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Iran said on Friday it did not expect an attack from Israel or the United States triggered by the long-running dispute over its nuclear programme. "The possibility of such an attack (from Israel or the U.S.) is almost zero," Mottaki said, via a translator, in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV during a visit to Turkey. However, when asked whether it meant Iran was ready to freeze any expansion of its nuclear programme in return for the U.N. Security Council halting further sanctions measures against it, the source said "not at all".

President George W. Bush is fond of comparing himself to Ronald Reagan. But as he meets with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Washington this week, his policy regarding North Korea's nuclear weapons program looks more like something out of Bill Clinton's or Jimmy Carter's playbook. In dealing with the Soviet Union on arms control, Reagan was famous for repeating the Russian phrase, "Doveryai, no proveryai" (trust, but verify). Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev reportedly once complained to Reagan, "You use that phrase every time we meet." To which Reagan smilingly replied, "That's because I like it so much." This administration...

MUSCAT, Oman — Vice President Dick Cheney retained his tough stance against Iran today and said the U.S. is uncertain if Tehran has restarted the nuclear weaponization program that a U.S. intelligence report says it halted in 2003. Speaking in Oman, a U.S.-allied Arab monarchy and neighbor of Iran's, Cheney told ABC News, "The important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for the entire area." In December an intelligence report known as the National Intelligence Estimate...

What are Russia's four main contributions to Iran's nuclear program? Russia, as the prime subcontractor for Iran's nuclear program, is providing: 1) Six nuclear reactors for Iran. Four are at Bushehr and two are at Akhvaz. 2) A uranium-conversion plant at Bushehr that can be used for uranium enrichment. 3) An exemption in the UN resolution on Iran. In its draft resosultion the Russians have exempted “materials, equipment, technology" used at Bushehr 1. This exemption will allow Iran to convert the lightly-enriched fuel in the light-water nuclear reactor into weapon-grade 235. It need only remove fuel rods from Bushehr, then...

Perry: U.S. might use force on DPRK The Yomiuri Shimbun Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry warned Saturday that the United States might be forced to take military action against North Korea if China and South Korea do not agree to apply "coercive action" in urging North Korea to scrap its nuclear ambitions. At an emergency international symposium, titled "North Korean Nuclear Test and Security in East Asia," hosted by The Yomiuri Shimbun with moderator Hajime Izumi, a professor at the University of Shizuoka, Perry and three other panelists from Japan, China and South Korea expressed pessimistic views on the...

US speeds up North Korea attack plan November 3, 2006 - 6:59AM The Pentagon has stepped up contingency planning for attacks on North Korea's nuclear program, reports say. Citing defence officials who asked not to be identified, the reports said the planning included programs for striking a plutonium-reprocessing facility at Yongbyon with commando raids or precision-guided missiles. The planning, which has been under way several months, means only that US military forces would be ready if President George W Bush were to order attacks, the newspaper said. Defence officials said China's condemnation of North Korea's nuclear test and Beijing's support...

Federal government set up Web site -- Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal -- to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war; detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research; a 'basic guide to building an atom bomb'... Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency fear the information could help Iran develop nuclear arms... contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that the nuclear experts say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums... Website now shut... Developing...

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has doubled its capacity to enrich uranium by successfully executing the process with a second network of centrifuges, a semiofficial news agency reported Friday, sending a defiant new message to the U.N. Security Council. Council members are working on a draft resolution that would impose limited sanctions on the Islamic republic because of its refusal to cease enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for a civilian nuclear reactor or fissile material for a warhead. The Iranian Students News Agency quoted an anonymous official as saying Iran has successfully begun injecting gas into a second network...

Today the Iranian nation's (nuclear) strength is ten times stronger than it was last year at the beginning of this glorious path," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech to a crowd in the southern city of Rey. "On the other hand, our enemy's strength has become ten times less than it was last year.

by Mark Finkelstein April 10, 2006 Reminds me of the old joke: "The food at that restaurant is absolutely terrible." "Yeah. And the portions are so small!" This morning's 'Today' generally offered criticism of a potential attack on Iran designed to disable its nuclear program, but at the same time complained we didn't have the means to carry out such a strike. UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was shown stating that the idea of a [tactical] nuclear strike on Iran "is completely nuts." NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported the skepticism of military experts who say "air strikes could slow Iran's...

Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned Iran will pay "a very heavy price" for defying the world over its nuclear program. Iran is no longer cooperating with the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and has barred snap inspections of its nuclear facilities. Iran says it will start enriching uranium again in retaliation for being reported to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear activities. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed his country's referral to the Security Council as a "funny decision". He says Iran only wants to develop nuclear technology so it...

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's defense minister hinted Saturday that the Jewish state is preparing for military action to stop Iran's nuclear program, but said international diplomacy must be the first course of action. "Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability and it must have the capability to defend itself, with all that that implies, and this we are preparing," Shaul Mofaz said. His comments at an academic conference stopped short of overtly threatening a military strike but were likely to add to growing tensions with Iran. Germany's defense minister said in an interview published Saturday that...

LONDON, Jan. 16 -- China and Russia agreed with the United States, Britain, Germany and France on Monday that Iran must completely suspend its nuclear program, the British Foreign Office said. Although the countries failed to agree on whether Iran's case should be referred to the U.N. Security Council, the Europeans applied new pressure on the Iranian government by calling for an emergency meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Feb. 2. With all six nations declaring that they sought a diplomatic solution to the escalating confrontation with Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a glimmer of hope for...

UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said he is "losing patience" with Iran's lack of transparency about its controversial nuclear program. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says Iran's decision to resume nuclear fuel research, which it announced overnight, marks a breach of its international commitments and "cannot remain without consequence". However, the European Union's current president, Austria, says it does not believe the time has come for the bloc to discuss sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. Tehran's announcement that it would resume nuclear fuel research ends a two-year suspension and has sparked international concern about the nature...

Sunday, January 01, 2006 An Attack on Iran? Yesterday the online edition of The Jerusalem Post, Israel's English language daily newspaper, lead with the headline US planning strike against Iran. The story, which actually quotes the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, claims that NATO, rather than the United States alone, are examining prospects for such a strike. It goes on to say: According to the report, CIA Director Porter Goss, in his last visit to Turkey on December 12, requested Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide military bases to the United States in 2006 from where they would be able...

Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still remembered as a dashing revolutionary thirty eight years after his death on October 8, 1967 in the Yaro ravine in Bolivia. Today, the dreams - or nightmares - of "Che" live on in the actions of Venezuela's Marxist president, Hugo Chavez, assisted by his Islamic fundamentalist and Asian Communist friends. Venezuela was once friendly to the United States and a major U.S. supplier of oil. The name of the nation is now the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in reference to 19th century liberator Simon Bolivar who advocated a united South America. Continent-wide unification of Latin...

Three Villages Razed In Qinghai After H5N1 Bird Flu Riots? Recombinomics Commentary August 2, 2005 According to the Qinghai Bulletin Board Service (BBS), the state of emergency imposed on the farming community and its surroundings in the Northwestern Qinghai City / Town of Yushu was lifted on the night of 28th July. When natives living further from the area made a trip to the farming community, they discovered that it had "vanished" together with 3 of its surrounding villages. Only some ruins, blocks from collapsed walls, remained. Apparently, the farms and villages had been flattened and there were signs that...

Senate panel eyes Japan nuke option to press China on N. Korea test By Kohei Murayama WASHINGTON, May 20 Kyodo - U.S. policymakers should highlight Japan's possible nuclear pursuit and other security repercussions for China in pressing Beijing to stop North Korea from testing its nuclear weapons, a Senate Republican policy panel said in a recent report. ''A test in North Korea would certainly raise the prospect of a major public debate in Japan over whether to turn its latent nuclear capabilities in its civilian and space sectors into an overt nuclear weapons program,'' the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee...

Yaron London Nuclear ayatollahs Does Israel have an answer for Iranian nuclear aspirations? "The State of Israel's establishment is the most terrible event in history…one nuclear bomb is enough to destroy it." (Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, 2001.) "The cancerous growth called Israel must be uprooted from the area," (Iranian Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a recent speech.) For 18 years now, Iran has been surreptitiously striving to acquire nuclear weapons. Initially, experts thought Iran's objective was to counterbalance the Iraqi nuclear threat. However, now that Saddam's Iraq has been obliterated, there can be no doubt the Iranians aspire...

WASHINGTON, March 28 - The final report of a presidential commission studying American intelligence failures regarding illicit weapons includes a searing critique of how the C.I.A. and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapon stockpiles, according to officials who have seen the report's executive summary. The report also proposes broad changes in the sharing of information among intelligence agencies that go well beyond the legislation passed by Congress late last year that set up a director of national intelligence to coordinate action among all 15 agencies. Those recommendations are...