Oh No! The Iranians Are All Mad At America....Again

You know, has there been a single day in the past 37 years that the Iranian Mullah Regime hasn't bitched or moaned or whined about something?  I'm not sure if we should just nuke these fuckers or put em all in Pampers.

I'm sure John Kerry's been on the phone already with them to apologize and lift the sanctions. Oh and he read them a bedtime story too.

The story comes from Al Arabiya.

Iran angered by new U.S. sanctions on missiles

Iran on Monday denounced "illegitimate" new sanctions by the United States on its ballistic missile program, days after Tehran's historic nuclear deal with world powers was confirmed.

"Iran's missile program has never been designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons," foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said, according to the ISNA news agency.

He added that Tehran saw fresh economic sanctions as "illegitimate".

"The U.S. sanctions against Iran's ballistic missile program ... have no legal or moral legitimacy," Ansari said in a televised news conference.

"America sells tens of billions of dollars of weaponry each year to countries in the region. These weapons are used in war crimes against Palestinian, Lebanese and most recently Yemeni citizens," he said.

The United States announced new penalties Sunday related to Iran's ballistic missile program after the lifting of punishing measures aimed at its atomic activities as the deal with world powers was confirmed in Vienna.

"As previously announced, the Islamic republic of Iran... responds with determination to such propaganda by accelerating its legal ballistic missile program and boosting defense capabilities," Ansari said.

Holger Reacts to Iranian Deal

HolgerAwakens ‏@HolgerAwakens 4m4 minutes ago

@AmbassadorPower Time to celebrate the 2nd Holocaust via Iranian nukes, huh Samantha. Got your party hat on?



HolgerAwakens ‏@HolgerAwakens 5m5 minutes ago

@SenFeinstein @SenatorBoxer Isn't it amazing that 2 Jewish Senators are going to sign off on the massacre of 6.5 millionJews via Iran nukes?



HolgerAwakens ‏@HolgerAwakens 18m18 minutes ago

@SenBobCorker At least Obama needs 2/3 of the Senate to approve...oh wait...he doesn't...because of u. Corker the Traitor. Blood on ur hanz

Imagine That! There's Some "Issues" With the Iranian Nuke Deal!

 Centrifuges unveiled in Natanz Photo: REUTERS

Good grief - when you make deals with devils and demons...you expect what?  Compliance?  Cooperation?  Honesty?

John Kerry is an idiot.

The story comes from The Jerusalem Post.

Iran nuclear talks hit snag on centrifuge research


UNITED NATIONS - Negotiations between Iran and six world powers on implementing a landmark November deal to freeze parts of Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for easing some sanctions have run into problems over the issue of centrifuge research, diplomats said.

The dispute over centrifuges highlighted the huge challenges facing Iran and the six powers in negotiating the precise terms of the Nov. 24 interim agreement. If they succeed, they plan to start talks on a long-term deal to resolve a more than decade-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Among the issues to be resolved in political discussions due to begin in Geneva later this week is that of research and development of a new model of advanced nuclear centrifuge that Iran says it has installed, diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

Centrifuges are machines that purify uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants, or, if purified to a high level, weapons.

"This issue (centrifuges) was among the main factors in stopping the previous technical discussions on Dec. 19-21," a Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Other Western diplomats confirmed that centrifuges were a "sticking point" in the talks with Iran but noted that last month's discussions were understandably adjourned ahead of the December holidays.

"As part of the (Nov. 24) agreement, Iran is permitted to engage in R&D (research and development), but that is tempered by the fact that it is prohibited to install new centrifuges, except as required by wear and tear," the first diplomat said.

Western diplomats said they were uncomfortable with the idea of Iran pressing ahead with the development of more advanced centrifuges. But Iran says centrifuge research is crucial.

"We have to make sure our right to research and development is respected," a senior Iranian government official said on condition of anonymity.

Iran and the so-called P5+1 - the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China - reached a deal on Nov. 24 in Geneva aimed at curbing the Islamic Republic's most sensitive nuclear work, including medium-level 20 percent uranium enrichment, in return for easing some economic sanctions.

Iran is under UN, US and European Union sanctions for refusing to heed UN Security Council demands that it halt all enrichment- and plutonium-related work at its nuclear sites. Tehran rejects Western allegations that it is seeking the capability to produce atomic weapons, saying its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity.

Learning to Love the Iranian Bomb

From Family Security Matters.

Learning to Love the Iranian Bomb


It is as though Obamacare had an international equivalent. While Americans were busy celebrating Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the fallout continued from the administration's recent decision to conclude a covenant of death with Iran. It's easy to be confused by the obscure controversies over centrifuge numbers and enrichment percentages, not to mention press pundits turning back flips to rationalize Mr. Obama's latest debacle-in-progress.

Just remember just one thing: Retired Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency and the CIA - someone who probably understands the intricacies of intelligence on Iran better than anybody else - declared that the agreement "hit the pause rather than the delete button." It was, he told Newsmax, "practically the worst of all possible outcomes, because now [Iran becomes] a nuclear-capable state . And my fear is, this interim agreement, which doesn't roll back much of anything becomes a permanent agreement."

This means an Iranian nuclear weapon is now a foregone conclusion - a matter of when, not if. This despite red lines, endless jawboning and, for good measure, the deployment of the Stuxnet virus, a dual act of war and industrial sabotage inviting retaliation whenever it will best serve Iranian interests.

Still, weren't we able to contain the Soviet Union? Didn't mutual assured destruction guarantee a half-century of peace after the American nuclear monopoly was broken? Maybe, but Iran is the kind of adversary that can quickly make you lonesome for the Russians.

To illustrate: As the Iranian hostage situation first unfolded in 1979, I served as chairman for a panel discussion at Harvard's Kennedy School, which featured professor Roger Fisher, co-author of "Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In." An authority on negotiation theory, Fisher outlined strategies the Carter administration might reasonably follow in engineering the hostages' release. One of my military colleagues was a member of the panel, a tough special-forces officer who had left the U.S. Embassy staff in Tehran only days before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned the mobs loose. When his turn came, my military colleague's reply was unforgettable. "Professor Fisher, I appreciate your advice, but you really don't understand what we're up against. The Iranians won't negotiate about cutting your heart out. The only thing they'll negotiate is afterwards - whether or not they should roast it over a slow fire."

Even for those whose only exposure to the Persian mindset was viewing recent film "Argo," it shouldn't be hard to understand why Iran's neighbors - based on several millennia of historical experience - have an understandable skepticism about glib White House assurances. There are a number of recent game-changers in this notoriously volatile region:

Diminishing nuclear deterrence: Deterrence was always about terror, the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that created a lingering awe of the only superpower to have used those dreaded weapons in combat. Deterrence can be compromised by fading memories, though, as well as revised reputations, such as when President Obama bases his foreign policy on coddling enemies, double-crossing allies and hollowing out the U.S. military. Since the U.S. cavalry is clearly not riding to the rescue, then self-help becomes the order of the day.

Incipient nuclear proliferation: The most overlooked recent lesson is that chemical weapons, long considered as the poor man's nuke, were dismantled in both Libya and Syria. Nuclear weapons, however, continue their unchallenged track record for ensuring the stability of those regimes able to acquire them. That lesson is not likely to be lost on Saudi Arabia, which views Shiite Iran as a direct threat to itself and neighboring Sunni oil kleptocracies. Since kingdom petrodollars bought and paid for Pakistan's nuclear development, it is assumed that a Saudi nuke could be supplied in short order. Another joker in the deck is Egypt, disowned as an American ally by Mr. Obama but a traditional military power in a tough neighborhood.

Changing regional alignments: Acknowledged or not, the basic regional alliances now pit Iran-Syria-Lebanon against Israel-Saudi Arabia-Egypt. Russia, with its newly rediscovered roles in both Syria and Egypt, is quickly displacing the United States as the key offshore balancer. Because power abhors a vacuum, that far-reaching displacement is just another casualty of the nonstrategy of leading from behind.

Questionable command and control: With more nuclear weapons in more hands, "Dr. Strangelove" might reappear on 21st-century screens, but as genuine tragedy rather than black comedy. Even with the steady injection of technology, U.S. and Soviet permissive-action links and fail-safe systems still needed a fair amount of luck to avoid an accidental detonation. What about Iranian, Saudi or even Egyptian nuclear forces? If they build such weapons, will they also invest in the technologies and practice the unforgiving disciplines needed to avoid the worst of all man-made calamities?

These are hard questions, even assuming that the new Iranian nukes are meant for deterrence rather than another holocaust.

Iran's Ayatollah Gloats Over Victory Over America

For those of you on the left in America ... do you enjoy being the butt of jokes by a bunch of pedophile, young boy buggering mongrels in Iran?  Oh yeah, I forgot...you do.

The story comes from Family Security Matters.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Claims Victory for Nuclear Program


Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed victory over the United States Sunday shortly after a historic nuclear agreement was reached in Geneva between the Islamic Republic and the 5+1 world powers.

Under the agreement, Iran, in return for sanctions relief, will keep much of its nuclear infrastructure, is limited to enriching uranium to the five percent level for six months, will convert its highly enriched uranium of 20 percent to harmless oxide and will allow more intrusive inspections of its nuclear plants by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will be limited to only agreed-on facilities.

Fars News Agency, the media outlet of the Revolutionary Guards, reported that Khamenei in a statement thanked President Hassan Rouhani and his negotiating team for their achievement in Geneva.

"I thank God that... the new government... was able to legitimize the Iranian nation's nuclear program on the international stage and take the initial step in a way that the nuclear rights and the enrichment rights of the Iranian nation are acknowledged by world powers where before they had tried to deny them, and (the agreement will) open the way for future big strides in technical and economic progress," Khamenei said.

Rouhani, speaking at an event for families of "martyred" Iranian nuclear scientists, said Iran will continue its nuclear progress. "No matter whether the world wants it or not, this path (to nuclear capability) will, God willing, continue to the peak," he said.

As reported exclusively in the Daily Caller in February 2012, sources inside Iran said President Barack Obama appeared to enter into an informal agreement with Iran that he believed would defuse the nuclear weapons crisis and keep Israel from attacking the Islamic regime. The agreement called for the United States to acknowledge that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, and for Iran to hand over its highly enriched uranium, which is necessary for nuclear weaponization.

Those sources revealed then that Khamenei, in a secret meeting with his top officials and military commanders, had issued a directive to push for a step-by-step Russian proposal to defuse the crisis in which Iran would only hand over its 20 percent enrichment stock while keeping all low-enriched uranium stock (enough for six nuclear bombs) and cooperate more with the IAEA (all the while continuing its enrichment activity). In exchange, the West would ease up on the sanctions as each step was taken.

Iran has always believed that America has no choice but to accept its nuclear program. In an article in April 2012, titled "The Lessons from the Past for the Negotiations in April," Mohammad Mohammadi, an Iranian international affairs and nuclear expert, wrote, "Looking back at the past decade, all the red lines by America and the West over Iran's nuclear issue have now been transformed into acceptance. America has always adopted radical actions at first that have changed to symbolic measures later. Iran has always known that America and the West needed a way to solve the nuclear issue with some honor, and today it is quite visible that with the defeat of America's policies toward Iran, the talk about a need to solve the Iranian nuclear issue diplomatically is a way to obtain that honor."

The United States initially demanded that Iran suspend all its nuclear activities, Mohammadi said: "Today, though, the Americans have given up on that, and what Obama is asking is the halt of the enrichment to the 20 percent level with a full acceptance of Iran's enrichment rights to the 5 percent level." Enriching uranium to the 20 percent level is a critical step in achieving nuclear weaponization.

"The Americans have also changed their language," Mohammadi said. "Where at first they claimed that they had evidence that Iran was working to make the nuclear bomb, now, though, they state openly that Iran has not yet decided to make a bomb. This change in their demands and in their language can only mean one thing - that they are incapable of stopping Iran's nuclear program."

Iran has negotiated its 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 now has over 10 tons of low-enriched uranium - enough for several bombs - and has over a thousand ballistic missiles and, in collaboration with North Korea, is working on intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Iran's Thugs Smile, We Lose

From Family Security Matters.

Iran's Thugs Smile, We Lose


John Kerry's interim disaster augurs catastrophe....

Sunday morning's interim nuclear deal that six Western powers made with Iran's rulers is a disaster in search of catastrophe--the latter in the form of the planned final deal six months hence.

On Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace began his report on the deal having been reached with "While many were sleeping"; it would have been more accurate for him to have said "While our negotiators were sleeping."

President Obama's first official statement about the deal included this:

While today's announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal. For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back. Iran has committed to halting certain levels of enrichment and neutralizing part of its stockpiles. Iran cannot use its next-generation centrifuges, which are used for enriching uranium. Iran cannot install or start up new centrifuges, and its production of centrifuges will be limited. Iran will halt work at its plutonium reactor. And new inspections will provide extensive access to Iran's nuclear facilities and allow the international community to verify whether Iran is keeping its commitments.

The canary in the diplomatic coal mine, however, is this report, that the US had been secretly negotiating since March 2013 with Iran--(a) without telling its mortally-endangered ally, Israel until two months ago (seven months into the talks); and (b) negotiating (for one of the five meetings) with Rouhani's predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

These sanctions have had a substantial impact on the Iranian economy, and with the election of a new Iranian President earlier this year, an opening for diplomacy emerged. I spoke personally with President Rouhani of Iran earlier this fall. Secretary Kerry has met multiple times with Iran's Foreign Minister. And we have pursued intensive diplomacy -- bilaterally with the Iranians, and together with our P5-plus-1 partners -- the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China, as well as the European Union. (Emphasis added.)

Put simply, the president at minimum misled us when he cited Rouhani's "reformer" status (in reality, simply wrong, on all available evidence--Rouhani lied about Iran's nuclear program after it was outed in August 2002, when he headed the regime's 2003-2005 nuclear negotiations--as the reason we could negotiate. He had already secretly negotiated with Israel's openly genocidal adversary, without informing Israel. (Emphasis added.)

The White House fact sheet on the deal looks superficially plausible, except that there is no practical way to either verify compliance nor has the president left the military force option credibly on the table--hence Obama's assertion that diplomacy is the sole way to resolve the problems posed by Iran's nuclear program.

The president, near the end of his statement, made this contradictory and delusional remark:

Ultimately, only diplomacy can bring about a durable solution to the challenge posed by Iran's nuclear program. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But I have a profound responsibility to try to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than rush towards conflict. Today, we have a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive, peaceful settlement, and I believe we must test it. (Emphasis added.)

Only diplomacy? Decisive military action could destroy Iran's nuclear assets. Better by far still, positive regime regime, replacing Iran's genocidal Islamist regime with a moderate one--the very possibility Pres. Obama scorned during the June 2009 popular uprising against the rigged re-election of A-jad--could have ended Iran's military nuclear program.

Here is Iran's version of the full accord text, as published by Iran's Fars News Agency. Israeli PM Netanyahu's first statement on the deal predictably stood in sharp contrast to the president's:

What was achieved last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it is a historic mistake. Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has made a significant step in the direction of achieving the most dangerous weapon in the world. For the first time the leading nations in the world agreed to the enrichment of uranium in Iran by ignoring the decisions of the Security Council that they themselves led. Sanctions that took years to put into place and held within them the best possible opportunity for a solution by the way of peace were lifted for cosmetic Iranian compromises that can be canceled in weeks. This agreement and its significance there of threatens many countries and of course Israel among them. Israel is not obliged to the agreement. The regime in Iran is dedicated to destroying Israel and Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself with it's own forces against every threat. I want to make clear as the Prime minister of Israel, Israel will not let Iran develop a nuclear military capability.

The New York Times report on the deal notes that at most--if Ian honors the accord, which would be a first in its nuclear dealings with the West--it delays Iran's march to a bomb by one month. Iran's declared amount of seven tons of low-enriched uranium (commercial grade 3.5% enriched) would be allowed first to rise to eight tons, then is to fall back to seven tons by the six-month mark.

The Gray Lady's report includes this gem as to verification:

To guard against cheating, international monitors would be allowed to visit the Natanz enrichment facility and the underground nuclear enrichment plant at Fordo on a daily basis to check the film from cameras installed there.

But Iran did not agree to all of the intrusive inspection regime that the International Atomic Energy Agency had said was needed to ensure that the Iranian program is peaceful. (Emphasis added.)

Another Gray Lady piece encapsulates how successful Iran has been in advancing its nuclear program during the Obama years:

At the beginning of Mr. Obama's presidency, Iran had roughly 2,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, barely enough for a bomb. It now has about 9,000 kilograms, by the estimates of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A few thousand centrifuges were spinning in 2009; today there are 18,000, including new models that are far more efficient and can produce bomb-grade uranium faster. A new heavy water reactor outside the city of Arak promises a new pathway to a bomb, using plutonium, if it goes online next year as Iran says it will. (Emphasis added.)

The same article offers this on possible hidden facilities and possible rollback of elements not covered by the deal:

True rollback would mean dismantling many of those centrifuges, shipping much of the fuel out of the country or converting it into a state that could not be easily adapted to bomb use, and allowing inspections of many underground sites where the C.I.A., Europe and Israel believe hidden enrichment facilities may exist. There is no evidence of those facilities now, but, as a former senior Obama administration official said recently, speaking anonymously to discuss intelligence, "there has never been a time in the past 15 years or so when Iran didn't have a hidden facility in construction."

There is also the problem of forcing Iran to reveal what kind of progress it has made toward designing a weapon. For years, its leaders have refused to answer questions about documents, slipped out of the country by a renegade scientist nearly eight years ago, that strongly suggest work on a nuclear warhead. Inspectors have never been able to interview Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the academic believed to be in charge of a series of weapons development projects. (Emphasis added.)

SecState John Kerry says that "Israel is in fact safer than it was yesterday"; but Iran's foreign minister warns that Iran will not accept any tighter sanctions, and further asserts that the deal preserves Iran's "right to enrich" uranium.

Iran's asserted "right to enrich" is fictive, but it serves the regime's purpose to assert it, as it transforms a legal prohibition against Iran enriching uranium to an arcane diplomatic legal dispute that is hence inconclusive. Put simply, the Nonproliferation Treaty confers no explicit right to enrich uranium; given the NPT's objectives, an implied right to do same is not reasonably inferred from the text. Permanent United Nations sanctions (oil & economic) were imposed in 2006, to last until Iran's suspends its uranium enrichment program. Instead, in the interim accord Iran won a limited "right to enrich" and obtained a lightening of UN sanctions.

One Iranian general--the day before the deal was struck--warned that Iran would make war against the US:

According to Fars News Agency, the regime's outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Massoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, said "America's interests and all of Israel are within the range of the Islamic Republic and there is not the slightest doubt among Iran's armed forces to confront the American government and the Zionists (Israel)."

Jazayeri said Israel is pulling the strings of Washington and "the American government is one of the most hated and evil governments in the world."

The general mocked President Obama's position that the military option remains on the table over Iran's nuclear development. "If America had the ability and the will for war, it would allow no doubt in attacking Syria. America will soon find out that Iran's power cannot be ignored."

Most chilling, too, was the March 2013 report that Iran has built a massive new underground site for its enrichment program (8,000 centrifuges--which would add to the 18,000 already known to exist), long-range missiles, etc. the "Quds" (Arabic for Jerusalem) enrichment facility is buried 375 feet down, more than 50 percent deeper than al-Fordo (Iran's previous deepest facility) and five times deeper than Natanz (Iran's main enrichment facility). The report indicates also that Iran has converted some uranium into metal, a crucial step for a bomb not used in nuclear reactors; and that Iran is working on specialized components used to detonate nuclear bombs. Also, Iran is working on neutron technology to create an EMP weapon--used to knock out electric power grids via a high-altitude detonation that emits serial pulses of destructive electromagnetic energy.

Surprised? Then try this on for size: an Iranian state-TV video (4:39) simulating a counter-strike on Israel. Or this: Iran accused Israel of killing JFK because JFK tried to halt Israel's nuclear bomb program.

Finally, a read of Winston Churchill's Nov. 5, 1938 address to the House of Commons is instructive, especially these choice paragraphs:

The Chancellor of the Exchequer [Sir John Simon] said it was the first time Herr Hitler had been made to retract - I think that was the word - in any degree. We really must not waste time after all this long Debate upon the difference between the positions reached at Berchtesgaden, at Godesberg and at Munich. They can be very simply epitomised, if the House will permit me to vary the metaphor. £1 was demanded at the pistol's point. When it was given, £2 were demanded at the pistol's point. Finally, the dictator consented to take £1 17s. 6d. and the rest in promises of goodwill for the future.

Those are the features which I stand here to expose and which marked an improvident stewardship for which Great Britain and France have dearly to pay. We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word "war" was considered one which could be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power - power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right - reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now....

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Munich bought Europe s one-year respite from a shooting war. How long the Iran respite lasts is anyone's guess, but the interim accord does little concrete that might--if implemented--improve our security, and much to impair same. War--nuclear war--could very well come later.

Bottom Line. Appeasement of a hostile power with revolutionary aspiration will work no better in the 21st century than it did in the 20th.

And that is why Iran's Islamist rulers are smiling today.

Obama's Dirty Deal

From The Jerusalem Post.

Iran deal: Same world, opposite risk assessments


Judging from their reactions to the deal that world powers signed with Iran in Geneva early Sunday morning, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama live in different worlds.

Diplomacy, Obama declared in a message to the nation announcing the accord, “opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure.”

Netanyahu begged to differ, telling the cabinet Sunday that “today the world has become a much more dangerous place, because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.”

Same world, yet diametrically opposed risk assessments by two very close allies.

Beyond the nuclear element, one of Jerusalem’s main concerns is that Iran – once the lynchpin of another US president’s “axis of evil” – is suddenly cleansed, receiving a stamp of approval as a legitimate member of the international community in good standing. Iran under President Hassan Rouhani has – in the six months since his election – undergone a revolutionary rebranding, a rebranding Israel could only dream of, from pariah state to “constructive” actor.

Or, as Obama enthused, if Iran “seizes this opportunity” to prove to the world that its nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes, then “the Iranian people will benefit from rejoining the international community, and we can begin to chip away at the mistrust between our two nations. This would provide Iran with a dignified path to forge a new beginning with the wider world based on mutual respect.”

Really? How about Iran’s part in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s massacre of tens of thousands of people? How about its continued development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads that were not even mentioned in the Geneva agreement? How about its role in exporting terrorism around the globe? How about its stoning of women accused of adultery, hanging of homosexuals and gruesome rate of executions? How about the anti- Semitic ranting of its leaders? Does all of the above really render the world a safer place, as Obama said? This agreement shows that Iran can indeed do all of the above, yet still get to be a member of the international community.

Israel’s concern about a nuclear Iran has never only – or even primarily – been that the Iranians will use a nuclear bomb on Israel, but rather that even having the weapon or the weapons capability will magnify its power in the region and embolden it and its proxies.

There is a deep concern that the Geneva agreement will indeed bolster Iran in the region.

Iran is already a nuclear threshold state, as is any state that can enrich uranium to 5%, has 18,000 centrifuges (nuclear-armed Pakistan has only 6,000) at its disposal and can “break out” with a bomb in five weeks.

But if before Saturday night Iran was a nuclear threshold state with leper status in the world, now it is a nuclear threshold state with international legitimacy.

UN Security Council resolutions on Iran called for it explicitly to suspend its enrichment; this agreement says go ahead and enrich, just not beyond 5%.

The agreement gives Iran considerable regional leverage.

Will the US or other Western countries push Iran on the Syrian issue, knowing that if they push too hard, Iran may walk away from the nuclear agreement? After investing so much time and energy into forging an agreement, none of those involved will want to do anything that could lead to its falling apart.

Two weeks ago, US Secretary of State John Kerry, following an inconclusive round of talks in Geneva, was asked in a BBC interview whether Hezbollah or the conflict in Syria came up in his talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“I think we spent 30 seconds on Syria,” Kerry said tellingly.

And the regional ramifications do not only touch on Syria (notice that Damascus praised the agreement to the moon), but will also have ramifications on the diplomatic process with the Palestinians.

Firstly Iran – suddenly let off the ropes – will once again be free to do what it can to torpedo any possible Israeli-Palestinian accommodation, as any pressure on Iran to demonstrate “good behavior” in order not to scuttle a potential deal with the West is now off. Expect, therefore, a sudden upsurge again in Iranian support for Hamas, a group looking for a new patron following their split with Damascus and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi in Egypt.

The agreement will also have ramifications on the Israel-Palestinian front for a couple of other reasons. First of all, Israel will feel no compulsion now to repay a tough US or international stance on Iran with concessions to the Palestinians, since from Netanyahu’s point of view there was no strong stance on Iran.

The linkage discussed so often in the past, “Bushehr for Yitzhar” – the US stops a nuclear Iran symbolized by the nuclear reactor in Bushehr, and in return Israel gives up settlements symbolized by Yitzhar – has lost currency, for from Israel’s perspective the world is letting Iran keep Bushehr.

Also, any agreement with the Palestinians will necessitate Israel taking calculated risks. But Israel now will be much more risk averse, with Iran suddenly emboldened and enjoying new-found international legitimacy.

In addition, any possible future agreement with the Palestinians would undoubtedly necessitate ironclad security guarantees from the US. Considering the way Washington handled the Iranian file since Rouhani’s election in June, does anyone really think Netanyahu is going to place Israel’s security in the hands of US guarantees? A safer world? Maybe seen from Washington, a long way from Iran and the Middle East.

But from Jerusalem, close to Iran, and in the eye of the storm? Hardly.

John Kerry Arrives in Geneva To Offer Up Six Million Jews To Iranian Slaughter

From The Jerusalem Post.

Kerry, Western FMs arrive in Geneva to push for Iran nuclear deal


US Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers of five other world powers joined talks on Iran's contested nuclear program on Saturday with the two sides edging towards a breakthrough to ease a dangerous decade-old standoff.

The Chinese, Russian, French, British and German foreign ministers - Wang Yi, Sergei Lavrov, Laurent Fabius, William Hague and Guido Westerwelle - all pulled up their sleeves to try to seal an interim deal under which Iran would cap its nuclear activity in exchange for limited relief from sanctions.

Hague and Westerwelle, however, both cautioned that a preliminary accord to turn the page on years of confrontation with the Islamic Republic was not yet guaranteed and that there was much work to do to bridge remaining differences.

"We (foreign ministers) are not here because things are necessarily finished," Hague told reporters. "There is a huge amount of agreement...(But) the remaining gaps are important and we will be turning our attention to those over coming hours. They remain very difficult negotiations."

Diplomats earlier said a formidable sticking point in the intense negotiations, which began on Wednesday, may have been overcome with compromise language that does not explicitly recognize Iran's claim to a "right to enrich" uranium but acknowledges all countries' right to their own civilian nuclear energy.

But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Iran's demand to continue construction of a heavy-water reactor near Arak that could yield plutonium - an alternative bomb material - remained a tough outstanding issue.

Ryabkov said a breakthrough was closer now than at the Nov. 7-9 round of Geneva talks but, he told Russia's Itar-Tass news agency, "unfortunately I can't say that there is a certainty of reaching that breakthrough."

"It's not a done deal. There's a realistic chance but there's a lot of work to do," Westerwelle told reporters.
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The powers' goal is to cap Iran's nuclear energy program, which has a history of evading UN inspections and investigations, to remove any risk of Tehran covertly refining uranium to a level suitable for bombs rather than electricity. Iranian authorities deny any agenda to "weaponize" enrichment.

"We are close to a deal but still differences over two-three issues remain," said Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbar Araqchi, a senior negotiator.

An initial accord on confidence-building steps would be designed to launch a phased process of detente with Iran after decades of tense estrangement, and banish the specter of a devastating Middle East war over its nuclear aspirations.

A preliminary pact would run for six months while the powers and Tehran hammer out a broader, longer-term settlement.

Diplomacy revived dramatically after the landslide election of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, as Iranian president in June, replacing bellicose nationalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Rouhani aims to relieve Iran's isolation by mending fences with big powers and getting sanctions lifted. He has obtained crucial public backing from clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, keeping powerful hardline critics at bay.

The draft deal would have Iran suspend some sensitive nuclear activities, above all medium-level enrichment, in exchange for the release of some of many billions of dollars in Iranian funds frozen in foreign bank accounts, and renewed trade in precious metals, petrochemicals and aircraft parts.

The United States might also agree to relax pressure on other countries not to buy Iranian oil. Tehran has made clear it wants a more significant dilution of the sanctions blocking its oil exports and use of the international banking system.

France's Fabius, who objected to what he felt was a one-sided offer to Iran floated at the November 7-9 negotiating round, seemed guarded on arrival in Geneva early on Saturday.

"I hope we can reach a deal, but a solid deal. I am here to work on that," he said. France has consistently taken a tough line over Iran's nuclear program, helping Paris cultivate closer ties with Tehran's adversaries in Israel and the Gulf.

Kerry left for Geneva "with the goal of continuing to help narrow the differences and move closer to an agreement," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. Direct US-Iranian engagement is crucial to a peaceful solution given the rupture in bilateral ties since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Echoing optimism that a deal was close, China's state-run Xinhua news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying the talks "have reached the final moment."

On the politically charged enrichment issue, Western powers say there is no such thing under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a "right to enrich," but Iran has viewed this as a matter of national sovereignty and crucial to any deal.

Diplomats said revised wording on the table did not explicitly recognize a right to produce nuclear fuel by any country. "If you speak about the right to a peaceful nuclear program, that's open to interpretation," a diplomat said.
For the powers, an interim deal would mandate a halt to Iran's enrichment of uranium to a purity of 20 percent - a major technical step towards the bomb threshold, more sweeping UN nuclear inspections in Iran and an Arak reactor shutdown.

The OPEC producer rejects suspicions it is covertly trying to develop the means to produce nuclear weapons, saying it is stockpiling nuclear material for future atomic power plants.

Israel pursued a lobbying campaign against the offer of respite from sanctions for Iran, voicing its conviction that all this would achieve would be more time for Iran to master nuclear technology and amass potential bomb fuel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told local media in Moscow that Iran was essentially given an "unbelievable Christmas present - the capacity to maintain this (nuclear) breakout capability for practically no concessions at all."

Why the Iranians Are Using John Kerry For the Stall

The story comes from The Clarion Project.

What Stalling for Time Will Buy Iran


Had France not balked, the P5+1 group of world powers might have allowed Iran to get its foot in the door of the nuclear-armed clubhouse.

“One wants a deal,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Sunday in Geneva as the latest round of negotiations over Iran’s illicit nuclear program broke up, “but not a sucker’s deal.”

Indeed, that’s exactly what the Islamic Republic has been playing the world powers as — suckers — for years and years as it seeks to buy time to develop nuclear weapons and force the West to accept its nuclear status as a fait accompli.

Iran’s latest bait-and-switch ploy began earlier this year as the regime’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his ruling cadre of mullahs changed tactics to buy the precious time needed to complete their goal of becoming the undisputed power in the region. They have mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and are steps away from nuclear weaponization.

The new tactics to achieve that? Present a new face of Iran to the world, one of sincere moderation and reasonableness, someone unlike the boastful bully, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

So the mullahs settled on Hassan Rouhani to become the new president in June’s elections. Mr. Rouhani would give the Iranian people something to hope for, someone who would change course and help end the crush of the staggeringly strict sanctions. The Iranian economy is on the brink of collapse and so too, feared the mullahs, might their reign be. That fear is so palpable that the theocracy has drawn up plans to deploy Revolutionary Guard, Basij and internal security forces against its own people to brutally suppress any uprising against the worsening economic crisis.

No one is allowed to run for president of the Islamic Republic unless he will further the goals of the theocracy. Those who try to run without the mullahs’ blessing are either jailed or executed. While Mr. Rouhani ran as a moderate, he is exactly what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

This wolf tried to pull the wool over the world’s eyes. Media around the world hailed him as a moderate and welcomed a change in Iran’s direction. The new president went to New York in September and told the United Nations General Assembly what it wanted to hear, and Mr. Rouhani even had a phone chat with President Obama.

The stage was set for the latest bait and switch. First, a hint was given to the world powers that the time was right for a deal that would end the standoff and sanctions. The bait was set. The world powers sent their deputy foreign ministers to Geneva for the latest round of talks to work out the details.

Then Iran switched. It demanded what it had previously demanded: the right to enrich uranium and the right to expand its nuclear facilities, all the while working to bring a plutonium facility at Arak online, which would give it a second path to nuclear weapons.

Startled, Secretary of State John Kerry and his foreign minister counterparts rushed to Geneva to save the “deal.” Intense negotiations into early Sunday morning failed. Iran was intransigent — but so was France.

Back-channel negotiations and secret meetings between the Obama administration and Iranian officials representing the views of the supreme leader go back to 2009. At that time, Iran was subject to several U.N. sanctions conditioned on its suspension of all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, which had producted 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium at its Natanz facility. The regime agreed to move forward with negotiations.

The high-level talks in Geneva in October 2009 seemed promising when the Iranian delegates agreed to the terms of the P5+1 group to export 75 percent of its enriched uranium and to allow further inspection of its nuclear facilities. As millions of Iranians took to the streets demanding change, the proposed agreement gave the regime enough time to suppress its own people, torturing and killing many while the free world watched.

Early in 2010 when the threat of uprising was over, the regime announced that the terms agreed to in Geneva were no longer acceptable and that now they had also mastered enriching to the 20 percent level, which is 80 percent of the way to weaponization.

This time, the P5+1 wants Iran to suspend its nuclear program for six months in return for the easing of some minor sanctions. No, the Iranians said. We want all sanctions ended on our oil and banking industries. We might curb enriching uranium to the 20 percent level, but that’s it.

The race for time is on. Iran needs the oil and banking sanctions ended to prevent the imminent collapse of its economy and an uprising of its people. It would buy more time to work on weaponization with the enriched uranium it already has.

Today, Iran has more than 19,000 centrifuges and over 10 tons of low-enriched uranium, along with more than 400 pounds of highly enriched uranium at the 20 percent level, which can be converted to weapons grade within weeks. It also has over 1,000 ballistic missiles in heavily fortified facilities and many on mobile vehicles.

This is what time has already bought. Now Iran is stalling for even more time.

What Really Happened With Those Iranian Nuke Negotiations?

From Family Security Matters.

What Happened in Geneva? What Does It Mean?


It's not easy to make a deal with Iran (and even when you think you've made one, you might be wrong). The failure of the Geneva talks is just another in a long series of such failures. Even the public events are part of the well-established pattern: the secretary of state jumps on a plane and flies to meet with the Iranians. But when he gets there, he finds it's not quite a done deal. And in the wee hours of the morning two days later, there's no deal at all.

Remember that something very similar happened in September 2006, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice jumped on a plane in Washington and flew to New York, expecting to sign a deal at the United Nations with Iran's Ali Larijani. The deal had been negotiated in secret over several months, and both sides had agreed to the final language. But Larijani never showed up. This time the deal had again been negotiated in secret over several months, and, unlike 2006, the Iranians actually showed up, smiling broadly and brandishing their signing pens. But it turned out that there was no deal. What went wrong?

The headlines suggested that the French were to blame, that Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius rejected some of the conditions, and his demands were unacceptable, at a minimum to the Iranians and perhaps to some of the Western countries as well. The French insist [1] that this latter claim is false. They say that Kerry and Fabius met head-to-head on Saturday evening around six o'clock, and agreed on the Western final proposal. They go on to say that, on the basis of the Franco-American agreement, Catherine Ashton of the EU wrote a 3-page text that all members of the Western group agreed to and that was given to the Iranians. After some delay, the Iranians said that the text would have to be approved by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and they were unable to sign anything on the spot in Geneva.

No doubt we're going to get more detail in the next few days, but if the French account-which was given to the Socialist magazine Le Nouvel Observateur-is anywhere near correct, then there's an obvious series of questions:

-First, when the Obama administration whispered to the press that the deal was done, and that Kerry was showing up for the signing party in Geneva, what, if any, were the differences between that deal and the one the Iranians couldn't sign then and there?

-Second, was the Obama administration totally unaware of the French position? How could Fabius's proposal have come as a surprise? It's not as if we are isolated from French diplomats, after all;

-Third, were the Iranians unaware of the French position? Or did they think that the Obama administration was going to force an agreement that did not satisfy Paris?

Here and there, I've read claims that the Americans backtracked during the negotiations in Geneva. If true, it would help explain the snafu. And if the French account is correct, it would mean that the United States backtracked twice, first to the Iranian demands, and then to French conditions. When the Iranians saw that their own proposed deal was not accepted, they had to say that Khamenei would have to decide the matter.

However you explain it, I think the key to understanding lies in the 3-page document Ashton gave the Iranians (if it indeed exists), and whether the Western group approved it all.

Meanwhile, since all these negotiators are going back to Switzerland in ten days, it behooves us to look carefully at the three matters to which the French are said to object:

-The heavy-water reactor at Arak. If the Iranians can continue work on it, it's hard to be enthusiastic, since that reactor provides Tehran with the potential to construct a plutonium bomb;

-Language that states Iran has a "right" to enrich uranium. The whole point of any deal with Iran is to prevent the mullahs from amassing enough enriched uranium to quickly assemble an atomic bomb, or warhead;

-The disposition of Iran's "known" stockpile of enriched uranium. If they can keep it, that makes it much harder for the West to have any confidence that we've made significant progress in preventing Iran going nuclear.

But whatever the answers to all these questions, one thing is luminously clear: the Obama administration certainly misspoke when it whispered to journalists that the deal was done, and that Kerry was just showing up to get his fair share of the champagne. As usual, too much (misleading) talk from Obama & Co, and too much amateurism in doing the real deal.

Reminds me of Obamacare, somehow.

The Iranian Nuclear Reactor In Bushehr Nearly Exploded In October, Would Have Killed Millions of Iranians, Shoddy Russian Workmanship Blamed

This story is hilarious - I'll give you the cliff notes and then let you read the whole thing below.  Back in October, Russian and Iranian scientists monitoring the nuclear reactor at Bushehr in Iran sounded the alarm that the reactor was reaching dangerous levels and there was the distinct possibility that the whole damn thing could blow - the Russians went on high alert and sent in teams to shut it down and find out what in the world happened.

Well, it turns out that some nuts and bolts holding the nuclear fuel rods in place had popped out and fallen to the base of the reactor.  That's right.  Millions of Iranians were nearly killed by the explosion and subsequent radiation because a few Russian contractors didn't quite get a few nuts and bolts quite torqued tight enough.

Now THAT is funny stuff.

The report comes from DEBKA.

Alarm in Tehran and Moscow over Bushehr nuclear reactor’s near-explosion in mid-October


Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr was shut down in mid-October for fear of an explosion. Saturday Dec. 1, an authoritative Russian nuclear industry source revealed the cause of its malfunction: “Indicators showed that some small external parts were… in the [Bushehr] reactor vessel….” They were identified as “bolts beneath the fuel cells.”

debkafile’s Moscow sources report this information came from a source in the office of Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the Russian nuclear energy authority Rosatom, which supervised the construction of Iran’s first atomic reactor at Bushehr.

According to our intelligence sources, Russian scientists and engineers were rushed from Moscow to Bushehr when Russian leaders including Vladimir Putin were warned that the danger of an explosion at Bushehr was high. Neither Moscow nor Tehran reported what was happening. Now they are racing against the clock to get the reactor back on stream.

Russian experts estimated that an explosion at the Bushehr reactor had the potential for causing a million Iranian deaths and hundreds of thousands of radiation victims in the Persian Gulf emirates, which supply the world with one-fifth of its fuel. The hazard was so great in October that Putin ordered command teams of the Russian emergency ministry trained to deal with nuclear disasters to set out for Bushehr in southern Iran and prepare the infrastructure for larger teams.

The engineers immediately shut down the reactor and removed its 163 fuel rods. The bolts which had turned up in the reactor vessel were examined to find out from which part of the plant they had come loose – from the fuel rods – which would have embarrassed Russia as their supplier - or some other part of the reactor. The Russian source which revealed the mishap made a point of saying that the bolts were “small external parts,” indicating that they were not from the rods.
Our intelligence sources in Moscow report that two possible outside causes of the malfunction are under scrutiny by Moscow and Tehran:
1. The bolts were deliberately unscrewed and dropped into the reactor vessel as an act of sabotage;

2. The Stuxnet virus which attacked Iran’s nuclear program two years ago was back and had tampered with the reactor’s computers.

Five months ago, Iran suspended operations at the Fordo underground enrichment facility near Qom after the power lines supplying the plant were sabotaged on Aug. 17 and some of the centrifuges blew up. The Iranians resumed work at Fordo in the second half of September without discovering who was responsible for the incident. However, the suspicion of sabotage at Bushehr immediately crossed the minds of the Russian and Iranian investigators, although they have not ruled an accident or incompetence.
Bushehr supplies the Iran’s national electricity grid with one-fifth of its fuel and it was therefore important to get it running again without delay. Our sources report that Monday, Nov. 26, Iranian and Russian engineers reloaded the fuel rods – still without explaining why they had been removed.
Friday, Nov. 30, shortly before the disclosure from Moscow, Tehran for the first time in its twenty-year nuclear program showed concern about the impact of “nuclear accidents” at Iran’s nuclear sites on the wellbeing of the population and environment.
Gholamreza Massoumi, head of Iran’s accident and medical emergency center, announced: “We believe all of our emergency services should be trained and ready to face nuclear accidents.”
He referred to “accidents” at the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility where yellowcake is converted into highly toxic uranium hexafluoride and revealed: “People who have been in the region, for example – Isfahan’s UCF – have had some accidents for which they have been treated.”

He admitted that some employees at Isfahan had suffered from “health issues” and warned of “problems that civilians living close to nuclear sites could face.”
Massourni’s comments were removed from the semi-official Mehr news agency’s website a few hours after they were published.
Officials in Tehran, already jumpy over the near-catastrophe in Bushehr, must have realized that the comments about the urgent need to prepare emergency services for nuclear accidents, if tied in with the “health problems” at Isfahan and the near-disaster at Bushehr, were a recipe for a nightmare scenario of mass panic in the population and an outcry in the Gulf region against the hazards of Iran’s nuclear program – even before it produces a weapon.

Barack Hussein Obama: It's Okay Iran, Go Ahead With Your Nuclear Plans, Just Don't Make Any Nuclear Bombs, Okay?

To think that the President of the United States of America could be this naive is beyond comprehension. Especially when we are talking about the "smartest man ever to be President" right? So, if Barack Hussein Obama is THEE smartest President of the U.S.A. ever, he certainly is a LOT smarter than the mullahs and the Ayatollah in Iran, right? And if that is so, then if Obama is going to allow the Iranians to have their nuclear program and believes they won't make it into nuclear weapons then he must secretly WANT them to have nuclear weapons, right? I mean, even one of the dumbest men in America would know that the Iranians are lying when they say they aren't going to build nukes, based upon the mountain of evidence that they are doing just that, right? So, it can only mean that Barack Hussein Obama is complicit with the Iranians building a nuclear weapon arsenal.

If Barack Hussein Obama is complicit in Tehran's aim of arming themselves with nuclear weapons, then he is aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States of America and that is an impeachable offense.

Case closed.

The story is from Times of India.

US will accept Iran civilian nuclear programme: Report


WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama has told Iran the United States would accept Tehran having a civilian nuclear program if the Islamic state can prove it is not seeking atomic weapons, the Washington Post said.

Obama sent such a message to Tehran via Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who delivered it to Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei last week, said the newspaper's foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius.

"President Obama has signaled Iran that the United States would accept an Iranian civilian nuclear program if Supreme leader Ali Khamenei can back up his recent public claim that his nation 'will never pursue nuclear weapons'," said Ignatius yesterday.

"A few days before traveling to Iran, Erdogan had held a two-hour meeting with Obama in Seoul, in which they discussed what Erdogan would tell the ayatollah about the nuclear issue and Syria," he wrote.

The United States had said on Thursday that it still expected Iran to hold talks with six world powers on the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear program to go ahead next week, despite a dispute on the venue being Istanbul or Baghdad.

According to Ignatius, Obama asked Erdogan to tell Khamenei "that the Iranians should realize that time is running out for a peaceful settlement and that Tehran should take advantage of the current window for negotiations."

However, "Obama didn't specify whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium domestically as part of civilian program the United States would endorse. That delicate issue evidently would be left for the negotiations."

Turkey has told Iran it remains ready to host the talks between Iran and the P5+1 group, Iran's Al-Alam television station reported yesterday, but the Islamic republic has said it wanted the meeting held in Baghdad or China instead.

Iran last held talks with the six powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- in January 2011 with no results.

Ignatius added that "the challenge for negotiators is whether it's possible to turn Khamenei's public rhetoric into a serious and verifiable commitment not to build a bomb."

Isn't Iran Basically Saying They Want the West To Drop 20 Nuclear Bombs on Tehran?

I'm serious - I think Iran is begging for the West to completely destroy their country and kill every last one of their inhabitants...what else could the reasoning be for this regime to come out today and continue the "in your face" rhetoric and threats? We all know that the Ayatollah and the mullahs think that the 12th imam is just waiting to show up when total chaos and ruin hits the Middle East - that the "Mahdi" will show up to save the Iranians...so this is why the Iranians don't give a shit what the West's response is...they think they are covered by the magical Mahdi.

So I say, let's give it to them. Let's set the table for the return for this so-called 12th imam - we will pound Iran with nuclear bombs, we will level that country into a smoldering, glowing mass of radiation and then we'll wait for the Mahdi to show up. Okay? Deal?

The story is from The Telegraph.

Iran retaliates over international pressure with threat to stop selling oil to the EU


The regime announced that it had used domestically-made fuel rods in a reactor for the first time, and claimed to have built a "new generation" of centrifuges. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared on live television at the Tehran Research Reactor to unveil what he described as a "very big new achievement".

The regime then threatened to pre-empt the EU's decision to embargo Iranian oil from July 1, suggesting that supplies to some European countries could be halted immediately.

But Tehran carefully balanced its defiance with conciliation, formally offering to resume talks with the world's leading powers over its nuclear ambitions.

The unusual series of rapid-fire announcements suggested that Iran's leaders have decided how they will deal with the wall of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions that their adversaries are seeking to construct around them.

The European Union has taken the most far-reaching step with its decision to impose a full oil embargo. Yesterday, however, Iran invited six European ambassadors to the foreign ministry in Tehran.

Those present included envoys from Greece, Italy and Spain, who buy some 450,000 barrels of Iranian crude every day, making them Tehran's biggest European customers. By phasing in the agreed embargo over almost six months, the EU aimed to give them time to find alternative supplies.

But the ambassadors were told that Iran would halt its oil sales unless these countries agreed to sign long term supply contracts - a step that would violate the EU embargo, which already bans new agreements with Tehran.

Representatives of France, Portugal and the Netherlands - who only buy token amounts of Iranian oil - were also present. They were told these minimal supplies would stop immediately, according to Mehr, a semi-official news agency.

The unveiling ceremony took place in Tehran (AFP/GETTY)

The oil market reacted to the possibility of Iran halting oil sales to Europe by sending the price of a barrel of Brent crude up by $1 to reach $118. Taking this step could be a "very smart move" for Iran, said Prof Paul Stevens, senior research fellow on energy at Chatham House.

Iran would almost certainly be able to find alternative buyers in Asia, he said, noting that China aims to purchase 450,000 barrels every day this year to fill a newly-completed strategic reserve. Iran would probably have to offer a discount to secure a new deal with China, but if oil prices were to rise, its revenues could hold up anyway, argued Prof Stevens.

"The Iranians have said to the EU, if you want to play hardball, we can play hardball too," he said. "To some extent this was inevitable arising from the stunning incompetence of the EU, which didn't think through the consequences of introducing an oil embargo."

Prof Stevens added: "The oil market is too complex and too diverse for any embargo to be effective."

However, western officials disagree with this assessment, pointing out that Iran is now forced to keep huge quantities of unsold oil sitting at sea on idle tankers. Last October, Iran had 34.3 million barrels of crude in "floating storage", according to the International Energy Agency, suggesting a serious difficulty with finding buyers.

While trying to use oil for diplomatic leverage, Iran also sent the West a defiant message over its nuclear ambitions. During his appearance at the Tehran Research Reactor, Mr Ahmadinejad told scientists that Iran needed four more plants of this kind in "four different spots", adding: "Go build them, to carry out research activities and provide radio-medicine needed by the country."

Mr Ahmadinejad also claimed that 3,000 new centrifuges had been installed at a different plant, including advanced "fourth generation" models, allowing uranium enrichment to proceed far more rapidly.

However, experts treated both announcements with scepticism. The Tehran reactor is a genuine civilian facility designed to produce medical isotopes for cancer treatment. "There are absolutely no military implications to this at all," said Mark Fitzpatrick, head of non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "The implications are political: it's basically a way of showing Iran's people that sanctions have not impeded the nuclear programme."

As for the claim that Iran had managed to build "fourth generation" centrifuges, Mr Fitzpatrick said that was "almost certainly" an exaggeration. Iran has spent most of the last decade trying to develop a second generation centrifuge. While 260 have been installed, they are still only at an experimental stage.

"I'm sceptical that they're leapfrogging on to the next generation," added Mr Fitzpatrick. "We shouldn't be too impressed by this. We shouldn't start to build bomb shelters yet."

While proclaiming the alleged progress of its nuclear programme, Iran also accepted an invitation to resume talks with the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany.

Saeed Jalili, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, wrote to Baroness Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, saying that Iran "welcomes" negotiations "in order to take fundamental steps toward further cooperation".

The last talks took place in Istanbul over a year ago and led to no progress. At that time, Iran was unwilling to discuss its nuclear ambitions except in the most general terms.

Since then, however, tighter sanctions have increased the economic pressure on the regime. Western officials believe these tougher measures have effectively brought Iran back to the negotiating table. They interpret Iran's recent moves as possible signs that the country's leadership could be willing to modify its position.

Who Is Blowing Up Iran?

Satellite image of damage at a missile site near Bid Kaneh, where an explosion happened on November 12.

We've been getting very sketchy details regarding numerous explosions that have been going on in Iran...at least more details did finally come out regarding the one that killed one of the commanders of the Revolutionary Guard there but even that report is suspect. But this article, from Family Security Matters, talks about the real chance that the resistance inside of Iran is more formidable than we had imagined and is indeed conducting operations inside of Iran.

If this author's take on things is correct, and it turns out later that the Obama administration did NOT sign off on total support of this faction inside of Iran...and in that I mean providing weapons, intel, protection and monetary support, then there should be some real hell to pay for the leadership in America.

Who's Blowing Up Iran?


Another week, another explosion at or near an Iranian military installation (or is it a nuclear research facility?). As usual, the regime doesn’t know what to say. The mullahcracy is so intensely divided that different “spokesmen” from different ministries/news outlets/cults/mafias put out different versions. There was an explosion, or at least “the sound of an explosion.” This goes out on the wires. Then, no, there was no explosion, it was just the sound of our fierce military training. Then again, yes, there was something, but not to worry, just go home and shut up. And so it goes in the Islamic Republic of Iran, as our president so loves to call his intended international partners.

I’ve been reporting for many months about the ongoing sabotage of pipelines, refineries, military sites, Revolutionary Guards’ aircraft and trains, and groups of regime thugs. and have received the usual cold shoulder from publications “of record,” which is to say silent sneers. But the tempo of attacks, most notably the monster blast a week ago that vaporized General Moghaddam and his foreign visitors (at least some of whom had taken the shuttle from Pyongyang to be with him on what they wrongly expected would be a happy day) led the Washington Post’s man in Tehran, Thomas Erdbrink, to note the phenomenon in a useful story entitled“Mysterious Explosions Pose Dilemma for Iranian leaders.” He gives us a pretty good rundown of the explosions, and, living as he does in Tehran, gives ample space to regime “explanations” such as bad welding, western sanctions, and so forth. Given the number of foreign journalists who have come to a bad end in Iran, you’d do the same.

Safe in London, on the other hand, Roger Cohen of the New York Times has no doubt about what’s happening: his guy Obama is waging a secret war against the mullahs. “It would take tremendous naïveté,” he lectures the great unwashed, “to believe these events are not the result of a covert American-Israeli drive to sabotage Iran’s efforts to develop a military nuclear capacity. An intense, well-funded cyberwar against Tehran is ongoing.”

So color me tremendously naive. I would really love to believe Roger Cohen; the very idea that Obama, at long last, has ordered a response to the Iranian war against the west (totally unmentioned, needless to say), is delightful. But I don’t believe it, and Cohen doesn’t give us any evidence for it, aside from intoning, as the mullahs themselves are so wont to do, that it’s the infidels and the Zionists.

Yes, there’s a cyberwar, but Revolutionary Guards generals don’t get vaporized by Stuxnet. And Cohen’s judgment is so swayed by his fandom for Obama that it verges on the worst of the early Chris Matthews. Try this, for example:

Foreign policy has been Obama’s strongest suit. He deserves great credit for killing Osama bin Laden, acting for the liberation of Libya, getting behind the Arab quest for freedom, winding down the war in Iraq, dealing repeated blows to Al Qaeda and restoring America’s battered image.

I suppose some copy editor took out “ordering the” before “killing” and the “of” right after it, but sure, full marks for seeing it through. As for the Libyan, Egyptian, Tunisian and Iraqi decisions, the jury’s out, and seems to be leaning against Cohen’s client nowadays. The blows to Al Qaeda–by which he is referring to drone attacks and the like–are fine, albeit the really vicious body blow was the defeat of AQ and their sponsors in Iraq. If you think our national image has been “restored” under this president as a result of his great foreign policy, more power to you. Ring up Roger in London, maybe he’ll give you tea.

Since I’m pretty much the only guy in town who forecast the war against the mullahs, and it’s now so obvious that even MSM reporters and columnists can mention it without blushing, I’m sticking to my story. I don’t think the ongoing assault against the regime is coming from outside Iran. I think it comes from the Iranian opposition within the country. And I think it shows that the opposition is a great deal stronger than the experts have opined.

If you were Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, what would you be saying to that unhealthy face in the mirror? You’d say, “they come and go at will; they obviously have the full cooperation of traitors at very high levels of the regime, even inside the Guards. They not only knew Moghaddam was going to be there, but exactly where and when. Now Isfahan, another heavily guarded base. That doesn’t look like Zionists and infidels, whose pathetic collaborators we round up easily over and over again; it looks like people who are trusted and supported by the traitors in my own house.”

When a regime cracks, even very high officials start to do favors for the opposition, hoping to avoid the worst if the regime comes down. Khamenei knows that the head of the shah’s secret intelligence service went on to hold the same position under the fanatical Ayatollah Khomeini. Recent events will have convinced the supreme leader that his own security may be as compromised as the shah’s was.

Add to this the dreams common to regular users of opium (Khamenei is one of them) and you’ve got a very explosive situation.

To No Avail, Israel Tries To Convince the World To Cripple Iran With Harsh Sanctions

Big surprise, huh? The Israelis are not seeing any others in the world willing to step up to the plate and demand very strict and harsh sanctions against Iran now that the U.N.'s IAEA has found the Iranians to be well advanced in their development of nuclear weapons.

From the article at The Jerusalem Post:

Israel watched the developments at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on Thursday very closely, yet unable to convince the world to implement crippling sanctions on Iran that would convince it to jettison its military nuclear program.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview Thursday morning from Canada with Israel Radio, said that Jerusalem was engaged in an "intensive world struggle to enlist world leaders" to support sanctions. "Our goal is to ensure that as a result of the recent IAEA report there are practical actions and steps taken to stop Iran."

You will see further on in the article just how torn the leaders are in Israel about a military action against Iran's nukes - listen, I don't blame them. If things were to go badly for an Israeli raid on Iran, they could suffer some huge devastation and right now, it sure doesn't look like there are any horses in the world that are willing to watch the back of the Israelis.

At the same time, the Israelis have to have seen how damn wimpy the West is with sanctions and how futile sanctions have been so far - I cannot think of any sanctions that will cause the Iranians to abandon their nuclear development.

Israel watches as world rejects strict sanctions on Iran


Israel watched the developments at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on Thursday very closely, yet unable to convince the world to implement crippling sanctions on Iran that would convince it to jettison its military nuclear program.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview Thursday morning from Canada with Israel Radio, said that Jerusalem was engaged in an "intensive world struggle to enlist world leaders" to support sanctions. "Our goal is to ensure that as a result of the recent IAEA report there are practical actions and steps taken to stop Iran."

That report, issued last week, stated that Iran was working to develop a nuclear-weapon design and conducting extensive research and tests for those weapons. On Thursday a resolution was agreed upon in Vienna by the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany, to slam Iran for its defiance, but stopped short of sending the matter back to the UN Security Council for another round of sanctions. The resolution is expected to be passed by the IAEA board of governors meeting on Friday.

Barak said that Israel should not adopt a policy of "whining and fear and saying that they are going to do all kinds of things to me, but rather Israel must make clear that it understands the situation very well, and that what is being discussed is a challenge to the whole world because it threatens the whole world."

Meanwhile, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon picked up on the universality of the Iranian threat during a speech Thursday at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, saying Iranians fingerprints can be seen in every area of conflict in the region.

"The significance of an Iran with nuclear weapons capability is that it could create nuclear chaos in the Middle East, and lead to the use of the nuclear umbrella to encourage terrorism and irredentism, and the transfer of a dirty bomb to Manhattan and Europe," he said.

"It is forbidden for that non-conventional regime to obtain non-conventional weapons, and one way or another Iran has to be prevented from acquiring a military nuclear capability," Ya'alon said. "The challenge is not only on our doorstep, and it is before the whole free world, led by the US.

Ya'alon said that these were "critical hours" in determining where the world would go with its Iranian policy. "Our assessment is that it is possible to stop the military nuclear project in Iran if all will cooperate and the Iranians will be faced with the following dilemma: nuclear weapons or survival.

He said that those making the decisions in Iran were still not convinced of the west's determination to stop it.

National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror, speaking at the same conference, came out against former security officials who in recent months have spoken out against military action against Iran, saying they were trying "to educate" the prime minister, rather than give advice.

While he mentioned no names, former Mossad head Meir Dagan, former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and former Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) head Yuval Disking have all come out publicly in recent months against military action against Iran.

Amidror said it was "arrogant" for them to try and "educate the decision makers, rather than realizing that people with another world view were elected."

He said that they were "confused" thinking that they had a better understanding than those with a differing view and ideology. "So I say, if they think they have a better world view they should go to elections and then there will be a chance that they will make the decisions the next time."

Barak, meanwhile, warned in a US television interview Wednesday that if Iran succeeded in developing a nuclear weapon, a Middle East arms race would ensue with Saudi Arabia and Egypt eventually seeking nuclear weapons as well.

Speaking in an interview with US broadcaster Charlie Rose, Barak also said that if he were in Iran's place – a country seeing itself as the descendants of a 4,000 year old civilization – he would "probably" want nuclear weapons.

"They look around and see that the Indians are nuclear, the Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan is nuclear, Korea, not to mention the Russians. They look westward and see Sadam tried it, Bashar Assad tried it, Gaddafi tired it, Israel allegedly has it. But the Middle East with a nuclear Iran is a totally different place."

Why Iran Doesn't Fear Obama

The fact of the matter is that the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khamenei and the mullahs simply don't fear the Obama administration and quite frankly, that means they do not fear any in the West. This article, from Family Security Matters, details the impression that the Iranians have of the weak-kneed defender of America. As some of you may have heard last night at the GOP debate, Mitt Romney made the statement that if Obama is re-elected, Iran will have nuclear weapons.

Now, we have seen in the past couple of weeks more of an undercurrent that the West and Israel are beginning to rumble about new options to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat but once again, we see how a rudderless America is missing the prime opportunity to form a coalition...a chance to stand up, rally those of the West and eliminate the Iranian threat. This may truly be the biggest review of Obama's leadership abilities - will he be able to form a union of opposition that will take the big leap, can he gain the support of numerous allies to once and for all destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Why Iran Doesn't Fear Obama


As expected, the latestInternational Atomic Energy Agencyreport on Iran’s clandestine nuclear-weapons program has revealed, once again, that the Islamic Republic is determined to ignore international law and the threat of military action.

Many factors may be behind Tehran’s behavior -- most notably, a misreading of the Obama administration’s intentions and America’s ability to impose its will on Iran if necessary.

Iran’s official media have long claimed thatPresident Obamahas sent two letters to Iranian “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei. But until yesterday, there had been little information about Obama’s attempts at charming the mullahs with his magic prose.

Now an editorial in Kayhan, a daily Tehran newspaper run by the office of the “Supreme Guide,” has revealed what it describes as “America’s demands” from the Islamic Republic. Since Khamenei has refused to write back to Obama, the editorial can be regarded as his reply.

The paper lists five demands:

* Refrain from action that might disrupt the flow of OPEC’s oil to world markets.
* Stop the campaign to topple the monarchy in Saudi Arabia.
* Stop supporting movements opposed to the Israel-Palestine peace process, and accept Israel’s right to exist.
* Accept the US military presence in Muslim countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
* Don’t support groups that try to create Islamist regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen.

Khamenei’s reply to Obama can be summed up in one phrase: Take a walk!

The editorial asserts that the US is in “global retreat” and that the American military are “scared” of confrontation with Iran. “It is interesting that while the White House, the State Department and the FBI are conducting the campaign of threats against Iran, the American security and military organizations have remained quiet,” Kayhan notes.

The silence of “the head of the Pentagon, the CIA, the [Joint] Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Adviser” indicates that the US “military-security” establishment fears the Islamic Republic. As a sign of that fear, the paper claims that these days the US fleet in the Persian Gulf “promptly answers any question put by the Iranian Central Command.”

“It is true,” the editorial continues, “Iran is America’s No. 1 challenger. But it is also true that the United States’ principal concern today is to reach an accommodation with Iran.” Washington now has “a strong adversary that cannot be deterred,” the paper muses.

It makes it clear that Khamenei wants total victory and is confident of securing it without endangering his hold on power.

While hardly mentioning Israel, the editorial makes clear that its destruction as a Jewish state remains a high priority of Khomeinism and its Arab clients. Convinced that Israel is in no position to attack Iran on its own, Kayhan makes no mention of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent threat of military action.

For Khomeinists only one adversary counts: America.

And, since the United States is believed to be in terminal decline, there is no need for Tehran to fear American threats or respond to Obama’s offers. All it need do is wait until Americans realize they have no future in the Middle East and acknowledge Iran as the regional “superpower.”

The editorial reveals a deep misreading at the highest level of Iranian leadership of the situation and the United States’ interests and capabilities.

Khamenei’s analysis is that the US would simply sit back and watch as Iran becomes a nuclear power, wipes Israel off the map, imposes the rule of the “Supreme Guide” from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and uses Middle East oil as a weapon in global jihad against the Infidel.

Khamenei is also mistaken in his understanding of the “American psychology.” Americans may be reluctant warriors and natural dealmakers -- but, when forced to fight, they are not the cowards that Khamenei believes.

Mutual misunderstanding has often been the cause of conflict and war. In the case of Iran and the United States, that misunderstanding seems to be especially acute.