conspiracies for spreading anti-Khartoum propaganda about Sudan’s decades of support for the terrorist Lord’s Resistance Army.

Most pitiful, though, the U.S. and other Western governments overlook Khartoum’s dubious connections and the massive human rights abuses within its own borders. They naively take the Sudanese regime’s word that it is, after 9/11, “on their side” in the war on terror. The U.S. government claims to have been given intelligence by Khartoum, although human rights groups point out Sudan has most likely providing interrogation for ‘rendered‘ individuals and bases for stationing drones. The West also appeases Khartoum in the hope that it will behave better toward its own citizens and its neighbors, a foolish assumption.

In an Orwellian twist, Sudan’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Ali Karti, will attend a conference on demobilisation and demilitarising Sudan in London in November. During the exchange of clichés about peace-building, will anyone dare to question the regime’s commitment to peace, given its ongoing bombing of its own citizens in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains? Numerous regime worthies, including the president, have earned indictments by the International Criminal Court. Why do we welcome their representatives to our diplomatic bean feasts? Apparently the Israelis are less willing to allow Sudan to make them look like fools.

Watching Hurricane Sandy from Israel: Our turn to worryIsrael News – Haaretz Israeli News source..

The last time I can recall Israelis being quite so concerned about danger in America was in the aftermath of 9/11.

By Allison Kaplan Sommer | Oct.30, 2012 | 3:38 PM | 1

Pedestrians walk past a submerged taxi in Brooklyn, New York, October 29, 2012 as Hurricane Sandy made landfall in the northeastern United States. Photo by Reuters

By The Associated Press and Reuters

Oct.30,2012 | 3:38 PM | 1

“It all just feels so backwards. We’re watching them and trying to understand exactly what’s going on, and we are concerned whether they are safe. It’s such a strange feeling – it’s supposed to be the other way around.”

I’ve heard versions of these comments in person, on the phone and online repeatedly over the past 72 hours, as Hurricane Sandy threatened the Eastern seaboard of the United States, and then after it became a reality.

I’ve heard them from my fellow Israelis with close family members in the northeastern United States – not only American immigrants, but all Israelis who have siblings or children living there. And as anyone who has taken a Tel Aviv taxi or gone electronics shopping in Manhattan knows – that’s a lot of Israelis.

Those of us in Israel with loved ones located in the swathe between Boston and North Carolina were glued to the Internet and foreign news channels all day Monday, oblivious to the news coming out of the Likud convention that day or to any other local headlines. We may have been physically in Israel, but our hearts and minds were far away. They were with elderly parents sitting through the hurricane on the 40th floor of an apartment building in Manhattan swaying in the wind with no elevator operator; brothers and sisters sitting in a New Jersey suburb with no electricity, a flooded basement and a fallen tree blocking their front door; or with an elderly uncle in Far Rockaway, Queens, dependent on medical equipment that operates on electricity, or a daughter in a Brooklyn brownstone apartment in a low-lying area with a new baby.

Thanks to cell phones and old-fashioned handsets for landlines that weren’t dependent on electricity, we were able to keep calling and checking up on our family members every time we were overly panicked by the latest news on CNN or Fox News or on the Israeli news broadcasts, where the coverage has been intense despite the current barrage of political news.

The last time I can recall Israelis being quite so concerned about danger in America was in the aftermath of 9/11. In the interim, there was, of course, Hurricane Katrina, which was a huge news story but didn’t grab Israelis as personally as this hurricane. Katrina, after all, took place in Louisiana and Mississippi, not New York, New Jersey or Maryland, where millions of Israelis, immigrants and native-born, feel a personal connection.

Many of us can’t stop looking at familiar landmarks that have been damaged or utterly destroyed – the piers in Long Island where we hung out as teenagers smashed to pieces, and the streets in Manhattan where we once walked to work or the Queens Midtown Tunnel we drove through to work, underwater. The boardwalk in Atlantic City where we vacationed washed away.

And indeed, it has felt strange to be cast in the role of the worriers instead of the worry recipients. So rarely are we the ones so concerned about the safety of our loved ones in the U.S. That’s their job. They are the ones who made the worried phone calls and sent the emails in the aftermath of car or bus bombings, the Gaza and Lebanon Wars, and most recently the Qassam and Grad rocket attacks in the south.

There are, of course, major differences between following the unrest over here and the short-term crisis of a hurricane in the U.S. For one thing, with a hurricane, we get a lot more moment-by-moment information to feed our obsession with the situation (not always a healthy thing.) The flip side of this is that those in the storm are aware that the world is watching and the world cares. That is the luxury of being part of a short-term crisis in the center of the universe – at least, when it comes to the financial world.

Residents of southern Israel don’t enjoy that amount of attention these days – the frequent missile-lobbing from Gaza has been going on so long that they have trouble holding the attention of their fellow citizens in the central portion of their own country, let alone the world.

Certainly, it’s not only Israelis in southern Israel that must feel this way. Many people around the world embroiled in conflict would kill for a fraction of the media coverage that Hurricane Sandy enjoys, including our Arab neighbors. Hurricane Assad has been lashing out at his citizens for far longer and far more mercilessly than the waves and winds have whipped the East Coast of the United States.

Speaking of the Arab world, Israelis aren’t the only ones watching hurricane-related events unfold with interest. An Egyptian friend reported on Twitter that Gaza residents have been tweeting tips to friends and relatives in the U.S. helping them cope with extended electricity shortages. He says that many third-worlders are surprised that so few Americans have emergency back-up generators and are now so helpless after their power is lost.

Generators … I think I know what to get my family members for Hanukkah.

Israel says Iran has pulled back from the brink of nuclear weapon – for now – Telegraph.

Iran has drawn back from its ambition to build a nuclear weapon but the respite is only temporary and Tehran will still have to be confronted by next summer, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said on Tuesday.

Mr Barak was adamant that Israel would reserve the right to take its own decisions on whether to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities Photo: Jane Mingay for the Telegraph

Mr Barak said this decision “allows contemplating delaying the moment of truth by eight to ten months”. As for why Iran had drawn back, the minister said: “There could be at least three explanations. One is the public discourse about a possible Israeli or American operation deterred them from trying to come closer. It could probably be a diplomatic gambit that they have launched in order to avoid this issue culminating before the American election, just to gain some time. It could be a way of telling the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] ‘oh we comply with our commitments’.”

Mr Barak added: “Maybe it’s a combination of all these three elements. I cannot tell you for sure.”

Asked if Iran had not pulled back, would the crisis have peaked “about now”? In reply, Mr Barak stated simply: “Probably yes”.

Despite this decision, however, Mr Barak said that Iran was still resolved to build nuclear weapons, stressing how this was not only a threat to Israel, but to the wider world.

“We all agree that the Iranians are determined to turn into a military nuclear power and we all share the declaration that we are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear and all options are on the table,” said Mr Barak. “We mean it – we expect others to mean it as well. So it’s not something just about us. But we, for obvious reasons, see the Iranian threat in much more concrete terms.”

Mr Barak was adamant that Israel would reserve the right to take its own decisions on whether to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. “When it comes to the very core of our security interests and, in a way, the future of Israel, we cannot delegate the responsibility for making decisions even into the hands of our most trusted and trustworthy ally,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we would be sorry if the Iranians come to the conclusion on their own. The opposite is true. But, if no one acts, we will have to contemplate action.”

Mr Barak added that Iran was “moving forward on all other aspects as well, probably not in full speed, but quite intensively. So basically, it’s about the question of when they come into this zone of immunity, where no Israeli surgical attack, probably somewhat later not even an American surgical attack, can delay them significantly. That’s the issue that bothers us.”

As for when Iran will enter the “zone of immunity”, Mr Barak said it would probably be “next spring or early summer next year”.

He acknowledged that the sanctions now imposed on Iran, notably a European Union oil embargo, are “unprecedented in scale and depth and they are biting”.

But Mr Barak added: “To tell you the truth, out of long experience of the Middle East, I am extremely sceptical about the chances that it will lead the Ayatollahs to sit together at any point in the foreseeable future and decide to give up their intention to go in the footsteps of Pakistan and North Korea and turn into a military nuclear power. They think of themselves as a major regional power from the dawn of history and they are determined not to fall into the trap that, in their mind, in their judgment, the late Gaddafi fell into.”

Mr Barak added that the costs and risks of military action would only mount and the option of acting “now” must be retained. “It’s not a minor decision to contemplate an operation against Iran, but however complicated, dangerous – it probably carries some unintended consequences – an operation against Iran could be now,” he said. “Think of what it means to try it when Iran is already nuclear, several years down the stream. It would be much more complicated, much more dangerous and with much far-reaching, unintended potential consequences, much more costly in terms of human lives as well as financial resources.”

Mr Barak added: “Don’t misread me. We would love to wake up one morning and learn, against my expectations, that the Ayatollahs gave it up. I don’t believe it will happen.”

PM: Strike on Iran would be good… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

The deciding vote ? – YouTube.

Ex-General: Is Israel Waiting for Jewish Blood? – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Aftermath of rocket attack in Ashdod

Flash 90

The Israeli government will not take real action against Gaza terrorists’ rocket attacks until Jewish blood is shed, former IDF Brigadier-General Tzvika Fogel told Arutz Sheva.

Experience over the past few years shows that the government responds sharply to rocket attacks only when a Jew is badly wounded or killed, he explained. Attacks in which there are no serious injuries, or foreign workers are hurt, are not met with a similar response.

The standard response to attacks that do not cause injury is an IAF strike on a weapons plant or smuggling tunnel in Gaza.

The current approach must change if Israel is to restore deterrence, he declared. “Every rocket that is fired must be met with a response where either a Hamas leader loses his head, or the street the rocket was fired from is taken out,” he said. “There’s no other way.”

Israel can look to its success in Lebanon for guidance, Fogel said. “Even if the war in Lebanon was considered unsuccessful from a diplomatic perspective, from a military perspective it was very successful,” he argued.

Unlike southern Israel, northern Israel has not been a target of frequent rocket fire in recent years, he said. In southern Israel, he noted, there are 12 and 13-year-old children who have grown up with rocket fire a part of their daily reality.

“It’s not normal that children live that way in the state of Israel,” Fogel said.

Romney’s Critique of Obama’s Iran Policy – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic.

Here is an example of the b.s. of all campaigns, everywhere. Just before last week’s foreign policy debate, the Obama campaign sent out a bulletin entitled “Romnesia, Foreign Policy Edition,” which contained the following bullet item:

ROMNEY HAS ISSUED VOLATILE RHETORIC ON IRAN THREATENING “IF YOU WANT PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR”

Romney To Iran: “If You Want Peace, Prepare For War.” “The United States needs a very different policy. Si vis pacem, para bellum. That is a Latin phrase, but the ayatollahs will have no trouble understanding its meaning from a Romney administration: If you want peace, prepare for war.”

Scary, no? Except that the idea of keeping the peace by preparing for war has been American doctrine, and everyone else’s doctrine, for just about ever. Could you imagine a Romney campaign press release headlined: “Obama Secretly Orders Pentagon to Prepare for War in Persian Gulf”? This would be a perfectly true statement. So would “Obama Orders Pentagon to Prepare for War Against North Korea” and “Obama Spends Billions to Target World with Nukes.”

I mention this only to make the observation that the Iran policies of Obama and Romney are actually not so far apart. They are both opposed to containment, they both support tough sanctions and they both hold out the option of military action should Iran continue down its current path.  It’s been in the interest of Obama to paint Romney as a warmonger, and in the interest of Romney to paint Obama as an appeaser, but I think both of them are united in the idea that a military confrontation to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold may be necessary. Obama would go into 2013 with certain advantages — as I’ve written before, I think Obama is more likely than Romney to move toward military action, particularly in the short-term, if the moment comes (which is not something that Sheldon Adelson wants to hear), but I’ve come to believe that there is a slightly better chance that the Iranian regime would show up for serious negotiations with Romney as president.

Why? President Obama has been undermined from time to time by his own team on the Iran question — whenever a senior official of his administration analyzes publicly the dangers of a military confrontation to the U.S., we should assume the Iranian leaders breathe a sigh of relief, and make the calculations that Obama is bluffing on military action.  So far at least, Romney’s people haven’t undermined him the same way. In any case, the Iranians most likely believe that the Republicans are more bellicose. (Mind you, I don’t think the Iranians are very much interested in making the deal the U.S. wants them to make, but this could change as sanctions become more punishing.)

All this is a roundabout way of getting to the debate, and Romney’s seemingly new emphasis on seeking a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program. Like some hawks, and some doves, I asked myself if Romney was shaking the Etch-a-Sketch, and so I e-mailed him some questions about his Iran thinking. Here are some of his e-mailed answers, which appear in my Bloomberg View column today:
“I have always talked about the diplomatic process,” he wrote. “I will not rule out diplomatic options, so long as we would not be rewarding bad behavior and so long as the Iranian leadership was truly cornered and ready to change its behavior. A crumbling economy is not enough. Because even with a crumbling economy, the Iranian leadership is still racing towards a bomb right now.”

Romney went out of his way to suggest that the Obama administration plans to spring some sort of late-November surprise on America’s Middle East allies, citing a recent New York Times report that Iran and the White House had agreed to face-to-face negotiations after the election (a report denied by the White House). “Our closest allies, like Israel, will not learn about our plans from the New York Times,” Romney wrote. “And I’ll be clear with the American people about where I’m heading. I won’t be secretly asking the Ayatollahs for more flexibility following some future election.”

He also denied that his new emphasis on negotiations means that he would accept less than a complete halt to Iran’s nuclear work: “To be clear, the objective of any strategy will be to get Iran to stop spinning centrifuges, stop enriching uranium, shut down its facilities. Full stop. Existing fissile material will have to be shipped out of the country.”

Romney reaffirms tough position on Iran, promises to keep Israel in the loop | The Times of Israel.

In effort to distinguish himself from Obama, GOP candidate says he’s willing to try diplomacy with Tehran but is adamant that it shutter all nuclear facilities

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is greeted by President Barack Obama before the start of the third presidential debate, Monday, Oct. 22, 2012. (photo credit: AP/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he is committed to ending Iran’s nuclear program come what may, and drew differences between his approach and that of President Barack Obama, despite his apparent broad agreement with Obama on the issue in their foreign policy TV debate last week.

In an email exchange with Bloomberg reporter and commentator Jeffrey Goldberg that was published on Monday, Romney clarified that if elected, he would bring an end to Iran’s atomic bomb development and reaffirmed that Israel, as the US’s closest ally, would be kept in the loop.

“Our closest allies, like Israel, will not learn about our plans from The New York Times,” Romney wrote. “And I’ll be clear with the American people about where I’m heading. I won’t be secretly asking the Ayatollahs for more flexibility following some future election.”

Goldberg questioned Romney about his policies on Iran in light of statements he made during last week’s televised debate in which he appeared to promote a firmly diplomatic approach, and took pains to play down the possibility of military intervention.

“It is also essential for us to understand what our mission is in Iran, and that is to dissuade Iran from having a nuclear weapon through peaceful and diplomatic means,” Romney said during the debate. He also said, “We need to increase pressure time and time again on Iran because anything other than a solution to this which stops this nuclear folly of theirs is unacceptable to America. And of course, a military action is the last resort. It is something one would only, only consider if all of the other avenues had been tried to their full extent.”

However, in the email response to questions from Goldberg, Romney said that diplomacy is an option only as long as it produces results.

“I have always talked about the diplomatic process,” Romney wrote. “I will not rule out diplomatic options, so long as we would not be rewarding bad behavior and so long as the Iranian leadership was truly cornered and ready to change its behavior. A crumbling economy is not enough. Because even with a crumbling economy, the Iranian leadership is still racing towards a bomb right now.”

“To be clear, the objective of any strategy will be to get Iran to stop spinning centrifuges, stop enriching uranium, shut down its facilities. Full stop. Existing fissile material will have to be shipped out of the country,” he added.

Romney also criticized Obama’s approach for doing more to reassure the Iranians that a strike won’t happen than force their hand to stop the nuclear program.

“In the first year of his administration, the President said he would sit down with Ahmadinejad without pre-conditions, and President Obama deliberately remained silent during the Green Revolution, signaling to the Ayatollahs that Iran’s dissident movement would not have America’s support,” Romney wrote.

“President Obama also pursued a policy of creating ‘daylight’ — his word — between the US and Israel. And through the end of the third year of his administration, the president fought congressional efforts — bi-partisan congressional efforts — to pass crippling sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank. This all happened against the backdrop of the president’s top advisers and cabinet secretaries broadcasting the risks of the military option, therefore conveying to Iran’s leadership that the threat is simply not real. Add all of this together, one can understand why Iran’s leaders are not taking the United States very seriously these days.”

IDF reached a dead end in Gaza – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

The IDF has still not found a solution to the rockets being fired from Gaza into southern Israel – around 1,000 in this year alone.

By Reuven Pedatzur | Oct.30, 2012 | 4:15 AM | 5

The Israel Defense Forces has reached a dead end in the Gaza Strip. The defense minister and the prime minister are arrogantly threatening Hamas day and night with a painful reaction if the rocket fire doesn’t stop. And the chief of staff has declared that “the IDF is powerful and ready to react, initiate and respond to any threat at any time.”

But the bitter truth is that the army doesn’t have a solution.

This year alone, around 1,000 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israeli towns and villages, from Sderot and Ashkelon to Be’er Sheva. Hardly a day goes by without the alarm sending residents rushing to protected areas – but the IDF has no answer.

Sad to say, in the past decade the IDF has failed to deal with Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s rockets. What hasn’t it tried? It has tried targeted killings, attacks on “infrastructure,” artillery fire at militants launching rockets, a broad campaign in the Gaza Strip (Operation Cast Lead ), an anti-rocket system, and the reinforcing of thousands of homes at the cost of hundreds of millions of shekels. Only last week the prime minister pledged protection for every building within four and a half to seven kilometers of the Strip.

But despite all this, the launchings continue. In effect, it’s Hamas that decides the rules of the game. When it wants to, it fires rockets, and when it wants to, it declares a lull. The initiative is with the other side and the IDF is forced to respond.

Chief of Staff Benny Gantz has hinted that this can’t continue and there will be no choice but another big military operation in Gaza. Last November, Gantz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee: “The recent repeated rounds of escalation, the injuries to people and the disruption to people’s lives in the south create a situation where the IDF will have to carry out a significant attack in the Gaza Strip. We cannot continue with round after round.” That was nearly a year ago. Since then there have been other “rounds,” but the IDF hasn’t entered the Strip.

The chief of staff is right not to have recommended another Operation Cast Lead. He is well aware that even a broad military operation in Gaza will not solve the rocket problem. It’s reasonable to assume that the IDF would kill quite a few Hamas militants and maybe even capture launchers and rockets, but the firing would not stop. We must not forget that even during Cast Lead, during the actual fighting, Hamas continued to launch rockets. It even picked up the pace.

It seems the last thing Gantz wants is to occupy the Gaza Strip. And besides, what would happen when the fighting settled down? Would the IDF stay in Gaza and its surroundings? Probably not. And after it left, the situation would go back to square one. There is no substance to the claim that another broad operation is needed to deter Hamas. The illusion created by the top brass that Cast Lead strengthened Israel’s deterrence has long been smashed.

It seems the time has come to change our way of thinking and realize that the IDF has reached a dead end. It’s very possible that Hamas has found the IDF’s Achilles’ heel, and it’s possible that no effective solution to the rocket problem is available.

Despite our tendency to believe that every threat has a military solution and that the IDF will always find an appropriate military response, the reality is much more depressing. It’s hard to demand that the chief of staff tell the government that the IDF has failed and that no effective military solution is available to the rocket problem. But that’s what he has to do.

Iran seeks quick resolution of standoff, urges recognition of its nuclear rights | The Times of Israel.

( Another delay tactic, or the real deal? – JW )

Facing economic sanctions, Tehran ready to talk uranium enrichment suspension with Western powers

Iranian technicians work at a facility producing uranium fuel for a planned heavy-water nuclear reactor, outside Isfahan, 255 miles (410 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, in 2009. (photo credit: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman says the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program could be resolved quickly should world powers recognize the country’s right to master the nuclear fuel cycle for peaceful purposes.

The Tuesday remarks by Ramin Mehmanparast during a press conference in Tehran underscores Iran’s push to resume talks with the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany.

Iran has indicated that it will be willing to negotiate suspension of its highest level of uranium enrichment in return for recognition of its nuclear rights and the lifting of tough Western sanctions that have squeezed its economy.

The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and says its right to enrich uranium is non-negotiable.