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Dubai -- A US Navy warship fired a warning flare to wave off an Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboat coming straight at it during a tense encounter in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, officials said Tuesday. The incident on Monday involving the Guard and the Navy comes as tensions remain high over stalled negotiations over Iran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers and as Tehran enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels under decreasing international oversight. Meanwhile, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said Iran now plans to enrich uranium through a second set of advanced centrifuges at its underground Fordo...

Iran is stewing over the potential loss of its most advanced centrifuge production plant after some kind of explosion and fire severely damaged it. Naturally, the Iranians are being pretty closemouthed about the incident. They haven’t said much about the fire and explosion at what was suspected to be a nuclear research facility in the mountains outside of Tehran, either. But it’s hard to hide what happened at Natanz — the nuclear facility with the highest-profile in the country. And Iran is hinting that the destruction of its advanced centrifuge plant might have been caused by some kind of variation...

My, but Iran must have a lot of defective “industrial gas tanks” lying around. A week after Iranian officials tried to explain away a massive explosion at Parchin as a civilian-area accident, a large fire at Natanz might prove more difficult to dismiss. Natanz, like Parchin, is a site where the US alleges that Iran has performed work on their nuclear-weapons program, and experts believe that uranium-enriching centrifuge work might have been the target this time: Iran says there has been an “incident” at one of its nuclear facilities.Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi did not...

Summary: Suspect Kangsong Enrichment Plant • We have learned of a suspect gas centrifuge site, in addition to the one at the Yongbyon Nuclear Center, that has the name of Kangsong. It may have other names as well. • We have not located this site, although we received a description of the building from more than two independent governmental sources. Its operation allegedly started several years ago. • If it is a centrifuge plant, we are unaware of any information on how well it has operated. • The original information about this site came from a defector several years ago...

Is it really true that Saddam Hussein had no "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invaded in March 2003? Not exactly - at least not if one counts the 500 tons of uranium that the Iraqi dictator kept stored at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant. The press hasn't made much of Saddam's 500-ton uranium stockpile, downplaying the story to such an extent that most Americans aren't even aware of it. But it's been reported - albeit in a by-the-way fashion - by the New York Times and a handful of other media outlets. And one...

AN IRAQI scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country’s dormant nuclear programme were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.But their existence, Dr Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq’s successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon. In The Bomb in my Garden, Dr Obeidi details Saddam’s quest for a nuclear bomb: "Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the...

Saddam, the bomb and me Mahdi Obeidi NYT Tuesday, September 28, 2004 Iraq's nuclear program While the final report from Charles Duelfer, the top American inspector of Iraq's covert weapons programs, won't be released for a few weeks, the portions that have already been made public touch on many of the experiences I had while working as the head of Saddam Hussein's nuclear centrifuge program. Now that I am living in the United States, I hope to answer some of the most important questions that remain. What was really going on in Iraq before the American invasion last year? Iraq's...

The sign out front said "Saddam Hussein's Nuclear Mastermind." Inside, Mahdi Obeidi, former head of Iraq's centrifuge program for uranium enrichment, told more than 200 people, including Department of Energy employees, that he wants to help stop one of humanity's greatest nightmares - global weapons of mass destruction. "We cannot afford one mistake," Obeidi said. "Everybody should be concerned." Obeidi, who emigrated to the United States in 2003, spoke on Wednesday morning at the Pollard Auditorium at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. His visit was sponsored by the Oak Ridge Office of Counterintelligence and funded by the U.S. State Department, according...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu dismissed as “completely groundless” allegations he is manufacturing a crisis with US President Barack Obama just before the November 6 American election to influence the outcome in favor of Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Netanyahu, in a Rosh Hashana interview with The Jerusalem Post that will appear in full on Sunday, said his call for the United States and the international community to set red lines for Iran was not at all connected with the US political campaign. “It has nothing to do with the American elections, because the Iranian nuclear program doesn’t care about the American...

China blocks report on North Korea's new nuclear facility, UN diplomats say China is blocking the release of a report by a UN expert panel on the revelations of a new and highly sophisticated uranium enrichment plant in North Korea, according to Security Council diplomats. Many council members pushed for the publication of the report, arguing that all 192 UN member states should have access to its findings, according diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity. The report which found that Pyongyang is ignoring UN sanctions and continuing its nuclear enrichment program contains recommendations on how to improve Pyongyang’s compliance with...

Malicious computer virus accelerated, wrecked motors and may have decommissioned uranium enrichment centrifuges, think tank concludes. Talkbacks (10) The Stuxnet virus that has infected Iran’s nuclear installations may have been behind the decommissioning of 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility earlier this year, according to a new analysis of the malicious software. Prepared by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, the paper raised the possibility that the reported breakage of 1,000 centrifuges was caused by the virus. According to the paper, the timing of the removal of 1,000 centrifuges was consistent with a statement made last...

Review U.S. policy toward North Korea By Robert Carlin and John W. Lewis Monday, November 22, 2010; While the United States has stood aside, hoping time and circumstances would force North Korea to accede to demands for denuclearization, the North has forged ahead with its own plans. Near-universal skepticism greeted Pyongyang's announcement last year that it intended to build a light-water reactor and perfect enrichment technology to fuel it. Not two weeks ago, while visiting the nuclear center at Yongbyon during a four-day trip to North Korea, we saw that the North had begun construction of a light-water reactor that...

Satellite Image Shows Building Containing Centrifuges in North Korea by David Albright and Paul Brannan November 21, 2010 Dr. Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University released a report on November 21, 2010 detailing his recent visit to the Yongbyon nuclear site in North Korea. Hecker describes his visit to a building containing 2,000 gas centrifuges located on the site of the fuel fabrication facility at Yongbyon dedicated, according to his hosts, to producing low enriched uranium (LEU). He notes that the building is approximately 120 meters long and has a blue roof. ISIS assesses that this building can be seen in...

GENEVA (AP) — A Swiss man suspected of being involved in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring claims he supplied the CIA with information that led to the breakup of the black market nuclear network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In a documentary airing Thursday on Swiss TV station SF1, Urs Tinner says he tipped off U.S. intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program. The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The 43-year-old Tinner...

Iranian construction of a previously secret uranium enrichment site is at an advanced stage, with high-tech equipment already in place at the fortified facility ahead of its 2011 startup, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report Monday. The revelation of the existence of the underground plant known as Fordo, near the holy city of Qom, has heightened concerns of other possible undeclared Iranian facilities that are not subject to IAEA oversight and therefore could be used for military purposes. In Washington, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the IAEA report "underscores that Iran still refuses to comply fully...

As a Presidential candidate, Barack Obama called a nuclear Iran "a grave threat" and insisted "the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." But he also called for direct, high-level talks in the hopes that the mullahs could be persuaded to abandon their nuclear dreams. We've never held out much hope for those talks, which would inevitably be complicated and protracted. Now it turns out that the rate at which Iran's nuclear programs are advancing may render even negotiations moot. That's one conclusion to be drawn from the latest report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. Among...

via translation - ALERT - Nuclear: Iran has 5,000 to 6,000 centrifuges TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Iran had 5,000 to 6,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment activities, confirming that the Islamic Republic has expanded its controversial nuclear programme, reported state radio.

Pakistan's Military Knew Of Nuclear Technology Transfer To N Korea, Says Scientist 7/4/2008 2:52 PM ET Abdul Qadir Khan, who is considered to be the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, said on Friday that the country's former military regime was aware of the transfer of nuclear technology to North Korea. AQ Khan told media on Friday that the Pakistani army, which was headed by President Pervez Musharraf then, was aware of the technology transfer as the uranium enrichment equipment was dispatched onboard a North Korean plane under the supervision of Pakistani army officials in 2000. Khan's statements on Friday contradicts...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's president says Iran has begun installing 6,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the work on state television on Tuesday. Iran already has about 3,000 centrifuges operating in Natanz. The new announcement is seen as a show of defiance of international demands to halt a nuclear program. The U.S. and its allies say the program is aimed at building nuclear weapons. Iran denies those allegations.

VIENNA, Austria - Iran has assembled hundreds of advanced machines reflecting a possible intention to speed up uranium enrichment, diplomats have told The Associated Press. ADVERTISEMENT One diplomat said more than 300 of the centrifuges have been linked up in two separate units in Iran's underground enrichment plant and a third was being assembled. He said the machines apparently are more advanced than the thousands already running underground, suggesting they could be the sophisticated IR-2 centrifuge that Tehran recently acknowledged testing. But a senior diplomat said that while the new work appeared to include advanced centrifuges, they were not IR-2s....