Iran Seeks To Continue Nuclear Research

[Nickdfresh]

Iran seeks nuclear freeze opt-outs
Thursday, November 25, 2004 Posted: 8:23 AM EST (1323 GMT)

VIENNA, Austria -- The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog says Iran is insisting it be allowed to operate some uranium enrichment machinery before a key meeting of his agency that could lead to sanctions against Tehran.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters on Thursday he hoped the dispute would be resolved within 24 hours.

He said Tehran was insisting that 20 centrifuges -- which purify uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power plants or atomic bombs -- be exempt from an agreement to freeze uranium enrichment and related activities.

"I'm going to report that we have completed our work with regard to verification of the suspension with one exception, the request by Iran to exempt 20 centrifuges for (research and development) without using nuclear material," ElBaradei told reporters before the IAEA governing board meeting in Vienna.

This request by Iran has resulted in a dispute between Iran and the EU, which ElBaradei said he hoped would be resolved "within 24 hours."

Western diplomats told Reuters that a European-Iranian accord for Tehran to freeze uranium enrichment appeared in jeopardy.

The diplomats said Iran seemed not to be ready to suspend its uranium enrichment program fully and was backing out of a pledge to France, Britain and Germany.

Speaking to CNN, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said Iran was under no legal obligation to the agency to suspend the program.

"Those centrifuges and that whole question of suspension was part of a deal between the Europeans and Iran to help to build confidence -- to suspend the program while diplomacy could act and hopefully build confidence in the international community of Iran's intentions," Gwozdecky said.

"(Iran's) obligation (to the IAEA) is to ensure inspections occur and that all of their programs are monitored, but not necessarily suspended."

Iran gave the EU a pledge last week that it would suspend its entire uranium enrichment program and all related activities in a bid to avoid possible economic sanctions by the U.N. Security Council. The freeze, aimed at preventing Iran from making bomb-grade uranium, took effect Monday.

Iran first promised the EU it would freeze its enrichment program in October 2003 but never entirely halted the work.

Meanwhile the EU's "Big Three," Britain, France and Germany, have circulated a draft resolution at the IAEA that demands Tehran keep frozen all nuclear work that could help it develop fuel for atomic weapons.

The main topic of the meeting of the IAEA's 35-member board is the agency's two-year investigation into Iran's nuclear program. The IAEA has found no clear proof that Tehran plans to make atomic arms, but is concerned Iran may possess hidden nuclear facilities.

It will also discuss South Korea's undeclared experiments with weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium.

[Nickdfresh]

Iranains maybe preparing for an attack by U.S. and Israeli warplanes designed to halt Nuclear Research.

Iranians march in N-row defiance
Wednesday, November 24, 2004 Posted: 12:28 PM EST (1728 GMT)

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Tens of thousands of civil defense volunteers held a rally Wednesday in Iran's capital city in a show of force designed to deter possible U.S. or Israeli attacks on Iran's nuclear installations.

The rally was held a day before a crucial meeting in Vienna of the Board of Governors of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Thursday's meeting is to debate whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program, which the United States, Israel, and several European countries say is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

There has been speculation in Iran that the United States or Israel may decide to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities in an effort to forestall Iran's alleged move towards building nuclear weapons.

In Tehran, men and women civil defense volunteers known as Bassij, or mobilization forces, lined up along several kilometers of a highway before marching past the their commanders.

They held up flags and placards denouncing the United States and Israel and pledging to defend the country.

Meanwhile, Iran's top nuclear negotiator was in Beijing, where he rejected U.S. demands that his country dismantle its nuclear program and sought support from China -- a permanent member of the Security Council with veto power.

"Definitely, Iran will never be prepared for dismantling," said Hossein Mousavian. "This is out of the question and is out of negotiation."

But, Mousavian said, Iran has suspended its nuclear activities, a move aimed at building confidence. The nuclear enrichment program, he said, will remain "forever peaceful and would never be diverted."

China has good reasons to support Iran. It faces Muslim unrest in its western frontier, and wants to cut off support to local dissidents from radical Islamic groups. China is also seeking stable sources of oil imports from countries such as Iran to meet surging energy needs stemming from rapid economic growth.

Iranian officials said China opposes sending the issue to the Security Council, and believes in Iran's commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. "We have promised Chinese officials that Iran would be committed to NPT safeguard and protocol," Mousavian said.

Still, officials in Israel expressed skepticism.

"The foreign minister of China believed after his visit to Tehran that the Iranians are serious about they are planning to move this development or those efforts only in order to develop, let's say, nuclear energy," said Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. "We know the truth. I think most of the world knows the truth."

After the Tehran march, the commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, Yahya Rahim Safavi, told a news conference that Iran is ready to face the United States, although he said he did not think an attack was likely.

"The Americans are deep in the quagmire of Iraq. They are not in a position to attack Iran," Safavi told CNN.

Bassij volunteers are the civil defense arm of the Revolutionary Guards -- an elite armed force parallel to the army.

In a deal with the three European powers, Britain, France and Germany, Iran has agreed to suspend its nuclear enrichment activities -- which could be diverted to producing nuclear fuel for weapons -- in return for a range of incentives.

But while Iran says it will never give up its right to nuclear know-how, Europe and the United States insist that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment activities indefinitely.

CNN Correspondent Kasra Naji contributed to this report

[DEMON CUNT]

LET'S GO KICK THEIR DAMN BUTTS! YEE HAW!

[DEMON CUNT]

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by DEMON CUNT
LET'S GO KICK THEIR DAMN BUTTS! YEE HAW!

We couldn't if we wanted too. Captain Yee-Haw has us tied down in in Iraq!

[BigBadBrian]

The problem with the Iranian situation is quite simple: power vs. economics. The EU believes Iran can appeased into backing down with trade deals. It's not about that. Iran doesn't want economic trade. It wants power. That is why it wants the "nuke." The Europeans simply don't understand the situation at all.

[Nickdfresh]

They also want to challenge the Israelis and their implied, yet unstated, possession of "the bomb."

The problem too with Iran is that they have a fairly large and powerful military, unlike Iraq.

[Nickdfresh]

Iran: Nuclear resolution unacceptable
Saturday, November 27, 2004 Posted: 2:17 PM EST (1917 GMT)


TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said the new draft resolution put forward by three European powers at a key meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog is still unacceptable despite recent changes, Iran's state-run news agency reported Saturday.

"There has been a good deal of changes in the draft resolution, but still, there are points that are not acceptable to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and run contrary to the Paris agreement," Kharrazi said, according to IRNA.

Kharrazi also rejected reports from Vienna that Iran agreed to give up the use of 20 centrifuges as part of a plan to freeze its nuclear program entirely.

The Iranians had initially asked the IAEA to exempt the 20 centrifuges, which can spin gas into fuel-level or weapons-grade uranium, despite an agreement reached earlier this month in Paris which obliges Iran to suspend all its uranium enrichment activities until a broader agreement is arranged with Great Britain, Germany and France.

Diplomats in Vienna, where the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency is meeting, are extremely concerned about Kharrazi's comments and told CNN's Matthew Chance it may make it difficult to put a deal back together again.

Over the weekend, representatives from Iran and Great Britain, Germany and France will hold informal talks in the Austrian capital in an effort to break the deadlock before the IAEA's board of governors reconvenes Monday at 3 p.m. (9 a.m. ET).

Diplomats familiar with the negotiations Friday said Iran struck a tentative deal with IAEA to give up the centrifuges, and had hoped -- as a result of the apparent progress -- a new IAEA resolution on Iran's nuclear program could come to a vote by Saturday.

The deal remains tentative until Iran formally submits a letter to the IAEA outlining the terms and the European countries that initiated the negotiations sign off.

Under the tentative agreement, Iran would give up its request to exempt the centrifuges when negotiators dropped two clauses from a draft IAEA resolution on Iran's nuclear program, the diplomats said.

The dropped provisions included a trigger clause that would have automatically referred Iran to the U.N. Security Council if it were found that the Iranians had reneged on their promise to stop enriching uranium.

The second clause that was dropped would have given IAEA inspectors Iraq-style access to Iran -- allowing inspectors to go anywhere at any time.

The IAEA already has extensive access arrangements, including above-normal access agreed to by the Iranians.

Finally, as part of the tentative deal, the IAEA would agree not to seal the centrifuges with steel wires but would instead monitor them with cameras.

Diplomats said the cameras render the centrifuges unusable but aren't as offensive to Iranian pride as having the centrifuges wired and sealed.

Iran has maintained throughout the negotiations that its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes.

CNN Correspondents Matthew Chance in Vienna and Kasra Naji in Tehran contributed to this report

[Nickdfresh]

CIA Attempts to Find WMD's in Iran

November 27, 2004

THE WORLD
U.S. Lacks Reliable Data on Iran Arms
The dearth of quality intelligence complicates Washington's effort to persuade other nations to act on its suspicions of nuclear activity.


By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Although convinced that Iran is "vigorously" pursuing programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the U.S. intelligence community has few sources of reliable information on any illicit arms activities by the Islamic republic, current and former intelligence officials and Middle East experts say.

The United States has struggled to get more than glimpses and incomplete accounts of Tehran's weapons programs, they say, despite the fact that American spy agencies are in a better position to collect information on Iran since U.S.-led invasions and occupations of two of the country's neighbors in the last three years.

The dearth of quality intelligence has complicated American efforts to convince other nations to more aggressively confront Iran, and accounts for the caution expressed by some U.S. intelligence officials last week when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he had seen important new evidence that Iran was pursuing ways to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

"There are parts of the Iranian world that are not impenetrable," said a former senior CIA official who left the agency several months ago. The CIA and other U.S. spy services have been able to get a steady stream of reports on political developments inside the regime, he said, and have had some success tracking Iran's support of terrorist networks, including Hezbollah.

But Tehran "is particularly controlling and tight" in maintaining secrecy around its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, the former official said.

"As with any country that may be pursuing WMD," he said, referring to weapons of mass destruction, "that's the most difficult nut to crack."

The combination of the hard-line U.S. diplomatic stance and the scant underlying intelligence has prompted comparisons to the United States' flawed case for war against Iraq. Despite the parallels, officials and experts said they believe there were important distinctions.

"We have so much more access to Iran" than U.S. intelligence did to Iraq before the war or to North Korea currently, said a congressional official with access to classified intelligence reports.

The official noted that significant numbers of Iranians travel abroad and that Iran is more open to outside visitors than either Iraq or North Korea.

"The window into Iran is much better," the official said.

Indeed, a secret CIA station in Los Angeles for years has cultivated contacts with members of the large Iranian population in Southern California, seeking information from those who have returned from trips to Iran or are in contact with relatives there, former CIA officials familiar with the program say.

Intelligence officials also note that unlike in Iraq, where inspectors searched the country before the U.S. invasion and found no evidence of ongoing illegal weapons programs, United Nations inspectors over the last year have confirmed that Iran has built facilities capable of enriching uranium, the main ingredient in a nuclear bomb.

Tehran says the facilities and equipment are for providing nuclear energy for peaceful, civilian use. Many U.S. analysts and experts doubt that explanation.

On Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog, reported in Vienna that Iran and three European nations were near agreement on Iran's suspending programs to enrich uranium using centrifuges, a process that can provide material for either power generation or nuclear weapons. An earlier agreement with Britain, France and Germany appeared to unravel this week when Iran insisted on allowing 20 centrifuges to continue operating.

This week, the CIA released a report concluding that Iran has "continued to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons." In particular, the report says the U.S. "remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program" and that Iran "received significant assistance" from the nuclear proliferation network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Iran has pledged to suspend enrichment activities, but some U.S. officials are concerned that it will continue nuclear weapons work at hidden locations. Although inspectors have visited Iran's declared sites and gathered valuable information, "they don't have any access to facilities that are undeclared or covert," a CIA official said. "Inspectors inspect what they're allowed to inspect."

The suspicion that Iran may have secret nuclear facilities would be a major complication if the U.S. or another nation were to attempt to disable Iran's program with military strikes. The Bush administration has not proposed such an extreme measure and so far has backed European leaders' efforts to negotiate with Tehran.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has provided new opportunities for American intelligence agencies to recruit informants traversing Iran's borders. U.S. officials believe that hundreds of Iranian intelligence operatives and members of the country's Revolutionary Guard have flowed into Iraq to provide material and support to Shiite Muslim clerics and elements of the insurgency.

Iran's activities are "bad news for what the United States is trying to do in Iraq," said Daniel Byman, a former Middle East analyst at the CIA who is an assistant professor at Georgetown University. "But the silver lining is it gives you access to streams of recruits," meaning some Iranian operatives might be coaxed into providing information to the United States.

Officials said that although there had been efforts to question Iranians, they had produced little useful information.

David Kay, the former head of the U.S. weapons search team in Iraq, said that "all the collection efforts are so dominated by security issues in Iraq" that the Iranians were asked almost exclusively about threats to U.S. forces and the interim Iraqi government.

Questions about Iranian weapons programs or other developments in Tehran were not part of interrogation scripts, Kay said, in part because Iranian agents operating in Iraq were seen as unlikely to have valuable information on those topics. The CIA declined to comment on its activities in the region.

The United States also relies extensively on satellites, surveillance aircraft and electronic eavesdropping equipment to monitor Tehran's nuclear activities. But "technical" collection efforts on Iran suffered a major blow this year when Tehran learned that the Americans had cracked its communications codes. U.S. officials have accused a former close ally of the Pentagon, Ahmad Chalabi, of leaking the information to Tehran.

"There was little doubt about that," said the former CIA official, who added that the disclosure had crippled one of the most successful U.S. intelligence operations against Iran.

Chalabi has denied the allegation.

In his remarks to reporters last week, Powell asserted that Iran was seeking to develop the capability to attach a nuclear warhead to a missile.

Experts said such efforts to develop longer-range missiles can be detected from satellite photos of the missiles and their launching stations, or from monitoring of tests of the devices. Improvements in warhead design are far more difficult to detect, if not impossible, without information from a human source with knowledge of the program.

Some of the most valuable information on Iran to surface in recent years has come from a longtime opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which claims to have a network of supporters inside the country tracking Tehran's nuclear and terrorist activities.

The Paris-based group was the first to disclose the existence of the secret uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, a report that was subsequently confirmed by inspectors. The group has a mixed record on the accuracy of other claims, and several years ago it was designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. But its public statements and claims are studied carefully by U.S. intelligence agencies.

"They obviously got sources inside their home country," said the former CIA official. "It's better than 'rumint,' " he said, using a common spy term for intelligence based on rumors.


Times staff writer Sonya Yee contributed from Vienna.

[ELVIS]

Next stop.. Iran...

[Viking]

The EU crapweasels and the Keystone Kops of the UN will continue to alternate between gut-wrenching appeasement and limp-dicked threats, until we finally have to step in and bomb the shit into dust.

[Nickdfresh]

If you guys think Iran will be that easy, you are delusional.