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Israel determined to“maintain military superiority”, in preparation for a nuclear Iran

Gantz: We must ‘adapt our plans’ to prepare for a nuclear Iran

Prime minister says Israel carefully monitoring situation in Lebanon and that IDF currently in better place than it was in 2006 war against Hezbollah, Tims of Israel, By JUDAH ARI GROSS15 July 2021, Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Wednesday called for Israel to step up its preparations for the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon……… Israel has maintained that as it is not part of the nuclear deal, it is free to act as it sees fit to prevent Iran from obtaining an atomic bomb.

In his speech, Gantz called for the government to allow the country’s security services to “maintain military superiority, which ensures our secure existence and advances peace.”

The remark appeared to refer to a report by the Kan broadcaster earlier in the evening that the IDF was asking the government for a major budget increase, in large part to prepare itself to conduct strikes aimed at thwarting Iran’s nuclear pursuit………https://www.timesofisrael.com/gantz-we-must-adapt-our-plans-to-prepare-for-a-nuclear-iran/

July 17, 2021 Posted by | Israel, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s outgoing top Mossad chief reveals that they caused recent attacks targeting Iran’s nuclear programme and murdering their scientists.

Israel spy on Iran nuclear scientists: ‘We offer them a way out’, Aljazeera

The outgoing spy agency chief reveals Israel was behind recent attacks targeting Iran’s nuclear programme and its top scientist.  The outgoing chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service has offered the closest acknowledgement yet his country was behind recent attacks targeting Iran’s nuclear programme and a military scientist.

The comments by Yossi Cohen, speaking to Israel’s Channel 12 investigative programme Uvda in a segment aired on Thursday night, offered an extraordinary debriefing by the head of the typically secretive agency in what appears to be the final days of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule.

It also gave a clear warning to other scientists in Iran’s nuclear programme that they too could become targets for assassination even as diplomats in Vienna try to negotiate terms to try to salvage the 2015 nuclear accord with world powers. United States President Joe Biden has dispatched his diplomats to revive the landmark deal from which his predecessor, Donald Trump, walked away in 2018.

“If the scientist is willing to change career and will not hurt us anymore, then yes, sometimes we offer them” a way out, Cohen said.

Among the major attacks to target Iran, none have struck deeper than two explosions over the last year at its Natanz nuclear facility. There, centrifuges enrich uranium from an underground hall designed to protect them from air strikes.

In July 2020, a mysterious explosion tore apart Natanz’s advanced centrifuge assembly, which Iran later blamed on Israel. Then in April of this year, another blast tore apart one of its underground enrichment halls.

Discussing Natanz, the interviewer asked Cohen where he would take them if they could travel there, he said “to the cellar” where “the centrifuges used to spin”.

“It doesn’t look like it used to look,” he added.

Iran nuclear programme is peaceful

Cohen did not directly claim the attacks, but his specificity offered the closest acknowledgement yet of an Israeli hand in the attacks. The interviewer, journalist Ilan Dayan, also seemingly offered a detailed description in a voiceover of how Israel snuck the explosives into Natanz’s underground halls.

“The man who was responsible for these explosions, it becomes clear, made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges are placed,” Dayan said. “As they install this foundation within the Natanz facility, they have no idea that it already includes an enormous amount of explosives.”

They also discussed the November killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist who began Tehran’s military nuclear programme decades ago. The US and its regional ally Israel suspect that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. But Tehran has long maintained its programme is peaceful.

While Cohen on camera does not claim the killing, Dayan in the segment described Cohen as having “personally signed off on the entire campaign”. Dayan also described how a remotely operated machine gun fixed to a pick-up truck killed Fakhrizadeh and later self-destructed.

Cohen described an Israeli effort to dissuade Iranian scientists from taking part in the programme, which had seen some abandon their work after being warned, even indirectly, by Israel. Asked by the interviewer if the scientists understood the implications if they did not stop, Cohen said: “They see their friends.”

They also talked about Israel’s operation seizing archival documents from Iran’s military nuclear programme. Dayan said 20 agents – none Israelis – seized material from 32 safes, then scanned and transmitted a large portion of the documents. Cohen confirmed that the Mossad received most of the material before it was physically taken out of Iran……… https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/11/ex-mossad-chief-signals-israel-behind-iran-nuclear-attacks

June 12, 2021 Posted by | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq nuclear reactor may have fuelled Saddam’s nuclear ambitions

ILeaked documents reveal secret French plans to stop Baghdad from getting nuclear weaponsBorzou DaragahiInternational Correspondent@borzou   Four decades ago, a squadron of Israeli fighter jets on a secret mission snuck over Saudi Arabian airspace and swooped in to destroy an Iraqi nuclear reactor site that was being built by French and Italian engineers just outside Baghdad. It was a surprise attack lauded by Israel’s defenders and cited as an example of effective derring-do, showing how raw military power could serve as a tool of arms control.

But a trove of previously secret United States documents release…….. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/israel-iraq-nuclear-osirak-military-b1861255.html

June 8, 2021 Posted by | Iraq, Israel, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Israeli public opinion makes a US-Iran nuclear deal urgent

Israeli public opinion makes a US-Iran nuclear deal urgent, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Doreen Horschig | May 14, 2021   Israel has consistently opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that the Biden administration is seeking to revive. The recent diplomatic talks in Vienna have been a welcome opportunity for proponents of the deal. But when progress was reported, Israel allegedly damaged an Iranian military vessel and a few days later caused a power outage at the Iranian nuclear site in Natanz.

Israel believes Tehran never abandoned its ambition to become a nuclear-armed state and that the deal paves the path for realizing this ambition. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration have been trying to convince the United States that a return to the JCPOA would be a mistake unless major flaws are addressed.

There are some straightforward reasons why it might be in Israel’s interest to revive the JCPOA, including a reduction of Iran’s installed centrifuges and stockpiles of enriched uranium. But another reason for reviving the deal has received little attention: Israeli public opinion. Not because the public supports the JCPOA (they don’t), but because—as my own recent research found—the Israeli public is highly hawkish and would be supportive of a nuclear first strike against a nuclear-armed Iran.

In other words, the world cannot rely on the Israeli public to avoid atomic warfare in the Middle East. Because of this, the Biden administration needs to redouble its efforts to make sure that the United States and Iran re-enter the nuclear deal. If Iran further develops the bomb and eventually obtains it, Israel’s government has public backing for a nuclear first strike against Iran—which would be both a regional and global disaster. The Israeli public will not provide a constraint if a nuclear strike is being considered………………

Israeli public opinion. Very few recent polls have attempted to identify preferences among the Israeli population for a nuclear strike. To fill this gap, I worked with Midgam—an Israeli research and consulting firm that frequently partners with academics—last summer to survey a nationally representative sample of 1,022 Israeli adults, including both Jews and Arabs. The survey aims to understand the circumstances under which people might support a first strike with a nuclear weapon………..

My survey results confirm a large hawkish majority indeed lurks within the Israeli public. Survey respondents read a government press release presenting a scenario that included an Iranian nuclear threat—and suggesting that an Israeli nuclear strike would effectively destroy an Iranian nuclear facility. The respondents were then asked: “Given the facts described in the article, if Israel decides to strike, how much would you approve or disapprove of this decision?” The findings suggest that 60 percent of Israelis approved of a nuclear first strike on Natanz if they felt threatened by a (hypothetically) nuclear-armed Iran. Even with a reminder of likely Iranian retaliation, approval for a strike was higher (45 percent) than disapproval (38 percent).

When I dug deeper to explore why some people are so supportive of the use of an atomic bomb, my research suggested that Israelis who were reminded of their mortality (through open-ended questions about their own deaths) were significantly more likely to support nuclear use in a first strike than those who were not reminded of death. Though it may seem paradoxical, a theory of psychology called Terror Management Theory predicts just that. It suggests that, when individuals are prompted to think of their own death, they become less risk-averse and increase their support for extreme aggression toward whatever it is that challenges their worldview—a worldview that normally provides a defensive death-denying belief. And what could remind Israelis more of their death than the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran?

This all suggests that the public cannot be counted on to be a constraint on Israeli leadership. Unlike during the Cold War, when people took to the streets to protest the US-Soviet arms race and use of nuclear weapons, there is currently no visible pro-disarmament sentiment in Israel. No public opposition in Israel will put a check on an Israeli nuclear first strike.

To avoid a dire conflict, it is in Israel’s interest to support diplomatic steps. So far, the JCPOA has prevented a trajectory to a nuclear first strike more effectively than counterproliferation measures and withdrawal did. If Israel needs one more reason to sympathize with the JCPOA, here it is: Public hawkishness could be a contributing factor that spirals the country into a nuclear crisis.

……….. If Israel wants to prevent a situation in which a nuclear-armed Iran causes the Israeli citizenry to support a nuclear first strike, then it should get on board with the JCPOA. And the Israeli public’s hawkishness should give the Biden administration an increased sense of purpose and urgency.

The window of opportunity to revive the Iran nuclear deal is closing quickly………………While the deal is not perfect, it’s at least a measure that has shown effectiveness in the past. ……….https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/israeli-public-opinion-makes-a-us-iran-nuclear-deal-urgent?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter05172021&utm_content=NuclearRisk_IranDealUrgent_05142021

May 18, 2021 Posted by | Israel, politics international, public opinion | Leave a comment

Israel’s Mossad co-operating with Saudi Arabia in devising military action against Iran?

Mossad Chief Reportedly Visited Saudi Arabia for Talks on Iran, https://www.haaretz.com/1.5152341 17 May 21, Account on WorldNetDaily follows series of recent reports on increasing secret cooperation between Israel and the Saudis, including defense coordination on matters related to possible military action.

Mossad chief Meir Dagan visited Saudi Arabia recently, if unofficial reports published over the weekend on the WorldNetDaily website are accurate. The Internet news site attributed the story to Arab sources.

According to the reports, the talks conducted in Saudi Arabia with the head of Israel’s espionage agency dealt with Iran and its nuclear program. The account follows a series of recent reports on increasing secret cooperation between Israel and the Saudis, including defense coordination on matters related to possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Two months ago, the Times of London reported that during the course of a Saudi military exercise, air defense system operations were halted for a few hours to rehearse a scenario whereby Israeli fighter planes would cross Saudi Arabian air space en route to an attack on Iran.

Arab and Iranian media outlets have also reported Israeli air force planes and helicopters landing in Saudi Arabia for the purposes of positioning equipment there.
Three weeks ago, it was reported that the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador in Washington said at a conference that the consequences of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranians would be more serious than an Israeli assault, because a nuclear Iran could not be tolerated. His remarks reflect a common concern felt in Israel and the Persian Gulf states over nuclear weapons in Iranian hands.

May 18, 2021 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hamas Targets Israeli Oil And Nuclear Facilities With Rocket Attacks

Hamas Targets Israeli Oil And Nuclear Facilities With Rocket Attacks, Oil Price By ZeroHedge – May 14, 2021 Hamas’ militant wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, announced earlier this week that it is deliberately targeting Israel’s secretive Dimona nuclear reactor site, known as the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, which lies east of the the Gaza Strip far into the Negev Desert.

It was on Wednesday that Qassam Brigade spokesmen said they were “directing a rocket strike involving 15 rockets for Dimona” – and since then it appears rockets have fallen generally in the southerly area – but there’s since been no reports of direct hits anywhere on the complex, or damage to the site……….

“On Tuesday, at least one rocket appeared to score a direct hit, damaging an Ashkelon facility connected to the Trans-Israel pipeline running from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea,” Newsweek observed, and continued:

“The military wing of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has targeted Israel’s nuclear facility, key oil facilities and other sites across the country amid a violent escalation between the two sides.”…… https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Middle-East/Hamas-Targets-Israeli-Oil-And-Nuclear-Facilities-With-Rocket-Attacks.html

May 15, 2021 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

In April, Syrian missile landed near Dimona nuclear reactor, interception failed.


Syrian missile lands near Dimona nuclear reactor, interception fails

SA-5 flies from Syria all the way to Negev in the longest-range attack yet by Syria; Patriot missile activated in response. By ANNA AHRONHEIM, UDI SHAHAM, JERUSALEM POST STAFF   APRIL 22, 2021 Israel and Syria exchanged missile attacks early on Thursday morning, after Damascus launched an advanced surface-to-air missile that landed in the Negev Desert.

Alarms sounded in Abu Qrenat near Dimona in the South.Syria fired the missile in response to what it claims was an Israeli Air Force bombing near Damascus. Israel frequently strikes Syria to prevent Iranian entrenchment in the country as well as weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.Reports from across the country, including central Israel and Jerusalem, spoke of “loud explosions” that “shook the houses.”The IDF activated its air defense systems in an attempt to intercept the missile, but that attempt failed. The military is investigating why its air defenses failed to intercept the SA-5.

Early reports indicated that the explosion was the result of a Patriot missile defense system battery responding to the firing of the missile into Israel. Missile parts were located on Thursday morning in the swimming pool of the Negev community of Ashalim.
“Due to a surface to air missile entering Israeli territory, air defense systems were activated,” a statement by the IDF read, noting that the military was still investigating the incident. The SA-5 reportedly landed close to Dimona, not far from the location of Israel’s reportedly secret nuclear reactor………… https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/alarms-sound-in-south-of-israel-665953

May 15, 2021 Posted by | Israel, Syria, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s ‘shadow war’ and plans to scupper Iran’s nuclear deal

Israel’s ‘shadow war’ and plans to scupper Iran’s nuclear deal

Hawkish elements in Israel will continue to play a leading role moving forward on Tehran’s nuclear programme, analysts say.  Aljazeera, Thomas O Falk, 3 May 2021

US President Joe Biden is pushing to reinstate Iran’s nuclear deal and weeks of talks in Austria appear to be bearing fruit.

Israel, however, continues to see its security jeopardised by a potentially nuclear Iran and is trying to thwart negotiations any way possible.

The Mossad spy agency chief Yossi Cohen – a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – met Biden on Friday and, according to one media report, pressed the US president not to sign back on to the nuclear accord unless “improvements” were made.

An unnamed senior Israeli official is quoted as saying Biden responded that the United States “is not close” to returning to the Iran deal, Axios reported.

Israel’s opposition to the nuclear agreement seems to go beyond words, however, with Iran accusing it of assassinating its top nuclear scientist and sabotaging its main nuclear facility Natanz in a series of attacks. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Benny Gantz, Israel’s defence minister, said in March his country has drawn up plans to strike Iranian targets if Tehran continues its nuclear escalation.

Simon Mabon, a professor of international politics at Lancaster University, told Al Jazeera that within Israel, and particularly in the government, hawkish elements will continue to play a leading role moving forward on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“Those supporting Netanyahu’s view of the Iranian regime are steadfast in their view that the Islamic Republic cannot be deterred through conventional forms of deterrence and a military strike is needed,” said Mabon.

‘Considerable damage’

Yaniv Voller, senior lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Kent, said Israel’s efforts against Iran’s nuclear programme – often described as “the shadow war” – are likely to continue given the positive events in Vienna after Tehran’s recent negotiations with world powers on the nuclear accord.

However, Voller said a hot war remains unlikely despite Israel’s best efforts.

“I do not think the shadow war will turn into a full-blown conflict between Israel and Iran. A greater risk is a local conflict between Israel and Iran’s proxies in the region, particularly Hezbollah,” Voller told Al Jazeera.

“This could be reminiscent of summer 2006, but with the potential to being even more devastating. Neither side has an interest in escalating the situation but, naturally, conflicts sometimes do spiral.”

He argued that, as the latest incidents have shown, Israel’s option to target the programme effectively is much broader than a mere preemptive attack.

“In any case, some of the actions that have been related to Israel and the US have already caused considerable damage to the Iranian nuclear programme, so a preemptive strike is not necessarily the only viable option to delay the Iranian nuclear programme.”…………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/3/israels-shadow-war-and-plans-to-scupper-irans-nuclear-deal

May 4, 2021 Posted by | Iran, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Israel (itself having 80 nuclear weapons) will do ”whatever it takes” to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon

Israel will do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop Iran on nuclear front -foreign minister  https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-will-do-whatever-it-takes-stop-iran-nuclear-front-foreign-minister-2021-04-16/Reuters, 17 Apr 21,  Israel will do “whatever it takes” to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said on Friday.

Speaking after a summit with his Greek and Cypriot counterparts and a senior representative from the UAE in Paphos, Cyprus, Ashkenazi said discussions centred around possibilities for building on prosperity and stability in the region.

“We also took time to discuss challenges that Iran and Hezbollah and other extremists pose to the stability of the Middle East and to the regional peace,” he said. “We will do whatever it takes to prevent this extremist … success and definitely, to prevent this regime from having nuclear weapons.”

April 17, 2021 Posted by | Iran, Israel, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel appears to confirm it carried out cyberattack on Iran nuclear facility

Shutdown happened hours after Natanz reactor’s new centrifuges were started, Guardian,  Martin Chulov Middle East correspondentMon 12 Apr 2021, Israel appeared to confirm claims that it was behind a cyber-attack on Iran’s main nuclear facility on Sunday, which Tehran’s nuclear energy chief described as an act of terrorism that warranted a response against its perpetrators.

The apparent attack took place hours after officials at the Natanz reactor restarted spinning advanced centrifuges that could speed up the production of enriched uranium, in what had been billed as a pivotal moment in the country’s nuclear programme.

As Iranian authorities scrambled to deal with a large-scale blackout at Natanz, which the country’s Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged had damaged the electricity grid at the site, the Israeli defence chief, Aviv Kochavi, said the country’s “operations in the Middle East are not hidden from the eyes of the enemy”.

Israel imposed no censorship restrictions on coverage as it had often done after similar previous incidents and the apparent attack was widely covered by Israeli media. Public radio took the unusual step of claiming that the Mossad intelligence agency had played a central role.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said later Sunday that “the struggle against Iran and its proxies and the Iranian armament efforts is a huge mission”…..


The unexplained shutdown is thought to be the latest in a series of exchanges between the two arch-enemies, who have fought an extensive and escalating shadow war across the Middle East over more than decade, centred on Iran’s nuclear programme and its involvement in matters beyond its borders.

Clashes have more recently been fought in the open, with strikes against shipping, the killing of Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, hundreds of airstrikes against Iranian proxies in Syria, and even a mysterious oil spill in northern Israel, which officials there have claimed was environmental sabotage.

Natanz has remained a focal point of Israeli fears, with an explosion damaging a centrifuge assembly plant last July, and a combined CIA and the Mossad cyber-attack using a computer virus called Stuxnet in 2010 that caused widespread disruption and delayed Iran’s nuclear programme for several years.

Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, urged the international community and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to take action against the perpetrators of the attack. He confirmed that a “terrorist attack” had damaged the electricity grid of the Natanz site. The IAEA said it was aware of the reports but declined to comment further…………

Western officials believe Israel has become increasingly brazen in its attempts to disrupt the Iranian programme, pointing to the killing of the country’s leading nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, last November, who was shot dead along with his bodyguards on a rural highway. Iran claims that artificial intelligence was used to identify Fakhrizadeh, who was gunned down by a remotely operated automatic weapon. The small lorry carrying the weapon then exploded…………… https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/israel-appears-confirm-cyberattack-iran-nuclear-facility

April 13, 2021 Posted by | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 2 Comments

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 | 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 | Iran, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Israel expands Dimona nuclear facility previously used for weapons material

 

February 20, 2021 Posted by | 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?

 

 

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

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