Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Start War Games

February 23, 2013

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have begun military exercises in the south of the country.

State media reported that the three-day ground and air manoeuvres started on February 23 around the southern city of Sirjan.

State TV said that the drills are aimed at upgrading the combat readiness of the Revolutionary Guards.

TV footage showed artillery and tanks attacking hypothetical enemy positions.

Tehran has expanded military manoeuvres after international tensions grew over its nuclear programs.

Israeli officials have indicated that they could carry out military strikes to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

In response, senior Iranian military officials have repeatedly warned that they would deploy long-range missiles that could target Israel.

via Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Start War Games.

Iran plays al-Qaeda figure to pit Turkey against US.

Obama and Netanyahu aid Khamenei’s campaign for Iran’s next presidentDEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 23, 2013, 11:44 AM GMT+02:00Tags: Iran nuclear Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Barack Obama Binyamin Netanyahu elections Yes we are close…Yes we are close… The Obama administration was unmoved by the IAEA finding that Iran had installed 180 advanced centrifuges had been installed at Natanz. Indeed, the White House said Thursday, Feb. 21 that “a diplomatic solution is still possible” for resolving nuclear issues with Iran.The International Atomic Energy Agency report came out the next day: The new IR-1m centrifuges installed in Natanz were said to enrich uranium three times faster than the outdated machines used at Natanz until now, considerably shortening Tehran’s path to a nuclear bomb. The IAEA also noted faster than expected progress in setting up the Arak plant for producing plutonium.These findings mean that the red line drawn by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu before the UN General Assembly last September – when he said Iran must not be permitted to stock 250 kilos of near weapons-grade uranium of 20 percent purity – is approaching faster than the “late-spring-early summer” deadline he set for stopping Iran before it can build a nuclear bomb.Yet, in the response to the IAEA finding of Thursday, Netanyahu’s office said only, that the report’s findings “prove that Iran continues to advance quickly to the red line” and “Iran is closer than ever to achieving enrichment for a nuclear bomb.”Administration sources report that the US is continuing to push Iran for one-on-one talks after the six powers face Iran in Kazakhstan on Feb. 26 – even though a secret round a couple of months ago was a flop. Gary Samore, the Obama aide who set it up, has since quit the White House and moved over to Harvard University.Yet Barack Obama stands by diplomatic engagement and “increased pressure” sanctions as the sole means of preventing Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has put the US president on the spot, debkafile’s intelligence sources report: He is calling in a debt. He respected Obama’s request to refrain from spoiling his campaign for reelection in November and held back from delivering the “October surprise” widely predicted by US media.Now, Tehran faces a presidential election in June and Khamenei wants to be sure that the US doesn’t upset his plans. His foremost aspiration is to block the path of the retiring president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s in-law to the presidency and replace him with a nondescript, uncharismatic figure handpicked by himself who is also a competent administrator and qualified to haul Iran out of its economic morass. Not all of Iran’s troubles are caused by sanctions; Ahmadinejad’s reign has seen plenty of dysfunction and corruption.Extreme violence is already bedeviling the Iranian campaign up to and including threats of assassination. The supreme ruler is bidding the Obama administration for some peace on quiet on the diplomatic front.According to our sources, Iran’s stormy election campaign will hold Tehran back from any real diplomatic breakthrough or progress toward definitive nuclear weaponization until a new president is elected and forms a government, some time in the fall.At the same time, the ayatollah is playing a complex double game by keeping diplomatic tensions high and avoiding any real dialogue with Washington. Indeed, he may even welcome tougher sanctions and military threats for boosting his candidate for president and letting Ahmadinejad’s candidate in for punishment at the hands of the suffering Iranian voter.Hence, the crossed signals from Washington, Europe, Israel and the IAEA. On the one hand, alarm over Tehran’s rapid advance toward a nuclear weapon capability, while on the other, insistence on doing nothing substantial beyond futile palaver to stop it. All four are playing into the ayatollah’s hands.

via Obama and Netanyahu aid Khamenei’s campaign for Iran’s next president.

Hagel’s damaged brand | The Times of Israel.

While they will no doubt lose the confirmation battle, Republicans have already achieved victory in the policy war

Former Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s choice for defense secretary, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 31 (AP/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON — Few issues have focused Washington’s contentious energies in recent weeks more than the nomination of former Nebraska senator and maverick Republican Chuck Hagel to the post of defense secretary.

Republican senators have delayed, chastised and publicly humiliated the nominee at every opportunity. Democrats, while quietly toeing the line for the president, have expressed their own reservations and even, discreetly, asked the White House if there wasn’t a better candidate available.

What’s surprising is not the level of opposition to Hagel’s candidacy, but that it surprised anyone when it surfaced. Hagel has been an outspoken critic of many of the signature Republican foreign policy positions of recent years, vociferously opposing Bush’s Iraq policy, openly calling for diplomatic contact with terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and speculating with apparent equanimity that the ayatollahs of Iran would responsibly wield a nuclear weapon.

Considering the gap between many of his positions and those of even Democratic senators, it should also not surprise anyone that the fight over Hagel has not been a clean one. His detractors suffered a blow this week when one of the growing number of circumstantial claims against him — that he once received money from a nonexistent group called “Friends of Hamas” — turned out to be either an honest misunderstanding of a joke, or a dishonest one.

Hagel’s supporters, meanwhile, have been forced to tread carefully around the fairly obvious point that the former senator has spent the past few months disavowing — with suspiciously convenient timing — the very positions that have come to define him politically.

In the end, nearly everyone in Washington concedes that Hagel will be the next secretary of defense. The president has stood by his choice, and the arithmetic, at least in the Senate, is heavily tilted in favor of the president.

Why, then, have Hagel’s opponents clung so stubbornly to their doomed campaign? In the pro-Israel camp, most centrist groups, including the camp’s 900-pound gorilla AIPAC, have pointedly sat out the fight, in no small measure because they didn’t want to be seen to lose it.

What do groups such as the Emergency Committee for Israel, Christians United for Israel or ZOA, not to mention senators Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, John McCain, Ted Cruz, and others, gain from continuing to challenge the confirmation?

Simply put: while they will no doubt lose the confirmation battle, in an important sense they have already won the policy war.

Since Obama’s reelection victory in November, the parties in Washington have jostled for position in an attempt to determine the political significance of the reelection. Obama has signaled a more aggressive commitment to pursuing progressive domestic policies while Republicans have tried to show they still have some power to hinder their implementation.

By opposing Hagel’s nomination so stridently, his opponents have already forced the former senator to publicly retract and apologize for past statements and views. And by continuing the fight, they have almost guaranteed that Hagel’s tenure as secretary of defense will be hopelessly politicized. Both Republicans who dislike him and Democrats who grudgingly backed him will be watching the new secretary closely for signs of weakness or a return to his unpopular past views.

It’s an especially inauspicious start following the widely celebrated and largely apolitical tenures of the past and current defense secretaries, Bob Gates and Leon Panetta. Hagel will begin his tenure with a level of partisan suspicion and dislike unknown since the end of Donald Rumsfeld’s term in 2006.

As one astute Republican observer told the Times of Israel this week, “the relationship is totally poisoned. I can’t imagine that Chuck Hagel can be a successful secretary of defense. Here’s a guy who over half of the Senate gave a vote of ‘no confidence’ to last week. The feeling was his personal heroism would enable him to go into the Pentagon with the political capital to cut the budget. He may in fact be confirmed, but it’s hard to see how he will be able to work. He’s going to be limping into the Pentagon.”

And a veteran Democratic activist: “Hagel’s already lost. Democrats will be relieved if he’s gone; they don’t like him on Israel, on Iran and because he’s a Republican.”

As several observers have noted, Obama’s very insistence on Hagel as his defense chief suggests that Hagel’s opponents are right to be worried, that the nomination means something. When it comes to foreign and defense policy, Obama’s first term was marked by continuity with the Bush policy. The timetables for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan largely followed those established before Bush left office. They were driven by the professional planning staff rather than any change in thinking in the Oval Office.

Hagel’s nomination matters because it signals to many in Washington, and around the world, that Obama is looking to dramatically reshape US foreign policy.

The fight over Hagel won’t end before the the formal vote on Tuesday — and not even then. The forces opposing him, like those who have come out in his favor, including J Street and a handful of “realist” former ambassadors and foreign policy officials, are engaged in a battle over policy, not personality. Republican senators, together with a few Democratic colleagues who will grudgingly vote for his confirmation, will be watching him closely for any perceived missteps in the years to come.

All in all, not an ideal starting point for a defense secretary, especially one whose chief responsibility will be the unenviable task of drastically reducing the budget and size of the department he has been asked to run.

Multi-Billion Dollar F-35 Fleet Grounded – ABC News.

Tom Reynolds/Lockheed Martin

The military has grounded its entire fleet of F-35 stealth fighters, the most expensive weapons program in history, after finding a crack in one of the multi-million-dollar plane’s engines.

The grounding comes just days after the Marine Corps gave its variation of the fighter the green light to fly again after its own month-long grounding for an unrelated problem.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program office released a statement today saying a routine engine inspection on Feb. 19 “revealed a crack on a low-pressure turbine blade of an F-35 engine” and the office took the “precautionary measure” of suspending all F-35 flight operations.

“The F-35 Joint Program Office is working closely with [engine maker] Pratt & Whitney and [primary plane manufacturer] Lockheed Martin at all F-35 locations to ensure the integrity of the engine, and to return the fleet safely to flight as soon as possible.”

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has a baseline price tag of over a third of $1 trillion as of last March, represents America’s costly foray into fifth-generation stealth fighters along with the troubled $79 billion F-22 Raptor.

The plane comes in three variants: an Air Force version with standard takeoff and landing capabilities, a Navy version designed to take off and land from aircraft carriers and the Marine version, which is designed to land vertically like Britain’s famous Harrier jet. The military currently has 58 planes total, but plans to purchase more than 2,400 more in order to replace the aging F-16 and F-18 legacy fighters.

The F-35 program has suffered a long history of delays and cost overruns, which officials said is partially because it is one of the most complex weapons systems in history and because it was put into production far too early – before major issues could be found.

This time last year Frank Kendall, then the Pentagon’s Acting Undersecretary for Defense Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said that the government’s plan to field the plane was so reckless it amounted to “acquisition malpractice.”

The engine itself has not been without controversy as well. For months General Electric teamed up with Rolls Royce to provide the military with an engine to compete with Pratt & Whitney, even though the military repeatedly said a second engine was not necessary. The alternate engine was partially funded by the U.S. government to the tune of $3 billion before it was called off in December 2011.

Despite its well-documented problems, the F-35 is seen by top military and government officials as the backbone of America’s future air power. The F-35 Program Office said it is currently investigating the cause of the engine crack.

Pentagon Grounds All F-35s Following Routine Inspection – Truthdig.

Posted on Feb 22, 2013

DOD/Cherie Cullen

The $400 billion boondoggle known as the Joint Strike Fighter suffered another setback Friday, when the Pentagon grounded the first 51 of 2,400 desired jets.

The F-35 was already a tough sell in a post-Cold War world more interested in drones than manned air craft. Delays and overruns have continued to drive up the price of each aircraft and the planes, which first flew in 2006, are still being tested. It’s a good thing, too. At somewhere close to $300 million a pop, you don’t want cracked engine blades turning up. But that’s exactly what the government found during an inspection at Edwards Air Force base in the California desert.

AP:

A watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, said the grounding is not likely to mean a significant delay in the effort to field the stealthy aircraft.

“The F-35 is a huge problem because of its growing, already unaffordable, cost and its gigantically disappointing performance,” the group’s Winslow Wheeler said. “That performance would be unacceptable even if the aircraft met its far-too-modest requirements, but it is not.”

The F-35 is the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program at a total estimated cost of nearly $400 billion. The Pentagon envisions buying more than 2,400 F-35s, but some members of Congress are balking at the price tag.

Read more

—Posted by Peter Z. Scheer. Follow him on Twitter: @peesch.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: The Maiden Voyage of SS Kerry.

On February 24, Sec. of State John Kerry will embark on his first foreign trip as newly-minted Secretary of State. After making the obligatory stopovers in Europe to check the boxes with key allies, the real business of his mission will take him to Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

It is a testament to the gravitational pull of the turbulent Middle East that it compelled Kerry to place the Obama administration’s vaunted pivot to Asia on the backburner. Recall that Hillary Clinton jetted off to Asia on her maiden voyage… Asia can wait.

Kerry’s trip in the Middle East is going to be more than merely courtesy calls on U.S. Arab “allies” pending President Obama’s March trip to the region, which will take both men to Jerusalem — a destination conspicuously absent from Kerry’s itinerary. Kerry’s spokesmen explained that until a post-election Israeli government is approved by the Knesset, it would be preferable to wait a tad longer for meetings with Israeli officials. Given Kerry’s close ties with Netanyahu, the bypass did not create yet another tempest in U.S.-Israeli relations.

Syria will dominate Kerry’s Middle East agenda and woven throughout his stops are visits to the key players dominating the Syrian Middle East equation. As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry developed a particular expertise on Syria, and had met several times with Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad in what was then a concerted effort by successive high-level American visitors to Damascus to wean Assad away from the dark side of Iran and implement reforms — obviously that U.S. courting had no effect on the clueless Assad.

Since his appointment, Kerry has been quietly crafting a fresh American-led plan to broker a political solution to the bloody Syrian civil war. While its elements are sketchy, it calls for a joint U.S.-Russian engagement bringing together Moaz al Katib — the elected leader of the Syrian opposition — and elements of the Syrian regime which, as demanded by the Syrian rebels, do not have “blood on their hands.” That may be like searching for Waldo. Katib already faces yet another internal rebellion within his serially divided Syrian opposition over his declared willingness to sit down with Assad’s cronies. The key stumbling block as Syria crumbles has been Syrian rebel demands that Assad must go as part of any political agreement. Whether the Russians are prepared to escort their protege to the exit as part of a settlement will be the key indicator whether this latest gambit has any chance of succeeding.

Fortuitously, Kerry will find support for a new peace initiative from, of all places, Assad’s closest ally, Russia. In a stunning about-face, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov declared last week Moscow’s support for political negotiations between Assad and the Syrian opposition — a position anathema to Assad. Kerry will meet with Lavrov in Berlin to explore the feasibility of coordinating a joint approach. Given the possibility of a joint U.S.-Russian approach on Syria, this may constitute the first credible opportunity to bring desperately needed pressure on Assad to face his inevitable swan song.

Given the Obama administration’s determination to avoid being drawn militarily into the Syrian morass, Kerry’s initiative is a way long overdue initiative given the calamitous impact Syria’s total disintegration would mean to U.S. foreign policy.

In his final stop, Kerry plans to meet with Egypt’s embattled President Morsi. Morsi is scheduled to come to Washington to meet with President Obama later this spring. Kerry will likely be delivering a firm message to Morsi that Congress is in no mood to further reward his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government with U.S. taxpayer assistance unless he reverses course and stops trampling on Egypt’s secular opposition in his mad dash to become the Islamist Caliph of Egypt.

Of course, looming in the background on Kerry’s agenda is the last gasp of a potential diplomatic resolution over Iran’s nuclear weapons program (those talks are going to start shortly in Kazakhstan), and the ever-stagnant Palestinian-Israeli situation, which he and Obama will address when they jointly travel to Israel.

Kerry inherited quite a Middle East mess from his predecessor. He is determined to tackle it head-on, and fortunately, for his president and for the nation, he has the expertise to do so.

Hezbollah Role In Syria Crisis Looks Poised To Grow.

Posted: 02/22/2013 1:54 pm EST

WASHINGTON — In October, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, delivered a rare speech to comment on rising rumors about the Lebanese Shiite group’s involvement in Syria’s ongoing civil conflict.

For weeks, reports had circulated that the bodies of dead Hezbollah fighters had been returning from the battleground in neighboring Syria.

Nasrallah, speaking via a remote transmission as is his custom, vehemently denied the reports. But he also didn’t rule out the possibility of Hezbollah joining the battle in the future.

“As of now, we have not fought alongside the regime,” he said. “We don’t know about the future.”

The battle lines in Syria fall neatly along sectarian lines, with most of the Syrian rebels being Sunni Muslims supported by the Sunni countries of the Arabian Gulf, while Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime is being backed by the Shiite government of Iran and by Hezbollah. The latter has been open about its support for Assad — at least politically.

But since Nasrallah’s speech, signs have been growing that Hezbollah’s armed wing is being drawn directly into Syria’s conflict, raising the specter of the violence spilling over into Lebanon.

Lebanese newspapers reported last week that a handful of Hezbollah fighters had been killed in a battle with Syrian rebels in Al-Qusayr, a Syrian town not far from Lebanon and heavily populated with Shiites.

And on Wednesday, a group of Sunni Syrian rebels made a public threat to bring the fighting to Hezbollah, giving the group 48 hours to cease its incursions into Syria before the rebels would retaliate.

The next day, a top Free Syrian Army commander reiterated the warning. “As soon as the ultimatum ends, we will start responding to [Hezbollah] sources of fire,” Gen. Selim Idriss, chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army, told Agence France-Presse. “Hezbollah is abusing Lebanese sovereignty to shell Syrian territory and Free Syrian Army positions.”

That deadline was set to end Friday, and there have been some early, unconfirmed reports of Syrian rebels attacking Hezbollah positions.

The reports of Hezbollah’s incursions into Syria date back many months. However, in public remarks — whether by official channels or through news reports — Hezbollah party leaders and officers have always downplayed those stories and have spoken of their possible entry into the fighting as a reluctant and defensive measure. Officially, the group has called for the Lebanese government to become more involved in shaping a political settlement to the violence in Syria.

In his October address, for instance, Nasrallah denounced specific claims that a top commander with Hezbollah had died in a clash in a Syrian town not far from Lebanon, saying that the man had been killed in a weapons accident while helping guard a Lebanese border town.

“Abu Abbas is a commander of the group’s infantry unit in the Bekaa,” Nasrallah said, by way of explaining the commander’s death. “He is then responsible for the Hezbollah members in that area, and because these border towns continue until this day to be attacked [by Syrian rebels], martyrs have fallen and Abu Abbas was one of them.”

A pseudonymous Hezbollah commander undermined this claim in a recent New Yorker article, insisting that Abu Abbas had indeed perished in battle and that “a lot of bodies” have been coming back from the Syrian battleground.

But he also characterized the fight as the front line of a Shiite and Lebanese defense against a surge of Sunni Salafism pushed by the Syrian rebels and their allies in the Gulf. “You wait and see,” he said. “You’re going to have Salafists in Syria attacking the Golan Heights. What are you going to do then?”

His remarks echoed those of another unnamed Hezbollah fighter, who told McClatchy this week that while fighters had been going in and out of Syria in a supporting role, the extent of Hezbollah’s involvement in the conflict was greatly exaggerated and remained focused on defending their own country from a flood of Sunni extremists.

The Free Syrian Army is not the only group to have launched broadsides against Hezbollah since the start of the Syrian uprising. Last September, a commander with an al Qaeda offshoot in Syria posted a message to online message boards denouncing the group for its reported involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and promising retaliation.

Late last year, the United States designated another Syrian rebel faction, Jabhat al Nusra, as a terrorist group for its ties to al Qaeda in Iraq.

Iran move to speed up nuclear program troubles West | Reuters.

By Fredrik Dahl

VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, a defiant step that will worry Western powers ahead of a resumption of talks with Tehran next week.

In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been put in place at the facility near the central town of Natanz. They were not yet operating.

If launched successfully, such machines could enable Iran to speed up significantly its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to devise a nuclear weapon. Iran says it is refining uranium only for peaceful energy purposes.

Iran’s installation of new-generation centrifuges would be “yet another provocative step,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.

White House spokesman Jay Carney warned Iran that it would face further pressure and isolation if it fails to address international concerns about its nuclear program in the February 26 talks with world powers in the Kazakh city of Almaty.

Britain’s Foreign Office said the IAEA’s finding was of “serious concern”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the report “proves that Iran continues to advance swiftly towards the red line” that he laid down last year.

Netanyahu, who has strongly hinted at possible military action if sanctions and diplomacy fail to halt Iran’s nuclear drive, told the U.N. in September that Iran should not have enough higher-enriched uranium to make even a single warhead.

Iran denies Western accusations that it is seeking to develop a capability to make atomic bombs. Tehran says it is Israel’s assumed nuclear arsenal that threatens peace.

The IAEA’s report showed “no evidence of diversion of material and nuclear activities towards military purposes,” Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Iranian media.

U.S. lawmakers meanwhile are crafting a bill designed to stop the European Central Bank from handling business from the Iranian government, a U.S. congressional aide said on Thursday, in an attempt to keep Tehran from using euros to develop its nuclear program.

In the early stages of drafting, it would target the ECB’s cross-border payment system and impose U.S. economic penalties on entities that use the European Central Bank to do business with Iran’s government, the aide said on condition of anonymity.

The aide disclosed the new push for sanctions ahead of fresh talks on Tuesday in which major powers hope to persuade the Iranian government to rein in its atomic activities, which the West suspects may be a cover to develop a bomb capability.

RISING WESTERN PRESSURE

It was not clear how many of the new centrifuges Iran aims to install at Natanz, which is designed for tens of thousands.

An IAEA note informing member states late last month about Iran’s plans implied that it could be up to 3,000 or so.

Iran has for years been trying to develop centrifuges more efficient than the erratic 1970s IR-1 model it now uses, but their introduction for full-scale production has been dogged by delays and technical hurdles, experts and diplomats say.

The deployment of the new centrifuges underlines Iran’s continued refusal to bow to Western pressure to curb its nuclear program, and may further complicate efforts to resolve the dispute diplomatically, without a spiral into Middle East war.

Iran has also started testing two new centrifuge types, the IR-6 and IR-6s, at a research and development facility, the IAEA report said. Centrifuges spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope in uranium.

In a more encouraging sign for the powers, however, the IAEA report said Iran in December resumed converting some of its uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent to oxide powder for the production of reactor fuel.

That helped restrain the growth of Iran’s higher-grade uranium stockpile since the previous report in November, a development that could buy more time for diplomacy.

The report said Iran had increased to 167 kg (367 pounds) its stockpile of 20 percent uranium – a level it says it needs to make fuel for a Tehran research reactor but which also takes it much closer to weapons-grade material if processed further.

NEW OFFER TO IRAN

One diplomat familiar with the report said this represented a rise of about 18-19 kg since November, a notable slowdown from the previous three-month period when the stockpile jumped by nearly 50 percent after Iran halted conversion.

Israel last year gave a rough deadline of mid-2013 as the date by which Tehran could have enough higher-grade uranium to produce a single atomic bomb if processed further. Experts say about 240-250 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium would be needed.

But a resumption of conversion, experts say, means the Israeli “red line” for action could be postponed.

Refined uranium can fuel nuclear energy plants, which is Iran’s stated aim, or provide the core of an atomic bomb, which the United States and Israel suspect may be its ultimate goal.

Next week’s talks between the six powers and Iran to try again to break the impasse in the decade-old dispute are their first since mid-2012 but analysts expect no real progress toward defusing suspicions that Iran is seeking atomic bomb capability.

The United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany want Iran to halt 20 percent enrichment and shut the Fordow underground plant where this takes place.

Iran wants them to recognize what it regards as its right to refine uranium for peaceful purpose and to relax increasingly strict sanctions battering its oil-dependent economy.

In Paris, French deputy foreign ministry spokesman Vincent Floreani said the powers were ready to make a new offer to Iran with “significant new elements” and that they hoped Tehran would engage seriously in the negotiations.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich; Rachelle Younglai, Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Paul Carrel in Frankfurt; Editing by Roger Atwood)

Iran determined as ever to get nuclear bomb – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Analysis: Installation of some 180 highly advanced centrifuges at Natanz plant proves Tehran has no plans to accept West’s demands

The new report the International Atomic Energy Agency will submit to its Board of Governors at the end of the month does not point to any dramatic developments in Iran’s nuclear program, but it does indicate that the Islamic Republic continues to develop the capability to “race toward a nuclear bomb” within a few weeks from the moment Supreme leader Khamenei and his people give the order.

Most concerning is the installation of some 180 highly advanced IR-2m centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear plant. These centrifuges, as soon as they are activated, will be able to enrich uranium three or four times faster that the less advanced centrifuges Tehran received from Pakistan. Last month Iran informed the IAEA of its plans to activate the new centrifuges, and now it appears that it will implement this plan.

It is important to note that the advanced centrifuges have yet to be activated. It is also important to note that only some of them are whole, while the rest are actually just empty centrifuge casings. Moreover, 180 centrifuges make up only one cascade (one cascade usually includes 174 centrifuges). An effective uranium enrichment process requires a number of cascades.

However, IAEA experts who have visited the facility in Natanz reported that the more advanced centrifuges have already been hooked up to other cascades of old centrifuges. The IAEA report, according to news agencies, also says Iran has already accumulated 167 kilograms (about 370 pounds) of medium-enriched uranium containing 20% of the fissile isotope 235U. An additional 28 kilograms (about 62 pounds) of uranium enriched to this level is being used to produce fuel rods for the nuclear research reactor in Tehran and perhaps for the heavy water research reactor Iran is building in Arak.

Good news from Bushehr reactor (Photo: Reuters) 

This is actually the good news, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu determined during his address at the United Nations General Assembly that Iran would cross the “red line” once it acquires 240-250 kilos of 20% enriched uranium. With this amount of 20% material it would take Iran a month or two to produce 26-28 kilos (57-62 pounds) of uranium enriched to 93%, which can be used to build one nuclear warhead. The fact that Iran is producing 20% uranium at a pace of 15 kilos a month means it could have accumulated enough material for a nuclear warhead by the spring, but the fact that it uses some of the uranium to produce fuel rods slows down the process.

According to experts in the West, Iran is purposely slowing down the pace of the enrichment of uranium to 20% to avoid harsher sanctions and a possible confrontation with the West and Israel. Iran has recently been hit with new sanctions that make it harder for the country to be paid in cash for the oil it exports.

Another positive development is Iran’s recent announcement that it was forced to shut down the nuclear reactor for the production of electricity in Bushehr. Iran did not explain why, but based on previous incidents, it is safe to assume that the Russians and Iranians are having trouble producing electricity at full capacity due to technical difficulties. The Bushehr reactor was also damaged by the Stuxnet computer virus, which penetrated it some four years ago. But technical malfunctions delayed work at the plant for more than a year even before it was infected by the computer virus.

All these developments indicate that Iran is still determined to advance its nuclear military program. This is why it is not giving UN inspectors access to the military complex near Parchin, where, according to Western intelligence agencies, it has conducted nuclear weapons-related tests. But the Iranians are concerned, and their economy has been hit hard by the sanctions, so they are slowing down the pace of the development of their nuclear capabilities.

These facts do not bode well for the upcoming nuclear negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council – plus Germany – which will open in Kazakhstan next week. The Iranians will apparently refuse to suspend their nuclear program, particularly ahead of the June parliamentary and presidential elections in the country. The ayatollah regime cannot afford to accept the West’s demands, as this would lower its prestige in the eyes of the public. At least this is what Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, who is completing two stormy terms as president, are signaling.