Sabotage, assassinations, cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear program
Iran Nuclear Sabotage Suspected After Reports of Blasts at Atomic Centers, Bloomberg, By Ladane Nasseri – Nov 28, 2011 Reports of a blast in the province of Isfahan, home to one of Iran’s atomic facilities, adds to a series of unexplained incidents that have raised suspicions of sabotage against the country’s nuclear program. Continue reading Explosion near Isfahan, in Iran, possibly near nuclear centre
| Blast near Iran nuclear facility Gulf Daily News, , November 29, 2011 |
 TEHRAN: The sound of an apparent explosion was heard from Iran’s Isfahan city yesterday, Gholamreza Ansari, the head of the judiciary in the province said. An important Iranian nuclear facility involved in processing uranium is located near the city, although Iranian media reports did not say whether the explosion was near the nuclear centre. International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said the UN watchdog was aware of the reports but had no further information.
Iranian media provided contradictory information about the incident, which came less that three weeks after a massive explosion at a military base near Tehran that killed more than a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guard including the head of its missile forces…. http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=318693 |
Iran warns it will retaliate on NATO bases if attacked by U.S. or Israel
Iran threatens to bomb Turkey if U.S. or Israel attacks its nuclear installations, By DAILY MAIL REPORTER, 28th November 2011 Iran will bomb Turkey if the U.S. or Israel tries to destroy its nuclear installations, a senior military commander warned today. Continue reading
A nuclear Iran is likely and acceptable to the world
World will accept Nuclear Iran, says Israeli economist Times of India Nov 25, 2011, JERUSALEM: A leading Israeli investment firm today said the world is likely to grudgingly accept a nuclear Iran given the high price any military strike on its nuclear facilities is going to exact.
“A sharp rise in the price of oil, the costs of war and the damage to global trade would be too great and deter world powers from taking any serious action,” Amir Kahanovich, chief economist at Clal Finance, one of Israel’s largest brokerage houses, said.
This assessment is in sharp contrast to Israel’s stated official position that Tehran’s nuclear aspirations are unacceptable and that all options are on the table to foil the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.
Even for Israel the economic cost of a military confrontation that could include retaliatory missile attacks by Tehran and proxies in Gaza and Lebanon would be too high, he predicted.
“Unfortunately, it appears that a nuclear Iran is the most reasonable scenario,” the economist inferred. His remarks came after President Shimon Peres said earlier this month that an attack on Iran was becoming increasingly more likely.
Iran and Kuwait – the double standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
It would be hard to find a more volatile place [than Kuwait] to build a nuclear installation. Oh, and the land is low lying and subject to silting and shifting.
Nuclear Madness: Iran, Kuwait or the IAEA?, Morning Star, 25 November 2011, by Felicity Arbuthnot As the sabre-rattling against Iran becomes more deafening – with threats of potentially creating a few Chenobyls or a Fukushima by bombing working nuclear power plants – another potential nuclear madness is planned.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) appears to be behaving in a partisan and shameless way regarding Iran, much as it did with Iraq.
With Iraq, accusations abounded that the inspection teams were more about spying than neutral observation. “The way back to the UN was via Tel Aviv,” one former inspector memorably remarked.
Gareth Porter has meticulously and comprehensively trashed the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report on Iran, showing disturbing parallels with the tragic Iraq fiasco. Continue reading
Iran is ‘the most threatened country in the world’
few observers believe Iran would dare attack Israel, a suicidal move if ever there was one. And it’s why Israel grasps at excuses to preemptively attack Iran, a far more plausible scenario than an Iranian attack on Israel.
…Iran is the most threatened country in the world….
Why everybody except Iran can have nuclear weapons, GERALD CAPLAN, Globe and Mail , Nov. 25, 2011 It is deeply regrettable that Iran may one day join the not-so-exclusive club of nations that possess nuclear weapons. It is a potential danger the world doesn’t need. If you’ll forgive an outburst of preposterous idealism, it would be kind of neat to have a world with no nuclear arms whatsoever.
But for the life of me I don’t see how the world convinces Iran it’s not entitled to such weapons when Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, India, China, the United States, France, Britain and Israel all have them. Continue reading
Agents of USA and Israel targeting Iran’s military and nuclear programs
Although the US Embassy in Beirut initially said there was no substance to the accusations, the Associated Press reports that American officials later conceded that Nasrallah had been telling the truth.
Iran arrests 12 ‘CIA spies’ for targeting nuclear plans BBC News, 24 November 2011 Iran has arrested 12 spies of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the official IRNA news agency reports. Parviz Sorouri, an influential lawmaker, said the agents were targeting Iran’s military and its nuclear programme.He said they were operating in co-ordination with Israel’s Mossad and other regional agencies…… Mr Sorouri, a member of the powerful National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, did not give the nationality of the alleged agents, nor when they were arrested. Continue reading
Iran is not racing toward a nuclear weapon
“We know what’s going on in (the monitored sites) now, and what’s going on in them now is not indicative of an Iran that’s racing toward a nuclear weapon,”
Analysis: Iran’s nuclear showdown with West still short of war, msnbc.com 11/22/2011 LONDON — Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West has led to much harsher
words and new economic sanctions, but Tehran has yet to cross the red lines that would prompt Israel or the United States to contemplate military action…..
For now at least, experts say there was nothing in the IAEA report that makes military action more likely. If anything, it points to the limits of the effectiveness of a military campaign, which would have to be weighed against the risk of starting a potentially catastrophic
regional war. Continue reading
Iran and nuclear issues: diplomacy is the only answer
Let’s be clear: there is still no concrete evidence Iran is building a bomb.The latest report from the IAEA, despite its much discussed reference to “possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme”, also admits that its inspectors continue “to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at [Iran’s] nuclear facilities”.
The simple fact is there is no alternative to diplomacy, no matter how truculent or paranoid the leaders of Iran might seem to western eyes. If a nuclear-armed Iran is to be avoided, US politicians have to dial down their threatening rhetoric and tackle the very real and rational perception, on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan, of America and Israel as military threats to the Islamic Republic. Iranians are fearful, nervous, defensive – and, as the Middle East map shows, perhaps with good reason…
If you lived in Iran, wouldn’t you want the nuclear bomb? Mehdi Hasan, guardian.co.uk, 19 Nov 11 The best way for the US to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons is to dial down the rhetoric and adopt some diplomacy
Imagine, for a moment, that you are an Iranian mullah. Sitting crosslegged on your Persian rug in Tehran, sipping a cup of chai, you glance up at the map of the Middle East on the wall. It is a disturbing image: your country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies and regional rivals, both nuclear and non-nuclear… Continue reading
Support for a diplomatic solution to issue of Iran’s nuclear programme
International officials call for diplomatic solution to Iran nuclear issue TEHRAN TIMES, 19 Nov 11– A number of international officials, including the Russian foreign minister, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, and Indian prime minister, have called for the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program to be resolved through diplomatic channels.Iran’s nukes – a matter of national pride
At Tehran University, a group of hard-line students starts a petition urging Iran to withdraw from an international treaty regulating nuclear development. There’s no doubt Iran carefully stage manages much of its backlash to Western pressures over its nuclear efforts. But not all.
Iran’s defiance remains one of the few patches of common ground in a nation with multiple divisions: Hard-liners against opposition groups; power struggles between the ruling clerics and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; infighting among various parliament factions.
“Iranians don’t agree on much these days, but you could say the nuclear issue is one where they more or less speak in a common voice,” said William O. Beeman, aUniversity of Minnesota professor who follows Iranian affairs. Continue reading
The psychology of attitudes in Iran to nuclear power
what about Ahmadinejad’s promise to “wipe Israel off the face of the map?” Several problems exist with the idea.
Firstly, scholars of the Persian language say that his oft-cited words have been mistranslated and taken out of context. Ahmadinejad was actually quoting the revolutionary regime’s founder, Ayatollah Khoemeni, not making a policy statement.. (Read here for more on this dispute).
The Threat of a Nuclear Theocracy, Act II. Slate, By Michael Moran , Nov. 15, 2011 As the U.S. debate over Iran’s nuclear program has heated up, an issue of war and peace is being framed in a very dangerous way. The United States, with all its other problems right now, must get this right, because all options on Iran’s nuclear program are laden with risk, and the truth is very inconvenient.
The debate—roughly sanctions and diplomacy versus airstrikes—fails to acknowledge some important facts, the most important of which is that neither a military option—short of the lunacy of an all-out invasion of Iran—nor diplomacy will guarantee that Iran won’t soon gatecrash the nuclear club. Continue reading
“Duqu” new virus hits Iran’s nuclear programme
It was not clear on Monday from the Iranian statement whether Duqu had also struck nuclear facilities, but it was the first admission of damage.
“We are in the initial phase of fighting the Duqu virus,” Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s civil defence programme, said. “The final report which says which organisations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been completed yet….. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8888967/Iran-claims-defence-computer-systems-hit-by-another-supervirus.html
Terrorist act kills Iran’s nuclear missile chief: Israel responsible?
Israel reported ‘behind blast’ that killed Iran’s missile chief, by Julian Borger 14 November 2011 guardian.co.uk Time magazine quotes ‘western inteligencel source’ as saying Mossad carried out blast at missile base near Tehran
Time’s correspondent in Jerusalem, Karl Vick, is reporting that Israel was responsible for the huge blast on Saturday at a Revolutionary Guard missile base, about 35 km west of Tehran. Vick quotes a western intelligence source as saying that Mossad carried out the sabotage attack, adding that more such attacks are to be expected – “There are more bullets in the magazine.”
If true, it would be the most damaging blow to date in the covert waragainst Iran‘s nuclear weapons programme. It killed 17 Iranian revolutionary guardsmen, including the head of the missile programme, General Hasan Moghaddam, decribed in the Iranian press as “a pioneer” of Iran’s missile project [Farsi]. His official job description was head of the ‘self-sufficiency department” for munitions. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was at the funeral today…. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2011/nov/14/iran-nuclear-weapons?newsfeed=true
Open anti nuclear activism in Iran
Iran Activists Join Antinuclear Push, WSJ, 14 Nov 11, By FARNAZ FASSIHI, A group of Iranian dissidents for the first time openly called on their government to suspend uranium enrichment, in an open letter published Monday that adds to the momentum of the international effortto convince Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear weapons program.
“The current deadlock over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and empty power play will set the stage for war and the people of Iran will have to pay the price,” said the letter. Continue reading
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