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A boatload of Iranian weapons destined for Shiite Zaidi rebels battling the military has been seized in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen, a local official said on Monday. The vessel, with a cargo mainly of anti-tank shells, was seized on Sunday off the village of Midi in Hajjah province adjoining Saada, the Yemeni province bordering Saudi Arabia where the fighting is fiercest, the official told AFP. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said five Iranians and an Indian have been arrested and taken to the capital Sanaa, where they are being questioned by police. Another local...

SNIPPET: "As Pakistan’s military continues to make progress against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in South Waziristan, an incident has occurred along its border with Iran that has raised eyebrows throughout the international community. Eleven Iranian Revolutionary Guards soldiers were detained after they crossed the Pakistan-Iran border into Pakistani territory. The incursion happens eight days following a suicide bombing that killed forty-two Iranians, including six Revolutionary Guards Commanders." SNIPPET: "The Iranian soldiers remain in Pakistani custody as they try to determine the meaning and intent behind the incursion. Officials have not announced whether or not the soldiers were part of Iran’s...

'There is no doubt he is our friend," Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. These outrageous assertions point to the profound change of orientation by Turkey's government - for six decades the West's closest Muslim ally - since Erdogan's AK party came to power in 2002. Three events this past month reveal the extent of that change. The first came on October 11 with the news that the Turkish military - a long-time bastion of secularism and advocate...

Student protests against the regime of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad continue. A protest was held today by students at the Islamic Azad University in southern Tehran. Reports say more than 1,000 students participated. The students chanted “Allah Akbar,” “Death to the Dictator,” and “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein," in support of opposition politician Mir Hossein Musavi, who lost to Ahmadinejad in a disputed election in June. A number of protests against Ahmadinejad and his allies have been held at universities in Tehran and other cities since the beginning of the academic year in late September.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thirty years ago, Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile to found a totalitarian theocracy -- the likes of which we have not seen for hundreds of years, perhaps even since medieval Europe. Thirty years ago, Iranian militants took American embassy workers hostage. Thirty years ago was the last time I saw Iran. To this day, I have not been able to return. In 1979, the new Iranian clerical regime promised the Iranian people a republic. By definition, a "republic" is a state in which the supreme power...

If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday. The French foreign minister suggested that time was indeed short for a solution to the Iranian threat. "There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat." "Israel will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us," said Kouchner, adding that for...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran wants major amendments within the framework of a U.N. nuclear fuel deal which it broadly accepts, state media said, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions. The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Tuesday there was no need to rework the U.N. draft and he and France's foreign minister suggested Tehran would rekindle demands for tougher international sanctions if it tried to undo the plan. Among the central planks of the plan opposed by Iran -- but requested by the West to cut the risk of...

The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons. U.S. officials insist they are not resigned to a nuclear Iran and are pressing negotiations to prevent it from joining the world's nuclear club. But at the same time, the administration has set in place the building blocks of policies to contend with an Iran armed with atomic weapons.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - State television says Iran will agree to the “general framework” of a U.N.-drafted plan to ship enriched uranium out of the country for processing, but will seek “important changes” in the deal. The report Tuesday on the state-run channel Al-Alam does not specify the amendments Iran will seek. It says Iran will officially reply within 48 hours. The plan calls for Iran to ship 70 percent of its enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment.

Conservatives like Dick Cheney just don't get it: It's not that the president is “dithering” while Americans are dying in Afghanistan; it's that the president has other “wars of necessity” to fight, simultaneously, and he can't be everywhere at once. Take, for instance, the president's Cairo pledge, back in June, to help correct “under-investment” in Muslim nations. Last Friday Obama announced that the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation would commit between $25 million and $150 million to fund investment “throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa.” This president is politically aware of the U.S.'s 10 percent unemployment rate, but he...

Tehran should love the U.S. offer on enrichment. One sign that an adversary isn't serious about negotiating is when it rejects even your concessions. That seemed to be the case yesterday when Iran gave signs it may turn down an offer from Russia, Europe and the U.S. to let Tehran enrich its uranium under foreign supervision outside the country. The mullahs so far won't take yes for an answer. Tehran had previously looked set to accept the deal, which is hardly an obstacle to its nuclear program. A Democratic foreign policy shop called the National Security Network heralded the expected...

Obama’s week finished with a soft power slump. The U.S. had high hopes for two meetings with Iranian officials on their suspect nuclear programs. Early in the week the administration prematurely and foolishly started crowing that the Iranians were willing to negotiate. Soft power, they proclaim, had triumphed. A Washington Post article described the deal as “providing a major boost for the Obama administration” in engaging with the Islamist government in Tehran.

Pakistani police arrested 11 Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers Monday for illegally entering the country, amid tensions over a recent suicide attack that Tehran alleges was carried out by militants backed by Pakistani intelligence officials. The 11 officers were taken into custody in Mashkel, close to the countries' border in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, police officer Dadur Raman said. He said officers were interrogating the men and had seized two vehicles.

As the United States and its allies haggle with Iran over its nuclear program, Moscow has fueled Western unease about its military links to Tehran by pledging to continue selling arms to the Islamic republic. This has raised speculation that it may brush aside the strident objections of the United States and Israel and supply Iran with advanced S-300PMU surface-to-air missiles that would greatly enhance its defenses against airstrikes. The Russians, who have rejected the proposed imposition of economic sanctions on Iran as "counterproductive," are keeping the waters muddied with contradictory and ambiguous statements regarding the S-300s. On Wednesday, Russia's...

TEHRAN, Iran — U.N. inspectors entered a once-secret uranium enrichment facility with bunker-like construction and heavy military protection that raised Western suspicions about the extent and intent of Iran's nuclear program. The visit Sunday by the four-member International Atomic Energy Agency team, reported by state media, was the first independent look inside the planned nuclear fuel lab, a former ammunition dump burrowed into the treeless hills south of Tehran and only publicly disclosed last month. The inspectors are expected to study plant blueprints, interview workers and take soil samples before wrapping up the three-day mission. No results from the inspection...

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...

You won't hear it from the Obama administration, but there's still a revolution going on in Iran. Massive protests—which began in June following the sham election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—persisted last month on Quds Day, when the government attempted to orchestrate nationwide anti-Israel marches. Refusing to follow the regime's script, marchers chanted "Death to Russia" and "Death to China" instead. (Russia was the first country to recognize Ahmadinejad as president in June, and China maintains rich commercial ties with Tehran.) State television abruptly stopped airing the marches. Two weeks ago, the Islamic Republic sentenced three people to death for participating in...

Obama's State Department cuts funding for Freedom House to placate Iran "Denying the Green Revolution" (Wall Street Journal, October 23 2009) reports that Barack Obama's State Department has cut funding for Freedom House, the bipartisan organization that reports on freedom and human rights throughout the world, because it publishes material critical of Iran's murderous regime. Freedom House was founded largely by Franklin Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt was its honorary chairman. As reported by the Wall Street Journal article, The Boston Globe reported this month that the Connecticut-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center recently lost its State Department funding. The Center—a...

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...

Wednesday night, October 21, former Vice President Dick Cheney received the Center's Keeper of the Flame Award. He was introduced by Senator Jon Kyl and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Here are his prepared remarks:

Iran's nuclear programme Deadline missed Oct 24th 2009 From Economist.com Iran misses a deadline for responding to an offer for others to enrich its uranium IRAN has again failed to do deadlines. It has been evading them in the seven years since an opposition group first outed its extensive covert nuclear programme, despite five UN Security Council resolutions that have told it to halt its suspect nuclear work. After talks that ended in Vienna on October 21st, Iran and the three countries trying to strike a side-deal over new fuel for a Tehran-based nuclear reactor were told by Mohamed ElBaradei,...

SNIPPET - QUOTE: Possibly the mystery of the three recent incidents of exploding Yemeni fishing boats can be explained as Iranian missile shipments. The following article asserts Iran is shipping from an African country, likely Sudan, to Yemen. A Yemeni fishing boat also exploded in a Sudanese port and Yemen's Midi Island is a new transit point for Sudanese refugees. Once there's a smuggling route established for weapons, the boats often also transport refugees. However this report is taken from a Yemeni government stooge newspaper, Akhbar al Youm, which once announced that Ayatollah Sistani and I (me Jane) wrote the...

US President Barack Obama called French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday, to reaffirm their commitment to a UN-backed plan that would ship most of Iran's uranium abroad for enrichment.

Iran yesterday angrily denied Israeli media assertions that senior nuclear officials from the two countries held confidential talks last month in what was portrayed as the first direct exchange between the two arch enemies for 30 years. The reports sparked a flurry of official statements from Tehran and Tel Aviv which, unusually, agreed on many points. Both acknowledged sending representatives to an international conference in Cairo on nuclear disarmament. Each confirmed there were no direct, bilateral talks. The deliberations were meant to be confidential. But leaked accounts of the conference infuriated Tehran, which said the notion of any sort of...

Speaking publicly about the role of Iran in Afghanistan--which is substantial, and about which we have considerable information--seems to be taboo for our current leaders. This is neither new nor surprising. Iranians, and Iranian-trained terrorists from organizations such as Hezbollah, have been killing Americans for years. The Bush administration, for example, had similar information about Iran's role in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and top officials did their best to suppress it. According to reporter Bob Woodward, a top State Department official knew that Iran had committed "acts of war" against our troops in Iraq and kept that information from the...

ran told the International Atomic Energy Agency it will respond by the middle of next week to a proposal to ship its nuclear fuel abroad for reprocessing, pushing back a deadline and raising concerns about Iranian intentions in the negotiations. The United Nations nuclear watchdog had given all parties until Friday to sign off formally on the deal, which was tentatively agreed to by Iranian negotiators on Wednesday in Vienna, after several days of talks with the U.S., France, Russia and IAEA representatives. Under the proposed deal hammered out earlier in the week, Iran would ship most of its nuclear...

Note: The following text is a quote: American Forces Press Service Gates Finds Broad Support for New Missile Defense Approach By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service BRATISLAVA, Slovakia, Oct. 23, 2009 – NATO defense ministers are expressing broad support for the new U.S. approach to missile defense in Europe and the opportunity it may offer to make Russia a partner in the effort, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today. Speaking to reporters during a NATO defense ministers conference here, Gates said he’s hearing “quite broad support for the new approach,” as well as “interest in extending our hand...

Dutch Millionaire's Daughter Released By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 15, 2:34 PM ET Kidnappers released a Dutch multimillionaire's daughter unharmed, but it was unclear if any ransom was paid to the abductors, who had demanded 660 pounds of cocaine, police said Thursday. Claudia Melchers, 37, walked barefoot into a train station in the town of Arnhem on Wednesday night. Her appearance came 48 hours after two armed men gained entry into her Amsterdam apartment, bound her, bundled her into a plastic crate, and loaded her into a vehicle. "We don't know why she was released," said police...

A British nuclear expert has fallen to his death from the 17th floor of the United Nations offices in Vienna. The 47-year-old man died after falling more than 120ft to the bottom of a stairwell. He has not been named. He worked for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency charged with uncovering illicit nuclear tests. A UN spokesman in the Austrian capital said there were no "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the man's death. Police said no other person was believed to have been involved. No suicide note has been found. Four months ago another UN worker also believed to...

Iran has delayed its response to a United Nations-backed uranium enrichment plan aimed at easing international concerns that Iran's nuclear program is being used to develop weapons. Iranian state television quoted Ali Asghar Soltanieh on Friday as saying his country is still considering various aspects of the proposal, under which Iran would ship much of its partially enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment. The uranium would then be used to fuel a research reactor. Soltanieh says Iran is looking at details and will respond to Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by the "middle...

Iranian authorities arrested the wives and family members of a number of high-profile political detainees at a religious ceremony in Tehran, several reformist Web sites reported Friday. The raid happened Thursday after the family members of one detainee, Shahab Tabatabee, announced on the Web site Norooz News that they were holding a prayer ceremony for his release. Mr. Tabatabee, a member of the reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front, was sentenced to five years in prison last week. The police raided the ceremony at a private home a few minutes after it began, according to a relative of some of...

Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian; Robert Baer a former CIA field officer. Both have studied the Middle East for decades, traveled to the area repeatedly in recent years and written about the region extensively. And both have become convinced that we may be facing a cataclysm. Hanson and Baer each presented his analysis during an interview this past week. Although they differ on certain matters, they agree on five observations. The first: If not already capable of doing so, Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons in mere months. Baer noted that Iran's scientific and technical capacity...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration expressed mild disappointment Friday that Iran withheld a decision on whether to accept a U.N.-coordinated plan that could ease fears about Iran's potential for making a nuclear weapon. The U.S., along with Russia and France, officially endorsed the plan Friday. The State Department said it was unhappy that Iran was not ready to embrace the plan, which calls for Iran to ship most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment and eventual use as fuel for a research reactor in Tehran that makes medical isotopes and is under regular monitoring by a U.N....

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Iran next week adds to concerns that Ankara may be slowly turning its back on its Western allies and seeking to regain its status as a regional power in the Middle East. Following what Turks saw as Arab betrayal in World War One, Turkey made joining the elite club of Western powers its number one foreign policy objective, joining NATO in 1952 and first applying to join the European Economic Community in 1963. Nearly 50 years on, Muslim Turkey is still kept at arms length by the European Union, but...

President Obama’s policy of diplomatic engagement with Iran is close to collapse as Tehran backtracks on a crucial deal aimed at cutting its stockpiles of nuclear fuel. Iran agreed a deal “in principle” at talks in Geneva to ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium overseas for reprocessing into nuclear fuel that could be used for a medical research reactor. A deal outlining this was finalised in Vienna this week and a deadline of midnight tonight was set for the agreement to be sealed with Tehran. The framework deal, along with an offer to allow international inspectors into its newly-revealed...

President Obama's policy of diplomatic engagement with Iran is close to collapse as Tehran backtracks on a crucial deal aimed at cutting its stockpiles of nuclear fuel. Tehran's latest move comes straight from a well-thumbed Iranian playbook and looks like yet another stalling tactic to test the West's resolve and buy time to avert new sanctions.

Iranian despot Ahmadinejad said it back in May but it is obvious that he still believes it. At a joint press conference with the Syrian President, Ahmadinejad boasted that “those who one day called Iran and Syria part of the axis of evil now want to develop relations with Iran and Syria. Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favor,we are on the road to victory." The way the tyrant intends to win is by making US President Obama and his "outreach" attempts look as foolish as possible In August Obama made a formal proposal to start talks between Iran and...

TEHRAN, Oct. 23 (Mehr News Agency) -- Turkey plans to carry out its $3.5 billion natural gas development plans in Iran, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Wednesday. "The issue would be discussed during Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan''s upcoming trip to Tehran," Reuters reported. The Turkish and Iranian governments agreed in July 2007 that Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) would produce 20.4 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas annually from three development phases of Iran''s South Pars gas field, but the deal has been delayed. Iran has given TPAO a one-month deadline to finalize the deal to develop...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran declined on Friday to endorse proposals by the U.N. nuclear watchdog to help reduce Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium. It said it was awaiting a "positive and constructive" response from world powers to its proposal on providing nuclear fuel for a Tehran reactor producing medical isotopes, state television reported.

Perhaps it will help put things in context by looking at the supreme leader’s recent movements. On October 5th he went from Tehran to Now Shar, where he visited a naval base and academy. Later that day he went to the city of Chaloos, preached a sermon, delivered a speech and returned to Now Shar. On the 6th he traveled by automobile to Ramsar, a very beautiful resort city, and which is graced by a palace of the late shah. Khamenei was supposed to spend three days there, but he wasn’t feeling well, and complained of difficulty in breathing. He...

TEHRAN, Iran — State TV says Iran wants to buy nuclear fuel it needs for a research reactor rather than accept a U.N.-drafted plan to ship much of its uranium to Russia for further enrichment. Friday's report quotes an unnamed source close to Iran's negotiating team as saying Tehran is waiting for a response to its proposal to buy nuclear fuel for the reactor, which is used to make radioactive medical isotopes. Iran's response will come as a disappointment to the U.S., Russia and France, which all endorsed the U.N. plan Friday. The three countries formulated the draft plan in...

VIENNA — Pressure mounted on Iran to agree a UN-brokered nuclear deal Friday after Russia approved a proposal under which it would enrich uranium for the Islamic Republic. Friday is the deadline for Iran to agree to a deal, drafted by the International Atomic Energy Agency after talks between France, Iran, Russia and the United States this week, aimed at breaking the seven-year deadlock on the Iran's suspect nuclear programme. Russia was the first of the four countries to formally back the proposal. "We agree with these proposals," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow. And diplomats...

TEHRAN, Iran — The U.S. and its allies hoped to secure Iran's approval Friday for a proposed deal that would ship most of the country's uranium abroad for enrichment and ease Western fears about Iran's potential to make a nuclear weapon. Approval of the draft agreement would be a key victory for President Barack Obama, who has stepped up diplomatic engagement with Iran since he took office in January and faulted the Bush administration for refusing to talk to U.S. adversaries. But Iran's endorsement of the proposal, which calls for shipping low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment to a...

Are we winning the diplomatic battle with Iran? Are we, for that matter, winning the diplomatic battle with Russia, which, with China, serves as Iran's principal protectorate? To put it necessarily bluntly, there is no indication that we are and every indication that we are indeed losing. Not simply losing, but ceding. A brief but careful examination of language reveals the unfortunate and frustrating truth. A Washington Times editorial calls it "Incorrigible Iran." The messianic and tyrannical regime is certainly that. While most of us recognize the Iranian regime for precisely what it is - a maniacal theocratic dictatorship bent...

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius passes on a report in Nucleonics Week that Iran's uranium enrichment may be stuck at 3.5% due to impurities. The Iranians have not been able to remove low percentages of metallic fluorides from the UF-6 feed stock that they've laboriously enriched to 3.5% U-235 over the past five years. This has the potential to stop their enrichment program cold -- at the level used for civilian nuclear power. Thus, the Obama administration's offer to have the Iranians' impure 3.5% UF6 shipped to Russia where it can be enriched to 19.75% in that nation's modern, high-capacity...

Even more concerning, was the presence of the “Interests Section of Iran” – a country that does not have an embassy in the U.S., since the countries have long cut off diplomatic relations. The “Interests Section of Iran” is the de facto diplomatic representation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the United States. And therefore any gifts from the “Interests Section” to CAIR – say, a donation to a fundraiser – would constitute a gift from the government of Iran.

MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday said it would continue military cooperation with Iran amid widespread unease in the West over Moscow's controversial contract to sell advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran. "The Russian Federation implements and plans to further implement the military-technical cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran in strict accordance with existing legislation and its international obligations," Russia's Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation said. The service released a rare statement after the Interfax agency, citing a Russian government source, reported ealier this week that Iran had not yet paid Russia for the S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.

October 22, 2009, 0:00 a.m. The Kitty-Cat Who RoaredThe loud reformer Obama himself proves even emptier in his promises than Bush. By Victor Davis Hanson President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion — only later to meow like a little kitty. Remember, for example, how he bellowed to cheering partisan crowds that he would close down the detainment facility at Guantanamo within a year? The clock ticks — and Guantanamo isn’t close to being shut down. It once was easy for candidate Obama to deplore George W. Bush’s supposed gulag. Now it proves harder to decide between...

A senior Iranian MP rejected on Thursday the idea of sending enriched uranium abroad for further processing, hinting at Tehran's reluctance to embrace a proposal meant to ease international tension over its nuclear ambitions. The U.N. nuclear watchdog has presented a draft deal to Iran and three big powers for approval by Friday. It would cut Iran's quantity of low-enriched uranium (LEU) below the threshold that could yield a nuclear weapon if it were refined to high purity, while providing Iran with fuel for a nuclear medicine facility. Diplomats say the plan would require Iran to send by the end...

On Tuesday, October 20, 2009, a Ministerial Committee on National Security convened for the first time in Israel to discuss the implications of the Goldstone Report recently adopted by the UN Human Rights Council. A new unit will be established in the Ministry of Justice in coordination with the Attorney General and the Public Prosecutor to handle legal proceedings taking place overseas against the State of Israel, or against its citizens, which require legal handling and special coordination. A Jewish person headed the Goldstone Report and the investigation leading to its publication. The White House Chief of Staff is Jewish....