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Iranian officials are claiming victory over the United States as diplomats gather this week for negotiations over a revamped nuclear deal, discussions that are likely to result in the Biden administration lifting tough economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said Tuesday that his country's leaders will not sit down for talks with the Americans, including U.S.-Iran envoy Robert Malley. American diplomats, however, expect indirect communications through intermediaries. Rabiei said the negotiations, which will occur in Vienna, represent a victory over the United States and the former Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran, which included...

U.S. military forces have discovered a smuggling ring moving copious quantities of explosives and weapons from Iraq to terrorist training camps constructed by the Saddam Hussein regime inside Syria prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Pentagon also announced that the structure bombed by U.S. warplanes last week, described by many major media outlets as a wedding celebration at a private ranching operation, was actually a "dormitory-like" facility used as a "safe house" to facilitate the clandestine movement of foreign terrorists into Iraq from Syria. According to Pentagon officials, small arms, explosives, and bomb making materials are being removed from...

Report: In Devastating Blow, Israel Sets Back Iran's Nuke Program Two YearsThe last couple of weeks have seen a string of apparent sabotage incidents in Iran. Questions about them abound. Possible answers are intriguing to say the least. Probably the most significant attack came early Thursday morning at Natanz, when, as the New York Times reported:...A Middle Eastern intelligence official…said the blast was caused by an explosive device planted inside the facility. The explosion, he said, destroyed much of the aboveground parts of the facility where new centrifuges…are balanced before they are put into operation…. ... ... Instead, Iran appears...

October 3, 2004 How the White House Embraced Disputed Iraqi Arms IntelligenceBy DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD and JEFF GERTH his article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr. Barstow. In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." The next month,...

Bush Aides Gave One-Sided View of Iraqi Data -- NYT October 2, 2004 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bush administration officials, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, gave a one-sided view of the case for believing Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arms program that ignored the doubts of their own experts, the New York Times said on Saturday. The newspaper made the charge in an article about thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes ordered by Iraq that leading administration officials said were intended for use in uranium centrifuges. "As the only physical evidence the United States could brandish of (Saddam's) revived...

Iran is using advanced models of centrifuges to enrich uranium, President Hasan Rouhani confirmed today. The move marks another breach of the 2015 nuclear agreement which lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for strict limits on the country's nuclear program. In 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- a move which Iran says nullified its own obligations. Trump has since reinstated sanctions on Iran. Iran has already taken steps that are in breach of the landmark deal. It started increasing uranium enrichment beyond the purity threshold it...

Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said the nation is using an array of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium in violation of its 2015 nuclear deal, the Associated Press reported. President Trump exited the deal last year and imposed crushing sanctions that have dealt a severe blow to Iran’s economy. Adding to the tension is the revelation an Iranian tanker that had been detained in Gibraltar — which Tehran promised wouldn’t go to Syria — was off its coast, satellite photos obtained by the AP showed.

Sunday's Der Spiegel had a massive expose on the continuing efforts of Bashar al-Assad to build a nuclear weapons plant, which included evidence that Iran is constructing such a plant for Syria in Qusayr, less than two kilometers from Syria's border with Lebanon. The issue came up in the State Department's Monday daily briefing. Disturbingly, spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the United States did not plan to raise the issue in the Iranian nuclear talks, claiming that those talks only deal with Iran's nuclear capabilities and not with Syria's. According to findings of Western intelligence agencies, however, the situation...

WALLACE: ...in October of 2002 in which you authorized the use of force, you went further than the president ever did. Let's watch:(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)ROCKEFELLER: I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11th that question is increasingly outdated.(END VIDEO CLIP)WALLACE: Now, the president never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?ROCKEFELLER: No. I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a...

A retired U.S. Marine Corps general who last served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pleaded guilty on Monday in a federal court to making false statements to the FBI during an investigation into leaks of classified information. Four-star General James Cartwright was questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2012 over a book written by New York Times reporter David Sanger, which exposed a malicious computer software program known as "Stuxnet" designed to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. Cartwright also in 2012 confirmed classified information about an unnamed country to Daniel Klaidman, then a reporter for...

Legal sources tell NBC News that the former second-highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military is now the target of a Justice Department investigation into an alleged leak of classified information about a covert U.S. cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program. According to legal sources, retired Marine Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been notified that he’s under investigation for allegedly leaking information about a massive attack using a computer virus named Stuxnet on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Gen. Cartwright, 63, becomes the latest alleged leaker targeted by the Obama administration, which has already...

President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran took another hit on Tuesday, as word arrived via Reuters that the Iranians have stopped dismantling centrifuges in two of their uranium enrichment plants. The stoppage comes “days after conservative lawmakers complained to President Hassan Rouhani that the process was too rushed.”

Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program, according to a secret Israeli government report obtained Monday by The Associated Press. The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran's nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.

The hours of congressional testimony, the speeches and the press conferences this week were all, nominally, about Iraq. But another, equally explosive question - what to do about Iran - loomed over the presentations by Army Gen. David Petraeus, the American military commander in Iraq, over U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and over U.S. strategy for the Middle East. Petraeus and Crocker, arguing that there has been progress in stabilizing Iraq since President Bush ordered a troop build-up there last year, fingered Iran's support for Shiite militias in Iraq, which they called "special groups," as the No. 1 threat...

(CNSNews.com) – During a “voters first presidential forum” in New Hampshire on Monday, GOP presidential candidate Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, saying he “declared war on trans fats and a ceasefire with the largest state-sanctioned sponsor of terrorism.” “This is a bad deal. He’s declared war on trans fats and a ceasefire with the largest state-sanctioned sponsor of terrorism,” said Jindal regarding the nuclear deal with Iran. As CNSNews.com previously reported, the Food and Drug Administration ruled in June that trans fat is not “generally recognized as safe” for use in food and gave...

Those who would even question the merits of this deal are dismissed by administration aides as “warmongers”, ... Unfortunately, there are plenty of worrying signs that is not what is happening in Lausanne, where it now seems Iran will be allowed to keep 6,000 of its centrifuges, considerably more than the 500-1,500 the US originally wanted, or the 4,000 “compromise” offer Washington made a year ago. Even more worryingly, the US is reportedly considering allowing Iran to keep some centrifuges at Fordow, the impenetrably hardened underground facility that Iran built in secret, and only admitted to having in 2009 ......

Israeli TV says agreement will leave Iran with 6,100 centrifuges spinning; Israeli official calls looming accord ‘incomprehensibly’ bad US Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and again on Friday to update him on progress in negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program, as an Israeli official castigated the emerging deal as “incomprehensibly” bad. According to an unnamed senior American official quoted by Haaretz Friday night, the secretary’s calls to Netanyahu came amid indications that the negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland, are making progress and that an agreement could be finalized by Sunday. Netanyahu has been...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu suggested Thursday his country might accept Iran having a small number of centrifuges, but insisted world powers could strike a better nuclear deal with Tehran than one now under negotiation. "I think you can get a better deal. The one I would have is to reduce Iran's nuclear capabilities so you increase the breakout time," the Israeli leader told NBC television. "I mean, if I had a vote on that negotiating team, I would say zero centrifuges," he said, when asked about reports that the Islamic Republic might be left with about 6,000 centrifuges. The highly...

A draft nuclear accord now being negotiated between the United States and Iran would force Iran to cut the amount of hardware it could use to make an atomic bomb by about 40 percent for at least a decade, while offering immediate relief from sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy, officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. As an added enticement, elements of a U.N. arms embargo against Iran could be rolled back. The very existence of the draft provided perhaps the clearest indication that the sides were nearing a written agreement as they raced to meet a March 31...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu The emerging U.S.-led deal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium at a limited rate, with the restrictions easing over time, poses a “great danger” to the Western world and Israel from a “messianic, apocalyptic” nation, Israel’s defense minister declared Monday. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon made the comments as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against the wishes of President Obama, prepares for a trip to Washington next week to explain in an address to both houses of Congress why he is against the negotiations. As WND reported, the prime minister’s aides have claimed Israel...