WarSclerotic

Israel dismisses reports Iran halting higher-grade enrichment – Israel News, Ynetnews.

State official says ‘Even if Iran stopped 20% enrichment, it is still equipped with advanced centrifuges that allow it to go from 3.5% enrichment to military grade 90% within a few weeks’

Reuters

Israel on Saturday dismissed as “irrelevant” reports that Iran had halted its most sensitive uranium enrichment activity, and said Tehran’s nuclear program must be dismantled.

A senior member of Iran’s parliamentary national security commission was quoted as saying Iran had stopped refining uranium above the 5% required for civilian power stations, as it already had all the 20% enriched fuel it needed for a medical research reactor in Tehran.

But diplomats accredited to the UN nuclear watchdog said they had no confirmation Iran had halted enrichment of uranium to 20% – a sensitive issue because it is a relatively short technical step to increase that to the 90% needed to make a nuclear warhead.

“The discussion on whether or not Iran has ceased 20% enrichment is irrelevant,” said an Israeli official.

Israel fears its arch enemy Iran is developing atomic weapons capability, and has hinted it could attack the Islamic republic to prevent it from getting the bomb. Iran says its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.

“Even if Iran stopped 20% enrichment, it is still equipped with advanced centrifuges that allow it to go from a level of 3.5% enrichment to a military grade 90% within a few weeks,” the official added.

World powers seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear dispute with Iran want it to stop enrichment. Iran indicated in talks that resumed in Geneva last week that it might scale back its program to win sanctions relief.

Israel, believed to be the Middle East’s only atomic power, says Iran must be stripped of enrichment capabilities.

“The international community must ensure the complete dismantling of the Iranian military nuclear program, and until then sanctions must be stepped up,” said the Israeli official.

Western officials have said Iran must stop enriching uranium to 20%, increase the transparency of its nuclear program, reduce its uranium stocks and take other steps to reassure the world that it is not after nuclear weapons.

Iran and six world powers – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany – said that this month’s talks in Geneva were positive and constructive.

Negotiations are due to resume there on November 7-8.

The meeting was the first since Iranian President Hassan Rohani came to office in August promising to try to resolve the nuclear dispute and secure an easing of sanctions that have severely damaged Iran’s oil-dependent economy.

Iranian MP: Despite warnings from West, Tehran continuing 20% uranium enrichment | JPost | Israel News.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi contradicts previous claim by other Iranian legislator that Tehran has halted enrichment of near-weapons-grade uranium; says Iran’s nuclear energy activities continue as they have in the past.

Official: Iran 20% enrichment debate meaningless, Israel seeks more US sanctions | JPost | Israel News.

Israeli official says debate is attempt to divert attention from need for complete halt of Iran’s uranium enrichment; says any enrichment capability, heavy water reactor not necessary for civilian nuclear energy program.

Iran Announces 34 New Nuke Sites | Washington Free Beacon.

Suspected Iranian nuclear facility / AP

BY: Adam Kredo
October 25, 2013 11:42 am

Iran plans to build many new nuclear plants with atomic reactors along its coastlines with the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, Iran’s top nuclear official announced on Thursday.

The announcement comes just a week after Western nuclear negotiators claimed that Iran was giving ground in talks aimed at ending Tehran’s contested enrichment program.

Iranian leaders, however, have remained defiant in the face of talks, announcing on Thursday that Tehran will build “enough atomic reactors to generate a total of 20,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020,” according to the country’s state-run Fars News Agency.

Top Iranian leaders and those involved with negotiations have also been quoted in the Persian language press as rejecting key details of the proposed nuclear deal.

Iran also announced that it was China’s largest oil supplier in the month of September.

“We are considering construction of power plants along the coasts of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea as well as the Central parts of Iran, but priority is given to the Persian Gulf coasts because we want to pave the way for [the construction of] water desalination facilities to supply drinking water for the Southern provinces of Iran,” Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO),  said Tuesday Fars reported.

At least 34 sites have already been designated for future nuclear power plants, according to Fars.

Additionally, Salehi announced just two days after nuclear negotiations ended that Russia would help Iran build new nuclear power plants across the country, according to Persian language press reports.

Salehi also suggested that Iran’s top nuclear negotiators lack the authority to agree to a deal with the West.

The IAEO, he claimed, also plays a role in Iran’s nuclear decision-making and would instruct negotiating officials, according to a Farsi-language Fars article translated by the Open Source Center.

Around 13,000 people are involved in Iran’s nuclear sector, according to Salehi, who also revealed that Russia could soon begin construction on a second nuclear power plant in Iran.

“We had a meeting [with Russians] at the beginning of this week regarding the signing of a protocol on the construction of the next power plant,” Salehi told Fars in Persian last week. “Once this protocol is prepared, Russia will start the constructing of another power pant in Bushehr.”

The latest power plant models “have been designed and are ready to be constructed, and the foundation of the next power plant is prepared in Bushehr,” where the Russians are helping Iran run final tests on another soon to be completed nuke plant, Salehi said.

Russia has helped Iran quicken its nuclear pace, according to Salehi.

“We worked with the Russians and it is a good opportunity, because it expedites our work and is not aimed at diminishing political pressure,” he said.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiators have also been quoted in the Iranian press downplaying progress in talks.

Iranian deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, who played a lead role in the negotiations, said that the Iranian side made “no commitment,” according to Iran’s conservative Tasnim News Agency.

Araqchi’s comments run against Western reports claiming substantive progress in the most recent round of negotiations.

Iran’s main goal is to preserve its nuclear enrichment program, according to Araqchi.

“The country’s proposal presented in the latest talks between Tehran and world powers was aimed at protecting Iranian rights to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” Tasnim reported this week.

“The defined goal is safeguarding Iran’s nuclear rights, both in terms of uranium enrichment and in [the] fuel production field,” Araqchi was quoted as saying.

Once the West is “assured” that Iran’s nuclear program is “peaceful,” the “sanctions would be totally lifted,” Araqchi claimed.

Iran reportedly presented to the West a “three-step plan” and promised to consider a proposal known as the “Additional Protocol,” which would make Iran subject to strict nuclear inspections, according to Tasnim.

Araqchi has also been telling Iranian lawmakers that the issue of Fordow, one of Iran’s top nuclear enrichment facilities, is not even on the negotiating agenda.

Araqchi reportedly told the West during talks that “Tehran would not stop uranium enrichment and that the closure of Fordow was not on the agenda of the Iranian negotiating team,” according to Iran’s Press TV.

Fordow has long been used by Iran to enrich uranium, the key element in a nuclear bomb. Iran has been producing 20 percent enriched uranium at the site for several months now, according to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

ISIS announced in a report late Thursday that Iran would have the ability to create weapons grade uranium by mid-2014, though its ability to produce a working nuclear weapons could come much sooner.

Israel issues warning on report on Iran bomb.

A new report that says Iran may need as little as a month to produce enough uranium for a nuclear bomb is further evidence for why Israel will take military action before that happens, an Israeli defense official said Friday.

A new report that says Iran may need as little as a month to produce enough uranium for a nuclear bomb is further evidence for why Israel will take military action before that happens, an Israeli defense official said Friday.

“We have made it crystal clear – in all possible forums, that Israel will not stand by and watch Iran develop weaponry that will put us, the entire Middle East and eventually the world, under an Iranian umbrella of terror,” Danny Danon, Israel’s deputy defense minister told USA TODAY.

Iran is developing and installing new and advanced centrifuges that enable Iran to enrich even low-enriched uranium to weapons grade uranium needed for nuclear weapons within weeks, Danon said.

“This speedy enrichment capability will make timely detection and effective response to an Iranian nuclear breakout increasingly difficult,” he said.

“Breakout” refers to the time needed to convert low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade uranium. On Thursday, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report stating that Iran could reach that breakout in as little as one month based in part on Iran’s own revelations about its nuclear program.

“If they use all their centrifuges … and their stockpiles of low- and medium-enriched uranium, that would take one to 1.6 months,” said David Albright, president of the institute and a former inspector for the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency.

The report comes as the White House is trying to persuade Congress not to go ahead with a bill to stiffen sanctions on Iran to force it to open up its program to inspection. The White House on Thursday invited senate staffers to a meeting on Iran strategy for negotiations that are to resume next month with Iran, it said.

In discussing Iran strategy, President Obama has said Iran is a year or more away from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.

Bernadette Meehan, an spokeswoman for the administration’s National Security Council, said the intelligence community maintains “a number of assessments” regarding potential time frames for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one weapon or a testable nuclear device.

“We continue to closely monitor the Iranian nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium,” Meehan said.

In the report, Albright said negotiations with Iran should focus on lengthening Iran’s breakout time. ISIS’ analysis is based on the latest Iranian and United Nations reports on Iran’s centrifuge equipment for producing nuclear fuel and its nuclear fuel stockpiles.

Iran’s stockpile of medium-enriched uranium has nearly doubled in a year’s time and its number of centrifuges has expanded from 12,000 in 2012 to 19,000 today.

Sen. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican whose Senate Banking Committee is considering legislation to tighten Iran sanctions, said the report shows that Iran is expanding its nuclear capabilities under the cover of negotiations.

“The Senate should move forward immediately with a new round of sanctions to prevent Iran from acquiring an undetectable breakout capability,” he said. The House has already passed legislation to toughen sanctions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said his country has no interest in nuclear weapons but that producing nuclear fuel is Iran’s right. However, Iran has blocked international inspectors from some suspected nuclear facilities, making it impossible to determine whether it is complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed.

United Nations inspectors say they have found evidence of a weapons program in violation of Iran’s commitment under the treaty. The USA and the U.N. Security Council have implemented economic sanctions on Iran to persuade it abide by its obligation and verify it is not developing a bomb.

Albright says negotiations with Iran should focus on establishing protocols that lengthen the time period that it would take Iran to convert uranium to weapons grade uranium.

“An essential finding is that they are currently too short and shortening further,” stated the report by the Institute for Science and International Security.

Contributing: Michele Chabin in Jerusalem

Former IAF chief: Even if Iran gets nuke, it won’t last forever – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Maj. Gen. Nehoshtan trusts in IAF’s ability to strike Iranian nuclear program: ‘Deterrence is strong.’ He warns against ‘drawn out’ talks, ‘bad deal’

Ilana Curiel

Former Air Force commander, ret. Maj. Gen. Ido Nehoshtan, referred to the Iranian nuclear program and to the Air Force’s strike capabilities in a public event in Beersheba on Saturday. “I wouldn’t underestimate the IAF’s abilities to stand up to the task,” Nehoshtan said.

Referring to the fail-safe point, he added: “If we’ve reached a situation in which, god forbid, Iran possesses nuclear weapons and we’re too late, it doesn’t mean it will stay that way forever. We’re not there yet.”

Nehoshtan also said that “deterrence, composed from military ability and the readiness the use it, not only exists, but is also strong. Israel has a reputation for significant military force, varied capabilities combined with exact intelligence and when it (Israel) feels it has to, it does.”

Regarding the negotiations with Iran he said: “We’re at the outset of one of the most important processes in the Middle East. We got there because sanctions work. Rohani was elected to change the internal economic situation. We’ve found leverage over the Iranians which brought them to the negotiating table, but the Iranians are good in negotiations. They’re masters of the art. And when you run negotiations with a group of countries it’s harder to find common ground.”

Analyzing the possible results of the talks, Nehoshtan said there are four possibilities, two winning and two losing: “One win is that the talks will succeed. The Americans and we are on the same page: Prevent the Iranian from having nuclear weapons. The second win is exposing them, showing their bluff.

“There are also two dangerous scenarios: One is to fall into a bad deal. We’re concerned they’ll manage to convince the world with a good Powerpoint presentation while giving nothing away. The other is the drawing out of the process. Some are experts at that. Leave smiling and draw it out.”

Nehoshtan said: “We – the free world – have to prevent the losing scenarios. Not let a bad deal come into being and not let the process to last forever.”

The former IAF chief noted that the Iranians reached a low-grade enrichment of uranium, enough for several low quality bombs.

“For a bomb high-grade is needed,” he said. “Enrichment is possible but it takes time.”

Regarding a possible military strike against Iran, Nehoshtan said: “No one is eager to pursue military action; you do it when the alternative is worse. There’s no telling what will follow a military strike.”

‘Israel’s missile-defense system could crumble at the moment of truth’ | JPost | Israel News.

( Convincing and scary, this article supports Luis’ argument that a “surgical strike” is a terrible idea.  It also supports my argument in favor of using a massive EMP attack.  Why take chances with our lives if we can avoid it? –  JW )

Dr. Nathan Faber, an expert on anti-ballistic-missile defense, questions the efficacy of Israel’s tiered-defense concept in an all-out war on several fronts, citing financial and operational reasons.

Israel Hayom | The astute Saudi nose.

David M. Weinberg

Kerry & Netanyahu Spar in Rome | FrontPage Magazine.

AP reported this week that Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi “predicted…the nuclear talks could take as long as a year…with the first milestone coming in three to six months and negotiations concluding within the year.”

That “prediction” should come as no surprise. The same report says “significant gaps remain between what the Iranians offered” in last week’s first round of talks and what the P5+1 countries are seeking “to reduce fears Iran wants to build nuclear weapons.”

In other words, Iran’s strategy is to make an offer it knows even its eagerly “peace”-seeking interlocutors are quite capable of refusing—and then take lots of time seemingly whittling down that offer toward something more acceptable. Meanwhile Israel—if this goes according to plan—gets diplomatically closed out of taking military action and incurring universal wrath by wrecking “peace” and “progress.”

Also this week The New Republic posted a long interview with Amos Yadlin, Israel’s previous chief of military intelligence and current head of its leading security think tank.

Interviewer Ben Birnbaum notes that in September 2012, when many thought an Israeli strike on Iran was imminent, Yadlin told an Israeli journalist: “They say that time has almost run out, but I say there is still time. The decisive year is not 2012 but 2013. Maybe even early 2014.”

That is, a direct clash with Araghchi’s assessment of another leisurely year for talks.

Does Yadlin still see it the same way? It emerges that he does:

…I think 2012 was the wrong year to do it, because in 2012, it was a bright red light from Washington. I would like to emphasize, Israel is not asking for a green light. Israel only doesn’t want to do something that is going 180 degrees against American vital interests as long as it is not a response to a threat that is almost an existential threat. I think in late 2013 or early 2014, especially if America sees that Iran is not serious about reaching an acceptable agreement and only continues to buy time, the U.S. will accept an Israeli attack because a nuclear Iran is absolutely against American vital national security interests.

Yadlin adds later:

The most problematic issue has nothing to do with Israel. It’s nonproliferation in the Middle East. It’s the fact that the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Turks will go for nuclear weapons if Iran gets them, and…miscalculations, unintended escalations, nuclear weapons to terrorists will be multiplied tenfold—it will be a nuclear nightmare.

Meanwhile, in a tour of European capitals this week Secretary of State John Kerry tried to assuage, in particular, Israeli and Saudi concerns about Washington’s Iran policy. According to a New York Times report on Thursday, Kerry had little success.

The Times notes that “Saudi officials have made it clear they are frustrated with the Obama administration,” which is viewed in the region at large as simply seeking to avoid confrontations and hence quite amenable to Iran’s approach of drawing out the talks and playing for time.

And as for Kerry’s seven-hour-long meeting in Rome on Wednesday with Binyamin Netanyahu, the Times says “Kerry’s comments appeared to do little to persuade” the Israeli prime minister, with “the United States and other world powers…willing to explore a deal that is far less stringent” than any Netanyahu would consider acceptable.

In other words, the picture that emerges is less optimistic than former intelligence chief Yadlin’s expectation of U.S. understanding for a possible Israeli attack in a matter of months.

The next round of talks with Iran on November 7-8 should help clarify whether the U.S. and its European allies are capable, even at this late date, of relating to the danger with a modicum of seriousness.

Israel, for its part, should be thinking about forestalling the nuclear nightmare without even an amber light from Washington.

Analysis: Obama’s aversion to Mideast conflicts fuels backlash from allies | Reuters.

(Reuters) – From Saudi Arabia to Israel, traditional U.S. allies in the Middle East are beginning to ask: Is America turning its back on us?

President Barack Obama’s diplomatic overtures to old foe Iran and his last-minute refusal to attack Syria have officials in Israel, the Gulf countries and Turkey wondering if Washington is deliberately neglecting them to avoid being dragged into a Middle East facing deeper sectarian strife and concerns that Tehran may be seeking a nuclear bomb.

Media reports that the U.S. National Security Agency may have spied on the leaders of Germany, Mexico and Brazil have upset those longtime allies too, adding to the impression in some quarters that Obama has his foreign priorities backward.

But it is in the Middle East where Obama’s policy is under harsher scrutiny, especially from Saudi Arabia, which fears a warming of relations between the United States and Riyadh’s regional rival Iran.

A senior Saudi prince warned this week that the kingdom could “shift away” from the United States, suggesting a major strategic change after decades of close military and economic cooperation.

Israeli officials say they worry Obama will not take a hard enough line in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions and might balk at a military attack on Iran just as he backed off from attacking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September.

“The United States did a lot of damage to their image by failing to attack Syria,” said an Israeli diplomat in Jerusalem.

Allies’ concerns about U.S. distaste for deep involvement in the Middle East are heightened by opinion polls showing Americans strongly opposed to intervention in the Syrian civil war. A Reuters/Ipsos survey from October 11 showed only 13 percent of Americans backed U.S. intervention in Syria.

‘IT’S A MESS OUT THERE’

The White House denies insinuations from both friends and foes in the Middle East that it does not have the stomach to use force in the region and points to the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

U.S. officials also caution against underestimating Obama’s willingness to use a military option against Iran to prevent it from getting a nuclear weapon.

“It’s not as if this is a president who has proven to be unwilling to act when he believed it was in our interest, but he’s not going to act when he doesn’t think it’s in our interest,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser.

He said the United States would not begin to lift sanctions against Iran until Tehran shows real progress in nuclear talks.

Washington and its allies believe Iran is developing the ability to make a nuclear weapon, but Tehran says the program is for generating power and medical devices.

But Obama will resist pressure from Saudi Arabia to become more active in Syria where the rebels opposing Assad are coming increasingly under the sway of Islamist militants, some of whom are linked to al Qaeda.

Obama is extremely wary of open-ended U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. His caution is shaped in part by Iraq, Rhodes said.

“I think the Iraq war does bear on our thinking,” Rhodes told the Reuters Washington Summit. He said Iraq’s slide into sectarian and political chaos “proved the limitations of our influence.”

“We had an occupying army of 150,000 people in the country and we weren’t able to dictate events in that country over the following several years. So it’s not as if that was an advertisement for the ability of military power to dictate outcomes in the Middle East,” he said.

Obama’s wariness is matched by congressional opposition as well as a war-weariness that most polls show has permeated the American public.

“The president is accurately reflecting a kind of fatigue with the Middle East,” said Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy aide under Obama’s Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, and a frequent critic of the Democratic president.

Obama, he said, had embraced the view that “it’s a mess out there” and that it is best to limit military action largely to drone strikes in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

SAUDIS SMARTING

Saudi Arabia is still smarting over what it says were promises by the United States that it would strike Assad – a close ally of Iran – for using chemical weapons against civilians.

“What we are doing seriously is to scare the Americans to make them wake up. They can’t make promises to us and then not implement those promises. It’s going to cost them,” said a Saudi analyst close to the thinking of the kingdom’s rulers.

Obama cut long-standing ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak adrift during huge street protests in 2011, raising red flags with both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

U.S. officials see the recent Saudi threat to distance itself from Washington as mostly rhetoric. There has been no sign the Saudis want to scale back or close U.S. military installations, including a base used to launch drones against militants in neighboring Yemen.

Large strides in U.S. oil output helped by “fracking” technology make America less dependent on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf crude producers. But if Saudi Arabia decides to translate its anger over U.S. policy into action, it could make life more difficult for Washington.

Saudi Arabia could be less helpful in filling the gap in global oil supplies – and keeping prices under control – to make up for lower Iranian exports caused by Obama’s drive for international sanctions.

Saudi Arabia could also supply more advanced weapons to radical Islamists fighting to overthrow Assad, giving them an advantage in firepower over moderate Western-backed rebels.

Apart from trying to smooth over relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel, the White House is struggling to head off complaints from Europe and Latin America that the NSA monitored leaders’ communications.

Those complaints stem from media reports based on classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“It is a challenging situation,” Rhodes said. “Country by country, we’re just going to have to address diplomatically what the concerns are that arise.”

Despite the anger of individual leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel who suspects her cell phone was bugged, governments recognize that even some allies spy on each other. So the diplomatic fallout from the surveillance scandals is unlikely to last long.

“At the moment, there is not real damage done to relations,” said a senior EU diplomat, citing common interests with the United States in trade talks, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

More worrying is Obama’s handling of the Middle East, as well as distraction at home from constant budget battles with Republicans, the diplomat said.

“U.S. foreign policy is in serious problems, not only because of the NSA. That Obama could not go to Asia because of domestic problems left a disastrous impression in some ASEAN countries where China is increasing its influence,” he said, referring to Obama’s cancellation of a trip to Southeast Asia this month because of the U.S. fiscal crisis.

Germany will send its top intelligence chiefs to Washington next week to seek answers from the White House on the Merkel phone-tapping reports.

(Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem, Andreas Rinke in Berlin, William Maclean in Dubai; Editing by Peter Cooney)