Iranian Alert -- December 2, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD

Iran's European Partners

Dec. 2, 2003
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
Insight On The News

For most of the 1990s, Europe pursued a policy of "constructive engagement" with the Islamic Republic of Iran despite the Iranian government's proven involvement in international terrorism, including the murder of Iranian dissidents on European soil. Today, Europe buys close to 30 percent of all Iranian exports, which are mostly oil. More importantly, however, Europe provides Iran with key technology, helping Iran to expand its industrial base - including its ability to manufacture nuclear materials for a weapons program.

Germany leads the pack of European exporters to Iran, with sales worth an estimated $2.1 billion in 2002, according to monthly statistics compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). German sales to Iran are expected to grow to $2.4 billion. Italy comes in second, with sales of $1.7 billion last year, and France third with $1.44 billion in exports. Most of the European Community exports are high-technology items such as machine tools, electronics, telecommunications equipment and transportation gear.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight

http://www.insightmag.com/news/567024.html

OPEC set to defer oil cuts as economy buoys price
Reuters, 12.02.03, 8:18 AM ET

By Peg Mackey and Jonathan Leff

VIENNA, Dec 2 (Reuters) - OPEC producers bolstered by an upbeat world economy gathered on Tuesday for a meeting this week that is expected to defer supply cuts as oil prices hold strong.

OPEC's hopes of extending an oil price boom into a fifth straight year have brightened as economic growth picks up in oil importing giants China and the United States.

U.S. crude is near $30 a barrel as major consuming nations head into winter. Oil ministers from Iran, Kuwait the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia have said prices are strong enough to let OPEC leave a 24.5 million barrels per day (bpd) production ceiling in place.

"Politically it would be very difficult for them to cut at $30 oil," said Gary Ross of consultants PIRA Energy in New York.

Ministers have suggested that OPEC could meet in January or February when they are expected to cut production for the second quarter as fuel demand declines following the northern winter.

OPEC's September meeting agreed a shock 3.5 percent production cut from November to counter rising supply from Russia and Iraq.

Delays in the post-war recovery of Iraq's oil exports have helped contain growth in oil inventories and held OPEC's reference price above the top end of the cartel's $22-28 target range for most of the last two months.

Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said on Tuesday that Iraq plans to raise oil exports to two million barrels a day by the end of the first quarter next year.

"We plan to export two million barrels a day by the end of the first quarter," Uloum told Reuters on his arrival in Vienna.

Iraq exported just over 1.6 million barrels a day last month from its Gulf Basra export terminal in the south of the country and is planning to increase production from its southern fields.

Repeated sabotage has kept closed the country's northern export pipeline since the war.

OPEC has scheduled talks to start at 1100 GMT (1200 local) on Thursday to discuss output policy.

Ministers will also discuss the election of a secretary-general. Current Secretary-General Alvaro Silva is standing again with two new candidates, Iran's former envoy to the United Nations Hadi Hosseinian and Kuwait's OPEC chief economist Adnan Shihab-Eldin.

http://www.forbes.com/business/energy/newswire/2003/12/02/rtr1165935.html

Nuclear Weapons Production in Iran

Posted Dec. 2, 2003
By Kenneth R. Timmerman

Iran has been diverting equipment from its nuclear power plants to its weapons program.

Get ready for another high-profile confrontation with Europe over a rogue state bent on developing weapons of mass destruction. As with Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors have made astonishing finds: undisclosed facilities producing nuclear-weapons material, secret supplier agreements to import banned equipment and officials who have engaged in a systematic effort at deception. This time, with Iran, France and its European partners demonstrated more skill in managing the rhythm of events to prevent escalation into crisis. But, despite their efforts, the crisis emerged on Nov. 20 when the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) met in Vienna to debate what to do about dramatic new revelations in Iran and that country's clandestine efforts to acquire the bomb.

Just two days before the fateful meeting - which failed to find Iran in "material breach" of its obligations as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - Secretary of State Colin Powell met with European foreign ministers in Brussels but manifestly failed to win their support for more vigorous action on Iran. Powell warned that the European-backed resolution on Iran being massaged by the IAEA board was inadequate because it lacked "trigger mechanisms in the case of further Iranian intransigence or difficulty." State Department spokesman Richard Boucher added that the United States believes "we need to verify the promises and the information that Iran has put forward" and not just continue with business as usual.

Behind the diplomatic language lurked dramatic new events that could catapult Iran from a rogue state with nuclear aspirations to an imminent threat to the United States and its allies in the Middle East. Two things are key to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-weapon state, U.S. officials tell Insight: closing down existing but previously undisclosed nuclear plants in Iran and preventing Iran from gaining access to key materials and technologies that Europe and others continue to provide. Neither seems about to occur without vigorous U.S. action.

The emerging crisis with Iran began earlier this year when IAEA inspectors discovered two previously undeclared uranium-enrichment plants under construction at Natanz, a mountain town just north of Isfahan. A subsequent inspection turned up traces of highly enriched uranium (HEU), a sure sign of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. Elsewhere, IAEA inspectors discovered facilities the Iranians had tried to keep secret, where they admitted they were converting uranium ore so it could be enriched, and where they had extracted plutonium from spent fuel. Pressed by the IAEA, Iran also admitted that it was building a heavy-water production plant and a separate research reactor in Arak that could fabricate weapons-grade fuel. The IAEA suddenly realized that for 18 years Iran had been submitting false declarations about its nuclear activities.

The Natanz site is particularly worrisome because underground production facilities were being prepared to house some 50,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges which Iran has begun to manufacture locally. Once it goes operational, the Natanz plant could produce enough HEU for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons within a year.

To head off a crisis, the French, British and German foreign ministers traveled to Tehran for two days of talks in late October and claimed that Iran had pledged to "suspend" its clandestine nuclear programs, including the Natanz enrichment plant. In exchange, Europe agreed to continue trading with Iran [see sidebar] and offered to counter U.S. efforts to haul Iran before the U.N. Security Council for international sanctions. Iran's promises to behave, and Europe's willingness to believe it, left U.S. officials speechless.

Iran has "lied repeatedly" to the IAEA, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Steve Rademaker told an audience of U.S. nuclear-weapons experts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Nov. 14. For years Iran simply claimed that it never had conducted a program to enrich uranium or to reprocess spent fuel to extract plutonium. When U.N. inspectors found evidence that it had done both, Iran's leaders simply changed their story and "lied again," he said.

Despite having discovered previously undeclared facilities suspected of carrying out weapons-related work, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei concluded in a confidential report on Nov. 10 that the watchdog agency had found "no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities . . . were related to a nuclear-weapons program." That conclusion, Rademaker noted acidly, was "simply impossible to believe" and was "not supported by the IAEA's own report."

The United States believes that the "massive and covert Iranian effort" to develop a range of nuclear technologies - from uranium mines to milling plants to a heavy-water plant to a centrifuge-enrichment "cascade" to plutonium reprocessing - "makes sense only as part of a nuclear-weapons program," Rademaker added.

According to the IAEA report, the Iranians showed extraordinary contempt for the U.N. inspectors, apparently in the belief they would not be caught in their lies. When initially challenged in February, they claimed that their entire uranium-enrichment program was indigenous and used no foreign supplies. But when the inspectors found traces of HEU on centrifuge parts, the Iranians switched gears and said the parts were imported and must have been contaminated by the suppliers. Pressed to identify those suppliers, the Iranians replied that they had bought the equipment from "brokers."

Rademaker asks, "Is it plausible that Iran bought centrifuge components and didn't know where they bought them?"

Behind the scenes, the United States has been pressing members of the IAEA Board of Governors to "declare that Iran is not in compliance" with the NPT, officials said. The U.S. goal is to bring Iran before the U.N. Security Council, which then would have to debate whether to take punitive measures against Tehran. The unusual public criticism suggests that the administration is preparing for another high-profile standoff at the United Nations. But unlike the diplomatic confrontation over Iraq, this time it appears likely that Britain will not join the United States in urging vigorous international action against Iran.

"How many times has [British Foreign Minister] Jack Straw gone to Tehran recently?" one administration official told Insight. "We get the sense that the British feel they need to show their independence from us on this one." In fact, Straw accompanied his French and German counterparts to Tehran in October. At the conclusion of those talks the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, hailed Iran's decision to "come clean" on its previous nuclear-research programs and promised that Europe would assist Iran to acquire "peaceful" nuclear technologies in exchange.

That was the original bargain on which the 1968 nuclear treaty was based, but cheaters such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea have shown that it is a dangerously flawed arrangement. "Under the NPT's basic trade-off, Iran can acquire all the capabilities it needs to produce nuclear weapons materials and then later withdraw from the treaty and use the material in weapons," Rademaker said. "This risk will not be cured by Iran's acceptance of more-rigorous inspections by the IAEA."

A former chief U.N. arms inspector, Swedish ambassador Rolf Ekeus, urged the United States and other supplier nations to rethink the terms of the NPT. In comments at a Livermore conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program, Ekeus said there was little justification to allow developing countries such as Iran to acquire enrichment technologies or to gain access to the nuclear-fuel cycle. As a condition for providing nuclear-power reactors, he said, supplier nations instead should guarantee supplies of reactor fuel and take back all nuclear waste, he said.

"The recent disclosures by Iran about its nuclear program clearly show that, in the past, Iran had concealed many aspects of its nuclear activities, with resultant breaches of its obligations to comply with the provisions of the Safeguards Agreement," IAEA Director General ElBaradei concluded in his report, which Insight has obtained. Nevertheless, he observed, "To date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities ... were related to a nuclear-weapons program."

Because Iran's nuclear facilities are buried and dispersed, former U.N. arms inspector David Albright estimates, they cannot readily be taken out through aerial bombing.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight. His latest book, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America, has just been published by Crown Forum.

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=567018

Nuclear Weapons Production in Iran

Posted Dec. 2, 2003
By Kenneth R. Timmerman

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1032112/posts?page=23#23

pong

U.S. Warns Iran, North Korea on Nuclear Issues

December 02, 2003
Reuters
Reuters.com

WASHINGTON --- Undersecretary of State John Bolton said on Tuesday the United States would act decisively to impede any transfers of nuclear and missile technology to Iran.

In prepared remarks for a speech at a security conference, Bolton also reaffirmed a U.S. pledge to provide North Korea with a written security assurance. But this can only happen if the North agreed to "an effective verification regime" that assured Washington it would not reconstitute its nuclear program, he said.

"For our part, the United States will continue its efforts to prevent the transfer of sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile technology to Iran, from whatever source, and will monitor the situation there with great care," he said.

The tough talk come as the United States is involved in separate efforts to persuade both Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions.

Faced with concerted international pressure, Iran agreed last month to allow snap inspections of its nuclear sites and suspend uranium enrichment, which can be used to make fuel for bombs.

But a top Iranian official said on Sunday that Iran has no intention of scrapping its disputed enrichment program.

Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear reactor at the Bushehr power complex, but said it drop those plans if the International Atomic Energy Agency presented evidence that Iran was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

The United States and four other countries -- China, Russia, South Korea and Japan -- are in the process of trying a second round of six-party talks with North Korea aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programs.

Responding to one of the North's demands, President Bush recently said he was willing to provide Pyongyang with a security guarantee, a pledge Bolton reaffirmed -- along with the verification caveat.

Bolton, who often takes a tough stance on weapons proliferation for the Bush administration, also asserted that, "we are determined that bad behavior on the part of North Korea will not be rewarded."

"North Korea will not be given inducements to reverse actions it took in violation of its treaty commitments and other international obligations," he said.

Reneging on a 1994 accord, Pyongyang within the past year has unfrozen its plutonium program at Yongbyon and withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, among other things.

The other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- China, Russia, Britain and France -- in various combinations have resisted U.S. demands that the Iran and North Korea nuclear cases be brought before the council for action.

Bolton warned that these actions could have long-term implications by reducing the council's role and this would be "truly unfortunate and ironic."

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3925332

Iranian Drug Dealers in Disguise in Holy Iraqi City

December 02, 2003
Reuters
Michael Georgy

KERBALA -- Undercover policemen watch closely as thousands swarm around sacred Shi'ite shrines. But in the holy city of Kerbala it's difficult to find the criminals they are looking for -- Iranian drug dealers posing as pilgrims.

''The borders have to be closed. These dealers should not be let in to Iraq. We have to protect our youth,'' cleric Hussein al-Kathim said. ''Otherwise future generations will be in danger.''

The fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in April brought freedom to the oppressed Shi'ites of Kerbala. It also generated business for Iranian drug traffickers who exploited open borders in the mayhem after the war.

Police officials and ordinary Iraqis say a drug problem has emerged for the first time in Kerbala, fuelled mostly by an influx of Iranian drug traffickers.

Heroin, hashish and other narcotics are sold to Iraqi dealers or individuals. The goods are hidden in clothes in crowded markets. Elderly women selling syrupy tea on sidewalks also offer drugs.

It can't compare with drug deals in New York or Miama. But small amounts of hashish are enough to alarm Kerbala, a conservative Iraqi city that is home to some of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites and that prides itself on purity.

''This has never happened before in Kerbala. We have launched a big campaign to fight it,'' Kerbala police chief Abbas al-Hassani told Reuters.

''We have patrols of 60 policemen assigned especially to drugs. We are containing the problem. We were arresting 10 to 15 dealers a day. Now it is less frequent. But we will keep cracking down.''

Dealing or using hard drugs is still punishable by death because Iraq has yet to draw up a constitution after Saddam's fall. But Hassani said it was easier to control the Iranian pilgrims under the former regime.

''Saddam's agents used to charge every Iranian $500. They would be transported from the border and watched at all times, in their hotels and in the street. He bugged their rooms,'' said Hassani.

These days, policemen face the challenge of catching dealers in the chaos of street markets around Kerbala's sprawling golden-domed shrines.

Throngs of Iranians walk past stalls stacked with clothes, slippers and cigarettes. Donkey carts clatter past televisions playing videotapes of Saddam's agents blowing up political prisoners in dirt pits. Videos of self-flagellating men remind Shi'ites of their religious duties.

Beer and whiskey are also now on offer in a city where posters of Shi'ite leaders hang on many buildings and women are covered in black shawls.

Apart from commercial transactions, there is little interaction between Iranians and Iraqis, who fought a brutal war in the 1980s, making it difficult for undercover police to gather intelligence. But still, they are making arrests.

``There are arrests here every day -- of young and old,'' said Alaa Hameed, a teenage shoe vendor. MG

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters12-02-074030.asp?reg=MIDEAST

Iran Uncovered, Inside the Hidden Revolution (DOCUMENTARY TONIGHT Ch 4 (England)

Channel 4 News ^ | Jane Kokan
Posted on 12/02/2003 9:21 AM PST by faludeh_shirazi

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1032380/posts

If she wears it she's a scumbag traitor just like Khatami.

We'll see.

Thanks for the ping!

Rumsfeld Issues New Guideline, Triggering Concern of Hawks
By ELI LAKE Staff Reporter of the Sun

The Pentagon’s contacts with opponents of the Iranian regime have all but dried up after elaborate procedures were introduced requiring such meetings to be cleared at the top levels of the Defense Department.

Some advocatyes of a hard line against Iran say that the new restrictions have meant less encouragement from America for those seeking to spread freedom and democracy in Iran. They also voice concern that the rules have prevented America from getting valuable information about Iran’s support for terrorism and its effort to build a nuclear bomb.

The restrictions on Pentagon meetings have also given the State Department, which has pushed to engage Iran, an upper hand in the interagency debate over policy toward the Islamic Republic.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1032542/posts

"We didn't see a police state,"

O Lord, save us from these Jimmy Carter useful idiots.

Due to the report by FOX's Mansoor Ijaz about 10 days ago, this article from October might interest readers.

Iranian Force Has Long Ties to Al Qaeda;
Terrorism Support Group Operates Independently of Iran's Elected Leaders

By Dana Priest and Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page A17

The elite Iranian force believed to be protecting Saad bin Laden and two dozen al Qaeda leaders is one of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' five branches, and has been given the mission of "exporting the Islamic revolution" by training, arming and collaborating with foreign terrorist groups -- even those who do not share Iran's fundamentalist Shiite brand of Islam.

The Jerusalem Force, also known as the Qods Force, is highly trained and well-funded. It has provided instruction to more than three dozen Shiite and Sunni "foreign Islamic militant groups in paramilitary, guerrilla and terrorism" tactics, according to a recent U.S. intelligence analysis.

Groups including Hezbollah, or Party of God; the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas); and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have received arms and training at one of several specialized sites in Iran, according to that document.

The Jerusalem Force's former commander, Ahmad Vahidi, allegedly helped plan the 1994 bombing of the Amia Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 civilians were killed and 230 injured, according to Argentine intelligence officials and others.

The group has also maintained ties with the al Qaeda terrorist network for more than a decade, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials. Senior al Qaeda leaders first met and formed a tactical alliance with the nascent Jerusalem Force in Sudan in the early 1990s, according to intelligence officials. The group was creating terrorist training camps there at the same time that Osama bin Laden had begun to create his own financial and training infrastructure.

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, used his decade-old relationship with Vahidi, then commander of the Jerusalem Force, to negotiate a safe harbor for some of al Qaeda's leaders who were trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in 2001, according to a European intelligence official.

The group is "a state within a state, and that is why they are able to offer protection to al Qaeda," one European intelligence analyst said. "The Force's senior leaders have long-standing ties to al Qaeda, and, since the fall of Afghanistan, have provided some al Qaeda leaders with travel documents and safe haven."

The organization's autonomy from Iran's elected leaders underscores the deep split between the moderate government of President Mohammad Khatami and the unelected hard-line clerics who control much of the nation's security apparatus.

Khatami, who has repeatedly denied that senior al Qaeda figures are in Iran, has no control over security organs such as the Revolutionary Guard, which answer to the office of the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Although Iran is a Shiite Muslim nation, the Jerusalem Force's willingness to work with rival Sunni Muslim organizations has made it particularly dangerous as a liaison between Iran and other Islamic groups that share its goal of destroying secular Muslim states.

The Jerusalem Force has agents in "most countries with substantial Muslim populations," according to the U.S. analysis. "Their mission is to form relationships with Islamic militant and radical groups and offer financial support either to the groups at large or to Islamic figures within them who are sympathetic to the principles and foreign policy goals of the Iranian government."

The Force's training regime includes psychological and guerrilla warfare operations, with emphasis on the use of hand grenades, mines, booby-trap techniques, camouflage and ambushes. Its terrorist-related training includes assassinations, kidnapping, torture and explosives, according to the U.S. intelligence analysis.

Yeah i personally wrote the idiot who wrote that column.

Let us know if you hear back. That would be amusing.

"We didn't see a police state," he said, noting it appears the country is putting money into education and libraries.

What, Cuba was booked for the season?! LOL

What's happening with the meeting in Washington?
Still "On" for tomorrow?
CSPAN or anyone else covering it?

I was told C-Span may still show up.
It will be broadcasted, but in Persian on KRSI an Iranian radio program available on the Internet.

This thread is now closed.

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