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North Korea will eventually be able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit in a missile, a news report said Sunday. Seoul's Yonhap news agency, citing the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analyses (KIDA), said Pyongyang developing the technology to achieve miniaturisation was inevitable. "It is believed that North Korea has not completed the technology for the miniaturisation... of nuclear warheads," KIDA said in a report to be issued in January, according to Yonhap. But KIDA said it is "just a matter of time", noting the country has a high-explosives test site and an estimated 3,000 nuclear scientists...

A nuclear bomb consists of three main parts: Nuclear fuel, launching systems and a neutron initiator that is needed to trigger a fission chain reaction. The initiator makes sure that the chain reaction happens at the right time. To obtain projected nuclear yield of the bomb, you need to have enough neutrons within the supercritical core at the right time. If the chain reaction starts too soon, the result will be only a "fizzle yield," much below the design specification; if it occurs too late, there may be no yield whatever. It is the initiator that makes sure the neutrons...

Taiwan is probing allegations that local companies might have sold specialised equipment to Iran that could be used to make nuclear weapons, a report said Saturday. "We are looking into the matter," Hsu Chun-fang, a spokesperson for Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade was quoted by the Taipei Times as saying without elaborating. Export of sensitive items or to sensitive regions are restricted by the bureau and require permits, officials said. Hsu was responding to a Daily Telegraph report that Iran's defence officials have met Taiwan-based firms to purchase hundreds of pressure transducers that can be used to make weapons-grade uranium....

Iran is already a nuclear weapons power, with externally-acquired nuclear weapons. Iran's present geo-strategic position is also transformed in importance by the end of the Great Game (or at least the component of it which began with the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813, transformed with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, and arguably concluded with the new Russo-Iranian understandings of the past few years). ShareThis Effective 2010, Iran is part of the Russian-dominated Central Asian energy and strategic framework, as is Turkey. In a parallel, and overlapping, dynamic, the China-Iran historical link has returned to the fore, especially given the PRC's position...

Israel is one of those anti-Islamic nations that are not quite happy with US President Barack Obama’s overtures towards Iran and Islamic world. Against all odds, Obama has made many overtures to Iran. He abandoned Washington's demand that Tehran give up uranium enrichment altogether, which had been a precondition to negotiations under his predecessor, George W. Bush. In a video message to the Iranian people coinciding with the festival of Nowruz, which marks the beginning of the Iranian New Year, Obama spoke of the great civilizing achievements of the Persian nation. He has also admitted to historical mistakes, such as...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he has documented evidence that the United States was trying to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam (messiah). According to a Khabar Online report, Ahmadinejad expounded on the plots hatched by the East and West for the annihilation of Iran....addressing an audience of the families of martyrs and altruists in Isfahan on Friday. Referring to his June reelection, Ahmadinejad said, "The enemy... was hyping the issue as if the Iranian nation has been weakened and as if this was the best opportunity to get concessions from them. But your humble son [Ahmadinejad] stood in front...

History was made about ten days ago in Vienna at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency when China and Russia voted along with the United States to sanction the Islamic Republic of Iran over its continued pursuit of nuclear energy. Iran, it is believed, intends to develop the technology to produce weapons of mass destruction. So say Western nations. Iran, of course denies all such accusations, claiming its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes. What is “historic” in this context is the fact that both Russia and China saw eye to eye with the United States...

Is Italy capable of delivering a thermonuclear strike? Could the Belgians and the Dutch drop hydrogen bombs on enemy targets? And what about Germany - a country where fear of atomkraft is so great that the last government opposed all civilian nuclear power? Germany's air force couldn't possibly be training to deliver bombs 13 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, could it? It is Europe's dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those - Britain and France - who have built their own weapons. Nuclear bombs are stored on air-force bases in Italy, Belgium,...

Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran's nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we'll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let's hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn't take as long. As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional...

MINSK (Reuters) – The United States and Russia will sign a deal this year to cut vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons but may miss an early December deadline, a Kremlin source told Reuters on Friday. Diplomats from the two biggest nuclear powers are trying to prepare a new agreement on cutting atomic weapons before the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires on December 5. The new accord will be signed "in a European country" in December, the Kremlin source told Reuters in Minsk, where President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting regional leaders. "We may not be able to do...

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Thursday that his probe of allegations that Iran was trying to produce nuclear arms is at "a dead end" because Teheran is not cooperating. ElBaradei criticized Teheran for not accepting an internationally endorsed plan meant to delay its ability to make such weapons. Confidence in Iran's leaders, he warned, had shrunk in the wake of its belated revelation of a previously secret nuclear facility. The unusually blunt comments appeared to be a reflection of ElBaradei's frustration four days before he ends his tenure leading an agency that has proven unable to...

Malaysia denied Tuesday any role in the illegal export of nuclear weapons to Iran but confirmed the involvement of a national in the export of potential military and explosive components. Deputy foreign minister A. Kohilan Pillay told AFP Malaysia was not a centre for nuclear weapons shipments to Iran. "Our country is not a centre for nuclear components or weapons or other weapons trans-shipments to Iran or anywhere else. We do not condone such activities," he said. Kohilan however confirmed Malaysian Brian Kaam and Iranian Majid Seif, who lives in Malaysia, along with two local companies, were among eight people...

Iran's foreign minister on Wednesday ruled out sending enriched uranium out of the country for further processing, effectively rejecting the latest UN plan aimed at preventing Teheran from building nuclear weapons. The United Nations last month offered a deal to take 70 percent of Iran's low-enriched uranium to reduce its stockpile of material that could be enriched to a higher level, and possibly be used to make nuclear weapons. "We will definitely not send our 5.3-percent enriched uranium out of the country," Foreign Minister Manochehr Mottaki told the semiofficial ISNA news agency. Instead Mottaki said Iran would consider some kind...

At a press conference in Tokyo today, a Japanese reporter asked Obama whether Harry Truman made "the right decision" to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Obama dodged the question....I wonder what he really thinks. It seems likely that, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, Obama thinks the bombs had to be used.But given his longstanding views about nuclear weapons, I'm actually not certain that Obama agrees with the decision.

Nov 14, 2009 17:25 | Updated Nov 14, 2009 17:29 Iran has completely rejected a UN-brokered nuclear deal, but US President Barack Obama has postponed the official announcement on Teheran's refusal due to internal political reasons, Israel Radio quoted a senior western official as saying Saturday. The deal would see most of the Islamic Republic's uranium shipped to Russia and France for further processing. The official reportedly told journalists in Paris that Iran has also refused to resume nuclear talks with the six world powers.

President Barack Obama was surprisingly given the Nobel Peace Prize "primarily for his work on and commitment to nuclear disarmament," according to Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician who served on the award committee. Valle told the Wall Street Journal that the stewards of the prize wanted to "support" Obama's goal, as expressed recently at the U.N., "of a world without nuclear weapons." It's tough to think of a goal more widely espoused than the dream of an H-bomb-free planet. President Ronald Reagan and activist Jane Fonda, political opposites, came together on this one — in his second term, Reagan stunned...

Defending the decision of the United States to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII is not a comfortable thing to do when you're in Japan. But if you're President of the United States, you must do it. Diplomatically, yes. With sympathy for the civilian victims, yes. But you must do it. But when it came time today for Barack Obama to do so, he failed in that fundamental duty. The very first reporter [from Fuji TV] called on at the joint press conference with PBO and Japanese PM Hatayama in Tokyo today put the question to Pres....

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the US to choose between Israel and Iran on Tuesday night, according to Iranian state media. Ahmadinejad said that for a real change in relations to take place, a choice must be made. Speaking in Istanbul at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Iranian president said that it was up to US President Barack Obmaa to illustrate his motto of "Change." "The support of both Israel and Iran can't go hand in hand," he was quoted as saying by...

Pakistan on Sunday angrily rejected a media report that raised fears of a militant takeover of the Taliban-hit nation's nuclear weapons and suggested that the US had a hand in protecting the arsenal. In the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that US officials had negotiated pacts with Pakistan to provide security for the nuclear arsenal in extreme circumstances. It also raised the possibility that the threat to the security of the nuclear programme might come not from Taliban rebels battling the government, but from a "mutiny" by fundamentalist elements within the powerful military....

Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight. Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop,...

Some troubling news has come out from the British Guardian. According to sources in the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian scientists have been working on a nuclear warhead design which makes it easier to miniaturize the bomb. This allows the warhead to be placed on a missile for deployment. Western weapons experts say there are no such civilian applications, but the use of co-ordinated detonations in nuclear warheads is well known. They compress the fissile core, or pit, of the warhead until it reaches critical mass.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog has asked Tehran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced secret nuclear warhead design, according to a report published Friday. Citing what it calls "previously unpublished documentation" from an International Atomic Energy Agency compiled report, Britain's The Guardian newspaper said Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of a "two-point implosion" device. The report said that even the existence of two-point implosion nuclear warhead technology is officially secret in both the U.S. and Britain. The technology allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads, making it easier to put a...

BERLIN - The Mossad espionage agency used Trojan Horse programs to gather intelligence about a nuclear facility in Syria that the Israel Defense Forces destroyed in 2007, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported yesterday. According to the magazine, Mossad agents planted the malware on the computer of a Syrian official while he was staying in London, at a hotel in the upscale neighborhood of Kensington. The program copied details about Syria's illicit nuclear program and sent them directly to the Mossad agents' computers, the report said. Israel's raid on the al-Kabir site in Syria's eastern desert on September 6, 2007...

The United States is looking for nukes in all the wrong places. Nuclear terrorism won't come from countries; it will come from vast networks of operatives with only tenuous links to states. Nor are terrorists likely to get their nuclear material from rogue regimes. Far more probable is that they will steal it or obtain it through the growing global black market. If this is to be prevented, the United States and its allies will have to give their counterproliferation mindset a sweeping overhaul. Today's terrorist threats are far less tangible than the traditional, state-centric security ones embodied by such...

A suspected suicide bomber has killed six people outside Pakistan's main air force maintenance facility. Police said the attack took place near the Kamra aeronautical complex, 60km (35 miles) from the capital, Islamabad. The bomber blew himself up when he was stopped at a checkpoint outside the complex. Among the dead were two security officials. The attack comes as the Pakistani army continues its drive against Taliban bases in South Waziristan. A wave of attacks on Pakistani cities has killed nearly 185 people during the month of October alone. "It was a suicide attack, which killed six people, including four...

With the U.S. defense chief in Seoul for security talks, a group of scholars and retired military officials have called for a redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea to counter North Korea's nuclear drive. They also urged the United States to delay the planned transfer of wartime control of South Korean troops to Seoul beyond 2012, citing lingering threats from the North. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Seoul Wednesday for the annual Security Consultative Meeting, which is focused on steps to deter military threats from North Korea. Gates and South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young were...

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...

Iran, Russia and America met in Vienna under the supervision of the IAEA.The meeting is to discuss the shipment of nuclear fuel with about %20 of enrichment to Tehran's research reactor which produces radioactive medicine for hospitals.IRI's representative in the IAEA Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh is leading Iran's delegation. IAEA's director-general Mohammad Elbaradei is also attending the meeting.The Islamic Republic of Iran demands that up to %5 of enrichment for Tehran's research reactor to be done in Iran and then be sent to Russia, France or America for more enrichment.

Representatives from Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and three western states have convened in two-day talks in Vienna on October 19-20 to discuss supply of nuclear fuel for Tehran reactor. Informed sources close to the talks in Vienna said that the US has in a series of secret meetings informed its European partners of Washington's decision on acceptance of uranium enrichment in Iran. The sources reiterated that a number of Washington's EU allies have voiced strong protest against the decision, calling it a too big concession to Iran and a second blow to their stance by the US...

An audacious weekend assault by Islamic militants on Pakistan's army headquarters is again raising fears of an insurgent attack on the country's nuclear weapons installation. Pakistan has sought to protect its nuclear weapons from attack by the Taliban or other militants by storing the warheads, detonators and missiles separately in facilities patrolled by elite troops. Analysts are divided on how secure these weapons are. Some say the weapons are less secure than they were five years ago, and Saturday's attack would show a "worrisome" overconfidence by the Pakistanis. While complex security is in place, much depends on the Pakistani army...

Despite decades of denials by Washington and Tokyo, US officials believe they enjoyed a secret pact to transport nuclear weapons through Japan, newly declassified documents showed. The disclosure came after Japan's left-leaning government ended more than half a century of conservative rule and launched a probe into thousands of files to settle longstanding suspicions of a hush-hush pact. Any evidence of an agreement would trigger charges of hypocricy as Japan is the only nation to have suffered nuclear attack and has campaigned for the worldwide abolition of the ultra-destructive weapons. The National Security Archive at George Washington University released documents...

The US Air Force said on Thursday the commander of a nuclear wing had been sacked after his unit failed a safety inspection, trucks carrying missile parts crashed and officers under him fell asleep with launch codes in hand. Colonel Christopher Ayres, commander of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, was removed Wednesday "due to loss of confidence in his ability to command," Air Force Space Command said in a statement. The Air Force has tried to improve its handling of the country's nuclear arsenal after a series of mishaps and blunders led to...

Russia in a new review of its policy on use of nuclear weapons will reserve the right to undertake a pre-emptive strike if it feels its security is endangered, a senior Kremlin official told a Russian newspaper. Russian and U.S. negotiators are in talks to find agreement on a new bilateral pact cutting stocks of strategic nuclear weapons. Both sides are working to a December deadline for a new treaty to replace the landmark Cold War-era START pact. While Moscow and Washington have made progress in strategic nuclear arms talks, Russia's security may come under threat from regional conflicts and...

US NASA Missile Slams Moon, Warning For Iran By US, Israel On Nuclear Weapons? By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem, Israel ---- October 9, 2009 ..... It definitely sounded innocent enough. NASA in a search to discover if there's water on the moon, bombed the moon today with a rocket weighing some 2.2 tons, carrying the destructive force equivalent that of 1.5 tons of dynamite. In pre-dawn hours, a US spacecraft punched a deep hole in the moon's south pole to find out whether ice is hidden in a crater that hasn't seen sunlight in billions of years. Two...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran will "blow up the heart of Israel" if the United States or the Jewish state attacked it first, a top official with Iran's most powerful military force -- the Revolutionary Guard -- warned Friday. Cleric Mojtaba Zolnour, who is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in the Guard, said that if a U.S. or Israeli missile lands in Iran, Iranian missiles will hit Israel in retaliation. "Should a single American or Zionist missile land in our country, before the dust settles, Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel," Zolnour was quoted as saying...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

Following diplomatic talks with Iran, the mainstream media was abuzz with the stunning success of the Obama administration. During the short meeting, Iran agreed to allow inspections of another secret nuclear facility publicly disclosed during the G20 summit. But is Iran's agreement to inspections of the nuclear facility a genuine success? History tells us that the Obama Administrations direct engagement yielded no more results than the failed global approach of the past 7 years. Since proof was first submitted in 2002 or Iran's secret nuclear program, the Iranian government has agreed 7 times to allow the inspections to occur. In...

TEHRAN, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that "Israel is number one threat to Middle East" with its nuclear arms, the official IRNA news agency reported. At a joint press conference with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran, ElBaradei brought Israel under spotlight and said that the Tel Aviv regime has refused to allow inspections into its nuclear installations for 30years, the report said. "Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses," ElBaradei was quoted as saying....

London, Oct. 4 (ANI): Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has handed over a list and evidence to Moscow, showing that some Russian scientists have been helping Iran to develop a nuclear bomb. Netanyahu’s revelation came during his secret Moscow visit where he held urgent talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 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,” Times Online quoted a Russian defence ministry source, as saying. “That is why it was kept secret. The point is not to...

Officials from 8th Air Force here reached a milestone in nuclear enterprise transformation Oct. 1 with the transfer of nonbomber units to 9th Air Force and 12th Air Force. Under this unit reassignment, 12th Air Force officials at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., gains control of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale AFB, Calif.; the 55th Wing at Offutt AFB, Neb.; and the 552nd Air Control Wing at Tinker AFB, Okla. Officials from 9th Air Force at Shaw AFB, S.C., is now responsible for the 116th Air Control Wing at Robbins AFB, Ga.; and the 819th RED HORSE at Malmstrom...

Days before President Barack Obama told the United Nations that he hoped to push through a universal treaty to ban all nuclear weapons testing by the end of 2010, a top Indian scientist threw New Delhi's security establishment for an atomic loop. Kasturiranga Santhanam, the coordinator of India's 1998 nuclear tests, went public with allegations that India's much heralded Pokhran II test of a thermonuclear bomb 11 years ago was actually a fizzle. "We are totally naked vis-a-vis China, which has an inventory of 200 nuclear bombs, the vast majority of which are giant H-bombs of power equal to three...

WASHINGTON — A two-week deadline set by world powers for Iran to open a newly-revealed nuclear site to inspectors is not "written in stone," the US State Department said on Friday. "I don't think it was a hard deadline. We made clear it was a matter of some urgency," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly at a press briefing. After Thursday talks between Iranian officials and representatives of six world powers, US President Barack Obama called on Iran to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to visit the newly-revealed nuclear site near the Iranian city of Qom within two...

US President Barack Obama characterized Thursday's landmark meeting with Iran as a "constructive beginning," following Iran's apparent agreement to open its nuclear facilities to inspection, to meet again later in the month and in principle to have a third party provide it with nuclear energy. "Today's meeting was a constructive beginning, but it must be followed by constructive action by the Iranian government," Obama said during a brief White House appearance following the talks held in Geneva. He gave Iran two weeks to allow IAEA inspectors into its recently revealed second uranium enrichment facility at Qom. "Iran must take concrete...

As diplomacy talks are set to begin today between Iran and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (the G5+1) to deter the Iranian regime from pursuing their nuclear weapons program, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy strategy to date appears to have strengthened Iran’s murderous regime. Last Friday, President Obama revealed that another Iranian uranium-enrichment facility is buried at an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base near Qom. President Obama has known about this formerly secret facility since he became President-elect and was selecting his foreign policy team that would craft, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called...

The revelation of an Iranian uranium-enrichment facility buried in a mountain at an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base near the religious city of Qom might seem ominous. If, that is, the Iranians were determined to develop a nuclear weapon. Fortunately, we are advised that they are not. In November 2007, U.S. intelligence agencies wrote a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” The intelligence community appears to be sticking by its judgment, which means — cue the sighs of relief — that the Qom facility may be...

A nuclear-armed Taliban? It may not be as far-fetched as it might first appear. The Taliban already control or have a significant presence in northwest Pakistan along a critical stretch of the Afghan border. Taliban units operate with relative impunity in the region surrounding Peshawar, Pakistan's major population, commercial and transportation center less than 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Dominance of Taliban and al-Qaida forces in the pivotal northwest region of Pakistan provides not only a sanctuary and training centers for attacks on Afghanistan, but it has become a base of operations to weaken any pro-Western sentiments among the...

It is shameful when the White House is accused of betrayal by close allies in eastern and central Europe, but utterly humiliating when even the Elysee Palace thinks the United States has been transformed from a lion to a lamb in the face of mounting global threats. As The Wall Street Journal reported this morning, French president Nicolas Sarkozy was less than impressed with Barack Obama’s performance last week in the face of the Iranian nuclear crisis. According to the paper, Washington urged Paris to delete key sections of Sarkozy’s UN speech that were critical of Iran and supposedly threatened...

China on Friday batted down the notion of punishing Iran with additional sanctions for developing a secret nuclear facility, saying negotiations are a better way of dealing with Tehran. Chinese officials told reporters at the G-20 economic summit that Iran should cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency as it investigates the facility. Asked if China would support punishing sanctions against Iran at the U.N. Security Council, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said, "Personally, I don't like the word punishment. "I think that all the issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation." China, a growing economic, military and...

Note: The following text is a quote: NEWS ARTICLE ‘No Doubt’ New Iranian Nuke Facility is ‘Illicit,’ Gates Concludes By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Sept. 27, 2009 – Revelations that Iran has covertly been building an underground nuclear-fuel processing plant belie the Iranian-government’s denials that it is attempting to develop nuclear weapons, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on the Sunday TV talk show circuit today. “We’ve been watching the construction of this facility for quite some time and one of the reasons that we’ve waited to make it public was to ensure that our conclusions...