WarSclerotic

US, Iran make major progress toward nuke deal, Israel TV claims | The Times of Israel.

( Watching Ch 2 news now, I saw Ehud Ya’ari speak about the contents of this article.  What he added at the end FLOORED me.  He said an Iranian source told him there may soon be a meeting between Iran and Israel. Anyone else who saw this, either confirm or tell me how I got it wrong. – JW )

Nascent secret agreement aims to keep Tehran ‘two to three years’ from nuclear weapons capability; report comes one day after Netanyahu warned against ‘bad deal’

US President Barack Obama speaking to his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, on Friday Sept. 27, marking the first time the two countries’ leaders engaged each other since 1979. (photo credit: Pete Souza via White House Twitter page)

Iran and the United States have secretly made significant progress toward an agreement that would aim to keep Iran “two or three years away” from a nuclear weapons capability, and would see an easing of economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic, an Israeli TV report said on Wednesday.

The behind-the-scenes negotiations have moved a long way forward — far more than is widely thought — with Oman among the mediators, Israel’s Channel 2 news said.

“Israel knows this,” the report added. There was no confirmation of the report, which was made by the station’s Middle East affairs correspondent Ehud Ya’ari.

The TV report came just a day after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned against “a bad deal” being done with Iran, under which sanctions were eased but Iran was left with the capacity to enrich uranium and/or pursue a plutonium route to the bomb.

There is “more than a likelihood” that the accelerated diplomatic contacts will produce a deal, the TV report said, adding that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “will come in at a certain stage… and play an important role,” as he did in resolving the crisis over Syria’s use of chemical weapons a little over a month ago. For now, though, it is the US and Iran that are doing the negotiating.

In Geneva next week, the so-called P5+1 powers are set to resume diplomatic negotiations with Iran over its rogue nuclear program. President Barack Obama told Netanyahu at the White House last Monday that the US was determined to “test” the diplomatic route, but would be “clear-eyed” in engaging with Iran.

On September 27, Obama spoke by telephone with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani — the highest level contact between the US and Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Reports earlier Wednesday said Iran was preparing to offer to limit its production of nuclear fuel in exchange for an easing of international sanctions. It will make the offer in Geneva next week, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

“The Iranians are preparing to go to Geneva with a serious package,” said a former Western diplomat quoted in the report. “These include limits on the numbers of centrifuges operating, enrichment amounts and the need for verification.”

Iran is expected to offer “to stop enriching uranium to levels of 20% purity, which international powers consider dangerously close to a weapons-grade capability,” agree to ship its stockpile of nuclear fuel to a third country for storage, open its nuclear facilities to more thorough international inspections, and close the enrichment facility near Qom, the Journal report said.

Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz called Iran’s reported offer a “joke.”

In a statement released by his office Wednesday morning, Steinitz said that “the so-called gestures offered by Iran [in the report] are a joke. The closure of the Qom facility would mean that, in its first year of nuclear capability, Iran would be able to produce five bombs instead of six, and the limiting of uranium enrichment to 20% is even less significant in a situation where Iran already has 20,000 centrifuges.”

“Israel is ready for a real, serious diplomatic solution which would mean that Iran’s nuclear program would be similar to that of Canada or Mexico,” he added.

Netanyahu warned in a speech at the UN General Assembly last Tuesday that Iran was seeking to fool the world and had no genuine intention of giving up its goal of attaining a nuclear arsenal. He said Iran was bent on destroying Israel, and that Israel would “stand alone” if necessary to thwart the Iranian nuclear weapons ambition.

A close colleague of Netanyahu’s, Likud MK Tzachi Hanegbi, told The Times of Israel soon after Netanyahu’s speech that the prime minister was indicating to Iran that Israel will take action “even if the Americans will be prevented from acting.”

On Tuesday, Netanyahu reiterated his insistence that any Western deal with Iran must guarantee the removal of all of Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges and the cessation of its plutonium production program.

Netanyahu asserted that while Iran was desperate for a reduction in the severity of the international sanctions imposed on its economy, it had no intention of stopping its military nuclear aspirations. “I think that there’s nothing wrong with diplomacy if it achieves a good deal,” he said. “But a bad deal is worse than no deal. And a bad deal is a partial deal that removes the sanctions, or most of them, and leaves Iran with the capacity to enrich uranium and pursue the plutonium route to nuclear bombs.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is set to present the Iran’s diplomatic package to the P5+1 next week “to kick off what is expected to be an intense new round of negotiations,” according to officials quoted in the report.

Both Zarif and Rouhani have said that Iran will continue to pursue a “peaceful” nuclear program, which the US has indicated could be acceptable under certain conditions to the international community.

The Obama administration’s chief Iran negotiator, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, told a Senate hearing last week, “We respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy.”

For first time, two IDF soldiers hurt by mortar fire from Syria | The Times of Israel.

The two suffer light injuries and are treated on site; IDF assesses shells were result of fighting between Assad army, rebels

Israeli infantry soldiers on the Golan Heights, near the Syrian border (Photo credit: Flash 90)

Two IDF soldiers were hurt Wednesday after two mortar shells fired from Syrian territory landed near their position in the Golan Heights.

One soldier suffered light injuries from shrapnel and was taken by ambulance to a local hospital. The second soldier suffered shock and was treated on site.

Israel Radio reported that, according to an IDF assessment, the mortar fire was not aimed at Israel, but rather was errant shells from fighting between the Syrian army and rebel forces.

The incident marked the first time IDF soldiers are known to have been injured in the overspill from the Syrian civil war.

Late last month, an Israeli army patrol took fire along the Syrian border in the northern Golan Heights. No injuries were reported in that incident.

Heavy fighting has been reported near the border for the last several days. On Tuesday, a group of shepherds fleeing the fighting crossed into Israel, but were sent back by IDF forces who intercepted them.

“The heavy battles are happening in the area around the north Golan in the village of Jubata al Khashab, and there have been heard many explosions from falling mortars,” a defense official told Maariv.

UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry told the Security Council last month that fighting on the Israel-Syria border could “jeopardize the ceasefire” between Jerusalem and Damascus that has been in place since 1974, monitored by UN peacekeepers.

Also last month, several mortal shells fired from Syrian territory landed in the Golan Heights, with one striking an IDF lookout post at Tel Fares. No injuries or damage were reported in that incident.

Since the start of the civil war in Syria in March 2011, dozens of mortar shells have landed in Israeli territory. In the past, Israel filed a complaint with the UN peacekeeping forces in the Golan, requesting that it bring an end to the cross-border shelling.

In mid-August, after 10 shells landed in Israeli territory, the IDF launched a Tammuz missile, destroying a Syrian cannon that had fired at Israel.

Israel Hayom | Iran reportedly willing to drastically limit nuclear program.

Ya’alon urges Hagel not to ease up sanctions on Iran | JPost | Israel News.

Hagel assures Ya’alon the US will be “clear-eyed” on Tehran.

Israel Hayom | IMF: Israel’s economy to outpace all other Western economies.

Israeli prof Arieh Warshel shares 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry | The Times of Israel.

Another of the three winners, Pretoria-born Michael Levitt, also holds Israeli citizenship. Trio, rounded out by Martin Karplus, win prestigious prize ‘for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.’ My work is mainly motivated by my curiosity, says kibbutz-born Warshel

By Times of Israel staff October 9, 2013, 12:53 pm

Arieh Warshel (photo credit: CC BY Wikipedia)

Israeli professor Arieh Warshel on Wednesday won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with professors Martin Karplus and Michael Levitt.

Warshel is a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he has been since the 1970s.

Fellow winner Michael Levitt, a South Africa-born professor, also holds Israeli citizenship. The third member of the winning trio is Vienna-born Martin Karplus.

The trio won the award “for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.

Warshel, contacted by the Swedish Academy of Sciences live by phone at 3 a.m. Los Angeles time, shortly after the award was announced, said he had been watching the ceremony live on the Internet, and added cheerily that he felt “extremely well.”

He said his research is motivated largely by his own curiosity. The work for which he and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel is for developing “a method that allowed us to understand how proteins actually work,” he said, and he explained that it was like seeing a watch, wondering what was going on inside, and finding out.

“We developed how a computer can take the structure of a protein, and can understand how it does exactly what it does — for example digesting food,” Warshel said. “You want to understand how it is happening, and then you can use it to design drugs, or in my case, to satisfy your curiosity,” the professor added.

Israel Radio spoke to his brother, Benny Warshel, Wednesday, who said his brother brought great honor to the state of Israel.

“He fough in this country’s wars. In the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War and he defends Israel in academic circles,” said Benny.

“He’s very connected to this country,” he added.

Warshel was born in 1940 in Kibbutz Sde Nahum, in the Beit She’an Valley. He served in the IDF (reaching the rank of captain), then attended Haifa’s Technion, where he got a BSc degree in Chemistry in 1966. He earned MSc and PhD degrees in Chemical Physics (in 1967 and 1969), at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. He then did postdoctoral work at Harvard University, returned to the Weizmann Institute in the early 1970s and also worked for the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England. He joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at USC in 1976.

Levitt, who was born in Pretoria in 1947, received his BSc from King’s College, London and his PhD in computational biology from the University of Cambridge. He was a Royal Society Exchange Fellow at the Weizmann Institute from 1967-1968, and later returned as a professor of chemical physics from 1980-1987.

Nobel chemistry prize winners (from left) Karplus, Levitt and Warshel (photo credit: Wikipedia Commons)

In its reasoning, the academy noted that in the past, chemists “used to create models of molecules using plastic balls and sticks. Today, the modelling is carried out in computers. In the 1970s, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel laid the foundation for the powerful programs that are used to understand and predict chemical processes.”

The academy continued, in a statement: “Computer models mirroring real life have become crucial for most advances made in chemistry today. Chemical reactions occur at lightning speed. In a fraction of a millisecond, electrons jump from one atomic nucleus to the other. Classical chemistry has a hard time keeping up; it is virtually impossible to experimentally map every little step in a chemical process. Aided by the methods now awarded with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, scientists let computers unveil chemical processes, such as a catalyst’s purification of exhaust fumes or the photosynthesis in green leaves.”

It said the work of Karplus, Levitt and Warshel “is groundbreaking in that they managed to make Newton’s classical physics work side-by-side with the fundamentally different quantum physics. Previously, chemists had to choose to use either or. The strength of classical physics was that calculations were simple and could be used to model really large molecules. Its weakness, it offered no way to simulate chemical reactions. For that purpose, chemists instead had to use quantum physics. But such calculations required enormous computing power and could therefore only be carried out for small molecules.”

This year’s Nobel Laureates in chemistry, the academy said, “took the best from both worlds and devised methods that use both classical and quantum physics. For instance, in simulations of how a drug couples to its target protein in the body, the computer performs quantum theoretical calculations on those atoms in the target protein that interact with the drug. The rest of the large protein is simulated using less demanding classical physics. Today the computer is just as important a tool for chemists as the test tube. Simulations are so realistic that they predict the outcome of traditional experiments.”

Vienna-born Karplus is based at the Université de Strasbourg, France, and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Levitt, who holds UK and Israeli citizenship, works from Stanford University, California. Warshel, who holds US and Israeli citizenship, is a distinguished professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

The prize amount, SEK 8 million — some $1.25 million — is to be shared equally between the laureates.

Netanyahu’s silent Middle East majority | JPost | Israel News.

The Middle East’s silent Sunni majority backs Netanyahu’s “distrust, dismantle, and verify” approach to Iran.

Iran rejects US precondition for participating in Syria peace conference | JPost | Israel News.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman: Any conditions set by President Obama for Iran’s participation in talks, including supporting a transitional Syrian government, will not be accepted by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iranian Speaker: We’re Ready for Nuclear Deal – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

Bushehr nuclear power plant

AFP photo

Iran is serious about resolving the dispute over its nuclear program and is keen to resolve the issue “in a short period of time,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament said on Tuesday.

“From Iran’s side, I can say that we are ready,” Ali Larijani told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview from Geneva.

“If the Americans and other countries say that Iran should not develop a nuclear bomb or should not move towards that, then we can clearly show and prove that. We have no such intention. So it can be resolved in a very short period of time,” he added.

Nonetheless, Larijani said, the West must accept Iran’s right to enrich nuclear fuel for civilian purposes, as allowed under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory.

“If they want to bargain with us or if they have ulterior motives,” he said, “or maybe they want to somehow convince Iran to abandon its nuclear program, then it is going to take a long time.”

Larijani referred to the recent conciliatory remarks made by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani who has called for the lifting of international sanctions, imposed over the nuclear program, that have taken a heavy toll on the Iranian economy.

Rouhani, who the West touts as a “moderate cleric”, has worked to smooth relations with the West and has been somewhat successful. In an indication of the shifting mood, he spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama by phone recently, the first direct conversation between leaders of the two countries since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

On Tuesday, Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague said that his country and Iran are taking steps toward restoring ties, two years after Britain cooled ties with Tehran, removing diplomats following an attack on its embassy.

“The important thing is that overall what [Rouhani did was approved by the Supreme Leader,” Larijani told CNN, saying that he had showed the world that Iran is “opposed to extremism.”

Ayatollah Khamanei has endorsed direct negotiations, and Larijani said that upcoming nuclear talks in Geneva will be a “very important step.”

“Right now, I have no reason to be pessimistic,” he told Amanpour. “Iran will be very serious about the talks, and Iran really wants to resolve the matter.”

Israeli leaders have expressed concern at Rouhani’s overtures, suggesting that the Iranian president’s speeches may cover an agenda that is not unlike his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran Readies Offer to Limit Its Nuclear Program – WSJ.com.

By  JAY SOLOMON

Associated Press

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in robe, attends the graduation of military cadets in Tehran on Saturday, as shown in a photograph released by Mr. Khamenei’s office.

Iran is preparing a package of proposals to halt production of near-weapons-grade nuclear fuel, a key demand of the U.S. and other global powers, according to officials briefed on diplomacy ahead of talks in Geneva next week.

Tehran in return will request that the U.S. and European Union begin scaling back sanctions that have left it largely frozen out of the international financial system and isolated its oil industry, the officials said.

The package from the new government of President Hasan Rouhani could revitalize long-stalled negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and underpin an emerging diplomatic thaw between Washington and Tehran.

But it also stands to test the unity of the U.S. and other international powers meeting with Iranian diplomats in Geneva in a bid to reach an accord to curtail Iran’s nuclear work.

By falling short of a complete shutdown of enrichment, the anticipated Iranian offer could divide the U.S. from its closest Middle East allies, particularly Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who have cautioned the White House against moving too quickly to improve ties with Tehran, according to American and Mideast officials.

In an opening salvo in the negotiations, Tehran is expected to offer to stop enriching uranium to levels of 20% purity, which international powers consider dangerously close to a weapons-grade capability.

Iran is also expected to offer to open the country’s nuclear facilities to more intrusive international inspections, the officials said. And Iran is considering offering the closure of an underground uranium-enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, which the U.S. and Israel have charged is part of a covert Iranian weapons program, which Tehran denies.

The international diplomatic bloc negotiating with Tehran, which comprises the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, last met with Iran in early April, two months before Mr. Rouhani’s surprise electoral victory.

The group of world powers, known as the P5+1, offered at the time to end sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports and precious metals trade in return for Tehran suspending its production of 20%-enriched uranium and ceasing activities at the Qom site, known as Fordow.

U.S. and European diplomats said Iran’s previous government never formally responded to the offer.

Russia and China, both P5 members, have pressed the U.S. and the European Union to begin scaling back sanctions on Tehran in an effort to underpin negotiations with Mr. Rouhani’s government.

The U.K., also in the P5, is demanding that Iran take concrete steps to set aside its nuclear ambitions before London dials back sanctions, Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Tuesday—adding, however, that the two countries are taking early steps toward reopening their embassies, which were closed in 2011.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran have intensified direct contacts in recent weeks in a bid to strengthen the diplomacy.

President Barack Obama spoke with Mr. Rouhani in a 15-minute phone call on Sept. 27, the first conversation between an American and Iranian president in more than 30 years.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met for 30 minutes with Secretary of State John Kerry last month in New York. They largely focused on resolving the nuclear dispute, according to U.S. and Iranian officials.

Mr. Zarif will present the package to the P5+1 to kick off what is expected to be an intense new round of negotiations, according to these officials. He has said Tehran’s new government wants to resume talks with a clean slate, and offered during meetings in New York to bring a new package when the next round begins in Geneva on Oct. 15, according to Iranian and U.S. officials.

Iran’s top diplomat has declined to publicly outline his road map. But Western officials who met his delegation said the plan would focus on stopping the production of uranium enriched to 20% purity while agreeing to ship Iran’s stockpile of the nuclear fuel to a third country for storage.

In return, Iran will seek to obtain from the international market the fuel rods needed to power the country’s research reactor in Tehran.

Less certain, said the officials briefed on the diplomacy, is whether Mr. Zarif will offer in Geneva to suspend or end nuclear-fuel production at Qom.

Israel has repeatedly threatened to bomb the site because it believes the underground facility is designed to produce highly enriched uranium for bombs. The site is controlled by Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which U.S. officials aren’t certain Iran’s diplomats can control.

Messrs. Rouhani and Zarif have stressed in recent weeks that Iran won’t agree to suspend all of its nuclear-fuel production—a program that includes the enrichment of uranium to levels between 3% and 5% purity. This fuel is usable for power reactors but isn’t suitable for weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.N. General Assembly last week that his country wouldn’t accept Iran maintaining the ability to enrich uranium at any level, due to concerns it would still maintain the latent ability to produce weapons-grade fuel.

Senior Obama administration officials have refused to say whether the U.S. would accept Iran maintaining the ability to enrich uranium on its soil.

“I’m not going to negotiate in public,” the Obama administration’s chief Iran negotiator, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, told a Senate hearing last week. “All I can do is repeat what the president of the United States has said: We respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy.”

A potential stumbling for the Geneva negotiations is the status of Iran’s heavy water reactor in the city of Arak, which Washington believes offers Tehran a second route to develop atomic weapons.

Iran has notified U.N. nuclear inspectors that it hopes to begin operating the Arak reactor by the second half of 2014. At that point, the facility would begin producing roughly two bombs’ worth of weapons-grade plutonium per year.

The status of Arak has only briefly been raised in previous negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran, according to U.S. and European officials. But the reactor has become of increasing concern to the U.S., U.N. and Israel as its operational date draws closer.

Mr. Zarif has said that his government is committed to bringing more transparency to its nuclear program. Among the steps Tehran is expected to offer in Geneva is allowing the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, greater access to Iran’s sites and the ability to call more snap inspections.

It is unclear, these officials said, if Iran will open up some of the purely military sites that the IAEA has said may have been used to test nuclear-weapons technologies in recent years. The agency has repeatedly been blocked from visiting the Parchin military base south of Tehran.

Negotiations will need to show quick results to counter domestic opposition to the talks in both Washington and Tehran, U.S. and Iranian officials say.

In the U.S., Congress is set to impose new sanctions on Iran that seek to enforce a total ban on oil exports and further block Tehran’s ability to conduct international trade.

Ms. Sherman pressed Congress last week to hold back on enacting the sanctions until the U.S. can test Mr. Rouhani’s new negotiating team. But a number of leading lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, said Washington should continue to increase the financial pressure until Iran cuts a deal.

“The State Department should not aid and abet a European appeasement policy by pressuring the Senate to delay sanctions while the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism races toward a nuclear weapons capability,” said Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) last week.

Conservative leaders in Iran, particularly leaders of the Revolutionary Guards, already have attacked the diplomatic efforts of Messrs. Rouhani and Zarif. The foreign minister told American leaders in recent days that the window for negotiations is somewhat limited, according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who met with Mr. Zarif in New York.

“There are people in Iran, just as there are people here, who would not want to see an agreement,” Ms. Feinstein said.

—Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.