The administration won’t portray it that way, of course. They will say they have succeeded in slowing down Iran’s program. They will offer the usual Obama straw man argument -- it’s a choice between this deal and war with Iran. And nobody wants another war in the Middle East. » | K. T. McFarland | Wednesday, April 01, 2015
Showing posts with label Iran's nuclear program. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran's nuclear program. Show all posts
Thursday, April 02, 2015
Obama’s Folly in Iran Needs a Page from Reagan’s Playbook
The administration won’t portray it that way, of course. They will say they have succeeded in slowing down Iran’s program. They will offer the usual Obama straw man argument -- it’s a choice between this deal and war with Iran. And nobody wants another war in the Middle East. » | K. T. McFarland | Wednesday, April 01, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Monday, March 16, 2015
Iran Deal Could Start Nuclear Fuel Race - Saudi Arabia
Prince Turki al-Faisal told the BBC that Saudi Arabia would then seek the same right, as would other nations.
Six world powers are negotiating an agreement aimed at limiting Iran's nuclear activity but not ending it.
Critics have argued this would trigger a nuclear arms race in the region spurred on by Saudi-Iran rivalry.
"I've always said whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same," said the prince, Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief.
"So if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it's not just Saudi Arabia that's going to ask for that.
"The whole world will be an open door to go that route without any inhibition, and that's my main objection to this P5+1 [the six world powers] process." With a late March deadline for an Iran deal approaching, Saudi Arabia last week signed a nuclear co-operation agreement with South Korea that included a plan to study the feasibility of building two nuclear reactors in the kingdom.
Riyadh has also signed nuclear co-operation agreements with China, France and Argentina, and intends to construct 16 nuclear power reactors over the next 20 years. (+ BBC video) » | Barbara Plett Usher | BBC News, Riyadh | Monday, March 16, 2015
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that he will not allow Iran to continue its progress towards nuclear armament if he is re-elected in January.
"I am of course ready to press the button if necessary," he told Israel's Channel 2 in an investigation aired on Monday evening.
"As long as I am prime minister, Iran will not have the atomic bomb. If there's no other way, Israel is ready to act."
The report revealed that the prime minister had in fact ordered his armed forces to prepare a unilateral strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in 2010, only to pull back from the brink of war.
Two years ago, Mr Netanyahu, supported by Ehud Barak, his defence minister, issued an order raising the military alert level to "P-Plus" – a rarely issued command signalling imminent war. » | Phoebe Greenwood, Tel Aviv | Tuesday, November 06, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
The last time Hezbollah attacked Israel, a rocket exploded next to Adam Bloom's house while his wife was in the shower.
"She was hysterical," he said. Afterwards it took hours to coax her and their two terrified young daughters out of the bomb shelter where they fled.
"Hezbollah had about 10,000 rockets then but they are supposed to have more like 50,000 now, so how many will be fired at us if they start again?" said Mr Bloom, 49.
The family, whose kibbutz is 30 miles south of the Lebanon border, had thought they were safely out of range in 2006. When rockets started landing they jumped in the car and headed south with 350,000 other Israelis, to spend weeks as refugees in their own country.
This time it is not only the north that is being prepared for a new conflict, one that Israelis fear could be much worse than anything since 1973. The trigger would be the long-threatened Israeli airstrike on Iran's nuclear programme.
The whole country is uneasily aware that Iran has giant rockets to fire back at Tel Aviv and Haifa in retaliation, and that it has armed its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon with Scuds and similar medium-range missiles, weapons it didn't have in 2006. » | Nick Meo in Jerusalem | Sunday, October 14, 2012
Sunday, June 03, 2012
UPI.COM: TEHRAN -- Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, said Sunday the West was more fearful of Iran's fervent Islam than its nuclear program.
The religious leader spoke Sunday at the 23rd anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomenei and claimed Iran was stronger than ever despite Western efforts to keep the country at bay. » | UPI | Sunday, June 03, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Saturday, April 07, 2012
THE WASHINGTON POST: President Obama has signaled Iran that the United States would accept an Iranian civilian nuclear program if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can back up his recent public claim that his nation “will never pursue nuclear weapons.”
This verbal message was sent through Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited Khamenei last week. A few days before traveling to Iran, Erdogan had held a two-hour meeting with Obama in Seoul, in which they discussed what Erdogan would tell the ayatollah about the nuclear issue and Syria.
Obama advised Erdogan that the Iranians should realize that time is running out for a peaceful settlement and that Tehran should take advantage of the current window for negotiations. Obama didn’t specify whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium domestically as part of the civilian program the United States would endorse. That delicate issue evidently would be left for the negotiations that are supposed to start April 13, at a venue yet to be decided.
Erdogan is said to have replied that he would convey Obama’s views to Khamenei, and it’s believed he did so when he met the Iranian leader on Thursday. Erdogan also met President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior Iranian officials during his visit. Read on and comment » | David Ignatius | Opinion Writer | Thursday, April 05, 2012
Saturday, November 12, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capabilities, raising fears that it may be planning a go-it-alone attack as early as next summer.
The US leader was rebuffed last month when he demanded private guarantees that no strike would go ahead without White House notification, suggesting Israel no longer plans to "seek Washington's permission", sources said. The disclosure, made by insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America's most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hawkish prime minister, comes amid concerns that Iran's continuing progress towards nuclear weapons capability means the Jewish state has all but lost hope for a diplomatic solution. » | Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem | Saturday, November 12, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Monday, May 17, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Iran has signed a nuclear fuel swap deal to ship 1,200 kilos of low enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for nuclear fuel for a Teheran reactor.
The agreement was signed in the Iranian capital between the foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Brazil after three-way talks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Under the agreement "Turkey will be the place to keep Iran's 3.5 per cent (low enriched) uranium," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters. "One thousand two hundred kilos (of LEU) will be exchanged."
He added that Iran will officially notify the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the agreement "within a week."
"The IAEA should inform the Vienna group (United States, France and Russia) of this proposal," he said of world powers which have wanted Iran since last October to accept a UN-backed deal to ship its enriched uranium abroad.
Israel, which along with many Western powers suspects Iran is using its nuclear enrichment programme to mask a drive for atomic weapons, immediately accused Teheran of "manipulating" Turkey and Brazil over the deal. >>> | Monday, May 17, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: Iran is focused on improving a growing arsenal of ballistic missiles but needs at least four more years to be able to target London and more than a decade to threaten the East Coast of the United States, a leading think-tank said yesterday.
The analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) came after Tehran said that it had test-fired for the first time a series of short-range Fajr (Dawn) missiles in the Gulf.
“The missiles were fired from surface to sea and hit the target with great precision,” Kiomars Haydari, deputy chief of the army ground forces, was quoted by a local news agency as saying. >>> Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor | Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
THE HEW YORK TIMES: WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.
Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.
Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.
One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as “a wake-up call.” But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
In an interview on Friday, General Jones declined to speak about the memorandum. But he said: “On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don’t announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn’t mean we don’t have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies — we do.” >>> David E. Sanger and Tom Shanker | Saturday, April 17, 2010
Saturday, October 24, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: A powerful Iranian lawmaker has joined criticism of United Nations plans for Tehran to ship uranium abroad for enrichment in a new blow to Barack Obama's diplomatic approach.
The senior legislator's comments came a day after Iran missed a deadline to respond to the International Atomic Energy Agency on a deal backed by the US, European powers and Russia - bringing President Barack Obama's policy of diplomatic engagement with Tehran close to collapse. >>> Philip Sherwell in New York | Saturday, October 24, 2009
Saturday, October 03, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has handed the Kremlin a list of Russian scientists believed by the Israelis to be helping Iran to develop a nuclear warhead. He is said to have delivered the list during a mysterious visit to Moscow.
Netanyahu flew to the Russian capital with Uzi Arad, his national security adviser, last month in a private jet.
His office claimed he was in Israel, visiting a secret military establishment at the time. It later emerged that he was holding talks with Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and President Dmitry Medvedev.
“We have heard that Netanyahu came with a list and concrete evidence showing that Russians are helping the Iranians to develop a bomb,” said a source close to the Russian defence minister last week.
“That is why it was kept secret. The point is not to embarrass Moscow, rather to spur it into action.”
Israeli sources said it was a short, tense meeting at which Netanyahu named the Russian experts said to be assisting Iran in its nuclear programme. >>> Uzi Mahanimi Tel Aviv Mark Franchetti and Jon Swain | Sunday, October 04, 2009
Sunday, July 05, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.
The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.
“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.
Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained “working relations” with the Saudis.
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.
Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: “None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.” >>> Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter | Sunday, July 05, 2009
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