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Israel should come clean about the expansion at its secret nuclear weapons plant

Secretive Israeli nuclear facility undergoes major project, 9 news, By Associated Press

 Feb 26, 2021
A secretive Israeli nuclear facility at the center of the nation’s undeclared atomic weapons program is undergoing what appears to be its biggest construction project in decades, satellite photos analysed by The Associated Press show.
A dig about the size of a soccer field and likely several stories deep now sits just metres from the aging reactor at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona. The facility is already home to decades-old underground laboratories that reprocess the reactor’s spent rods to obtain weapons-grade plutonium for Israel’s nuclear bomb program.
What the construction is for, however, remains unclear. The Israeli government did not respond to detailed questions from the AP about the work. Under its policy of nuclear ambiguity, Israel neither confirms nor denies having atomic weapons. It is among just four countries that have never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a landmark international accord meant to stop the spread of nuclear arms.
The construction comes as Israel — under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — maintains its scathing criticism of Iran’s nuclear program, which remains under the watch of United Nations inspectors unlike its own. That has renewed calls among experts for Israel to publicly declare details of its program.
What “the Israeli government is doing at this secret nuclear weapons plant is something for the Israeli government to come clean about,” Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said.
With French assistance, Israel began secretly building the nuclear site in the late 1950s in empty desert near Dimona, a city some 90 kilometres south of Jerusalem. It hid the military purpose of the site for years from America, now Israel’s chief ally, even referring to it as a textile factory.
With plutonium from Dimona, Israel is widely believed to have become one of only nine nuclear-armed countries in the world. Given the secrecy surrounding its program, it remains unclear how many weapons it possesses. Analysts estimate Israel has material for at least 80 bombs. Those weapons likely could be delivered by land-based ballistic missiles, fighter jets or submarines………….https://www.9news.com.au/world/secretive-israeli-nuclear-facility-undergoes-major-project/b417213f-9548-49f3-828d-fe674985c6b4

February 27, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Some Iranians and Israelis in full agreement on wanting to stop Iran nuclear deal

Hawks in Iran and Israel agree: Biden’s bid to salvage nuclear deal must not succeed, Guardian, Simon Tisdall     21 Feb 21 With elections looming in both states, and hardliners out to ensure the collapse of the 2015 deal, time is running short for the US president to save it

or sworn enemies, Iran and Israel have much in common. Both are regional powers, projecting their interests beyond their borders. Both are beholden, in different ways, to shifting US policy. Both have secretive nuclear programmes. And both are heading towards national elections – in Israel next month, in Iran in June – that could decide whether cold-hearted enmity turns into hot-blooded war.

The stand-off over Iran’s alleged attempts, which are always denied, to acquire atomic bomb-making capacity has gone on for so long that its dangers are often underestimated. Yet the coming days are crucial. Iran has set 21 February as a deadline for an easing of unilateral US sanctions. If it is ignored, Tehran is threatening to ban snap UN inspections of its nuclear facilities and further ramp up proscribed atomic activities……….

The escalating crisis has brought a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent days, involving Germany and Qatar who are acting as go-betweens. Crucially, the US accepted an EU invitation to join talks with Iran on returning to mutual compliance with the deal. In its response on Friday, Iran’s foreign ministry stuck to its previous position that all sanctions must be lifted before talks can begin

This will not be the last word. But it is a reminder of the sobering – and alarming – reality that powerful individuals and factions on both sides are doing all they can to ensure the 2015 deal definitively collapses. In Iran, hardline candidates and members of the Majlis (parliament), focused on June’s presidential poll, oppose any kind of rapprochement with America.

They include leading presidential hopeful Hossein Dehghan. He reportedly has the backing of Iran’s ultra-conservative supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has sworn never to talk to America. Dehghan accuses Biden of bad faith. “We still see the same policies … as we did from the Trump team: not lifting the oppressive sanctions against the Iranian people,” he told the Guardian

Such scepticism reflects genuine distrust, and fear of another Trump-style stab in the back. But it is also the result of calculation, suggested analyst Saeid Jafari . “Biden’s victory [over Trump] came as a big disappointment to hardliners seeking to undermine Rouhani’s last-ditch effort to save the nuclear accord,” he wrote. They may try to scupper any talks……..

Strong opposition to the deal, however Biden plays it, is evident in Israel, where the hard-right prime minister and close Trump ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, is fighting for his political life. Netanyahu encouraged Trump to ditch the pact, even as Israel has expanded its own nuclear facilities. He vehemently warns against resurrecting it as he woos Jewish supremacist parties in Israel’s fourth election in two years……..

Against all this must be set common sense. Trump’s maximum pressure policy failed miserably. It did not mitigate regional tensions or reduce proxy attacks. Rather, illegal US and Israeli assassinations of high-profile figures increased them. Sanctions have hurt Iranians, but did not topple the regime or change its behaviour. Iran is closer now to a nuclear weapon than in 2016.

Biden’s instinct to try to break this impasse and find a diplomatic way through – supported by the UK, Germany and France – is the right one. But words are not enough. As a sign of good faith, he should swiftly relax some sanctions and unfreeze Iran’s Covid-related $5bn IMF loan request.

Time is short. Proving peace works may be the only way to halt the fatal advance of warmongers in Israel and Iran.  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/21/hawks-in-iran-and-israel-agree-bidens-bid-to-salvage-nuclear-deal-must-not-succeed

February 23, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Israel expands Dimona nuclear facility previously used for weapons material

 

Israel expands nuclear facility previously used for weapons material, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/18/israel-nuclear-facility-dimona-weapons Julian Borger in Washington, Fri 19 Feb 2021 Satellite images show significant expansion of desert site over past few years   Israel is carrying out a major expansion of its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear arsenal.

Construction work is evident in new satellite images published on Thursday by the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM), an independent expert group. The area being worked on is a few hundred metres across to the south and west of the domed reactor and reprocessing point at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, near the desert town of Dimona.

Pavel Podvig, a researcher with the programme on science and global security at Princeton University, said: “It appears that the construction started quite early in 2019, or late 2018, so it’s been under way for about two years, but that’s all we can say at this point.”

The Israeli embassy in Washington The Israeli embassy in Washington had no comment on the new images. Israel has a policy of deliberate ambiguity on its nuclear arsenal, neither confirming nor denying its existence. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that Israel has about 90 warheads, made from plutonium produced in the Dimona heavy water reactor.

Avner Cohen, a leading expert on the Israeli nuclear programme called the new images “intriguing” and noted that the footprint of the Dimona site had remained essentially unchanged for decades.

The nuclear facility is reported to have been used by Israel to create replicas of Iran’s uranium centrifuges to test the Stuxnet computer worm used to sabotage the Iranian uranium enrichment programme in Natanz. But that more than 10 years ago, long before the current expansion began.

Israel built the Dimona reactor in the 1950s with extensive, clandestine help from the French government. By the end of the decade there were an estimated 2,500 French citizens living in Dimona, which had its own French lycées but all under the cover of official deniability.

According to The Samson Option, by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, French workers were not allowed to write home directly but had their letters sent via a phoney post-office box in Latin America.

Dimona’s role in Israel’s nuclear weapons programme was first disclosed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu, who told his story to Britain’s Sunday Times in 1986.

Before publication, he was lured from Britain to Italy by a female Israeli agent and abducted by Mossad. Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement, for revealing Dimona’s secrets.

February 20, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Mossad’s high tech murder of Iranian nuclear scientist

Why  is this article written in such an extraordinarily boastful style?

 

 

Truth behind killing of Iran nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh revealed

Top nuclear expert was killed by the Mossad, who used a one-ton remote-controlled gun smuggled into Iran piece by piece over eight months, the JC can disclose,   JC Jake Wallis Simons, February 13, 2021 The Iranian nuclear scientist who was shot dead near Tehran in November was killed by a one-ton automated gun that was smuggled into the country piece-by-piece by the Mossad, the JC can reveal.

The 20-plus spy team, which comprised both Israeli and Iranian nationals, carried out the high-tech hit after eight months of painstaking surveillance, intelligence sources disclosed……..

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 59, known as the “father of the bomb”, lost his life in a burst of 13 bullets as he travelled with his wife and 12 bodyguards in Absard, near Tehran, on 27 November last year.

When Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s “father of the bomb”, perished in a hail of bullets on the outskirts of Tehran in November, the assassination stunned the Iranian regime and made headlines around the world. But three months on, key questions remain unanswered.

Nobody even knows how the 59-year-old nuclear scientist was killed. Initial reports suggested he was gunned down by armed men; later, a Revolutionary Guards official blamed a “satellite-operated” gun using artificial intelligence.

Quite where such a device had come from, and how it had been set up, remained unexplained. To this day, nobody knows whether the operation was a snap move or had been planned for months. And despite many theories, no one knows exactly why he was killed.

Uncertainty also hangs over President Trump’s role in the hit. Some analysts argued that he was making his mark before leaving office, while others denied American involvement.

Most importantly of all — despite widespread speculation that Israel was responsible — nobody has pinned down the identity of those behind the killing.

Until now. Today, the JC can confirm that the hit was carried out by Mossad, Israel’s feared intelligence service. ……

The JC has confirmed that the assassins did indeed use a sophisticated remote-controlled gun, with a small bomb built in to allow it to self-destruct (though contrary to Iranian claims, it was not “satellite operated”)……..

“The machine was quite an impressive thing. There was a team on the ground as well, which made it quite complicated. But it had to be done and it was worth it.”……

Further assassinations were planned for the future, the source said, though nothing on the same scale as Fakhrizadeh or Soleimani. “Yes, the Mossad may have plans for further departures,” the source said……. https://www.thejc.com/news/world/world-exclusive-truth-behind-killing-of-iran-nuclear-scientist-mohsen-fakhrizadeh-revealed-1.511653

February 20, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Iran foiled series of assassinations planned by Israel – says Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi

Iranian minister: Israel planned series of hits against officials in nuclear program  https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/02/15/iranian-minister-israel-planned-series-of-hits-against-officials-in-nuclear-program/– By  Neta Bar

Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi says his officers had “recognized and foiled” several alleged attempts by Israel to eliminate Iranian officials in the wake of last year’s hit on the country’s nuclear mastermind – who he says was killed by a disgruntled co-worker, not Israel.

Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi claimed Sunday that Israel had planned to carry out “many operations” seeking to undermine the Islamic republic’s efforts to develop nuclear capabilities, saying these efforts have ” all been prevented by Iranian security.”
These efforts, he told the state-run ISNA news agency, included planned assassinations of officials in the nuclear program, which were to follow the November elimination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, believed to be head of the Iranian military nuclear program.

“After Fakhrizadeh was killed, the Zionists attempted to carry out additional acts of terrorism and evil in the country, including more assassinations. These attempts were recognized and foiled by Iranian intelligence,” he said.

While the ayatollahs’ regime has consistently blamed Israel for Fakhrizadeh’s death, Alavi told ISNA on Sunday that the country’s nuclear mastermind was not, in fact, killed by Israel rather “by a disgruntled co-worker.”

“The man responsible for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was fired from the intelligence service and left the country shortly before it [the hit] actually took place. He is now wanted by Iranian authorities,” the minister said.

He did not elaborate as to whether Iranian authorities think the suspect was working with Israel.

February 15, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

UK’s Freedom of Information law revealed Israel nuclear link, but now FOI is under threat

From duck houses to nuclear weapons: what we know because of Freedom of Information law, Open Democracy,  

Over the past 20 years, the ‘right to know’ legislation has helped expose many abuses of power, but now it’s under threat, Adam Bychawski11 February 2021  ”………. Since the act passed, politicians have repeatedly threatened to limit its powers. Recently, we revealed that an ‘Orwellian’ Cabinet Office unit has been coordinating Freedom of Information (FOI) responses across government departments, and screening journalists’ requests in ways that experts say could be breaking the law.

The unit has blocked the release of files about the contaminated blood scandal that claimed the lives of thousands across Britain and information about high-rise buildings that have potentially lethal aluminium cladding.

It’s not just journalists and rights campaigners who should be worried – the public should be too. Many of the biggest abuses of power have come to light only because of Freedom of Information requests.

Here are just a few examples of what Freedom of Information requests have revealed over the years………….

Britain’s role in Israel’s nuclear weapons program……

While the West has for decades been attempting to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, another Middle Eastern state is believed to have quietly built a covert nuclear bomb. Israel has long had a policy of neither confirming nor denying the existence of its nuclear programme. Despite this, it is thought to have established a clandestine arsenal on par with India and Pakistan.

How did Israel achieve this with a minimum of international outcry? Freedom of Information disclosures from the 1960s revealed that Britain was among many countries that secretly made hundreds of shipments of nuclear materials to Israel.

The documents showed that the nuclear industry played a key role in securing the transfer of the materials, despite warnings by British intelligence that it might be used to make a bomb. ………

A pandemic might seem like an unusual time to plan a “radical shake-up” of the NHS, but a freedom of information request by openDemocracy revealed that is exactly what the government has been preparing.

The disclosure showed that Munira Mirza, the controversial head of Boris Johnson’s policy unit, has been apportioned to oversee the plan. Mirza, who previously worked for Johnson during his time as mayor of London, has no background or policy experience in health.

The government initially declined to confirm reforms, it took a freedom of information request to confirm they are happening.

In February, a leaked document revealed plans to give the government substantially more control over the NHS, prompting concerns from health works about the timing of the changes.

Who’s behind a hardline Brexit pressure group?………

The public has a right to know who is trying to influence government policy, so Ministers should not prevent this information from being released because it may be politically awkward,” said Transparency International’s research manager, Steve Goodrich. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-information/duck-houses-nuclear-weapons-what-we-know-because-freedom-information-law/

February 13, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s military threat to Iran. Iran calls on U.N. to respond.

Iran calls for UN response over Israeli military action threat
An Israel general said its military is preparing ‘operational plans’ in reaction to Iran boosting its nuclear programme.
Aljazeera Maziar Motamedi, 7 Feb 2021

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s representative to the United Nations has protested recent Israeli military action threats against the country, calling on the intergovernmental organisation to interfere.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Israel has not only increased “provocative and warmongering rhetoric” against Iran, but is also actively making plans to act on its threats.

The latest example, he said, came in late January when top Israeli general Aviv Kochavi said Israel’s military is preparing “a number of operational plans, in addition to those already in place” in reaction to Iran boosting its nuclear programme in recent months.

Iran’s UN representative said the threat violates article two of the UN charter and requires a “proportionate response by the global community” due to Israel’s history of attacking other nations in the region…….

Takht-Ravanchi said Israel must take responsibility for its hostile actions and the UN must counter the country’s “destabilising and warmongering policies” as the entity in charge of securing international peace.

The representative also called for his letter to be registered as a formal document in the UN Security Council…….https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/7/iran-calls-for-un-response-over-israeli-military-action-threat

February 9, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Restoring Iran nuclear deal is good for Israel

Restoring Iran nuclear deal is good for Israel – opinion,  Economic pressure is of no value if it is not accompanied by a diplomatic route that will allow Iranian leaders to justify a policy change. Jerusalem Post By NADAV TAMIR   JANUARY 6, 2021 

The Biden administration, to be sworn in on January 20, will have to deal with many urgent issues at home and abroad and to repair the rubble left behind by the Trump administration. For Israel, despite the existential importance of reaching a two-state solution with the Palestinians and preventing a binational catastrophe, there is no more urgent priority at the moment than a return to the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the world powers (P5 +1) and Iran. This will immediately stop the prospect of Iranian nuclear breakout, which has become a very real possibility since the Trump administration’s abandonment of the agreement……..
Contrary to what the detractors say, the Biden administration has no intention of allowing Iran to reach military nuclear capabilities. The Biden approach is that in order to prevent Iran from achieving military nuclear capabilities, diplomacy is needed alongside economic pressure. To this end, it is necessary to renew the international coalition vis-à-vis Iran and its expansion, and it is necessary to strengthen the pragmatic side in Iranian regime that favor the good of the Iranian economy over efforts to achieve Shiite hegemony in the Middle East.  ……
The Israeli government needs to learn from the mistakes of its policies vis-à-vis the Obama administration. We must be a player that contributes to the international effort to stop Iran and refrain from pursuing a unilateral and confrontational policy toward the US and other powers. The Israeli confrontation with the Obama administration meant we were not part of the process of building the agreement, turning Israel into a divisive issue in American politics and tearing up the Jewish community, which largely supported Obama’s approach.

In order to stop Iran and to restore Israeli relations with the US and with the American Jewish community, the Israeli government must cooperate with the Biden government in its efforts to return to diplomacy with Iran from its first day in office, on January 20, not a moment too soon.

The writer is a former diplomat and foreign policy adviser to president Shimon Peres, a current senior adviser for international affairs at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, and a member of the board of the Mitvim regional foreign policy think tank and the steering committee of the Geneva Initiative. He served at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and as consul general to New England. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/restoring-iran-nuclear-deal-is-good-for-israel-opinion-654501

January 7, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Joe Biden must end the cover-up of, and the huge money to, Israel’s nuclear weapons

Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons, Guardian, Desmond Tutu, 1 Jan 2021

The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians

Desmond Tutu is a Nobel peace laureate and a former archbishop of Cape Town

Every recent US administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine US law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Part of the reason for this is to stop people focusing on Israel’s capacity to turn dozens of cities to dust. This failure to face up to the threat posed by Israel’s horrific arsenal gives its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a sense of power and impunity, allowing Israel to dictate terms to others.

But one other effect of the US administration’s ostrich approach is that it avoids invoking the US’s own laws, which call for an end to taxpayer largesse for nuclear weapons proliferators.

Israel in fact is a multiple nuclear weapons proliferator. There is overwhelming evidence that it offered to sell the apartheid regime in South Africa nuclear weapons in the 1970s and even conducted a joint nuclear test. The US government tried to cover up these facts. Additionally, it has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Yet the US and Israeli governments pushed for the invasion of Iraq based on lies about coming mushroom clouds. As Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu said: the nuclear weapons were not in Iraq – they are in Israel.

Amendments by former Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn to the Foreign Assistance Act ban US economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that acquire nuclear weapons. While president, Jimmy Carter invoked such provisions against India and Pakistan.

But no president has done so with regard to Israel. Quite the contrary. There has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” – effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility. And since President Bill Clinton, according to the New Yorker magazine, there have been these secret letters………

This farce should end. The US government should uphold its laws and cut off funding to Israel because of its acquisition and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The incoming Biden administration should forthrightly acknowledge Israel as a leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and properly implement US law. Other governments – in particular South Africa’s – should insist on the rule of law and for meaningful disarmament, and immediately urge the US government in the strongest possible terms to act……… https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/31/joe-biden-us-pretence-israel-nuclear-weapons

January 2, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

What’s behind the assaisnation of Iran’s top nuclear scientist?

The operation behind the assassination of the Iranian nuclear program founder, The Hybrid War Institute, 
Eyal Pinko, 29 Nov 20, 

On Friday morning, November 27, Muhsin Fakhrizadeh, considered the founder of Iran’s nuclear program, was assassinated…….. It is not the first-time assassination attempts were made to kill Fakhrizadeh, who survived a similar assassination attempt five years ago. Sixty years old Fakhrizadeh, who holds a doctorate in physics by his profession, was a key figure in the Iranian nuclear program and is considered one of its ancestors. Besides, Fakhrizadeh has been involved in other Iranian strategic plans, such as developing Iran’s air defense system and developing the missile upgrade program, known as Iran and Hezbollah’s missile precision project………
Once a clear and high-quality intelligence picture has been produced, which will allow an understanding of the target’s life routine and planned events, a relevant operational plan to thwart him will create, including the timing of the attack, ways, and means of access and withdrawal from the attack. …….. The recent assassination of Fakhrizadeh comes just a few weeks before the regime change in the United States, and the understanding that President-elect Joe Biden is expected to ease the nuclear sanctions imposed by Trump on the Iranian regime as part of his “maximum pressure” progra ……….

Senior Iranians, who were quick to accuse Israel of assassination, promised that Iran would not remain silent, and a painful Iranian response was expected. Fakhrizadeh’s senior status and key role in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile development raises the likelihood of an Iranian response. As Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s military adviser, Hossein Dehghani, said, “In the last days of a provocative ally, Israel is striving to increase pressure on Iran to go to war. We will pursue the shahid’s killers and make them regret their actions.” Dehghani is one of the prominent candidates for Iran’s presidency in the elections that are expected to take place in the country next year.

Simultaneously, the change of the administration in the United States and the Iranian hope for the expected changes with the entry of Biden into office is a brake and a deterrent to the Iranian response. An Iranian response at this time may be against Israeli elements only and at low intensity. As a recall, Iran has previously stated that it will respond sharply to the United States for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and has not yet implemented its threat in practice. It will now be a shaky deadline for it to react, at least until the Biden administration stabilizes.

For Israel, if it is the one behind the assassination operation, it is likely that the assassination operation will not significantly delay or halt Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear developments. But it could create a deterrent to Israel taking all measures to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear capability, even when it is expected that the US political support for these efforts will decrease significantly during Biden’s administration.. https://www.hwi.institute/post/the-operation-behind-the-assassination-of-the-iranian-nuclear-program-founder

November 29, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Architect of its nuclear programme assassinated – Iran vows retaliation

Iran vows retaliation after top nuclear scientist shot dead near Tehran  Guardian,   Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, identified by Israel as director of nuclear weapons programme, ambushed in street  Patrick Wintour and Oliver Holmes, Sat 28 Nov 2020 Iran has vowed retaliation after the architect of its nuclear programme was assassinated on a highway near Tehran, in a major escalation of tensions that risks placing the Middle East on a new war footing.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was ambushed with explosives and machine gun fire in the town of Absard, 70km (44 miles) east of Tehran. Efforts to resuscitate him in hospital failed. His bodyguard and family members were also wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Israel was probably to blame, and an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed retaliation. “We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action,” tweeted Hossein Dehghan.

The killing was seen inside Iran as being as grave as the assassination by US forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani in January.

Israel will face accusations that it is using the final weeks of the Trump administration to try to provoke Iran in the hope of closing off any chance of reconciliation between Tehran and the incoming US administration led by Joe Biden.

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli Defence Force intelligence, said: “With the window of time left for Trump, such a move could lead Iran to a violent response, which would provide a pretext for a US-led attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.”……..  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/27/mohsen-fakhrizadeh-iranian-nuclear-scientist-reportedly-shot-dead-near-tehran

November 28, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | incidents, Iran, Israel, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 1 Comment

Report: Israel ‘deeply concerned’ by Saudi Arabia, China alleged nuclear cooperation,

Report: Israel ‘deeply concerned’ by Saudi Arabia, China alleged nuclear cooperation, MEMO, Middle East Monitor, August 21, 2020 Israel’s Walla news website revealed that Tel Aviv has informed the United States that it was “gravely” concerned by alleged nuclear cooperation between Saudi Arabia and China.The website said senior Israeli intelligence officials had called their American counterparts to express their “grave concern” about the cooperation between Riyadh and Beijing.

According to the site, “unnamed” Israeli officials said there was a secret factory of primitive materials used in uranium enrichment in Saudi Arabia near the capital, Riyadh, explaining that the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times were the first to report on it, including satellite images of the factory.

The officials pointed out that the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deals with the file as “very sensitive” politically since Israel considers Saudi Arabia an important ally in the face of Iran.

The officials added that the Israeli intelligence services, the ministries of foreign affairs, intelligence and defence, and the Atomic Energy Commission are following the developments of the Saudi nuclear program……….

According to Israeli officials, Saudi Arabia has cooperated with China, because the Chinese did not ask for guarantees that the programme would be purely civilian, which is what the United States always demands. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200821-report-israel-deeply-concerned-by-saudi-arabia-china-alleged-nuclear-cooperation/

August 22, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Plan for nuclear-weapon free zone is unlikely to impress Israel

Eliminating Israel’s bomb with a nuclear-weapon-free zone?    https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/eliminating-israels-bomb-with-a-nuclear-weapon-free-zone/, 29 Jul 2020 Ramesh Thakur Nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs) deepen and extend the scope of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and embed the non-nuclear-weapon status of NPT states parties in additional treaty-based arrangements. This is why several NPT review conferences have repeatedly affirmed support for existing NWFZs and encouraged the development of additional zones.

There are currently five zones: in Latin America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central Asia. At a minimum, all NWFZs prohibit the acquisition, testing, stationing and use of nuclear weapons within the designated territory of the zone. They also include protocols for pledges by nuclear powers not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against members of the zone.

Israel has seemed more interested in implementing a military solution to its security challenges, including the threat of a preventive strike on Iran, than in exploring diplomatic options. But it’s simply not credible that Israel can keep its unacknowledged nuclear arsenal indefinitely, while every other regional state can be stopped from getting the bomb in perpetuity. The alternatives for Israeli security planners are regional denuclearisation or proliferation. The latter would entail the further risks of heightened tension and increased instability. Moreover, a nuclear-weapon capability is of no use to Israel in deterring or managing the threat of terrorism.

Because ‘the logic of using force to secure a nuclear monopoly flies in the face of international norms’, Israel could consider trading its nuclear weapons for a stop to Iran’s development of a nuclear-weapon capability by agreeing to an NWFZ. Conversely, the confidence built among states through an NWFZ process can spill over into other areas of regional interactions. The experience of working together in negotiating a zonal arrangement, and then working together once the zone is operational, generates habits of cooperation and sustains mutual confidence, both of which are necessary conditions for resolving other regional security issues.

Can an NWFZ be used for nuclear disarmament of a non-NPT state?

When the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995, the package deal included a resolution on the creation of a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction. The resolution required all regional states (including those outside the NPT) to sign, and International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards to be applied to all nuclear facilities in the region. The 2010 NPT review conference—the last one that had an agreed final document—reiterated the importance of the 1995 resolution and requested the UN secretary-general and Russia, the UK and the US—co-sponsors of the 1995 resolution—to convene a conference in 2012 to that end.

Finnish diplomat Jaakko Laajava was appointed as the facilitator and Helsinki was named as the venue for the conference scheduled to begin on 17 December 2012. However, on 23 November Victoria Nuland of the US State Department said there would be no conference ‘because of present conditions in the Middle East and the fact that states in the region have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions for a conference’. The failure contributed to the collapse of the 2015 review conference.

Like the Red Queen in Through the looking-glass, the UN has to run very fast just to stay where it is. The adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons might be thought to have made another NWFZ redundant. Yet, by an 88 to 4 vote (75 abstentions), UN General Assembly decision 73/546 of 22 December 2018 called on the secretary-general to convene a conference at UN headquarters in 2019 to elaborate a legally binding treaty for establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. Importantly, however, in paragraph a(iii), the document stipulated that all decisions of the conference ‘shall be taken by consensus by the States of the region’. The conference was held on 18–22 November 2019. Its political declaration affirmed ‘the intent and solemn commitment’ to pursue a treaty-based commitment, just like in 1995.

Not surprisingly, Israel is wary of the proposal’s origins in a document to which it did not subscribe, adopted by a conference to review and extend a treaty that it has not signed, whose core prohibition it has ignored. In a formal letter to the secretary-general (document A/72/340 (Part 1), 16 August 2017), Israel emphasised ‘the need for a direct and sustained dialogue between all regional States to address the broad range of security threats and challenges’. It’s difficult to see how negotiations can begin until all states explicitly accept the existence of Israel. No NWFZ has previously been established among states that refuse to recognise one another and do not engage in diplomatic relations and whose number includes some that are formally at war.

The bleak security and political environment in the conflict-riven Middle East is particularly inauspicious for the creation of an NWFZ. There is no regional organisation to initiate and guide negotiations, nor is there a regional dialogue process that can form the backdrop to negotiations. An NWFZ in regions of high conflict intensity may have to follow rather than cause the end of conflicts. Syria is convulsed in a civil war. Egypt has yet to sign the IAEA Additional Protocol and the Chemical Weapons Convention, or ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention and the African NWFZ. But it does strongly support a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.

Turkey is a NATO member. The possession and deployment of nuclear weapons are integral to NATO doctrine and command structure and US tactical nuclear weapons are based in Turkey. How can this be reconciled with Turkey’s membership of an NWFZ? Alternatively, how meaningful would a Middle Eastern NWFZ be without Turkey?

Most crucially, Israel is already a nuclear-armed state. This immediately raises an obvious but critical question. Is the expectation that Israel will sign a protocol as a nuclear-armed state, or that it must sign the treaty after first eliminating its nuclear weapons? The latter would be without precedent and transform the Middle East NWFZ treaty from a normal non-proliferation treaty into a unique disarmament treaty. An NWFZ is traditionally established as a confidence-building measure among states that have already forsworn the nuclear option. It is unlikely to be established as a disarmament measure, or even to constrain the future potential of states like Iran that retain the nuclear option in their national security calculus.

Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general, is emeritus professor at the Australian National University and director of its Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

July 30, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

American-Israeli strategy developing for clandestine not-quite-war strikes on Iran?

Long-Planned and Bigger Than Thought: Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Program

Some officials say that a joint American-Israeli strategy is evolving — some might argue regressing — to a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes. NYT,   By David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Ronen Bergman, 12 July 20

As Iran’s center for advanced nuclear centrifuges lies in charred ruins after an explosion, apparently engineered by Israel, the long-simmering conflict between the United States and Tehran appears to be escalating into a potentially dangerous phase likely to play out during the American presidential election campaign.
New satellite photographs over the stricken facility at Natanz show far more extensive damage than was clear last week. Two intelligence officials, updated with the damage assessment for the Natanz site recently compiled by the United States and Israel, said it could take the Iranians up to two years to return their nuclear program to the place it was just before the explosion. An authoritative public study estimates it will be a year or more until Iran’s centrifuge production capacity recovers.
Another major explosion hit the country early Friday morning, lighting up the sky in a wealthy area of Tehran. It was still unexplained — but appeared to come from the direction of a missile base. If it proves to have been another attack, it will further shake the Iranians by demonstrating, yet again, that even their best-guarded nuclear and missile facilities have been infiltrated.
Although Iran has said little of substance about the explosions, Western officials anticipate some type of retaliation, perhaps against American or allied forces in Iraq, perhaps a renewal of cyberattacks. In the past, those have been directed against American financial institutions, a major Las Vegas casino and a dam in the New York suburbs or, more recently, the water supply system in Israel, which its government considers “critical infrastructure.”
Officials familiar with the explosion at Natanz compared its complexity to the sophisticated Stuxnet cyberattack on Iranian nuclear facilities a decade ago, which had been planned for more than a year. In the case of last week’s episode, the primary theory is that an explosive device was planted in the heavily-guarded facility, perhaps near a gas line. But some experts have also floated the possibility that a cyberattack was used to trigger the gas supply.
Some officials said that a joint American-Israeli strategy was evolving — some might argue regressing — to a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes, aimed at taking out the most prominent generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and setting back Iran’s nuclear facilities……..   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-trump.html

July 13, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Explosion at Iran’s nuclear facility probably caused by Israel

What caused the explosion at a nuclear facility in central Iran?, The Strategist  10 Jul 2020|, Connor Dilleen  It seems increasingly likely that the 2 July explosion at the Iran Centrifuge Assembly Centre, located near the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, was the result of sabotage. And, despite initial speculation that it was the result of a cyberattack against critical operational control systems—and thus of a similar vein to the Stuxnet attack that took down multiple centrifuge cascades at Natanz in 2010—the simpler and more plausible explanation is that the explosion was caused by a bomb.

Despite claims of responsibility by a previously unknown group calling itself the Homeland Cheetahs that supposedly comprises disgruntled Iranian former military and security services personnel, it now appears widely accepted that Israel was behind the attack. There has been further speculation that Israel was also behind other curious incidents that have occurred at Iranian facilities in recent weeks—including explosions at the gas storage area near the Khojir missile facility at Parchin, at a medical facility in Tehran, and at a factory south of Tehran—although there is as yet no evidence of foul play in these events.

Multiple media outlets—including the New York Times and the Washington Post—have referenced intelligence officials attributing the Natanz attack to Israel. And while Tehran was slow in apportioning blame, on 7 July it accused Israel of being behind the attack, saying it was ‘a “wake-up call” meant to deter Iran amid advancements in its nuclear program, and … [that] those who planted the explosives had significant insight into the country’s nuclear program’.

Israel has form in using lethal force against high-value nuclear targets in the Middle East. Between 2010 and 2012, Israeli agents murdered four Iranian nuclear scientists. Earlier, Israel launched military strikes that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 and the Syrian Al Kibar reactor in 2007, the two most obvious manifestations of the Begin doctrine, which stipulates that Israel cannot allow any of its regional adversaries to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

However, two key issues remain unresolved. First, it’s not clear that the explosion at the centrifuge assembly centre will be a significant a setback for Iran’s enrichment capabilities. Second, if it is accepted that Israel was behind the incident, it’s difficult to assess whether the Natanz attack was merely a warning to Tehran or represents a new stage in Israeli efforts to curtail Tehran’s nuclear program. It’s possible that the attacks were also intended to provoke a reaction from Tehran that would justify more punitive and definitive military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities by either Israel or the US…….. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/what-caused-the-explosion-at-a-nuclear-facility-in-central-iran/

July 11, 2020 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

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