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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 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.

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...

The Islamic hard-liners are trying to convince the public that a plot in a form of a "velvet revolution" is threatening to bring down the Islamic government. The fundamentalists' regime has long feared a foreign-inspired upheaval. Ironically, they seem to have accomplished what their ubiquitous foreign "enemies" could not: They have planted the seeds for their own, homegrown velvet revolution. Whether it makes any sense, or is even believed by those putting it forward, Kourosh Zaim, (one of the leaders of the Iran's National Front who has just been released from prison) answers in an interview with Somayyeh Falsafi. (This...

nternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei held talks with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials on Iran's nuclear drive. Mr ElBaradei told a news conference after the meetings that UN inspectors would check Tehran's new uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom on October 25. He also announced that officials from the United States, Russia, France and Iran would hold talks in Vienna on October 19 on the possible enrichment abroad of Iran of Tehran's uranium. In Geneva last week, six world powers and Iran held the first such talks for 15 months over Tehran's nuclear...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran test-fired missiles on Sunday to show it was prepared to head off any military threat, four days before the Islamic Republic is due to hold rare talks with world powers worried about its nuclear ambitions. The missile maneuvers coincide with escalating tension in Iran's nuclear row with the West, after last week's disclosure by Tehran that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant. News of the nuclear facility south of Iran added a sense of urgency to a crucial meeting in Geneva on Thursday between Iranian officials and representatives of six major powers, including the...

When Barack Obama strode on stage to scold Iran for its failure to disclose the existence of a second uranium-enrichment facility in the country, his message was timid and at times almost apologetic. When the tough language came, it was because French president Nicolas Sarkozy had taken the podium. Sarkozy excoriated the Iranians for their deception, saying that the revelations have caused "a very severe confidence crisis" and issued a time-specific warning about oft-threatened (but never implemented) sanctions. "We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the centrifuges are spinning," he declared. "If by December there is not an...

It was three years ago that American intelligence agents began picking up signs that someone was tunnelling into the side of a mountain in the desert outside the city of Qom... Intelligence agents were on the lookout for a secret enrichment plant, reasoning that if UN inspectors were monitoring the known facility at Natanz, Tehran would look elsewhere to carry out its work. Yesterday’s revelations about Iran’s secret uranium enrichment facility at Qom came after three years of intensive investigation and surveillance by the most trusted of America’s intelligence allies: Britain, France and Israel... The Western allies kept quiet as...

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,...

Where to begin with the “surprise” announcement of a second, previously undisclosed “nuclear facility”? Some thoughts: (1) This is Iran’s answer to the Obama video peace offensive. This summer we kept quiet while thousands went into the streets of Tehran to protest brutality and a rigged election — just so that Obama’s much-heralded peace offensive, planned for October, could showcase his transnational diplomatic charisma. I think all that brilliance has just been preempted by the theocracy, which quite understandably concluded that Obama not only would not support democratic dissidents in the new “reset button” era, but was increasingly desperate, as...

When it was launched last December, Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip looked to most people in Washington to be risky, counterproductive and doomed to futility. 'snip' But today, Operation Cast Lead, as the three-week operation is known in Israel, is generally regarded by the country's military and political elite as a success. The reasons for that are worth examining now that a new and even more hawkish Israeli government is weighing whether to flout Washington's prevailing opposition to a military attack on Iran. Israel's satisfaction starts with a simple set of facts. Between April 2001 and the end of...

Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between. So why is the Obama administration doing everything it can to speed the war process along? At July's G-8 summit in Italy, Iran was given a September deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs. Last week, Iran gave its answer: No. Instead, what Tehran offered was a five-page document that was the diplomatic...

NEW YORK – Saudi Arabia is cooperating with Israel on the Iranian nuclear issue, an Egyptian intelligence official told WND. The official said Saudi Arabia is passing intelligence information to Israel related to Iran. He affirmed a report from the Arab media, strongly denied by the Israeli government, that Saudi Arabia has granted Israel overflight permission during any attack against Iran's nuclear facilities. The official previously told WND that Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, has been involved in an intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying effort urging the U.S. and other Western countries to do everything necessary to ensure Iran does...

The Islamic republic has test-fired missiles capable of reaching Israel, southeastern Europe and U.S. bases in the Mideast, and published reports say Iran is within a year of developing its own nuclear bomb. And security experts warn that even one nuclear device in the hands of a rogue nation could be used against the United States in a devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. So why isn't the Obama administration doing more to prevent a nuclear nightmare? “I get very, very nervous about it,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., told Newsmax.TV's Kathleen Walter. “I think Iran will have a nuclear weapon. I...

The tension in U.S.-Israel relations was manifest this past week as an extraordinary troupe of Obama administration officials visited Jerusalem. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, National Security Advisor James Jones, special Middle East envoy George Mitchell and new White House adviser Dennis Ross all showed up in Israel’s capital in an effort to…well, to do something. It was not quite clear what. Since President Obama came to office on Jan. 20 and then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 31, the main motif in relations between the two governments has been friction. While nearly 80% of American Jews voted for...

Asked by NBC's David Gregory if the effort to keep North Korea from going nuclear had failed, Mrs. Clinton answered, "No, I don't think so, because their program is still at the beginning stages." In other words, two nuclear tests and a stockpile of seven or eight nuclear weapons are no longer enough to join the club. Tough luck Pyongyang, you've been blackballed.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against the United States in a speech yesterday, showing little indication of embracing Washington's offer of engagement, a day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said time was running out. President Obama has offered to engage Iran in dialogue with the hope of reducing tension over Iran's nuclear program, which the West fears is aimed at developing a nuclear weapon but which Tehran maintains is peaceful.

Some of These Days by: Mytheos Holt, July 08, 2009 In order to devote further analysis to the threat level posed by a nuclear Iran, the Heritage Foundation recently convened a panel of speakers to discuss a recent jointly authored paper, entitled “Iran’s Nuclear Threat: The Day After.” The talk was moderated by James Jay Carafano, Assistant Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. In his brief introduction, Carafano described the central purpose of the paper and the question it aimed to answer. “This project actually started with a very simple premise and a single...

Plunging squarely into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. suggested on Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israeli military action aimed at the Iranian nuclear program. The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.” "Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, in an interview...

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Sunday that the Obama administration would not stand in Israel's way should the latter chooses to take military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat. Israel has the right to determine its own course of action with regard to the Iranian nuclear threat regardless of what the Obama administration chooses to do, Biden told ABC reporter George Stephanopoulos. When asked whether the Obama administration would restrain Israeli military action against Iran, Biden responded: "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do...

Dennis Ross, Out As Special Envoy To Iran; Was He Ousted Because He's A Jew Or A Bit Hawkish On Nukes? The news that Dennis Ross, long time State Department strategist and peace processor, is being bounced as special envoy to Iran comes from an article by Barak Ravid in the reliable (at least on these matters) Ha'aretz. The story seems to assume that Ross was declared persona non grata by Tehran either because he was a Jew or because he believes that Iran should not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. If the Obama administration so readily capitulated to...

Obama says Iran's energy concerns legitimate By NANCY ZUCKERBROD The Associated Press Tuesday, June 2, 2009 9:24 AM LONDON -- President Barack Obama suggested that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful. In a BBC interview broadcast Tuesday, he also restated plans to pursue direct diplomacy with Tehran to encourage it set aside any ambitions for nuclear weapons it might harbor. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity. But the U.S. and other Western governments accuse Tehran of seeking atomic...

The President's "outreach" isn't working very well. Today, North Korea gave Obama another smack in the face with both a new nuclear test and some missile launches,Iranian President Ahmadinejad continues to give Obama the "one fingered salute," and now the Israeli foreign ministry has documentation that the President's book buddy, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is trying to undermine the United States by supporting Iran with his nuclear quest. According to the reports, Venezuela and its satellite Bolivia, are supplying the Iranian madman with uranium for its nuclear program:

From Caroline Glick, deputy editor and op-ed writer for the Jerusalem Post, comes alarming news. An expert on Arab-Israeli relations with excellent sources deep inside Netanyahu's government, she reports that CIA chief Leon Panetta recently took time out from his day job (feuding with Nancy Pelosi) to travel to Israel to "read the riot act" to the government warning against an attack on Iran. More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, "...we...

Has President Obama inadvertently given Iran the green light to develop an atom bomb? I only ask because it appears to be the logical conclusion to be drawn from his announcement this week that he is giving Iran until the end of the year to decide whether or not to co-operate with the West over its controversial nuclear programme. ... Under pressure from a visiting Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to explain the latest White House position on Iran, a relaxed Mr Obama remarked: "We should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to...

Who said “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable and we have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening”? It wasn’t Benjamin Netanyahu. No, Pres. Barack Obama said that at his first press conference after winning the 2008 election. The clock is ticking ominously on that front. “We feel a sense of urgency,” an Israeli spokesman said as Prime Minister Netanyahu prepared for his first meeting with Obama since both were elected. All Israelis feel that sense of urgency because they have watched, frustrated, as the Bush administration signed on to a lengthy series...

As the Obama administration prepares to engage Iran diplomatically, one question is paramount: Who are the men with whom the White House hopes to reach accommodation? In "Khomeini's Ghost," British journalist Con Coughlin finds some troubling answers. He identifies the "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final decision-maker in the Islamic Republic and thus the interlocutor for Obama. "The powers entrusted to the Supreme Guide . . . compare favorably to those claimed by Europe's fascist dictators . . . with the added benefit of claiming divine inspiration." Next to the supreme guide, Coughlin says the Islamic Revolutionary Guard,...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions. The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection. But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks, a sharp break in the approach taken by the Bush administration, which...

Nuclear Weapons: Our Joint Chiefs chairman says Iran has enough material to make a nuclear bomb. Didn't our spy agencies less than a year and a half ago tell us all not to worry?Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN on Sunday that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. "We think they do, quite frankly," Mullen said. Tehran retorted that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency monitors Iran's nuclear facility at Natanz. But the IAEA was shocked last month to find 209 kilograms more low-enriched uranium at Natanz than expected, enough...

TEHRAN (FNA) - Former US envoy to the UN John Bolton said Washington has suffered a humiliating defeat in its drive against Iran's nuclear activities. In a Friday interview with BBC Persian, Bolton said Washington's efforts to curb Tehran's nuclear achievements have come to naught as Tehran has successfully managed to defend its national interests. In my view, we lost the fight. Tehran has emerged the ultimate winner in maintaining its nuclear program, he added. Bolton claimed that if Washington had settled on a military option against Iran's nuclear infrastructure beforehand, "the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons would not have...

Sen. Carl Levin, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, said Friday he believes the time is ripe for the U.S. to pursue a fresh partnership with Russia aimed at deterring Iranian missiles. The Michigan Democrat said he has spoken with President Barack Obama's advisers, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a private conversation, and that he believes they are open to the idea. Levin said pushing for the cooperative effort would be among his top priorities this year on the committee, which helps to oversee the Pentagon's $600 billion-plus annual budget. "There is potential here for a real...

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's leading candidate for prime minister, said Saturday that Iran "will not be armed with a nuclear weapon." In an interview with Israel's Channel 2 TV, Netanyahu said if elected prime minister his first mission will be to thwart the Iranian nuclear threat. Netanyahu, the current opposition leader and head of the hardline Likud party, called Iran the greatest danger to Israel and to all humanity. When asked if stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions included a military strike, he replied: "It includes everything that is necessary to make this statement come true."

"There's no way and no chance to stop the Iranian nuclear program," Republican U.S. Congressman and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra told the independent American news site Newsmax in an interview on Tuesday. The Congressman, who has access to top secret information, indicated that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be "incredibly difficult and complex." Hoekstra explained that while Israel's attack on a Syrian complex in 2007 completely destroyed in a single blow what the committee believes was a nuclear reactor located at a remote site, the case with Iran is entirely different. "In Iran you'd have to...

Item No. 1 ought to be preventing the world's No. 1 exporter of radical Islamic terror from obtaining nuclear weapons: Iran. Unfortunately, the new administration is not off to an auspicious start. On Wednesday - less than 24 hours after his inauguration - the Obama White House Web site announced, inter alia, that they will engage in "tough and direct" diplomacy with Iran "without preconditions"... ... This "new approach" includes little more than what our European allies have been trying for more than five years. Before issuing such a "bold initiative" and "outreach" toward the theocrats ruling in Tehran, Obama's...

Tehran's Tricks: Plays Rope-A-Dope On Nukes August 1, 2008 TOMORROW is the deadline for Iran to respond to the latest offer on its nuclear program. The package, shaped by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and offered in Geneva two weeks ago, offers a way out of the impasse. But don't expect Tehran to call the lead negotiator, European Union foreign-policy czar Javier Solana, to say it's accepted the deal. Iran has made it clear it doesn't intend to show any flexibility. "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set the tone Wednesday in...

Discredited NIE report In 2007, yet another confusing picture was presented to the world. The US intelligence community had appeared to be wholeheartedly, both in public and in many private off-the-record media briefings, behind the George W Bush administration's contention that Iran had a dedicated nuclear weapon research program up and running. However, in late 2007, the flawed and now largely discredited NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) report, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities", was published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in Washington and simply discarded years of supposedly hard intelligence. Tehran, it seemed, had placed its...

The United Nations Security Council has passed another resolution concerning Iran because its nuclear program is an unacceptable threat. Iran's violations of Security Council resolutions not only continue, but are deepening. Instead of suspending its proliferation-sensitive activities as the council has required, Iran is dramatically expanding the number of operating centrifuges and developing a new generation of centrifuges, testing one of them with nuclear fuel. Once again, Iran has not made the choice the world had hoped for; once again, the Security Council has no choice but to act. At stake is the security of a vital region of the...

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday it confronted Iran for the first time with Western intelligence reports showing work linked to making atomic bombs and that Tehran had failed to provide satisfactory answers. The United States passed the intelligence, which came mainly from a laptop spirited out of Iran, to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005 but out of fear for its spies only authorized the IAEA to present it last month, diplomats said. The IAEA said Iran had dismissed the intelligence as "baseless" or "fabricated", but had provided increased cooperation on other issues...

Is there anyone these liberal rags won't publish?Yup, Newsweek has allowed the one, the only, the wannabe Hitler to publish his own diatribe against Zionism and the United States.  With such great passages as this where could a liberal rag go wrong? The American people do not like to see their leaders fall captive to the Zionist network. Surely the American people would prefer U.S.-inspired policies to those perpetrated by the Zionists. No fair-minded American is happy with the present situation. Regrettably, despite the objections of some of America’s elite, personal and political interests—especially those of the present administration—have prevented...

It seems flabbergastingly improbable that President George W. Bush learned of the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iranian nuclear ambitions only a few days before the rest of us did, but the haplessness of his demeanor suggested that he might, in fact, have been telling the truth. After all, had the administration known for any appreciable length of time that the mullahs had hit the pause button on their program in late 2003, it would have been in a position to make a claim that is quite probably true, namely, that our overthrow of Saddam Hussein had impressed the Iranians in...

"The manner in which the Americans relate to the intelligence report on Iran is similar to the way in which they viewed those reports they received during the Holocaust on railways transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz," Minister Yitzhak Cohen of Shas said during a security cabinet meeting Sunday morning on the Iranian nuclear issue. "It can not be that (US President George W.) Bush is committed to peace as was declared at Annapolis, and then the Americans propagate such an intelligence report which contradicts the information we have proving Iran intends to obtain nuclear...

After years of trying to build awareness of the threat from Iran, the release last week of a new National Intelligence Estimate claiming that Teheran has no current nuclear-weapons program has sunk the campaign to keep the Islamist republic in quarantine. That is not the spin coming out of the administration or from many of its supporters. Instead, some of them claim the finding that Iran abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 is proof that an aggressive American foreign policy, mixing diplomatic sanctions, threats and military strikes, can bring rogue regimes to their senses. Nice try. But if the Iranians...

France and Germany said Thursday that Iran remained a "danger" and that the international community needed to keep up the pressure over its nuclear program despite a U.S. intelligence report concluding that Tehran was no longer building a bomb. The joint remarks, from two countries that have been important in the diplomatic standoff with Iran, will have come as a relief to Washington four days after the publication of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate was feared to erode support for tougher new sanctions.

The special defense and foreign affairs cabinet meeting of Dec. 12 did not linger on the dispute between Israel and the US over its last National Intelligence Estimate, which absolves Iran from running a nuclear weapons program from 2003. After briefings from intelligence chiefs, the ministers focused on what to do next. Most objected to letting Israel’s hands be tied by the Bush administration’s apparent waiver of its military option against Iran. They began exploring how to restructure and reorient the missions of Israel’s military from now on and, secondly, how to adapt the IDF’s strategy to the challenges on...

The secret campaign was launched two years ago to undermine Tehran's nuclear program. It has persuaded a 'handful' of key officials to leave. ***************** MANUEL BALCE CENETA / AP Porter J. Goss was the CIA director when the agency launched the defector program in 2005. WASHINGTON -- The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say. The previously undisclosed program, which CIA officials dubbed "the Brain Drain,"...

British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons programme, as a US intelligence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hoodwinked by Teheran. Iran 'hoodwinked' CIA over nuclear plans Analysts believe that Iranian staff, knowing their phones were tapped, deliberately gave misinformation The timing of the CIA report has also provoked fury in the British Government, where officials believe it has undermined efforts to impose tough new sanctions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities more likely.

U.S. intelligence services attempted to influence political policy by releasing their assessment that concludes Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, said John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Der Spiegel magazine quoted Bolton on Saturday as alleging that the aim of the National Intelligence Estimate, which contradicts his and President Bush's position, was not to provide the latest intelligence on Iran. "This is politics disguised as intelligence," Bolton was quoted as saying in an article appearing in this week's edition. Bolton described the report, released Monday, as a "quasi-putsch" by the intelligence agencies, Der Spiegel said.

The federal agency responsible for national intelligence estimates yesterday defended its report on Iran against charges that it was crafted primarily by former State Department officials who infused their personal politics into the report to undercut the Bush administration. "It's not as if there are two or three people who craft this and then it's just put out there," said Vanee Vines, spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The response came after The Washington Times reported yesterday that the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was heavily influenced by three former State Department officials who dislike President...

Iran threatens Mid-East, US says The US report confirmed Iran had a covert programme, Mr Gates said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has warned that Iran still poses a serious threat to the Middle East and the US.Mr Gates told a Bahrain conference Iran may have restarted its nuclear weapons programme, despite a US intelligence report saying it had stopped. He urged Gulf states to put pressure on Iran to "come clean" about past nuclear ambitions and stop uranium enrichment. US efforts to get Iran to suspend enrichment were 100% diplomatic and economic, he said. But all options were...

Report has torpedoed plans for military action and brought 'howls' from neocons The intelligence came from an exotic variety of sources: there was the so-called Laptop of Death; there was the Iranian commander who mysteriously disappeared in Turkey. Also in the mix was video footage of a nuclear plant in central Iran and intercepts of Iranian telephone calls by the British listening station GCHQ.But pivotal to the US investigation into Iran's suspect nuclear weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar. He was the principal author of an intelligence report published on Monday that concluded Iran,...