Is this the new 'reformed' Iran Mr Obama? : Iran boasts it producedlaser guided ballistic missiles with increased range

Iranian President says world powers have admitted failure in stopping Iran’s nuclear progress.

Iran has made a laser-guided ballistic missile with increased range, according to its defense minister.

“The fixed precision of our long-range missiles has increased to the extent that we can hit every point we wish,” Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said on Sunday, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.

He also said that the margin of error now is less than two meters for the missiles.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that world powers have admitted failure in stopping Iran’s nuclear progress.

“Iran’s policy of constructive interaction with the world states has forced the world to see the realities of Iran’s capabilities,” Rouhani said according to Iran’s Fars News Agency.

“You see that those powers which were thinking of destroying Iran’s enrichment capability, have now admitted that they cannot stop Iran's industrial progress and enrichment due to the indigenization of this industry and its expansion,” he said.

A Chinese official met with Rouhani on Sunday and said that Iran has a right to peaceful use of nuclear energy, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Both countries expressed their wishes to expand bilateral ties.

Rouhani also assured Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi that Iran’s nuclear program was peaceful and that it desires to solve the issue through negotiations.

“We respect Iran’s right to use nuclear energy, including the right of uranium enrichment,” said Jiechi according to Tasnim.

Jerusalem post

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Now the Twelfth Imam Can Come

Among the many who decried the Obama Administration’s catastrophic capitulation to the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, none spelled out its potential consequences as trenchantly as Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett: “We awoke this morning to a new reality,” he said Sunday. “A reality in which a bad deal was signed with Iran. A very bad deal. If a nuclear suitcase blows up five years from now in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the deal that was signed this morning.”

If that happens, it will also be because of the Shi’ite belief in the return of the Twelfth Imam. According to Islamic tradition, the dispute between the majority Sunnis and the Shiat Ali (Party of Ali) began upon the death of Muhammad in 632. The Sunnis contended that the prophet of Islam had made no provision for a successor as political, military, and spiritual leader of the Muslim community, and that therefore the Muslims should choose the best man among them as their leader. The nascent Party of Ali, on the contrary, claimed that Muhammad had designated his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor, and that the successor of Muhammad had to be a member of the prophet’s household.
What’s more, far from being a mere functionary, this successor would bear some of Muhammad’s prophetic spirit, as well as infallibility in deciding disputed questions. Ali was finally chosen as the fourth caliph in 656, but in 661 was assassinated. Hassan, his eldest son (and successor, as far as the Shi’ites are concerned), was murdered in 670 on the orders of the Sunni caliph Muawiya. Then the Sunni/Shi’ite split became definitive and permanent when Ali’s younger son, Husayn, was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680.

The Shi’ites were, thus, founded in loss and defeat, and these became the ongoing distinguishing features of Shi’ite history and piety. After the beheading of Husayn, the Shi’ites continued a succession of Imams, members of Muhammad’s household and his prophetic heirs. Each one in turn, over two centuries, was poisoned on orders of the Sunni caliph. According to the traditions of Twelver Shi’ism, the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the twelfth of these Imams, a boy of five years old, disappeared under mysterious and disputed circumstances in the year 874 – but remained alive. After his disappearance, he communicated to the world through four agents, the last of whom died in 941. At that point the Twelfth Imam went silent, entering the period of “Great Occultation.”

In his last communiqué to the world, via one of these messengers in 941, this mysterious figure consoled his followers with prophecies regarding his eventual reappearance. The circumstances of that reappearance could, in the hands of Iran’s mad mullahs, visit upon the world calamities of a scale never before seen. And Israel and America will bear the brunt.

“Hearts,” warned Mohammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, in his last message, “will become inaccessible to compassion. The earth will be filled with tyranny and violence.” He was speaking of the time of his reappearance, explaining that he would only come back to the world when the evil that Muslims were suffering was at its absolute apex. In this he echoed a Shi’ite tradition of the words of the prophet of Islam himself, Muhammad, who prophesied that the Twelfth Imam would be “the Resurrector” and explained: “He will fill the world with peace and justice as today it is filled with violence and tyranny.”

That violence and tyranny is not incidental to the theology of the Twelfth Imam, which has revenge as its core and essence. The Shi’ites began to teach that the Twelfth Imam would return at a time when the Muslims were oppressed as never before, and suffering worse than ever. The Imam, in the company of Jesus (re-imagined, as in Sunni Islam, as a Muslim prophet), would finally end the horrific persecution of the true believers, taking up arms against their enemies and conquering and Islamizing the world.

This eschatological revenge fantasy would be of no concern to anyone but pious Shi’ites and religious anthropologists were it not for the element of Shi’ite tradition that requires that the earth be “filled with tyranny and violence” before the Twelfth Imam can return.

There is no requirement that non-Muslims must be responsible for that violence; Shi’ites filled with religious fervor, like the Ayatollah Khamenei and the mullahs behind him, could hasten the Twelfth Imam’s return and the consummation of all things by, say, launching a nuclear strike against Tel Aviv or some other Infidel outpost, knowing that by doing so they would almost certainly be provoking a retaliatory strike that would subject the Muslims in Iran to more defeat and repression than even the Shi’ites had previously suffered. That would be enough to bring the Twelfth Imam out of the well where he is said to be hiding.

But that is a matter of religious hope and speculation; the devastation that would supposedly lead to his reappearance, however, would be all too real. The two powers that the Iranian mullahs have long designated as the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan” – America and Israel – would be the only targets of an Iranian attempt to hasten the Twelfth Imam’s coming.
A nuclear strike from Tehran into Israel could kill, estimates say, upwards of twenty million people, completely destroying the Jewish State.

Barack Obama, by acceding to the Iranians’ nuclear ambitions, has given a tremendous impetus to these revenge fantasies, probably not realizing or caring that Iran’s mullahs take the prophesies of the Twelfth Imam very seriously indeed – seriously enough for them to bet the entire world upon them. Obama has just made the odds appear to them to be considerably more favorable than they were just a week ago.

source

War, Peace, and a Nuclear Iran

 By Edward Bernard Glick

When I was a young man, two books impressed me. They still do. One is Konrad Lorenz's On Aggression. An M.D. and a Ph.D. and a 1973 Nobel laureate in medicine and physiology, Lorenz established the field of ethology, the study of the behavior of animals within their natural environment.

In his prologue to his book, Lorenz wrote, "the subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." According to him, animals, particularly males, are biologically programmed to fight over resources and turf and this behavior is part of natural selection. To a great degree, aggressive behavior is innate.

The other book that influenced me is Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative. He popularized and expanded on Lorenz's ideas. After reading Ardrey, a Book-of-the Month News reviewer asked: "Are we a territorial species? Do we defend ourselves, whether by war or other means, because we have learned to do so -- or because, as animals, we must?"

Lorenz and Ardrey provide the reasons for my embracing the Roman proverb Si vis pacem, para bellum, "He who wishes peace should prepare for war." (The full text goes on to say, "He who desires victory should carefully train his soldiers; he who wants favorable results should fight relying on skill, not chance.")
Today war is no longer confined to soldiers battling each other in uniforms. It now includes terrorists who do not wear uniforms, do not represent a sovereign state, and use civilian airplanes and motor vehicles to crash into buildings in order to kill their enemies.

Despite these changes, pacifists cling to the notion that war is always immoral and is never justified. They forget that soldiers, not sermons, stopped Islam from advancing into Christian Europe at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. It was not sermons, but soldiers, who freed the American colonists from Great Britain's rule in 1781. It was soldiers, not sermons, who emancipated America's slaves in 1865 and who liberated the survivors of the Nazi death camps in 1945.

Counterterrorism is the predominant form of contemporary war.

After the attack on New York's World Trade Center, on 11 September 2001, Americans divided themselves into the September 10th people, the September 12th people, and the September 13th people. The September 13th people blame the United States for September 11th and think that the proper U.S. response is to abandon American "arrogance" and American support of Israel. The September 10th people reject these notions, but think that terrorist acts are crimes that should be countered only by our law-enforcement and intelligence communities. The September 12th people believe that Islamic terrorists want to destroy Western civilization and that their acts of terrorism are acts of war that we must counter with mainly military responses.

When it comes to terrorism beyond our borders, passages from an article I published in 1979 come to mind:
  The essential question -- and it will cause us great pain in every sense if any of the American hostages now being held in Iran are harmed or are still being held when these words are printed -- is the extent to which the Western world in general, the Third World in particular, and the United States especially, are themselves responsible for this governmentally condoned terrorism.

  In its most recurring form, modern terrorism has manifested itself in the confrontation between the Arabs and the Israelis. . . Decades ago, Israel warned the world, particularly the Western nations, that internationally tolerated terrorism is a political virus that knows no boundaries. If left unchecked it would spread to other causes, continents, and countries.

  So long as they thought they were immune from the terrorist virus, aloof bystanders could adopt this kind of logic and base their actions and inactions on it. But there are no aloof bystanders. The Tehran terrorists have proven that once and for all. If the countries of the West do not band together against terrorism, whatever the short-term term economic sacrifices, their long-term future as truly sovereign states is problematical.
Those who hate America like to discuss war within the framework of American imperialism and colonialism. Yes, the United States took land from the native peoples of North America. But so did the French, British, and Canadians. So did the Spaniards and Portuguese in Latin America. So did the Australians and New Zealanders in the South Seas. So did the Russians, Chinese, and Japanese in Asia and Europe. Did the Scots, Welsh, and Catholics of Northern Island want to be a part of Great Britain? Do the Tibetans want to be part of Communist China?

 It is true that the United States conquered the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the 1898 Spanish-American War and remained in de facto control of Cuba until 1934. But America gave the Filipinos their independence in 1946, and it has promised statehood or independence to the Puerto Ricans whenever they want to have it.
It is true that President Theodore Roosevelt, influenced by U.S. Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan's sea-power theories, took advantage of a revolt against Colombia to acquire what became the Panama Canal Zone in 1903. But President Jimmy Carter returned both the Zone and the Canal to the Panamanians in 1977.
It is true that in 1945, President Harry Truman ordered the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan thus ending its participation in World War II. It is true that for a few years, the United States was the only power with nuclear weapons but it blackmailed no one. Nor did it take anyone's land. By contrast, the Soviet Union incorporated huge swaths of post-war Poland and Germany.

If one compares the United States to Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome -- or to Ottoman Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Russia, Britain, and France -- one can only conclude that the United States was and is the least warlike and least imperialistic super power in history.
The just-concluded agreement between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany raises the question of nuclear war,  something which Israel fears existentially.
In 1981, when Iraq threatened Israel, Israel's then Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, ordered the Israeli Air Force to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor and declared that "Israel has nothing to apologize for. In simple logic, we decided to act now, before it is too late. We shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal."
Now, one sometimes hears the argument that if Iran can live with an Israeli bomb, why can't Israel live with an Iranian one? The answer is that no Israeli leader has ever threatened to eradicate Iran. Iran is a large country. Israel is a tiny one. Israel's nuclear arsenal can deter its enemies only if they have the wisdom and sanity to be deterred.
During the Cold War, the Russians and the Americans operated under a political and military doctrine known as MAD, mutual assured destruction. It assumed that no matter how bad things got between the Soviet Union and the United States -- the 1962 Cuban missile crisis is a case in point -- neither side would risk annihilation.
The leaders of Iran do not think that way. They reason as follows: We have 70 million people, and Israel has 7 million. If we attack the Zionists with nuclear bombs, they will respond in kind. If they are lucky, they will kill half of us, but if Allah wills it, we shall kill all of them, and there will still be 35 million of us left.
In sum, we humans may enjoy periods of peace -- sometimes for a long time -- but we shall never rid ourselves of war because we are "wired" to fight over pieces of land, even useless pieces of land. I am afraid that Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, and Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus (the man who coined the Latin phrase Si vis pacem para bellum) are correct. So, too, is Max Boot, the American author and military historian. Boot rejects the "sunny, if ahistorical, Enlightenment faith that peace is the natural order of things and war a temporary aberration."
This is the world in which we have lived in the past. This is the world in which we live now. And this is the world in which we shall live in the future.

Based on part on my article "An Old Man's Thoughts on War and Peace," in Military Review, May- June, 2011

by Global Zionism

Watching the news it is really amazing that they went into Iraq & Afghan, losing many troops in the process, in Iraqis case to 'prevent' Saddam acquiring nukes, yet they just literally given a far more dangerous regime the means to acquire nukes, by giving them time and resources. It's now been stated that our dumb leaders still aren't sure if they aren't being bluffed. Lol bit late now! They really are the most useless embarrassments to world politics! How can we compare them to the leaders of old : We can't, so let's look at this so-called 'Deal'

So this is the deal : 

1) Iran will stop enriching uranium beyond 5%, and "neutralise" its stockpile of uranium enriched beyond this point, and we are supposed to believe it will?

2) Iran will give greater access to inspectors including daily access at the Natanz and Fordo nuclear sites. Again, how do we know they'll be shown "Everything?' 

3) There will be no further development of the Arak plant which it is believed could produce plutonium. But so what? Has it entered anyone's pea brains that the Iranians would hardly carry on using a plant that was 'suspect' 

In return for this ill thought out so-called concessions there will be no new nuclear-related sanctions for six months if Iran sticks by the accord, so they just got six months to carry on the bluff : That's going to be hard. 

Also Iran will also receive sanctions relief worth about $7bn (£4.3bn) on sectors including precious metals.

Yes people the Iran regime is going to be rewarded for being a barbaric evil regime with $7 Billion. We wonder how that will sit with the US tax payer as the American economy sinks?

by Daniel Pipes

The Geneva Agreement with Iran: A Foreign Policy Disaster

"For the first time in nearly a decade we have halted parts of Iran's nuclear program" announced a jubilantBarack Obama after the news of the just-signed Geneva six-month interim agreement with Iran.

But the American goal for the accord was that the Iranians not "advance their program" of building a uranium nuclear bomb (and perhaps a plutonium bomb too); the apparent deal exactly permits such advancement, plus sanctions relief to Tehran worth about US$9 billion.

This wretched deal offers one occasion when comparison with Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 is valid. An overeager Western government, blind to the evil cunning of the regime it so much wants to work with, appeases it with concessions that will come back to haunt it. Geneva and Nov. 24 will be remembered along with Munich and Sep. 29.

The Geneva negotiators on Nov. 23. Note the Iranian foreign minister (the man without a tie) ceremonially placed at the center.

Barack Obama has made many foreign policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster. Along with the health care law, it is one of his worst-ever steps. John Kerry is a too-eager puppy looking for a deal at any price.

With the U.S. government forfeiting its leadership role, the Israelis, Saudis, and perhaps others are left to cope with a bad situation made worse. War has now become a much more likely prospect. Shame on us Americans for re-electing Barack Obama. (November 23, 2013) - source

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Netanyahu says Iran nuclear deal is 'historic mistake'

Nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers reached in Geneva

1/24/2013 04:14

GENEVA- Iran and six world powers have reached an agreement on curbing Iran's nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief, several delegations in the talks said on Sunday.

"We have reached an agreement," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced on his Twitter feed. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also confirmed the deal.
----

Premier tells cabinet the world has become more dangerous as a result of agreement; Bennett: "Israel does not see itself as bound by this bad, this very bad agreement that has been signed."

Photo by: Reuters

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu characterized the agreement signed with Iran early Sunday morning as a historic mistake.

Directly contrasting US President Barack Obama who praised the agreement as opening a "new path toward a world that is more secure,"  Netanyahu – speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting -- said the world has become more dangerous as a result.

"What was agreed last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it is a historic mistake," he said. "Today the world has become much more dangerous because the most dangerous regime in the world took a significant step to getting the most dangerous weapon in the world."

For the first time, he said, the leading powers of the world agreed to uranium enrichment in Iran, while removing sanctions that it has taken years to build up in exchange for "cosmetic Iranian concession that are possible to do away with in a matter of weeks."

Netanyahu said the consequences of this deal threaten many countries, including Israel. He reiterated what he has said in the past, that Israel is not obligated by the agreement.

"Iran is committed to Israel's destruction, and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself by itself against any threat" he said. "I want to make clear as the prime minister of Israel, Israel will not allow Iran develop a military nuclear capability."

Netanyahu's government denounced world powers' nuclear agreement with Iran on Sunday as a "bad deal" to which Israel would not be bound.

Yet Israeli officials stopped short of threatening unilateral military action that could further isolate the Jewish state and imperil its bedrock alliance with Washington, saying more time was needed to assess the agreement.

"This is a bad deal. It grants Iran exactly what it wanted - both a significant easing in sanctions and preservation of the most significant parts of its nuclear program," an official in Netanyahu's office said.

Aimed at ending a dangerous standoff, the agreement between Iran and the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia was nailed down after more than four days of negotiations in the Swiss city of Geneva.

A senior US official said the agreement halted progress on Iran's nuclear program, including construction of the Arak research reactor, which is of special concern for the West as it can yield potential bomb material.

It would neutralize Iran's stockpile of uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, which is a close step away from the level needed for weapons, and calls for intrusive UN nuclear inspections, the official said.

The Islamic republic - which denies its nuclear program has hostile designs - has also committed to stop uranium enrichment above a fissile purity of 5 percent, a US fact sheet said.

But that still appeared to fall far short of Netanyahu's demand for a total rollback of the Iranian nuclear program.

"You stand and shout out until you're blue in the face, and you try to understand why they're not listening. The world wanted an agreement," Finance Minister Yair Lapid, a member of Netanyahu's security cabinet, told Israel's Army Radio.

"We also said that a diplomatic accord would be good. A diplomatic accord is certainly better than war, a diplomatic accord is better than a situation of permanent confrontation - just not this agreement."

Lapid said that in the Israel had to pore over the deal: "For example, we still don't understand exactly what stepping up the monitoring (on Iran's facilities) means. This is a detailed matter. God really is in the small details."

Economic Minister Naftali Bennett, another security cabinet member, told Army Radio in a separate interview: "Israel does not see itself as bound by this bad, this very bad agreement that has been signed."

Neither minister would be drawn on how Israel might respond. Israel, which is widely assumed to have the Middle East's sole atomic arsenal, sees a mortal menace in a nuclear-armed Iran and has at times threatened to launch a preemptive war against its arch-foe.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the Geneva deal required the Netanyahu government to conduct a strategic review.

Asked on Israel Radio whether he felt cheated by the United States for its role in the deal, Lieberman said: "Heaven forbid."

Meretz chairwoman Zehava Gal-On on Sunday praised the agreement while criticizing the Israeli government for overlooking important components of the deal.

“The Israeli government ministers’ assault on the agreement takes attention away from the fact that clauses of the deal include the most important goal which was the dismantling and rolling back of the fast track to the bomb,” she said.

“The main sanctions that will remain imposed on Iran and the tight supervision by IAEA inspectors who will visit nuclear sites daily are indicative of the fact that this is not just an American achievement, but also an Israeli achievement,” the Meretz chief said. “This is because the goal of supervision, similar to sanctions, is to encumber the race to the bomb and remove the possibility that Iran could fool the international community without anyone taking notice.”

The deputy speaker of parliament, Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, said on Saturday the interim agreement signed between Iran and the Western powers was tantamount to the Munich Agreement of the late 1930s.

“Like Czechoslovakia at that time, which was not party to the discussions that effectively sentenced it to death, Israel today watches from the sidelines how its existential interest is being sacrificed by the Western powers,” Feiglin said.

“Any rational person understands that we are in the midst of a process leads to a nuclear-armed Iran,” he said. “For years I have warned about the dangers of the strategy adopted by Israel towards the Iranian nuclear threat.”

Feiglin said that entrusting foreign powers to secure Israel’s defense interests is “disastrous” and “much worse than that which led to the Yom Kippur War.”

The lawmaker called on the Israeli government to declare an immediate end to all contacts with the West over the Iranian question and to make clear that it would not be bound by the agreement signed.

Knesset member Eli Yishai reacted Sunday morning to the deal: "the world's countries only saw the economic interests of the deal, and not their obligation to the security of Israel."

He stressed that Israel "has to no one to trust besides god and ourselves". - By HERB KEINON AND REUTERS

US says it 'appreciates' Israeli government skepticism over Iran nuclear deal

geez how understanding  of them....

United States officials on Sunday said they “appreciate” the Israeli government’s criticism of the interim agreement signed between the Western powers and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program.

In Washington, a senior US official said President Barack Obama would discuss Israel's misgivings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday.

"Ultimately we understand and appreciate how Israel is particularly skeptical about Iran. Given the threats that have been made about Israel from Tehran we understand why Israel will want to make sure that this is the best deal possible," the official said.

"I would say that what we have now is a six-month period to test whether the new leadership in Iran continues to follow through their commitment to move Iran on a new path. What we will know after six months is whether there can be a solution." 

White house: President Obama to call Netanyahu on Sunday

Iran currency jumps over 3% after nuclear deal

DUBAI - Iran's currency jumped more than 3 percent against the US dollar on Sunday as news of a breakthrough deal to curb Tehran's nuclear program raised hopes that the economy would start recovering from international sanctions.

The rial traded at around 29,000 against the dollar in Tehran's free market, Iranian traders said, up from about 30,000 before the agreement was reached by diplomats in Geneva in the early hours of Sunday.

"We are feeling the positive sentiment in Iran," Nariman Aflani, foreign exchange trader at AFI Group, an Iranian civil engineering firm, said by telephone.

He said that prices of construction materials such as ceramics and cement within Iran were coming down because people hoped a gradual loosening of sanctions would make it easier for the country to obtain supplies from abroad.

Under the Geneva agreement, Iran will receive minor relief from the sanctions, including potential access to $1.5 billion in revenue from trade in gold and precious metals, and permission to transfer $4.2 billion of revenue from its oil sales across borders. 

Defense minister tells Canadian counterpart Robert Nicholson that Iran is involved in every Mideast conflict; says nuke project must be stopped.

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and D
efense Minister Moshe Ya'alon in Halifax, Canada.
 Photo: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry

Interior of Bushehr nuclear plant

Iranian dissidents say Tehran moving nuclear research site

Alleged new nuclear site is a 600m tunnel complex built beneath mountains near the town of Mobarekeh, NCRI says.

An exiled Iranian opposition group said on Monday it had information about an underground nuclear site being built in Iran and that this was among a number of secret venues for an atomic bomb program.

The National Council of Resistance of Iranexposed Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water facility at Arak in 2002. But analysts say the NCRI has a mixed track record and a clear agenda of regime change in Tehran.

Iranian authorities deny any such intention, saying their nuclear program is for peaceful energy only. A diplomatic window to a peaceful solution of the dispute was opened by the election in June of moderate Hassan Rouhani as president.The Islamic Republic and six world powers will resume negotiations on Wednesday aimed at agreeing the first stage towards a comprehensive deal to end a decade-long standoff with Tehran defusing fears that it could develop nuclear weapons.

The Paris-based NCRI said members of its affiliated People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) inside the country had obtained reliable information on a new and covert site designated for Iran's nuclear project. But it had no details of what kind of nuclear activity was being carried out there.

"According to specific information obtained by the Iranian resistance, the clerical regime is establishing or completing parallel secret and undeclared sites for its nuclear project," NCRI official Mehdi Abrichamtchi told reporters.

Accusations the NCRI made in July and Octoberabout secret nuclear sites drew a wary international response, while the United States expressed skepticism about another claim in 2010.

The NCRI said the new site was inside a 600-metre tunnel complex beneath mountains 10 km (6 miles) from the town of Mobarekeh, adjacent to the Isfahan-Shiraz highway, within the existing Haft-e Tir military industrial complex.

Abrichamtchi said work on the site began in 2005 and the construction of tunnels ended in early 2009. Work on the facilities was recently completed, he said.

Abrichamtchi said Iran's Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research handled Iran's sensitive nuclear activity and also managed the new facility. The site had extra security compared to the rest of the military complex, he said.

Abrichamtchi said the information had been sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog. The IAEA had no immediate comment on the report.

Jerusalem post

Guardian propagandist Jonathan Steele egregiously distorts the Israeli position on Iran

The politics of veteran Guardian “journalist” Jonathan Steele are so off-the-charts that he’s accused Muslims who opposed Islamist rule in Tunisia of ‘Islamophobia’, written a spirited defense of the ‘tragically misunderstood’ Robert Mugabe and has even run interference for Kim Jong Un’s totalitarian cult in Pyongyang.  And, not surprisingly considering the ideological package he shows fealty towards, he’s also warned darkly of the Zionist influence on the U.S. media.

So, whilst nothing he writes anymore can surprise us, it’s nonetheless important to note that his Nov. 11 ‘Comment is Free’ essay (Iran: don’t let the naysayers prevail) blatantly misrepresented Israel’s position on the current talks to reach an interim nuclear deal with Iran.  Here’s the relevant passage:

In Saudi Arabia the reactionary monarchy has long been worried that calls for internal liberalisation will radicalise the large Shia populations who live in its oil-producing areas. Against all evidence it claims an Iranian hand behind their demands for justice. Riyadh also stands to gain from continuing sanctions on Iran and the higher world oil prices they bring. Whether they are cynics or victims of their own propaganda, the Saudi rulers, like Israel, want no deal with Tehran.

In fact, as the most rudimentary research would confirm, Israel is not opposed to a deal with Iran.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has clearly made the distinction between what he calls a “bad deal” and a “good” deal, and has expressed strong support for the latter.

After meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Netanyahu said:

Iran is in economic distress and it is possible to get a better deal. Before easing sanctions we need to get a good deal, not a bad deal.

At his weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu stated:

This is a historic process and these are historic decisions. I asked to wait. It is good that this is what was decided in the end but I am not deluding myself – there is a strong desire to reach an agreement, I hope not an agreement at any price, and if there is to be an agreement then it needs to be a good agreement and not a bad agreement. I hope that they will reach a good agreement and we will do our utmost to convince the major powers and the leaders to avoid a bad agreement.

At the Bloomberg Fuel Choices Summit, Netanyahu stated:

With every passing day, Iran is under growing economic pressure. One need not be hasty to conclude a bad deal. The time that has been achieved must be utilized for a good deal which dismantles Iran’s military nuclear capabilities.

In an address to the Knesset, Netanyahu stated:

There are not just two possibilities on the Iranian issue: A bad deal - or war. This is incorrect. There is a third possibility – and that is continuing the pressure of sanctions. I would even say that a bad deal is liable to lead to the second, undesired, result. There is no reason to submit to Iranian diktat; neither is there any reason to be hasty. Iran is under very harsh economic pressure and the advantage is with those applying the pressure. It is possible to achieve a good deal to dismantle Iran’s military nuclear capability. This cannot be achieved by the proposal now being discussed in Geneva. That proposal would make a gaping hole in the sanctions through which the air could escape from the pressure of the sanctions.

In fact, even the Guardian implicitly acknowledged that Bibi is seeking ‘a better deal’ in an official editorial they published the day before Steele’s own CiF essay:

Israel considers a bad deal with Iran to be worse than no deal at all. “Bad” would be any deal which leaves the Iranian capacity for making enriched uranium intact – Israel wants Iran to surrender the centrifuges it has created to enrich uranium. “Good” would be anything that sets the enrichment clock back.

Whether Steele is ‘a cynic or a victim of his own propaganda’, let the record show that his claim that Israel wants “no deal” with Iran is categorically untrue.

http://cifwatch.com/

Bennett: Israeli objections to Iran nuclear deal paying dividends

The Israeli government’s vocal objections to the proposed interim nuclear deal being mulled by Iran and the Western powers is having a positive effect on the parameters of any future agreement, according to a top minister in Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who is currently in the United States to lobby pro-Israel supporters on the need for a more robust approach toward the Iranian regime, told Army Radio on Monday that “Israeli opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran is beginning to bear fruit.”

French President Francois Hollande, who is in Israel for a three-day visit, said that France would not surrender to nuclear proliferation and would stand firm by its demands on the Iranians before consenting to an interim agreement. The French leader spelled out at the press conference at the Prime Minister’s Residence what those conditions were.“We want a good deal,” Bennett told Army Radio. “The state of Israel’s goal is to get to an agreement that dismantles Iran’s nuclear machine, and not a deal that simply pushes the pause button for a few months.”

Hollande said France was demanding that all Iran’s nuclear installations be placed under international controls, the suspension of all uranium enrichment to 20 percent, the reduction of existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, and a complete halt to the construction of the heavy water reactor at Arak.

“These are four points fundamental for an agreement to be reached,” he said.

Amid Netanyahu's repeated warnings that Israel will not be bound by a "bad" agreement with Iran, former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said Sunday that Israel has the ability to strike Iran, and is willing to do so alone.

Amidror, in a Financial Times interview obviously timed and placed to send a message to the world, said Israel could halt Iran’s nuclear capability “for a very long time,” and that the air force has conducted “very long-range flights... all around the world” in preparation.

“We are not the United States of America, of course, and believe it or not they have more capabilities than us,” Amidror said. “But we have enough to stop the Iranians for a very long time.

“We are not bluffing,” he said. “We are very serious – preparing ourselves for the possibility that Israel will have to defend itself by itself.”

Amidror said Israel could not, nor would it want to, “count on others to do the job if the others don’t want to do the job.”

Asked how Israel would respond if Hezbollah retaliated by firing missiles and rockets at Israel, Amidror indicated the government would be ready to “use ground forces to go into the urban centers and to deal with the people who are launching the rockets, and to destroy the rockets and launchers.”

Jerusalem post

Iran demands right to expand nuclear program

Despite a softening tone from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the regime’s illicit nuclear program, the Islamic Republic is hardening its position on the right to enrich uranium.

An analysis by Fars News Agency, the Revolutionary Guards’ media outlet, said that Iran not only has the right to continue its nuclear program but to expand it dramatically to fulfill its needs.

The recent analysis comes as the second round of talks between Iran and the world 5+1 powers is to take place on Nov. 7-8.

The regime’s supreme leader said on Sunday that he is not optimistic about those negotiations and called America the most hated power in the world.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also restated the regime’s view of Israel: “We have said since the very first day (of the Islamic Revolution), and we do say it now and we will say it in the future as well, that we believe the Zionist regime is an illegitimate and bastard regime.”

Western countries are worried that Iran, which has threatened to destroy Israel, is trying to develop nuclear weapons to carry out that threat. It has been reported here on many occasions that the regime has made great strides in that direction.

The Fars analysis, titled “What we want from the 5+1,” laid out the regime’s plans for its nuclear program and demanded:

• A recognition of its right to nuclear energy and its need to expand the program.
• All rights of Iran under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons must be recognized, including uranium enrichment.
• Iran must have the right to expand its nuclear power plants and have the right to build anywhere in the country.
• To fulfill the needs of these power plants, Iran must have the right to build further facilities for uranium enrichment anywhere in the country whether in a huge desert or under soaring mountains and increase the number of centrifuges.
• Iran must have the right to export nuclear fuel and not be required to import such for its facilities.

Iran’s previously secret nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow, revealed in 2009, was built under a mountain over 300 feet down, immune to any air strike and most bunker buster bombs.

A radical theoretician of the regime, Hossein Allahkaram, in an interview with the regime’s media outlet Kheybar Online, suggested further that Iran should enrich uranium all the way to weaponization.

Referring to recent negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program to relieve sanctions, he said, “Though to improve the economy and relieve some sanctions these matters (negotiations) are considered, the value of enriching to 20, 40, 60, and 99 percent that Iran is capable of doing is much more (important) than a good economy.”

Allahkaram, one of the founders of the radical militant group Ansar-e Hezbollah, was sanctioned by the European Union in April 2011 for human rights violations for his role in the violent crackdown of Iranian protesters in 2009.

Iran has negotiated over its illicit nuclear program with the U.S. and the world powers for over a decade, during which time it has successfully increased the number of centrifuges enriching uranium from 150 to over 19,000 today. It has also mastered uranium enrichment to the 20 percent level, which is 80 percent of the way to weaponization. It will take only weeks to further enrich from that level to a weaponization grade.

A recent report by the Institute for Science and International Security suggested that Iran with its current enriched uranium stock could build a nuclear bomb in as little as a month.

David Albright, the president of the institute and a former U.N. inspector, said that if the regime used all of its centrifuges and its stockpiles of low- and medium-enriched uranium, it would take one to one and a half months to become nuclear-armed.

Despite several United Nations resolutions and sanctions by the U.N., the United States and European Union demanding a halt to Iran’s illicit nuclear program, the Islamic regime has significantly expanded the program with enough enriched uranium for more than six nuclear bombs while at the same time is set to complete its heavy-water plant, which would give the regime a second path to nuclear weapons by acquiring weapons-grade plutonium.

previous post:   Ayatollah Khamenei: US should ‘slap’ Sheldon Adelson, cannot stop Iran’s nuclear program
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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

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Op-Ed: Mideast Nuclear Holocaust

What would an Iranian-Israeli nuclear exchange be like?

After constant exposure to critically important news, it begins to lose all meaning and sense of urgency.  Hearing the same warnings over and over again—especially when the status quo seems static—can cause a certain desensitization, a resigned apathy that ignores the warnings in the wishful hope that they won’t materialize.  This hope becomes more optimistic (and passive) with each passing day that the warnings do not materialize.  That's what Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tried to counter in his speech at the United Nations on October 2.

One of the most evident examples of this phenomenon is the threat of a nuclear Iran.  For years, the international community has been hearing about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons; for years, the world has been hearing Iran make bold, genocidal threats—most notoriously, that it will wipe the state of Israel off the map. But so far, Iran reportedly still has no nukes, and no large attack has been launchedon Israel.  Thus, many have become desensitized to the situation—including those charged with ensuring that a nuclear Iran never becomes a reality.

But that reality has never been closer, as we are warned in Noah Beck’s recent novel, The Last Israelis. It is our current proximity to apocalyptic war that makes Beck’s doomsday warning about a nuclear Iran so compelling. If the worst comes to pass, this chilling attempt to rouse the West from its torpor could turn out to be that final, horribly prophetic alert that went unheeded.

Much of the public is conditioned by the mainstream media and government to focus on the short-term—U.S. presidents tend to concentrate only on matters pressing during their tenure—and rarely ever on longer-term issues or threats. Thus, a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East seems unrealistic.  Add to this the fact that virtually all nations with nukes have never used them, and one can see why a certain apathy prevails when it comes to the idea of a nuclear Iran.

But Iran is different.  Its Shiites leaders believe that at the end of times, a 9th-century prophet, the 12th Imam, will reappear to kill all the infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all four corners of the world. Reza Kahlili, a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, reported last year on the apocalyptic statements from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who dictates Iran’s nuclear policy. Khamenei’s statements, which were carried by Iranian state media, proclaimed that “The issue of Imam Mahdi is of utmost importance, and his reappearance has been clearly stated in our holy religion of Islam.

We must study and remind ourselves of the end of times and Imam Mahdi’s era... We must prepare the environment for the coming so that the great leader will come.” Kahlili also translated Iranian news reports from last June suggesting that Iran’s newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani (the so-called “moderate”), shares Khamenei’s views. The reports quote Rouhani thanking the Islamic messiah for his June 15th electoral victory.

Indeed, the Islamic theocracy ruling Iran believes that apocalyptic scenarios are necessary before Islam’s savior, the Mahdi, or “Hidden Imam,” returns (including a prophecy that Muslims must slay all Jews before he returns); believes that death in the jihad results in instant paradise for the “martyr”; believes the oft recited Islamist sentiment that “Muslims love death as Westerners love life”—a sentiment that has manifested itself in reality all too often by young Muslim men and women sacrificing their lives to become suicide bombs that kill Americans, Israelis, and many others.

In short, Iran has a worldview that is markedly different than the one that guides Western decision-making.  Unlike nuclear-armed Western secular democracies, a nuclear Islamic supremacist regime in Iran is much more prone to use the devastating weapons.  Thus, the situation is serious, is urgent, and, as the United Nations refuses to act decisively, could trigger a holocaust that sees millions of innocent people—Israelis and Iranians alike—wiped out overnight.

What would such a nightmare scenario be like?

As a powerful, well-researched novel, The Last Israelis provides a gripping answer, and helps to neutralize the desensitization and/or apathy to a nuclear Iran by depicting an all too real scenario of what a nuclear Iran could ultimately mean for the region and the world.

The narrative follows the lives of an Israeli submarine crew.  After news that Iran has achieved nuclear status vis-à-vis an impotent or indifferent West, they are yanked from loved ones during an interrupted and all too brief shore leave, and sent on a mission possibly to retaliate with submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles, if a nuclear strike islaunched against Israel.  Halfway through their mission, the submariners lose contact with base command and the ambiguity surrounding those circumstances—and what they could imply—creates palpable tension and conflict among the crewmembers.

What follows among the crew is a very philosophical—though all too human—debate over what they should do, as it is now up to them to decide the fate of millions:

If the final communication from headquarters states that Israel was “attacked on all fronts,” and that naval command was hit and “in crisis management mode,” what did that mean for the rest of the country that had been “attacked on all fronts?”  What did it mean for [the submariners’] loved ones?...And what did it mean to decide to do something that would kill millions of human beings in just a few hours?  Each submariner struggled with these weighty questions, trying to decide for himself what was the most appropriate course of action under the circumstances.

The nuanced debates are particularly interesting because Beck’s crew is as heterogeneous and complex as the Israeli society that they defend, including a Vietnamese-Israeli, an Arab-Israeli Druze, an Ethiopian-Israeli, and a Christian Israeli.  Based on their individual backgrounds, upbringings, and most importantly, experiences, this motley crew offers dramatically different perspectives—from the hawkish to the dovish—that reflect the diverse views that one finds in a debate-driven democracy like Israel.

Besides issuing an urgent warning, The Last Israelis is so grounded in history and current events—including real people, places, and events—that it provides an entertaining way to become educated about the Middle East in general, and the conflict between Israel and Iran in particular.

And in one crucial respect, this book is no fiction: a nuclear armed Iran is very bad news, not just for Israel, as many think, but for the whole region and stability of the world.  Therefore, the world is obligated to act now to ensure that the horrific scenario recounted in The Last Israelis never comes to pass.

Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians