Iran... What will we do?

[BridgeTroll]

Not even Ahmadinejad is that crazy.

he is...

[Dog Walker]

Not even Ahmadinejad is that crazy.

he is...

He's not, but the ruling council of mullahs is.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iaea-says-foreign-expertise-has-brought-iran-to-threshold-of-nuclear-capability/2011/11/05/gIQAc6hjtM_print.html

IAEA says foreign expertise has brought Iran to threshold of nuclear capability
By Joby Warrick, Published: November 6

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.

Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added.

The officials, citing secret intelligence provided over several years to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the records reinforce concerns that Iran continued to conduct weapons-related research after 2003 â€" when, U.S. intelligence agencies believe, Iranian leaders halted such experiments in response to international and domestic pressures.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog is due to release a report this week laying out its findings on Iran’s efforts to obtain sensitive nuclear technology. Fears that Iran could quickly build an atomic bomb if it chooses to has fueled anti-Iran rhetoric and new threats of military strikes. Some U.S. arms-control groups have cautioned against what they fear could be an overreaction to the report, saying there is still time to persuade Iran to change its behavior.

Iranian officials expressed indifference about the report.

“Let them publish and see what happens,” said Iran’s foreign minister and former nuclear top official, Ali Akbar Salehi, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported Saturday.

Salehi said that the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program is “100 percent political” and that the IAEA is “under pressure from foreign powers.”

‘Never really stopped’

Although the IAEA has chided Iran for years to come clean about a number of apparently weapons-related scientific projects, the new disclosures fill out the contours of an apparent secret research program that was more ambitious, more organized and more successful than commonly suspected. Beginning early in the last decade and apparently resuming â€" though at a more measured pace â€" after a pause in 2003, Iranian scientists worked concurrently across multiple disciplines to obtain key skills needed to make and test a nuclear weapon that could fit inside the country’s long-range missiles, said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who has reviewed the intelligence files.

“The program never really stopped,” said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The institute performs widely respected independent analyses of nuclear programs in countries around the world, often drawing from IAEA data.

“After 2003, money was made available for research in areas that sure look like nuclear weapons work but were hidden within civilian institutions,” Albright said.

U.S. intelligence officials maintain that Iran’s leaders have not decided whether to build nuclear weapons but are intent on gathering all the components and skills so they can quickly assemble a bomb if they choose to. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear activities are peaceful and intended only to generate electricity.

The IAEA has declined to comment on the intelligence it has received from member states, including the United States, pending the release of its report.

But some of the highlights were described in a presentation by Albright at a private conference of intelligence professionals last week. PowerPoint slides from the presentation were obtained by The Washington Post, and details of Albright’s summary were confirmed by two European diplomats privy to the IAEA’s internal reports. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol.

Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran “has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. In the presentation, he described intelligence that points to a formalized and rigorous process for gaining all the necessary skills for weapons-building, using native talent as well as a generous helping of foreign expertise.

“The [intelligence] points to a comprehensive project structure and hierarchy with clear responsibilities, timelines and deliverables,” Albright said, according to the notes from the presentation.

Key outside assistance

According to Albright, one key breakthrough that has not been publicly described was Iran’s success in obtaining design information for a device known as an R265 generator. The device is a hemispherical aluminum shell with an intricate array of high explosives that detonate with split-second precision. These charges compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.

Creating such a device is a formidable technical challenge, and Iran needed outside assistance in designing the generator and testing its performance, Albright said.

According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country’s nuclear program. Documents provided to the U.N. officials showed that Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, according to two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.

Danilenko’s role was judged to be so critical that IAEA investigators devoted considerable effort to obtaining his cooperation, the two officials said. The scientist acknowledged his role but said he thought his work was limited to assisting civilian engineering projects, the sources said.

There is no evidence that Russian government officials knew of Danilenko’s activities in Iran. ­E-mails requesting comment from Russian officials in Washington and Moscow were not returned. Efforts to reach Danilenko through his former company were not successful.

Iran relied on foreign experts to supply mathematical formulas and codes for theoretical design work â€" some of which appear to have originated in North Korea, diplomats and weapons experts say. Additional help appears to have come from the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose design for a device known as a neutron initiator was found in Iran, the sources said. Khan is known to have provided nuclear blueprints to Libya that included a neutron initiator, a device that shoots a stream of atomic particles into a nuclear weapon’s fissile core at the start of the nuclear chain reaction.

One Iranian document provided to the IAEA portrayed Iranian scientists as discussing plans to conduct a four-year study of neutron initiators beginning in 2007, four years after Iran was said to have halted such research.

“It is unknown if it commenced or progressed as planned,” Albright said.

The disclosures come against a backdrop of new threats of military strikes on Iran. Israeli newspapers reported last week that there is high-level government support in Israel for a military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

“One of the problems with such open threats of military action is that it furthers the drift towards a military conflict and makes it more difficult to dial down tensions,” said Peter Crail, a nonproliferation analyst with the Arms Control Association, a Washington advocacy group. “It also risks creating an assumption that we can always end Iran’s nuclear program with a few airstrikes if nothing else works. That’s simply not the case.”

Special correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran contributed to this report.

[buckethead]

In my previous posts within this thread, I suggested an immediate attack against Iran.

I also suggested some kind of Patriot Act, which would suspend Habeas Corpus.

You guys continued with the jibber jabber.

We have some invadin' to do, and I'd like to offer your sons and daughters up to support my plan.

It's not like we'd be killing people that matter. That, and... It's only money.

They do, after all, hate us for our freedom.

WMD

[BridgeTroll]

In my previous posts within this thread, I suggested an immediate attack against Iran.

I also suggested some kind of Patriot Act, which would suspend Habeas Corpus.

You guys continued with the jibber jabber.

We have some invadin' to do, and I'd like to offer your sons and daughters up to support my plan.

It's not like we'd be killing people that matter. That, and... It's only money.

They do, after all, hate us for our freedom.

WMD

The title of the thread is "What will we do?"... Not... what should we do...

Predictions?

[buckethead]

"We try to take over the world."

http://www.youtube.com/v/iJPFSNu_QNs

[BridgeTroll]

Below is a link to the anticipated UN IAEA report on Iranian nuclear activities.  It is 25 pages long and highly technical in nature.

http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_8Nov2011.pdf

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,796997,00.html

Iran's Nuclear Denials Are 'an Oriental Fairytale'

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog sharpened its tone on Iran this week with a formal report claiming Tehran had carried out tests "relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device." The report was milder than suspicions voiced for years by Western politicians, but stronger than UN reports under the agency's former chief, Mohammed ElBaradei. It stirred consternation from Washington to China, though one Iranian spokesman dismissed it as "unbalanced, unprofessional, and prepared with political motivation and under political pressure by mostly the United States."

The report stopped short of claiming Tehran had command of a functional nuclear warhead. But it offered evidence that Iran had tested detonators "consistent with simulating the explosion of a nuclear device" and conducted "work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon."

No New UN Sanctions

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the UN's nuclear oversight organization, and its job is to determine how far outside international agreements Tehran has stepped with its nuclear energy program. Tuesday's report had -- on its face -- the potential to bring tougher sanctions on Iran by the UN Security Council. But Russia and China, which both hold veto power at the Security Council, both said immediately that further sanctions would be unacceptable.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said the IAEA's "detailed evidence" was damning, though not all the information was new. One fresh detail the agency mentioned with "particular concern" was a series of computer modelling studies carried out by Iran in 2008-09. "The application of such studies to anything other than a nuclear explosive," reads the report, "is unclear to the agency."

German commentators on Thursday are unanimous in believing that Iran wants a nuclear bomb. They don't agree however, at all, on what to do.

The conservative daily Die Welt writes:

"The world has known about the existence of the previously secret Iranian nuclear program for nine years now, but so far the international community has been unable to bring itself to impose more than half-hearted sanctions on Tehran. Iran, however, is not just any old state, but a country that has for decades used terror to further its political aims, which supports terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, destabilizes countries in the Middle East and elsewhere and which has been threatening a UN member country -- Israel -- with destruction for years. It is hard to image a state in whose hands nuclear weapons would be more dangerous. So what else does the international community need before it finally uses all the means at its disposal to prevent the completion of the Iranian bomb?"

"German and European politicians like to give the Israelis dire warnings against launching a military attack out of desperation. But when it comes to developing alternatives to prevent (Iran from getting the bomb) -- something that would be a serious strategic threat for Europe but an existential emergency for Israel -- most of them remain silent. No responsible politician will be able to avoid this question any longer -- especially not in Germany."

The left-wing daily Die Tageszeitung argues:

"The denials from Iran aren't believable. The government's refusal to discuss this evidence with the IAEA -- breaking its obligation under the UN's nuclear non-proliferation treaty -- only increases suspicion."

"But international calls for sanctions that are 'sharper' (Guido Westerwelle), 'crippling' (Benjamin Netanyahu), or 'unprecedented' (Nicolas Sarkozy) are useless. Harder sanctions will only work if they're imposed globally, by the UN Security Council."

"But an isolated solution won't be workable, either … not with sharper sanctions (from the West) or through military strikes. Either measure would succeed only in the context of a regional treaty that establishes a massive nuclear-free zone in the Middle East."

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"Instead of formulating a political strategy for this particular point in time, the international community is using nothing but old methods to dissuade Iran from a building nuclear bomb. It's a race, and Iran will win."

"The debate over a military strike has been revived in the last couple of days. But this is a non-option, as Israelis know. They're yelling about it now to pressure the rest of the world to impose tougher sanctions."

"The second unrealistic option is a total blockade of Iran -- an oil and gas embargo on a land rich in both. This is also a non-option."

"What's wrong with a direct warning of mutual assured destruction? Why not -- as the experienced German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger has suggested -- simply express the unthinkable? Tell the Iranians that they can expect nuclear armageddon if they set off a nuclear bomb. Perhaps Iran should be treated as the nuclear power it aims to become, in order to scare it off."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"IAEA General Director Amano was unable to answer the question as to how close to building a bomb the Iranians might be. But from the myriad puzzle pieces lying around, he chose those which seem to fit a picture of reality. The evidence may remind one of the fictional 'proof' of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But Amano's dispassionate nature is reassuring. He doesn't conceal the fact that he knows only what the IAEA member states tell him -- and he lets others draw conclusions. That is more appropriate for the Vienna-based agency than the political tactics of his predecessor ElBaradei, who seemed to believe that it was up to him to prevent a war with Iran."


The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The most interesting page of the new report on Iran's nuclear program is the last one. It has a colorful graphic that shows what sorts of cargoes might be carried in a new missile nosecone that Iranian technicians have been converting. IAEA experts come to a fairly clear conclusion, that the converted nosecone is good for exactly one cargo -- a nuclear warhead."

"The Iranian regime has characterized some damning documents as CIA fabrications or Zionist propaganda. If you believe Iran, what's really going on is a peaceful but secret project to build a wonder-machine, whose blessed goal is known only to a small circle of powerful men, and whose details can't be revealed to the skeptical West. Anyone who has read the IAEA report will recognize this story as an oriental fairytale."

Editor's note: The Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security has posted a copy of the IAEA report on Iran on its website in PDF format.

-- Michael Scott Moore

[buckethead]

There we have it. A majority of German news outlets surveyed believe Iran is close to nukes, as does the IAEA.  They also seem to suggest "the west" must do something about it due to the fact that Russia and China have UN Security Council veto powers.

The further "left" news outlet calls for the initiation of MAD policy toward Iran. The others seem to call for a "pragmatic" approach which seems to include military action.

Iran seeks a Caliphate (Panasia). They hate us for our freedom. (Already scientifically proven)

And for the trifecta...... WMD

In short, if we don't take action soon they can shut down the canal and cripple the world.

Looks like we've got some killin' to do.


Volunteers?

[BridgeTroll]

Iranians attacked and looted the UK embassy in Tehran yesterday... with diplomatic staff barely escaping...

Britain has ordered the Iranian embassy in London closed and all diplomats expelled...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/30/us-iran-britain-embassy-idUSTRE7AS0X720111130

UK expels Iran diplomats after embassy attack
10:02am EST
By Robin Pomeroy and Mitra Amiri

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Britain shut down the Iranian embassy in London and expelled all its staff on Wednesday, saying the storming of the British diplomatic mission in Tehran could not have taken place without some degree of consent from Iranian authorities.

Foreign Secretary William Hague also said the British Embassy in Tehran had been closed and all staff evacuated following the attack on Tuesday by a crowd who broke through gates, ransacked offices and burned British flags in a protest over sanctions imposed by Britain on the Tehran government.

It was the most violent incident so far as relations between the two countries worsen due to a wider dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

Hague said Iranian ambassadors across the European Union had been summoned to receive strong protests over the incident. But Britain stopped short of severing ties with Iran completely.

"The Iranian charge (d'affaires) in London is being informed now that we require the immediate closure of the Iranian embassy in London and that all Iranian diplomatic staff must leave the United Kingdom within the next 48 hours," Hague told parliament.

"We have now closed the British embassy in Tehran. We have decided to evacuate all our staff and as of the last few minutes, the last of our UK-based staff have now left Iran."

It was the worst crisis between Britain and Iran since full diplomatic relations were restored in 1999, 10 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa to kill author Salman Rushdie for his book "The Satanic Verses."

Hague said it was "fanciful" to think the Iranian authorities could not have protected the British embassy, or that the assault could have taken place without "some degree of regime consent."

"This does not amount to the severing of diplomatic relations in their entirety. It is action that reduces our relations with Iran to the lowest level consistent with the maintenance of diplomatic relations," he added.

British Prime Minister David Cameron chaired meetings of the government's crisis committee on Tuesday night and again on Wednesday morning to decide London's response.

But mindful of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, when radical students held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, Britain waited till all its two dozen diplomatic staff and dependents had left the country to announce its move.

IRAN ELITES FEUD

While the attack raises tensions between Iran and the West, it also exposes widening divisions within Iran's ruling elite over how to deal with the increased international pressure as sanctions take their toll on the already stagnant economy.

The protest appeared to be a move by the conservatives who dominate parliament to force President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to heed their demand to expel the British ambassador.

Ahmadinejad and his ministers have shown no willingness to compromise on their refusal to halt Iran's nuclear work but have sought to keep talks open to limit what sanctions are imposed.

The West believes the program is aimed at building a nuclear weapon, a charge Tehran strongly denies.

"It was planned and organized by the students, but it was not something that came from the government," said Mohammad Marandi, an associate professor at Tehran University.

"The students were telling me days before that they were planning to be there in large numbers. They said some students would try (to storm the embassy)," he said. "I don't think the government is happy with what happened."

Conservative newspapers trumpeted the embassy seizure.

The daily Vatan-e Emrouz declared "Fox's den seized," referring to Britain's nickname "the old fox" which reflects a widely held view in Iran that the former imperial power still wields great power behind the scenes in Iranian and international affairs.

While Iranian police at first did not stop the protesters storming the embassy gates, they later fired teargas to disperse them and freed six Britons held by demonstrators.

Iran's Foreign Ministry expressed its regret for the "unacceptable behavior of few demonstrators."

The protesters hit back at the Foreign Ministry and police.

"While the protesting students were seeking to answer to the plots and malevolence of this old fox in support of the decision of the revolutionary parliament to expel the ambassador of the British government we witnessed the harsh blow of the police on these students," said a statement by a group calling itself the Islamic community of seven Tehran universities.

"We expected the police to be on the side of the students instead of confronting them."

"CARNAGE"

Britain last week banned all its financial institutions from any dealings with Iran, including its central bank, after a report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency suggested Iran may have worked on developing a nuclear arsenal.

Iran, the world's fifth biggest oil exporter, says it only wants nuclear technology to generate electricity.

The United States and Canada also tightened their sanctions on Iran last week but France is pressing for more.

"France is advocating sanctions on a scale that would paralyze the regime: freezing of central bank assets and an embargo on hydrocarbon exports," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in an interview in a weekly news magazine.

Referring to an EU meeting on Iran in Brussels on Thursday, Juppe said: "We want to reach a common position so that the pressure will be utmost. We cannot keep letting the Iranians take us for a ride."

The protesters stormed the main British embassy in downtown Tehran, smashing windows, torching a car and burning the British flag, while at the same time, another group broke into a British diplomatic residential compound at Qolhak in north Tehran.

Several sources told Reuters that diplomats had had their movements restricted by protesters and one said staff in the main British embassy had been herded into a room while protesters ransacked the premises.

Both properties were severely damaged, with official and personal possessions looted or destroyed, said sources who had spoken to embassy staff. One described the scene as "carnage."

There was a heavy police presence outside the British embassy on Wednesday with patrol cars on every corner and police officers stationed on foot every few meters.

EU ambassadors met in Tehran on Wednesday to discuss the security of their staff and premises. Norway said it had temporarily closed its embassy but other European missions were operating normally.

[BridgeTroll]

Look familiar?

http://www.youtube.com/v/-0670-gdlNU

[BridgeTroll]

http://news.yahoo.com/iran-army-declines-mps-hormuz-exercise-remarks-132115297.html

..Iran army declines comment on MP's Hormuz exercise remarks
Reuters â€" Mon, Dec 12, 2011....Mon, Dec 12, 2011

....TEHRAN (Reuters) - A member of the Iranian parliament's National Security Committee said on Monday that the military was set to practice its ability to close the Gulf to shipping at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the most important oil transit channel in the world, but there was no official confirmation.

The legislator, Parviz Sarvari, told the student news agency ISNA: "Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure."

Contacted by Reuters, a spokesman for the Iranian military declined to comment.

Iran's energy minister told Al Jazeera television last month that Tehran could use oil as a political tool in the event of any future conflict over its nuclear program.

Tension over the program has increased since the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported on November 8 that Tehran appears to have worked on designing a nuclear bomb and may still be pursuing research to that end. Iran strongly denies this and says it is developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Iran has warned it will respond to any attack by hitting Israel and U.S. interests in the Gulf and analysts say one way to retaliate would be to close the Strait of Hormuz.

About a third of all sea-borne shipped oil passed through the Strait in 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and U.S. warships patrol the area to ensure safe passage.

Most of the crude exported from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq - together with nearly all the liquefied natural gas from lead exporter Qatar - must slip through a 4-mile wide shipping channel between Oman and Iran.

[JeffreyS]

Good luck with that Iran you would certainly need it.

[urbanlibertarian]

Here's Ron Paul answering a question from FNC's Megan Kelly about Iran and Israel:

KELLY: If you were President Paul and it turned out you were wrong â€" that it turned out that Iran did have the bomb and it attacked Israel â€" would you step in?

    PAUL: No. I’d let Israel take care of ‘em. Why should we interfere with Israel? We’re always interfering with Israel when they wanna deal with their neighbors. We undermine their national sovereignty. We shouldn’t tell them how to manage their borders. I defended Israel when they took out the nukes in Iraq many many years ago.

    Israel has 300 [nukes]. [...] There’s a lot of problems in Iran. There’s no doubt about it. But I tell you what: They’re not suicidal.

Sounds reasonable to me.

[jerry cornwell]

Here's Ron Paul answering a question from FNC's Megan Kelly about Iran and Israel:

KELLY: If you were President Paul and it turned out you were wrong â€" that it turned out that Iran did have the bomb and it attacked Israel â€" would you step in?

    PAUL: No. I’d let Israel take care of ‘em. Why should we interfere with Israel? We’re always interfering with Israel when they wanna deal with their neighbors. We undermine their national sovereignty. We shouldn’t tell them how to manage their borders. I defended Israel when they took out the nukes in Iraq many many years ago.

    Israel has 300 [nukes]. [...] There’s a lot of problems in Iran. There’s no doubt about it. But I tell you what: They’re not suicidal.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Yeah, Ron Paul closes the case here. Particularly the last line.