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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iran's plans to build 10 nuclear enrichment plants are unacceptable and may lead the international community to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran to halt the program, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations said on Monday. "We view the Iranian announcement, if it is in fact accurate and implemented, that they intend to build 10 additional facilities as completely inappropriate and further isolating Iran from the international community," Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters. Iran announced on Sunday that it intends to build 10 uranium enrichment plants in a major expansion of its atomic program, just...

President Barack Obama spent much of his time in Asia warning Iran that his patience for nuclear diplomacy is wearing thin. "Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal," Obama said Thursday in Seoul, referring to a deal under which Iran would export the bulk of its stock of enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into reactor fuel. "And so, as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences."

TOKYO - President Barack Obama is emphasizing cooperation on his first major trip to Asia, opening with a warning to North Korea that there will be tough, unified action by the U.S. and its Asian partners if the Koreans fail to abandon their nuclear weapons programs. The hard line on North Korea was to be a prominent theme of a Friday night speech that also was intended to more broadly showcase a United States that, under Obama's leadership, seeks deeper and more equal engagement in Asia. It was to be the fifth major foreign address of Obama's 10-month presidency, this...

egarding Hamas, Yadlin said the Gaza-based terror group now has a rocket with a 60-kilometer range that can reach Tel Aviv, and has already successfully test-fired it into the Mediterranean Sea. He said Hamas had also smuggled in Iranian-produced Fajr-style rockets, and overall has a better rocket capability than before the Gaza War last winter.

The problem of North Korea has bedeviled policy makers in Washington for years. The notoriously opaque Stalinist state that sits above the 38th Parallel represents one of the world’s most intractable security dilemmas. Starting this spring, however, the challenge posed by Pyongyang has grown more acute. The defiant series of nuclear and ballistic tests carried out by Kim Jong Il in May has brought into sharp focus the growing threat posed by the North’s strategic arsenal—and precipitated a frenzy of international activity in response. The Obama administration, still in the early stages of formulating its Asia policy, has reacted to...

Frustrated by Iran's continued defiance of demands to come clean on its nuclear program, the Obama administration is leaning toward imposing new sanctions, even if it must act alone. Administration officials acknowledged growing concern that there may not be international consensus to expand the existing U.N. sanctions, despite Tehran's apparent rejection of a confidence-building measure proposed by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog in hopes of making progress on the nuclear issue. To that end, the administration is quietly supporting legislation in Congress that would give President Barack Obama a broad new array of authority to target Iran's energy sector by penalizing...

Watching the Obama administration launch its "new era of engagement" over the past 10 months, most seasoned observers have pondered two questions: First, if engagement fails, will the Obama team ever acknowledge that it has failed? And what then? The first question is about to be answered. The main object of the "new era of engagement," Iran, has settled back into its old game-playing. The joint proposal agreed to by the United States, France and Russia, to have Iran ship 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia this year, was a compromise, as administration officials acknowledge. It might theoretically...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said Iran must agree to stop all uranium enrichment in any deal with world powers. The UN nuclear watchdog and world powers headed by the United States are trying to reduce Tehran's stockpile of enriched uranium in return for supplying a medical reactor. They hope the deal will build trust on the way to persuading Iran to give up uranium enrichment, which they fear is part of an atomic weapons program, even though Iran says the uranium will only fuel power stations. "The crucial thing is that the international community pressure...

President George W. Bush, backed by a well-known neo-con crew as well as the gang in Tel Aviv, did all he could to formulate his war-loving foreign policy to force his successor manage a third military conflict in the Middle East. President Obama, meanwhile, has toned down the rhetoric since taking office and adopted a softer language, offering a glimmer of hope for direct diplomacy with Tehran — the two states have not had any diplomatic relations since the US Embassy take over in Tehran in 1980. Soon enough, the White House will have to come to terms with the...

(3rd LD) U.S. vows unlimited deterrence against N. Korea By Sam Kim SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. pledged Thursday to mobilize its warfighting assets to their maximum capacity if needed to defend South Korea against North Korea, which continues to develop its nuclear and missile capabilities. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to provide extended deterrence for the ROK, using the full range of military capabilities, to include the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional strike, and missile capabilities," according to a joint statement with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has fallen for Iran's line that it is not developing nuclear weapons, but only wants the ability to develop one to achieve its place in the sun among the great nations of the earth. In an interview on a Sunday show and in a leak in The New York Times that seems to have come from her (since it uses the same language), she notes that "there's a small space for doubt [about Iran's intention to build a bomb] because there are some contrary indicators. There is no doubt in my mind that they...

If only the world matched President Obama’s rosy image of it. Perhaps then pre-emptive concessions to other nations, in the hope of prompting reciprocation, might make sense. Alas, the world doesn’t work that way. And nothing demonstrates this more than Moscow’s increasingly problematic position on Iran, despite the White House’s “goodwill.” This sorry lesson began last month, when the president unilaterally scrapped plans to deploy an Eastern European missile-defense shield meant to take out incoming Iranian missiles. The decision broke a Bush administration pledge to US allies in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Obama officials spun it as a...

Recent defections of noted Iranians mirror those from the old U.S.S.R. Someone is stealing Iran's nuclear experts. Physicist Shahram Amiri, a researcher at Tehran's Malek Ashtar University, went missing in June on the third day of a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. His family says the medical isotope specialist, who worked in an institution identified by the European Union as a possible secret nuclear weapons lab, phoned home when he first arrived but hasn't been heard from since. The pro-government Iranian newspaper Javan (Young) said this week Saudi immigration officials questioned Mr. Amiri extensively when he first arrived for...

Yes, I wish that this was a satire piece, but unfortunately it appears that this is real. President Obama's Administration is going to allow Russia to inspect our nuclear facilities-- within the United States. This is an unprecedented move that damages US national security. Not only does it lift the veil of secrecy, but if Russia decided to sell the secret information to terrorists or rogue states, attacks could follow. This is a disgrace.

Ann Curry she has no intention of recycling those "Make History!" presidential campaign buttons wasn't the only headline Hillary Clinton made this week. On Tuesday, Clinton emerged from her meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisting that Russia and the U.S. were united on Iran's nuclear program even though Lavrov dismissed joining the U.S. in threatening Iran with sanctions as "counterproductive" at this point. The secretary of state called the position of Russia and the United States on Iran a "very strong, united approach." Clinton said that the United States had "always looked at" potential sanctions against Iran if...

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - North Korea interrupted moves toward dialogue on its nuclear program Monday by reportedly test-firing five short-range missiles off its east coast. A South Korean official, briefing the Korean media, said two short-range KN-02 missiles were fired in the morning and three more in the afternoon. The missiles, with a range of 75 miles, were shot from mobile launch pads near where North Korea fired a long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5. The timing of the tests, the North's first in three months, is particularly significant since North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il has shown clear interest in...

North Korea wants to placate key benefactor China by offering to return to disarmament talks and it is unclear whether it really intends to give up its cherished nuclear deterrent, analysts said Tuesday. Leader Kim Jong-Il told visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao late Monday the North is willing to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations -- on condition it first holds talks with the United States to improve "hostile relations". Some analysts expressed scepticism about the North's conditional offer to return to six-party dialogue, almost six months after it quit the forum and announced it would restart its bomb-making programme....

SEOUL, Oct 6 (Reuters) - North Korea is close to restoring its Yongbyon nuclear facility, South Korea's Yonhap news agency on Tuesday quoted an official in Seoul as saying. The report followed North Korea's pledge to return to international nuclear disarmament talks as long as it first holds negotiations with the United States. The following is a look at destitute North Korea's decades-long pursuit of nuclear arms: YONGBYON FACILITIES The Yongbyon complex is at the heart of the North's plutonium weapons programme. It consists of a five-megawatt reactor, whose construction began in 1980, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium...

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.

This would be the same deadline that the State Department hinted yesterday that it’s prepared to back down from if ElBaradei asks them to. Allowing access within two weeks of the announcement would in effect give Tehran almost a month after its Sept. 21 acknowledgment of the plant’s existence to obscure evidence, they said. David Albright, a former international weapons inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said it would probably take Iran some time to conceal activities. But, “if you have a month, you have the time,” he said. A European official who declined...

The past two weeks have been a big success for the rulers in Tehran, despite what many in the United States and Europe may think. The Obama administration, the Europeans and the media have been obsessively focused on Iranian missile launches and secret enrichment facilities, on Russia's body language, and on the likely success or failure of Thursday's talks in Geneva. What the world has not focused on is the one thing Iran's rulers care about: their own survival. You have to give the clerics credit for keeping this grave matter off Western agendas. The fraudulent presidential election in June...

A new American Jewish Committee (AJC) survey of American Jews shows that for the first time, a majority of them would support a U.S military strike against Iran, and an even larger majority would support such a move by Israel...

LONDON – Deep-cover MI6 agents who have described the workings of the once-secret underground uranium enrichment plant near the Iranian city of Qom now have discovered a staggering five more similar operations, according to a report....

During his appearance at the United Nations, Barack Obama envisioned a world without nuclear weapons. We think we found this imaginary world and where it came from, as shown in the animation (http://www.stentorian.com/cartoons/2008/obama_movie.gif, Barack Obama's Amazing Acid Trip to a World Without Nuclear Weapons). Meanwhile, with due credit to Jefferson Airplane for the original, The red pill makes you larger And the blue pill makes you small And the pain pill that Barry will give you Won’t do anything at all Go ask Barry When he’s ten feet tall And if you want nuclear disarmament And you know anything at...

(IsraelNN.com) A top official in the Obama Administration has at last admitted what intelligence agents and Israeli government officials have been warning about for years: Iran intends to build a nuclear arsenal. In media interviews with American television news networks scheduled to air Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said bluntly, "The Iranians have the intention of having nuclear weapons."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates strongly hinted on Sunday that Iran may be concealing other nuclear facilities in the country, beyond the uranium enrichment facility disclosed Friday by President Barack Obama and other leaders at the G-20 Summit. This Week host George Stephanopoulos asked Gates if the newly discovered site is "the only secret site that we know of." After a pause, Gates said, "I'm not going to get into that. I would just say that we are watching closely." Gates told Stephanopoulos there is "not a chance" the United States will heed the request of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and...

President Obama's dream of a world without nuclear weapons seems more like a nightmare to Russia and other nations that possess doomsday arms. Obama is pushing on a door that is closed, barred from inside and locked with a key that has been thrown away as far as the Kremlin is concerned. This harsh reality does not mean that the president should abandon his effort, which is a useful tool in his broader, more urgent campaign to change America's image abroad. It does mean that Obama should temper his rhetoric and avoid adding atomic abolition to the growing list of...

American and Israeli military planners have been examining options for an attack on Iran for almost three decades. There is no shortage of possible targets: Iran has dozens of nuclear-related sites that are known to western officials. Yet military experts in Washington and Tel Aviv acknowledge that a surprise airstrike would be likely to succeed only in delaying Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. It would also present daunting logistical and political challenges with no guarantee that even a sustained assault on known facilities would eradicate Tehran’s nuclear threat. With President Barack Obama committed to diplomatic pressure, the most likely military...

The crisis in relations with Iran escalated ominously yesterday after the leaders of the US, Britain and France accused the regime in Tehran of operating a secret uranium enrichment facility buried deep in a mountain bunker near the ancient religious city of Qom. Barack Obama called Iran's activity "a direct challenge" to the international community. The accusations were made public in an extraordinary joint statement by the US President, flanked by Gordon Brown and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy before the start of the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh. Iran had previously insisted that its plant at Natanz, which is...

PORLAMAR, Venezuela – Venezuela's science and technology minister said his country is working with Russia to detect deposits of uranium but withdrew an earlier denial that the country was also working with Iran. Jesse Chacon originally denied the reports that Venezuela is receiving support from Iran to seek uranium, but clarified later Saturday that his comments were only in regard to Russia and that exploration efforts with Iran fall under the direction of Venezuela's Mining Ministry. Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz said Friday Iran is helping Venezuela to detect uranium deposits and that initial evaluations suggest reserves are significant. His announcement...

The right is calling Obama weak, but his wily foreign policy is paying off The spluttering of the American right — and some European conservatives — over Barack Obama’s foreign policy reached a new level of vituperation last week. “Is Obama naive?” pondered Michael Ledeen at National Review. “I don’t think so. I think that he rather likes tyrants and dislikes America.” Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “[Obama’s] appeasement of Iran, his bullying of Israel, his surrender to Moscow, his call for a nuclear-free world ... have all won him plaudits in the large...

When it comes to the nuclear-weapons issue, President Obama wants to be a global community organizer. However, what we really need are some tough beat cops with a mandate to clean up the neighborhood. On Thursday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution drafted by the United States that calls upon, urges, encourages, but does not require U.N. member states to take various actions to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama chaired the meeting and pressed the vision of a nuclear-weapons-free world that he had introduced in April. In the practical world of counterproliferation, the president...

The United States and five other world powers are planning to demand what they call "unfettered access" to Iran's new nuclear facility. A senior U.S. official, who refused to be named, says the United States and other world powers will also demand Iran turn over within weeks other information it has been withholding on its nuclear program. Diplomats from the U.S. and the five other powers - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - are scheduled to meet with an Iranian delegation in Geneva Tuesday. But even as world powers increase the pressure on Iran about its nuclear ambitions, Iran's...

It's a sad day for America when you realize the French President has more brass than our Commander in Chief. Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.” Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

WASHINGTON -- President Obama said yesterday he still favors dialogue with Iran -- even after it was revealed the country has been caught building a second top-secret nuclear plant inside a mountain. At a press conference in Pittsburgh, where the G-20 summit was taking place, Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy disclosed the existence of the uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom.

We now know that Barack Obama  has sat  for almost a year on the information regarding Iran's "secret" nuclear plant. His hand was forced yesterday by the Iranians who were the ones that went public with the information when it appeared to them that their security had been breached. This led to Barack Obama disclosing the previously withheld information regarding the plant. The Iranians kept the plant secret and Obama aided them by his silence. So much for the transparency promise. What damage has been caused by Obama's withholding this information from the world? Instead of focusing his attention and...

President Obama appreciates "teachable moments," so let's all discuss this week's lesson in arms control theory and practice. The President brought his soaring sermon about "a world without [nuclear] weapons" before the U.N. General Assembly. He called for a new arms control treaty and won Security Council support for a vague resolution on proliferation. On cue yesterday, Iran showed the world what determined rogues think about such treaties. On the evidence of his Presidency so far, Mr. Obama will not let that reality interfere with his disarmament dreams. The disclosure that Iran has a second facility to make bomb-grade fuel,...

President Obama's long-held hope of engaging Tehran about its nuclear program appears to be fading. Reporting from Washington - President Obama has maintained that he would not wait forever for Iran to decide whether it will negotiate over its suspected nuclear weapons program. It appears that the wait is about over. As he met with world leaders in New York and Pittsburgh this week, Obama gave the clearest signals yet that he's giving up on one of his trademark campaign themes, engagement with Iran, in favor of pursuing tough economic sanctions. Obama says he still harbors hopes for next week's...

WASHINGTON — Not letting up on Iran, President Barack Obama said Saturday that the Islamic republic must take action to demonstrate its peaceful intentions after the discovery of a covert nuclear facility or it will be held accountable by the world's nations. In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said that evidence showing Iran building an underground plant to enrich uranium that could be used for an atomic bomb "continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion" that jeopardizes global nonproliferation. He urged Tehran once again to open the site to international inspectors, or face consequences. The chief option is...

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - Bolstered by other world powers, U.S. President Barack Obama demanded on Friday that Iran come clean about its nuclear program or face "sanctions that have bite" after the disclosure of a secret uranium enrichment plant. Issuing a stern warning to Iran at the end of a Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, Obama pointedly declined to rule out the military option in dealing with the bitter standoff with Tehran but insisted he preferred to resolve it diplomatically. Obama stood earlier in the day with the leaders of Britain and France in accusing Iran of working in secret...

  Late Thursday night, two hours after it sent out President Barack Obama’s Friday schedule, the White House told reporters it was adding another event – a statement that he would give in the morning. Amid all the hoopla of the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, there was scant indication the announcement would be dramatic. But behind the scenes, the Obama administration was furiously preparing for a major public intelligence disclosure that it had not planned to make: that the U.S. had known for years about a previously undisclosed clandestine nuclear enrichment facility Iran has been building since 2005 in...

A week ahead of crunch talks on Iran's nuclear program, the leaders of the U.S., France and the U.K. on Friday accused Tehran of building a covert uranium enrichment facility, a development they said directly challenges the world's non-proliferation rules. Later in the day, Iran publicly confirmed and strongly defended the nuclear fuel facility. Speaking at an overflowing news conference in New York Friday afternoon, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country has complied with rules of the U.N. nuclear agency that requires Tehran inform it of any new enrichment facility six months before any such facility becomes operational, the...

The Obama administration reportedly knew about the second secret Iranian uranium enrichment program prior to the United Nations meeting, yet the president chose to say nothing about the revelation, either during his address to the General Assembly or yesterday, when he chaired a Security Council session. Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama has maintained his determination to engage in direct negotiations with Iran over the Iranian nuclear program. A meeting between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia – plus Germany is scheduled for Oct. 1 in Geneva....

If Zbigniew Brzezinski had his way, the US would go to war against Israel to defend Iran's nuclear installations. In an interview with the Daily Beast Web site last weekend, the man who served as former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser said, "They [IAF fighter jets] have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? We have to be serious about denying them that right. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not." Brzezinski has long distinguished himself as...

US President Barack Obama is to call for an end to nuclear arms and efforts to stop the spread of the technology behind them, at an historic UN session. In the first security council meeting chaired by the US, Mr Obama will present a resolution seeking "a world without nuclear weapons". The meeting comes a day after Mr Obama's debut UN speech, in which he warned of a nuclear arms race. It also comes amid growing concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions. The draft resolution reaffirms the council's commitment "to seek a safer world for all and to create the conditions...

Tomorrow, President Obama will chair a special nuclear-disarmament meeting by the United Nations Security Council. The White House bills this as a historic first, but it is typical of Mr. Obama's emphasis on style over substance. He will appear before the body with the weakest foreign-policy record of any new U.S. president in recent memory. An around-the-world tour of international hot spots shows that for all the president's lofty rhetoric, he can point to precious few accomplishments. In the Middle East, Mr. Obama's unprecedented obsequiousness in dealing with the Muslim world has generated no tangible returns. The leading Arab states...

Iran on Monday welcomed Washington's decision to cancel plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe. "The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes any act that causes a reduction in the conventional arms race," Hassan Qashqavi, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, was quoted as saying by Iranian PressTV news agency. According to the report, Qahqavi rejected the claim that the system was meant to face an Iranian missile threat, calling it a baseless political claim. "Such analyses have no realistic or evidential basis, for, from the beginning, adopting the claim of a missile threat from the Islamic Republic...

To ensure everyone likes the USA, President Obama’s approach is to set an example – for Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nuclear states – by cutting our own nuke arsenal and denying missile defense systems for Poland and the Czech Republic. There will be no peace without strength.

It's good news that President Obama has kicked back the Pentagon's "timid" proposals for a new nuclear posture review in favour of a radical rewrite (Barack Obama ready to slash US nuclear arsenal, 21 September). Breaking out of the "more of the same" approach is key to making progress towards abolition. It was disappointing, then, to read David Miliband's comments, pushing attention off on to Iran and North Korea, as usual (New nuclear resolve, 21 September). Perhaps this isn't surprising when you consider that the UK's nuclear policy remains the replacement of Trident – a cold war system with no...

Obama promised to neuter America before the election in one of his campaign ads to supporters: That was one promise he decided to keep. As promised, Barack Obama will go ahead with his plan to weaken America's stand in the world. The Guardian reported today that Obama is pushing a radical plan to eliminate not hundreds but thousands of the nation's strategic warheads, via Free Republic. Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal. Obama has rejected the...