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UK admits to cyber attack on Iran

Leave a comment Posted by on July 19, 2012

Press TV

UK Parliament’s Intelligence Security Committee (ISC) has admitted that Britain has launched a cyber attack against Iran shortly after the UK spy chief admitted Britain conducted covert operations against Iran.

In its annual report for 2011-2012 to the British parliament, the ISC claimed that Britain’s spies have caused disruption to Iran’ nuclear capabilities saying UK spying agents could access “networks or systems of others to hamper their activities or capabilities without detection.”

Meanwhile, the committee raised “grave” concerns over a security skills issue within Britain’s secret eavesdropping service Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and called on the British government to improve their cyber war capabilities.

In the report, the committee also recommended that enhancing Britain’s cyber war capabilities should include “accessing the data or networks of targets to obtain intelligence or to cause an effect without being detected”.

London’s claims about causing disruption to Iran’s nuclear capabilities come as Fereydoon Abbasi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, says cyber attacks against Iran are ineffective because Iran’s cyber experts can easily block any kind of virus.

The claims made by the ISC comes less than a week after British media reported the head of Britain’s secret intelligence agency MI6, John Sawers, admitted that Britain conducted covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program.

Sawers also claimed that Iran is after obtaining nuclear weapons and could have built such weapons in 2008 hadn’t British spies interfered. Moreover, Sawers claimed that Iran is only 2 years away from becoming “a nuclear weapons state” warning that the Israeli regime may decide to act with military aggression if it thought Iran would be a nuclear power by 2014.

The claims made by British officials come as Iran has cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) more than any other country throughout the history of the agency. Surveillance cameras are operative at all of Iran’s nuclear centers as these centers are being inspected around the clock.

The Islamic Republic of Iran stands for its rights to enhance nuclear energy and has given countless warnings to any foreign aggressor that any military strike against Iran would result in their quick defeat.

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Objective of US and Israeli policy is economic warfare against Iran

Leave a comment Posted by on June 7, 2012

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Anti-Iranian Propaganda

Leave a comment Posted by on May 27, 2012

by Stephen Lendman

When America goes to war or plans one, media scoundrels march in lockstep.

Articles, commentaries, editorials, and broadcasts feature Washington handout-style journalism.

Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure. Readers and viewers are deceived and betrayed.

For years, Iran and Syria have been targeted for regime change. Independent governments aren’t tolerated. Puppet ones are planned to replace them. Scoundrel media play leading roles.

On May 24, The New York Times headlined “Iran Nuclear Talks End with No Deal.”

P5+1 talks failed as expected. Washington bears full responsibility. Deal-making isn’t at issue. It’s portraying Iran as uncooperative for added justification to wage war.

“The six wanted a freeze on Iranian production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, which is considered a short step from bomb grade.”

In fact, it’s a giant one to 90% required for weapons making. It’s especially so without intent to produce them.

Medical isotopes and other peaceful applications require 20%. NPT provisions permit it. Iran fully complies. Washington and Israel are serial violators. Their belligerence threatens humanity. Tehran threatens no one.

EU lead negotiator Catherine Ashton said “very intense and detailed discussions (left) significant differences” unresolved. They’ll remain so in future meetings. A June 18-19 Moscow one is planned. Nothing substantive will change.

“We will maintain intensive contacts with our Iranian counterparts to prepare a further meeting in Moscow,” Ashton announced.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili said:

“Of the main topics in using peaceful nuclear energy is the topic of having the nuclear fuel cycle and enrichment. We emphasize this right.”

“This is an undeniable right of the Iranian nation….especially the right to enrich uranium.” If P5+1 nations negotiate in good faith, “we will, of course, welcome some offer to cooperate on.”

Iran didn’t go to Baghdad to surrender. Its position won’t change in Moscow. Washington demands it. The Times left that and other key issues unaddressed and/or misreported.

On May 26, Reuters headlined “Iran has enough uranium for 5 bombs: expert,” saying:

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) claims “Iran has significantly stepped up its output of low-enriched uranium and total production in the last five years (to provide) enough for at least five nuclear weapons if refined much further.”

David Albright heads ISIS. He impersonates a nuclear expert. He’s a former pseudo-UN weapons inspector. Former Iraq chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter called him a “nuclear expert who never was.”

His “track record (reveals) half-baked analyses derived from questionable sources….He breathes false legitimacy into these factually challenged stories by” claiming fake credentials.

Albright founded ISIS. It’s self-serving. It shuns truth. He fronts for power, privilege, and war profiteers. He’s part of Washington’s anti-Iranian agenda. In Iraq, he played the same role. He’s a pro-imperial opportunist.

In June 1996, he appeared once as as a pseudo-Iraq weapons inspector. His role was political, not scientific. He observed and regurgitated what Washington wanted to hear. He’s doing it now on Iran. His credibility is sorely lacking. He has none.

Claiming Iran is able to produce five bombs is inflammatory and misleading. All nations with commercial reactors produce enough uranium and plutonium for bomb-making. Only a handful, in fact, do it.

Iran isn’t one of them. That’s the headline not featured. Instead, deceptive ones heighten tensions for war.

IAEA head Yukiya Amano represents Western, not global interests fairly. He serves Washington’s anti-Iranian agenda. On May 25, he claimed inspectors found Fordo plant enriched uranium traces up to 27%.

Around 90% is needed for bomb-making. Iran purifies to 20%. Most amounts are around 3.5%. Traces signify nothing. Iran’s main stockpile complies with what it claims. No weapons development or production evidence exists.

At times, over-enrichment occurs. It’s normal, not unusual or cheating. Technicians adjust accordingly. IAEA inspectors should have left it unmentioned.

Media scoundrels, of course, jump on it in headlines. Many readers don’t go beyond a few paragraphs to know it’s insignificant.

On May 25, a Washington Post editorial headlined, “Iran’s hard bargain,” saying:

Iran rejected Western “confidence-building measures.” It demanded rights Washington rejects. “(E)xtended negotiations will only benefit Iran.”

“What’s most concerning about the Baghdad talks is that they failed to show that the regime of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has made a strategic decision to strike a bargain.”

“Instead, Tehran sought something for nothing: acceptance by the West of its uranium enrichment in return for assertions that it is not seeking nuclear weapons and promises to cooperate with international inspectors.”

“In fact, no ‘right’ to process uranium exists under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

Fact check

Iran wants (and deserves) to be treated like other countries with commercial nuclear operations. It complies fully with NPT provisions. Washington and Israel are nuclear outlaws.

Iran’s operations are more intensively monitored than any other nation. Washington and Israel prohibit inspections for good reason. Massive cheating would be found. Imperial powers never tell all or say they’re sorry.

NPT permits uranium enrichment as long as countries agree to rigorous monitoring. WP editors better check their sources. They, in turn, need to find another line of work.

Yousaf Butt is a nuclear physicist. He’s a Federation of American Scientists consultant. In January, his Foreign Policy article headlined “Stop the Madness,” saying:

“Despite all the hype, Iran’s nuclear program has yet to violate international law. It’s time to calm down, think, and above all halt the rush to war.”

“The IAEA considers 20 percent enriched uranium to be low-enriched uranium and ‘a fully adequate isotopic barrier’ to weaponization.”

Iran complies. It does nothing illegal. NPT doesn’t prevent a nuclear weapons “capability” or “option.” Dozens of nations have it.

Singling out Iran is for political reasons. It’s not about legitimate fears of an illegal weapons program in the hands of a country threatening to use them.

The key red line Iran won’t cross is “diverting” nuclear material for weapons production. Numerous experts and independent reports “affirmed (for) years that they have no evidence (of) any such program.”

Multiple rounds of sanctions “go far beyond anything related to its nuclear program.”

The hype about it is political. It has no scientific basis whatever.

Washington Post editorial assertions are false, misleading, and inflammatory. Iran is legally entitled to pursue its nuclear program.

P5+1 proposals were disingenuously one-sided. Unreasonable demands were made. Nothing was offered in return. Western good faith wasn’t present in Baghdad. It’s an oxymoron. It doesn’t exist.

Tehran negotiated responsibly. Not good enough, said Washington. Prove a negative was demanded. Refuse and be blamed for Western obstructionism.

Multiple rounds of discussions won’t change things. WP editors think the “slide toward war remains desirable. Iran cannot be granted much more time to build and install centrifuges.”

Washington is infested with hotheads. WP editorial and op-ed writers are among them. They have lots of scoundrel media company. Promoting war makes it more likely. Body counts and vast destruction don’t matter.

Nor for USA Today. It’s post-Baghdad editorial headlined “How the US can win at nuclear poker with Iran,” saying:

“There’s an old poker saying that if you look around the table and can’t figure out who the chump is, it’s you. Too often in high-stakes negotiations with rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, the U.S. has looked a lot like the chump as it tried to curtail those nations’ nuclear weapons programs.”

“(O)nly a sucker could be confident that….Iran really, really means” what it says.

Scoundrel media report this way. Managed news duplicity substitutes for real news, opinion and analysis.

Media liars bear full responsibity. So does Washington for failure, not Iran. Tehran can’t succeed without a willing partner. It hasn’t had one in decades. It has the worst of all relationships now. Obama itches for more war post-election.

He feigns negotiations while planning it at the same time. Munich and Hitler’s Non-Aggression Treaty with Soviet Russia come to mind. Washington and Israel are no different. Hawks in both countries are especially worrisome. They’re bent on aggression and won’t accept less.

In response on May 22, the Tehran Times headlined “Iran must take firm stance at Baghdad talks, saying:

For years, Iran “bravely resisted” unreasonable demands to halt its peaceful nuclear program. Tehran believes pursuing it is a legitimate right. It’s “non-negotiatble.”

At the same time, Iranian officials try to build trust and resolve differences. They negotiate in good faith. In return, they’re rebuffed, stonewalled, and betrayed.

It’s up to Washington to break the deadlock and end sanctions. They’re harsh and unfair. Short of capitulation, tug-of-war diplomacy won’t end. Hillary Clinton said Tehran must “close the gaps. All of our sanctions will remain in place and continue to move forward” for the duration.

They’re about making Iran’s economy scream. They’re not for its legitimate nuclear program. That’s red herring camouflage for bigger fish to fry. At issue is installing puppet leaders Washington controls. War looks likely to try.

Negotiating with America accomplishes nothing. It never did before and won’t now. “Therefore, resistance seems to be the only option left for the Iranian side to convey its message to the West and to uphold the inalienable rights of the Iranian nation.”

America and Israeli want imperial dominance. Iran wants to live free in peace.

Sovereign states deserve that much and more. Wars won’t end until enough of them unite and resist. If not soon, they’ll continue and expand dangerously.

Never in history has one nation devoted so much firepower to global death and destruction.

Saving humanity depends on restoring peace and stability before it’s too late to matter. There may not be much time left to do it.

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Hard line failure in nuke talks

1 Comment Posted by on May 25, 2012

US Position in Iran Negotiations Driven by “Israel”

by GARETH PORTER, source

Negotiations between Iran and the United States and other members of the P5+1 group in Baghdad ended in fundamental disagreement Thursday over the position of the P5+1 offering no relief from sanctions against Iran.

The two sides agreed to meet again in Moscow Jun. 18 and 19, but only after Iran had threatened not to schedule another meeting, because the P5+1 had originally failed to respond properly to its five-point plan.

The prospects for agreement are not likely to improve before that meeting, however, mainly because of an inflexible U.S. diplomatic posture that reflects President Barack Obama’s need to bow to the demands of Israel and the U.S. Congress on Iran policy.

The U.S. hard line in the Baghdad talks and the failure to set the stage for an early agreement with Iran means that Iran will not only increase but accelerate its accumulation of 20-percent enriched uranium, which has been the ostensible reason for wanting to get Iran to the negotiating table quickly.

Iran’s enrichment to 20 percent, which Tehran has justified over the past two years as needed by its Tehran Research Reactor to produce medical isotopes, can be turned into high enriched uranium more quickly than the 3.5 percent enriched uranium for Iran’s nuclear power programme.

But although Iran has let it be known that it is open to making a deal to end its 20 percent enrichment and even to let go of its stockpile if offered the right incentive, the Obama administration has opted not to go for such a deal by refusing to offer any corresponding reduction in sanctions.

The U.S. demand for the closure of the Fordow facility, which is now under surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was a direct response to pressure from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu declared that demand one of his “benchmarks” for the talks on Mar. 2.

In discussions with the U.S. in late March, Defence Minister Ehud Barak insisted on the closure of Fordow as one of the Israeli demands, as he revealed Apr. 4. That was a quid pro quo for Israeli acceptance of a focus in the first stage on halting Iran’s uranium enrichment to 20 percent rather than demanding an end to all uranium enrichment, as Reuters reported Apr. 4.

That agreement clearly implied that the Obama administration would do nothing to dismantle any sanctions against Iran unless Iran ended all uranium enrichment.

The administration’s refusal to entertain any removal of sanctions as part of its diplomatic strategy with Iran also recognised the fact that it would have to pay a steep political price merely to request any change in sanctions legislation and would be unlikely to prevail over the deeply entrenched interests of Israel in both houses.

After being lobbied by 12,000 activists attending the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March, the House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding a policy of preventing Iran from having a “nuclear weapons capability” by a vote of 401-11.

The U.S. understandings with Israel were sharply at odds with a deal with Iran based on a “step by step” approach which had been proposed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Under that approach, each move by Iran to satisfy Western concerns about its nuclear programme should be rewarded by a relaxation of sanctions.

As Michael Adler revealed in The Daily Beast Mar. 7, however, the Obama administration was unwilling to reduce sanctions gradually as the Russians wanted. Adler’s account implied that it could only come at the end of the process in response to a complete suspension of all uranium enrichment by Iran as a “confidence building measure”.

For Iran, 20 percent enrichment has been largely an exercise in increasing its bargaining leverage with the United States by creating a level of enrichment that the U.S has said is threatening.

Iran has made a series of policy statements since it began that enrichment suggesting that the objective has been to trade those bargaining chips for negotiating concessions that would benefit Iran – mainly moves to reduce sanctions and the recognition of its right to enrich.

The demand that the 20 percent enrichment be ended and that Fordow facility be closed without any easing of economic sanctions would represent a double diplomatic defeat which Iran has strenuously rejected.

“Giving up 20 percent enrichment levels in return for plane spare parts is a joke,” Iranian analyst Hasan Abadini was quoted as saying.

There was some discussion before the Baghdad meeting, initiated by Europeans, of at least offering to suspend a European ban on insuring oil tankers, which threatens some of Iran’s oil trade with Asian countries, in conjunction with a deal, according to the New York Times May 18. But that was evidently rejected by Washington.

The U.S. rejection of the “step by step” approach in favour of a stance that leans heavily toward Israeli preferences leads to apparent contradictions in U.S. policy.

That stance is sharply at odds with the official U.S. stance suggesting ending Iran’s 20 percent enrichment is an urgent requirement. A senior U.S. official was quoted by Associated Press Thursday as saying, “We are urgent about this, because every day we don’t figure this out, they keep going forward with a nuclear program.”

The contradiction was further highlighted by reports that Iran is further increasing its capability for 20 percent enrichment at the Fordow facility. A Reuters story from Vienna Thursday said that Iran may have already put 350 more centrifuges into Fordow since February, on top of the almost 700 already operating there.

Associated Press reported a senior U.S. official in Baghdad explaining that sanctions were likely to increase the pressure on Iran to agree to U.S. terms in the next round of talks. “Maximum pressure is not yet being felt by Iran,” the official was quoted as saying.

But few diplomatic observers believe that Iran’s Supreme Leader, who makes the crucial decisions, could afford to bow to the U.S. demands as presented in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the U.S. strategy of drawing out the talks to wait for the impact of sanctions to work on the Iranians allows Iran to continue adding “facts on the ground”.

Ironically, U.S. strategists have argued publicly in the past that Iran was using negotiations to “play for time” while it increased its nuclear capabilities.

In another seeming contradiction between U.S. diplomatic posture and its declared interest in ensuring that Iran prove the non-military character of its nuclear programme, U.S. officials dismissed as irrelevant the news that Iran and IAEA Director General Yukia Amano are close to an agreement on the terms of Iranian cooperation in clarifying allegations of past nuclear weapons work.

A “senior U.S. official” said the United States welcomed the signs of progress, but then carefully differentiated the purpose of the P5+1 negotiations and those of the IAEA, according to Al-monitor May 22.

“The IAEA is about accounting for the past and for naming what is,” the official explained. “It is not about what is the nature of Iran’s nuclear program and what will Iran’s nuclear program look like going forward, and will it be peaceful.”

That statement abruptly reversed previous U.S. insistence that Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA represented a central element in a diplomatic settlement of the conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme.

The idea that U.S. negotiations with Iran would not be affected by whatever it did to prove allegations of past nuclear weapons work wrong implies that Washington is firmly committed to its present diplomatic course mainly in order to placate Israel and the U.S. Congress.

GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.

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Activists seek UK PM pledge not to attack Iran

1 Comment Posted by on May 24, 2012

Activists seek UK PM pledge not to attack Iran

Press TV

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has sent a letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron to seek assurances that London will not engage in illegal military action in Iran.

The CND said the move is a response to the government’s call for legal advice on involvement in a military action against Iran.

Senior cabinet members have asked for recommendations from the Attorney General on a range of options regarding Iran’s nuclear energy program including “giving diplomatic support to Israel and/or using the Royal Navy to combat attempts by Tehran to close the vital Strait of Hormoz shipping route.”

However, the CND said it has sent it own “advice” to the government, expressing concerns about London’s escalating military rhetoric regarding the issue.

“[The letter seeks] to remind the Prime Minister that no concrete evidence has been provided to substantiate Western concerns [about Iran’s civilian nuclear activities] and that military intervention on the basis of such an ill-defined threat would be illegal,” the CND said.

“[It also] sets out the very limited circumstances prescribed by international law where pre-emptive military action can ever be justified. In short, such military action must always be used as a last resort; … in response to a clearly defined, instant and overwhelming threat. CND suggest that none of these criteria can be said to exist in the current Iranian context,” it added.

This comes as CND General Secretary Kate Hudson has called for a settlement of the situation through negotiations based on mutual respect and equality.

“The consequences of a military attack on Iran would be disastrous not only for that country but for the region as a whole. Genuine dialogue and diplomacy on the basis of equality and respect is the only way forward,” Hudson said.

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US pressuring India to cut crude imports from Iran

Leave a comment Posted by on May 7, 2012

US pressuring India to cut crude imports from Iran

Press TV

The United States is mounting pressure on India to scale back its oil imports from Iran as part of Washington’s campaign to force Tehran into abandoning its nuclear energy program.

“There is adequate supply in the market for India to find adequate sources,” US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.

This is while Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said on April 26 that India is bound by UN sanctions, but “unilateral sanctions imposed by countries or [a] group of countries shouldn’t impact legitimate trade relations with Iran.”

He said New Delhi crude oil imports from Tehran are guided by India’s energy needs.

The US imposed tough financial and oil sanctions against Iran in the beginning of 2012 in a bid to pile up pressure on Tehran over its nuclear energy program.

The US unilateral sanctions, slated to take full effect on June 28, seek to penalize other countries for importing Iranian crude.

The US and the EU claim that Iran’s nuclear energy program includes a military component, and have used such claims as a pretext to impose international and unilateral sanctions against the country.

Tehran refutes their claims, saying frequent inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have failed to prove any diversion in Iran’s nuclear energy program toward military purposes.

—————————————————————————————-

Tel Aviv spreads falsehood, deceptions against Iran: Israeli daily

Press TV

An editorial in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz says Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister for Military Affairs Ehud Barak are creating “falsehoods and deceptions on the Iranian issue.”

The article, published on Sunday, said while former Israeli premiers such as Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert did not allow war rhetoric against Iran “to reach apocalyptic proportions,” Netanyahu has baselessly turned the Iranian issue into the be-all and end-all.

According to the editorial, while there is a consensus among experts that Iran’s nuclear energy program “is being conducted methodically” and does not pursue a military capability, Netanyahu and Barak are creating “falsehoods and deceptions” on the issue.

“Many people, among them [Israel’s] Chief of Staff [Lieutenant General] Benny Gantz” believe that Iran will not produce a nuclear weapon, the article adds.

Gantz said on April 25 that he does not believe Iran will pursue nuclear weapons after years of efforts made by Tel Aviv and its allies to convince the world otherwise. He described Iran’s leadership as “very rational,” who would not make such a decision.

Tel Aviv has recently been subjected to harsh criticisms by the regime’s military-intelligence officials over its stance towards Iran.

On April 27, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yuval Diskin said Netanyahu and Minister for Military Affairs Ehud Barak were not fit to stand at helm of the Israeli regime.

“I will tell you things that might be harsh. I cannot trust Netanyahu and Barak at the wheel in confronting Iran. They are infected with messianic feelings over Iran,” Diskin said.

Pointing to the recent wave of criticisms targeting the Israeli policies on Iran, senior Iranian author and Middle East expert Dr. Ismail Salami said, “A rift the size of a potential coup is taking shape between the Israeli government and the military-intelligence men over Iran, a fact which threatens the ruling Israeli political apparat on the one hand and exonerates Iran of all years-long groundless allegations on the other.”

The US, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Washington and Tel Aviv have time and again threatened Tehran with a military strike against its civilian nuclear facilities.

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Britain’s Mad-house Foreign Policy

Leave a comment Posted by on April 5, 2012

Britain’s Mad-house Foreign Policy

by Stuart Littlewood, source

My local MP, Henry Bellingham, is a Foreign Office minister whose responsibilities include the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and conflict resolution.

I take this to mean he’s tasked with keeping the British Government on the straight-and-narrow as regards international law, with ensuring dutiful conformity with the UN’s Charter and numerous resolutions, with saving our warmongering hotheads from the calaboose in The Hague, and with treading the path of peace at all times.

The International Criminal Court is, to say the least, challenging. The world is crawling with high-ranking war criminals but the ICC in its 10 year history has delivered only one verdict. As if to underline the Court’s utter uselessness as an instrument of justice, the ICC prosecutor has just rejected a bid by the Palestinian Authority to have the war crimes tribunal investigate Israel’s conduct during ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in Gaza.

His excuse is that the status granted to Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly is that of “observer”, not a “Non-member State”. The fact that more than 130 governments and certain international organisations, including United Nation bodies, recognise Palestine as a state makes no difference.

Let’s see how quickly the UNGA, with Mr Bellingham’s help, can get their skates on and straighten out the simple matter of Palestine’s status so that Israel’s strutting psychopaths can finally be brought to book.

Hague’s Threats Costing Us Dear

A recent Reuters article, Iran sanctions bring unintended, unwanted results by their Political Risk Correspondent Peter Apps, points to Western sanctions against Iran having so far failed to deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear programme and generating instead unexpected side-effects and posing new problems.

It seems to me the consequences of sanctions were entirely predictable.

The expected loss of Iranian crude production has helped push oil prices to levels seen as threatening the global economy. And expert opinion seems to be saying that the ratcheting-up of economic pressure is not having the desired effect but simply increasing Tehran’s determination. “While Iranians may bear the brunt of the economic pain, people around the world are also feeling the knock-on effects of rising fuel prices that also drive food and price inflation.”

The message received is that whether sanctions work or not, “it may now be far from easy for Western states to significantly alter course to reduce or remove the restrictions, even if they want to”.

And Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle Eastern studies program at London’s City University, is quoted as saying: “The terrible thing is that this is the moment there might be a possibility to at least begin to make progress. But we are going to miss it.”

The other day NASDAQ carried a Dow Jones report saying the head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration had joined a panel of energy experts in dismissing the idea that a “quick fix” could reduce US gasoline prices, suggesting instead that rising demand for oil around the world and supply concerns stemming from Iran sanctions were driving prices at the pump.

The sanctions, coupled with other geopolitical events such as Libya’s civil war, are a source of “grave concern” for the oil markets said Dan Yergin, chairman of energy research organisation IHS CERA.

Hague led the charge on oil sanctions and the imposition of other measures to make economic life a misery. They are backfiring. So that’s another fine mess the Cameron-Hague foreign policy mad-house has got us into.

And Now a Legal Quagmire

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers in a statement issued 26 November 2011, said it was deeply concerned about the threats against Iran by Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Referring to the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), IADL stated that:

(1) The threats by Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom are unacceptable, and are dangerous not only for all the region but for the whole of humanity.

(2) Article 2.4 of UN Charter forbids not only use of force but also the threat of force in international relations, and that the right of defence settled by the Charter does not include pre-emptive strikes.

(3) While Israel, is quick to denounce the possible possession of nuclear weapons by others, it illegally has had nuclear weapons for many years; and

(4) The danger to world peace caused by nuclear weapons is so great as to require the global eradication of all nuclear weapons, and to immediately declare the Middle East a nuclear free zone and a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction, as required by UN Security Council resolution 687.”

What do UN Charter Articles 2.3 and 2.4 actually say?

• “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered”, and
• “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”.

It sounds crystal clear. What is it about this that Messrs Hague and Cameron don’t understand?

Let’s look a little closer at the settlement of disputes, one of Mr Bellingham’s specialisms. Article 33 of the UN Charter requires that “the parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means…”

I have asked the Government repeatedly, through Mr Bellingham, what efforts the Foreign Secretary made to meet and discuss with Iran’s ministers before resorting to economic ‘terror’ tactics.

• How many times has a British foreign secretary visited Tehran in the 32 years since the Islamic Revolution?

• Did Mr Hague go and talk before embarking on punitive sanctions?

He remains silent. Communication doesn’t seem to be Mr Hague’s strong point, except when lecturing. It was Hague’s decision to shut down the British embassy in Tehran and eject the Iranians from London. He had not in any case maintained a full diplomatic presence in Tehran and the embassy operated at chargé d’affaires level for several months after the previous ambassador left. Now we talk to Iran through a third-party country, Germany.

So much for his stated desire to improve relations, reach out and engage.

Negotiations in Bad Faith

I’m indebted to Dr David Morrison for reminding me that in 2003 the Foreign Ministers of the UK, France and Germany visited Tehran and initiated discussions with Iran on its nuclear programme. This of course was pre-Hague. In a statement issued at the time, the three EU states said they “recognise the right of Iran to enjoy peaceful use of nuclear energy in accordance with the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty]” – i.e. Iran had a right to uranium enrichment on its own soil like other parties to the NPT. This was repeated and confirmed at the Paris Agreement in 2004. Iran agreed “on a voluntary basis” to suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities. The three EU states recognized the suspension as “a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation”.

However, proposals published by the UK, France and Germany the following year demanded that all enrichment and related activities on Iranian soil cease for good. In other words, Iran’s voluntary suspension of these activities was to be permanent. What had happened to the trio’s earlier commitment to “recognise the right of Iran to enjoy peaceful use of nuclear energy in accordance with the NPT”? Was Iran to be the only party to the NPT forbidden to have uranium enrichment on its own soil?

Yes. The West’s aim was to halt all enrichment in Iran. From now on Iran would be treated as a second-class party to the NPT, with fewer rights than the others.

Rewarding Evil in Our Name

As for the British Government’s enslavement to Israel, the following statement appears on the Foreign Office website…

“Israel is an important strategic partner and friend for the UK. The UK and Israel hold a number of important shared objectives across a broad range of policy areas and countries.

“These include: shared regional security concerns, including diplomatic efforts to deter Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons; international work to counter anti-Semitism; bilateral defence cooperation; academic, scientific and cultural partnership; the promotion of democratic governance, judicial independence and media freedom; and building and maintaining strong trade and financial links.”

Regional security concerns? This cosiness with a rogue military power in the most explosive region of the world actually undermines our national security.

Israel’s illegal and murderous blockade of Gaza, its closure of West Bank, the annexation of East Jerusalem, the relentless Juda-isation of the Holy City, the building of the Apartheid Wall, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and the illegality of the settlements… all demonstrate the lawlessness of the Israeli regime. In recent months, three internal EU reports by the EU Heads of Missions in the Occupied Territories have detailed shocking human rights violations committed by Israel

As for “democratic governance”, the Foreign Office surely knows that Israel pursues deeply racist policies and there is no such thing as justice for Palestinians who come before Israeli courts on trumped up charges, or are detained on no charges at all.

I have visited Holy Land several times and seen for myself the brutality of the illegal Occupation and the human rights abuses inflicted daily on the Palestinian people. Yet Britain fails to hold the state of Israel to the same standards of human conduct expected of the rest of the international community.

“We do not hesitate to express disagreement to Israel where we feel necessary,” says the Foreign Office. “Although we do not agree on everything, we enjoy a close and productive relationship. It is this very relationship that allows us to have the frank discussions often necessary between friends.” What claptrap. The UK Government takes no action whatever to hold the Israelis to account. On the contrary, it continues rewarding their endless crime-sprees and recently relaxed our Universal Jurisdiction laws to protect Israel’s war criminals from arrest.

It is an outrage that the British Government, which is supposed to work for us the British people, aligns itself in our name with such evil. This revolting intimacy with the thugs of the Israeli regime is the scandal of our times. Since 1948 what exactly have those “frank discussions” achieved? Has Israel ended its illegal occupation and stopped its murderous assaults? No. Has it lifted its blockade of Gaza and closure of the West Bank? No. Has Israel brought its huge nuclear arsenal and other WMDs under international inspection and safeguards? No. Is Israel nice to its neighbours? No.

And what are the Government’s sanctions against Iran going to achieve? The cruel starvation of another half-a-million children like before, in Iraq?

In the last 24 hours there has been uproar in the UK over Government plans to snoop on every household’s emails, website visits and other private online activity. This sneaky intrusion by officialdom is said to be necessary to the war on terror.

But the best and cheapest way of protecting our national security is simply to eject the madmen from the Foreign Office and stop pimping for the US and its mad-dog protegé.

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“Israel” causes $66 million worth of damage to EU-funded aid projects

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Time Magazine: Fearing Iran’s response, Mossad to cut covert operations

Leave a comment Posted by on March 31, 2012

Moqawama

A Time Magazine report revealed on Friday that “”Israeli” intelligence services have scaled back their covert operations inside Iran.”

According to senior security officials who spoke to the magazine, operations have been reduced in areas such as high-profile missions, including assassinations and detonations at Iranian missile bases, as well as in recruiting spies inside the Iranian nuclear program, and efforts to gather on-the-ground intelligence.

The “Israeli” officials confirmed that “the reduced activities are due to the reluctance of “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is worried about the outcome of the operations being discovered.”

The report further clarified that “Iranian intelligence already cracked a cell trained and equipped by the Mossad.”

In this context, “western intelligence confirmed that the detailed confession of Majid Jamali Fashid over the January 2010 assassination by motorcycle bomb of nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohmmadi was genuine and blamed a third country for exposing the cell.”

The magazine also claimed that “a new US reluctance to turn a blind eye to said assassinations may be a thing of the past,” pointing out that “after the killing of nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan in January, the US categorically denied involvement in the death and issued a condemnation.”

“Scaling back covert operations against Iran carries cost especially as Iran hurries to disperse its centrifuges into facilities deep underground,” “Time Magazine” said.

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Details of talks belie charge Iran refused cooperation

Leave a comment Posted by on March 21, 2012

Iran and the IAEA

by GARETH PORTER, source

Vienna.

The first detailed account of negotiations between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran last month belies earlier statements by unnamed Western officials portraying Iran as refusing to cooperate with the IAEA in allaying concerns about alleged nuclear weaponisation work.

The detailed account given by Iran’s permanent representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, shows that the talks in February came close to a final agreement, but were hung up primarily over the IAEA insistence on being able to reopen issues even after Iran had answered questions about them to the organisation’s satisfaction.

It also indicates that the IAEA demand to visit Parchin military base during that trip to Tehran reversed a previous agreement that the visit would come later in the process, and that IAEA Director General Yukia Amano ordered his negotiators to break off the talks and return to Vienna rather than accept Iran’s invitation to stay for a third day.

Soltanieh took the unprecedented step of revealing the details of the incomplete negotiations with the IAEA in an interview with IPS in Vienna last week and in a presentation to a closed session of the IAEA’s Board of Governors Mar. 8, which the Iranian mission has now made public.

The Iranian envoy went public with his account of the talks after a series of anonymous statements to the press by the IAEA Secretariat and member states had portrayed Iran as being uncooperative on Parchin as well as in the negotiations on an agreement on cooperation with the agency.

Those statements now appear to have been aimed at building a case for a resolution by the Board condemning Iran’s intransigence in order to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran in advance of talks between the P5+1 and Iran.

Soltanieh’s account suggests that Amano may have switched signals to the IAEA delegation after consultations with the United States and other powerful member states which wanted to be able to cite the Parchin access issue to condemn Iran for its alleged failure to cooperate with the IAEA.

Parchin had been cited in the November 2011 IAEA report as the location of an alleged explosive containment cylinder, said by one or more IAEA member states to have been used for hydrodynamic testing of nuclear weapons designs.

The detailed Iranian account shows that the IAEA delegation requested a visit to Parchin in the first round of the negotiations in Tehran Jan. 29-31 and that it asked again at the beginning of the three “intercessional” meetings in Vienna for such a visit to take place at a second negotiating round in Tehran Feb. 20-21.

Soltanieh recalled, however, that during three “intercessional” meetings in February with IAEA Deputy Director General for Safeguards Herman Nackaerts, and Assistant Director General for Political Affairs Rafael Grossi, the two sides had reached agreement that the IAEA request for access to Parchin would be postponed until after the Board of Governors meeting in March.

But when the IAEA delegation arrived Feb. 20, it renewed the demand to visit Parchin, according to Soltanieh’s account.

“At the beginning of the meeting the first day, they said the director general had instructed them to give a message to us that they wanted to go to Parchin today or tomorrow, despite what we had clearly agreed two weeks earlier,” Soltanieh told IPS.

Soltanieh told the Board of Governors that the negotiating text on which the two sides were working at the Feb. 20-21 meeting provided specifically for a visit to Parchin as well as other sites in conjunction with Iran’s actions to clear up the issue of “hydrodynamic experiments” – the allegation by an unnamed member government published in the November 2011 IAEA report.

In response to the renewed request for a visit to Parchin, Soltanieh offered to let the delegation visit the Marivan site, where the same November report said the agency had “credible” evidence Iranian engineers worked on high-explosives testing for a nuclear device.

“We offered Marivan because it was the next priority,” Soltanieh told IPS, referring to the list of priority issues on which Iran was expected to take actions to be specified by the IAEA under the provision of the negotiating text.

But the IAEA delegation rejected the offer, claiming that it had been given too little time.

Soltanieh’s account reveals that the IAEA also turned down a request to stay one additional day to complete the negotiations of the new action plan. “At lunch hour the second day, we wanted them to stay another day,” he told IPS, and the delegation told them it might be possible.

But after consulting with Amano, the IAEA delegation said it could not stay.

Amano’s change of signals on Parchin and refusal to stay for a third day of negotiations were followed by condemnation of Iran as uncooperative by a “senior Western official” shortly before the IAEA Board of Governors meeting.

The official was quoted by Reuters Mar. 2 as saying, “We think there needs to be a resolution that makes clear that Iran needs to do more, a lot more, to comply with the agency’s requests.” The official called Iran’s stance during the talks a “gigantic slap in the face of the IAEA”.

In the end, no resolution was passed by the Board. Instead the P5+1 – the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany – issued a joint statement urging Iran to allow access to Parchin but not blaming Iran for the failure to reach agreement.

The negotiating text as it stood at the end of the February round of talks, which Soltanieh showed IPS, had relatively few handwritten deletions and additions.

A key provision in the draft text, which IPS was allowed to quote, says, “Iran agrees to cooperate with the Agency to facilitate a conclusive technical assessment of all issues of concern to the Agency. This cooperation will include inspections by the Agency, additional meetings, including technical meetings and visits, and access to relevant information, documentation and sites, material and personnel.”

The primary issue standing in the way of final agreement, according to Soltanieh, was whether the IAEA could reopen issues once they had been resolved. The text shown to IPS includes a provision that IAEA “may adjust the order” in which issues were to be resolved and “return” to issues even after they had been resolved.

The Iranians accepted the right of the IAEA to adjust the order but did not agree that it could reopen issues once they were completed satisfactorily, Soltanieh recalled, because Iran feared that giving the IAEA that power would lead to “an endless process”.

The other major issue, according to Soltanieh, was Iran’s demand that the IAEA “deliver” all the intelligence documents alleging that it had carried covert weaponisation activities to Iran before asking it for definitive answers to the allegation. The IAEA delegation said they couldn’t produce all the documents at once, he told IPS.

Iran then agreed that the agency could provide only those documents relevant to each issue when it comes up, the Iranian diplomat recalled. It is not clear, however, whether the IAEA has agreed to that compromise.

The United States has refused in the past to agree to turn over the “alleged studies” documents to Iran – a policy that Amano’s predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei had argued made it impossible to demand that Iran be held accountable for explaining those documents.

After Soltanieh’s presentation to the Board of Governors, Amano told reporters that some of Soltanieh’s statements had been inaccurate but appeared to confirm the main points of his presentation. “In fact, the February talks initially took place in a constructive spirit,” he said. “Differences between Iran and the Agency appeared to have narrowed.”

On the second day, Amano said, Iran had “sought to re-impose restrictions on our work,” which he said “included obliging the Agency to present a definitive list of questions and denying us the right to revisit issues, or to deal with certain issues in parallel, to name just a few.”

Amano’s spokesperson Gill Tudor declined to comment on the accuracy of Soltanieh’s account for this story, saying “(W)e would prefer to let the director general’s words speak for themselves.”

In response to a request for comment on this story, the U.S. State Department deferred to Amano’s account on the talks but said, “(D)espite the IAEA’s best efforts, Iran was unwilling to reach such an agreement” and had “failed an initial test of its good faith and willingness to cooperate by refusing an IAEA request to visit Parchin….”

GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.

Iran, Politics , , , ,

Iran hardest intelligence target to CIA, Mossad: NY Times & war costly

Leave a comment Posted by on March 20, 2012

Iran hardest intelligence target to CIA, Mossad: NY Times

Al Manar

The New York Times published Saturday a report under the headline “US Faces a Tricky Task in Assessment of Data on Iran, in which it quoted a former intelligence official as saying that “Iran is the hardest intelligence target there is. It is harder by far than North Korea”.

The report, which highlighted the difficulty that the United States faces in finding information on Iran’s nuclear program, also indicated that Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, agrees with the American intelligence assessments, despite Israel’s constant threats of waging a military attack on the Islamic Republic to prevent it from becoming a real existential threat to the occupying entity.

The intelligence official stated that “in large part, that’s because their system is so confusing… which has the effect of making it difficult to determine who speaks authoritatively on what.”

“We’re not on the ground, and not having our people on the ground to catch nuance is a problem,” he explained.

Jeffrey Richelson, the author of “Spying on the Bomb,” a history of American nuclear intelligence, told the US daily that “at certain stages, it is very hard to track the weapons work unless someone is blabbing and their communications can be intercepted… the extent of the evidence the spy agencies have collected is unclear because most of their findings are classified.”

The paper indicated that “the United States relies heavily on information gathered by inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency who visit some of Iran’s nuclear-related facilities.”

However, it added “collecting independent human intelligence — recruiting spies — has been by far the most difficult task for American intelligence. Some operational lapses — and the lack of an embassy as a base of operations ever since the hostage crisis three decades ago — have frequently left the C.I.A. virtually blind on the ground in Iran.”

In parallel, American officials assured to NY Times that America and Israel share intelligence on Iran, clarifying that “Israel relies in part on an Iranian exile group that is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or M.E.K., which is based in Iraq. The Israelis have also developed close ties in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq.”

In contrast, the paper pointed out that that “American intelligence officials, however, are wary of relying on information from an opposition group like the M.E.K., particularly after their experience in Iraq of relying on flawed information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group run by Ahmad Chalabi.”

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US War Game: “Israeli” Strike on Iran Means Regional War, Hundreds US Soldiers Dead

Moqawama

A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an “Israeli” attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead.

In an interview with “New York Times” US famous daily, US officials stated that “the game has raised fears among top American planners that it may be impossible to preclude American involvement in any escalating confrontation with Iran.”

The paper’s report further revealed that the results of the war game were especially troubling to General James N. Mattis, who commands American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia.
“Mattis told aides, upon the conclusion of the exercise, that an “” first-strike could have dire consequences for the region and for United States US forces stationed there,” the NYT added.

Well informed US officials told the paper that “the two-week war game, called Internal Look, played out a narrative in which Washington found that it was pulled into the conflict after Iranian missiles struck a Navy warship in the Persian Gulf, killing about 200 Americans.”

“US then retaliated by carrying out its own strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities,” the paper clarified.

Warning that “a strike could prove perilous for the United States,” the US military officials informed that “the initial “Israeli” attack was assessed to have set back the Iranian nuclear program by roughly a year.”

However, “the subsequent American strikes were not able to slow the Iranian nuclear program by more than an additional two years,” they stressed.

“In the end,” the report confirmed, “the war game reinforced to the unpredictable nature of a strike by “Israel”, as well as a counterstrike by Iran.”

According to the New York Times, the war game, called “Internal Look,” has been one of Central Command’s most significant planning exercises, and is carried out about twice a year to assess how the headquarters, its staff and command posts in the region would respond to various real-world situations.

Iran, Palestine, Politics, US , , , , , , , ,

Ignoring intelligence reports: ‘Let’s Make War’

2 Comments Posted by on March 6, 2012

by Khalil Bendib

by Stuart Littlewood, source

Is this what we voted for?

Is this what Western diplomacy has come to in the 21st century?

Thank heaven for Dr David Morrison’s very timely briefing document entitled “Iran hasn’t got an active nuclear weapons program, says US intelligence”. Morrison is the noted political researcher from Northern Ireland. He sets out the position in easy-reading form so that even our dimmest politicians can understand.

As he points out in a covering note, US Intelligence believes Iran hasn’t got an active nuclear weapons program and Israeli Intelligence agrees. “When this became the view of US intelligence in 2007, President Bush had to abandon any thought of taking military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. As he wrote in his memoir Decision Points: ‘How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?’

“Today, President Obama should be asking himself the same question, since US intelligence is still saying that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program.”

So too should Cameron, Hague and the entire EU.

Dr Morrison’s report boils down to this:

• According to the US intelligence community Iran hasn’t got an active nuclear weapons program and Israeli intelligence agrees.

• The US intelligence community set out this view in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in November 2007 and it remains their opinion today. Their assessment was that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. “We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007 …” (NIEs express the consensus view of the 16 US intelligence agencies).

• The November 2011 IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear activities did not say that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program despite the impression given by the media and ministerial ranting.

• Iran has declared to the IAEA 15 nuclear facilities (including its uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow) and 9 other locations. These are all being monitored by the IAEA. In its February 2012 report, the IAEA confirmed yet again there was no diversion of nuclear material from these facilities.

• The IAEA on 4 December 2007 noted that the NIE tallied with the Agency’s statements over the last few years that, although Iran still needs to clarify aspects of its nuclear activities, the Agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities.

• On 16 February this year, the present Director of the National Intelligence Agency, James Clapper, reported to the Senate Armed Services Committee: “We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons… We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons… That is the intelligence community’s assessment …”

• On the same day US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, gave the same assessment to another Congressional committee, saying that Iran has not made a decision on whether to proceed with development of an atomic bomb. A month earlier, when asked about Iran’s nuclear programme on Face the Nation on CBS, he replied: “Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.”

So why the mis-match between intelligence and the loud clamour for war – economic and military? The answer, presumably, is because war is good.. good for business. Hence war can be highly beneficial to a senior politician’s post-political career.

A Middle East Nuke-free Zone… Really?

The international community, including the US and the EU, says it is committed to a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East. The only impediment, of course, is Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, which menace the whole region and perhaps beyond. Some experts believe that Israel has around 400 nuclear warheads and, naturally, various means of delivering them.

Iran has none.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are open to IAEA inspection; Israel’s are not.

Furthermore, UN Security Council resolution 487, in 1981, called on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards”. Israel has ignored it for over 30 years.

Yet the US and the EU choose to impose vicious economic sanctions on Iran, and threaten military action, while taking no such measures against Israel… not even uttering a word of criticism.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in December at the Conservative Friends of Israel Annual Business Lunch said: “I think Israel is right to identify this [Iran’s nuclear programme] as one of the greatest threats to peace and human life in the world at the moment… Any excuse that Iran had that there was a peaceful purpose for what they were doing has been blown out of the water. There was a report recently from the IAEA which made that clear.”

Did it? Has Osborne actually read the IAEA report or is he mouthing off some Tel Aviv script?

He said he recently authorized the imposition of new sanctions “stronger than any we’ve ever imposed before with a country” cutting off the British financial system from the Iranian banking system.

He added: “David Cameron, myself and other prominent members of the government, as well as the many Conservative MPs who are here are all good friends of Israel.”

And at a dinner of the Community Security Trust in London recently Osborne went so far as to announce his support for the present mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in the coming election, saying that Boris, like him, was a lifelong friend of Israel, and the leader of London should be committed to securing the interests of Israel.

As if any mayor of London should bother himself with the interests of a foreign racist regime! That is not what the people of London elect him to do, nor did the people of Britain elect Osborne to fly the Israeli flag on the roof of the Treasury.

What they say and do make it very clear that prime minister David Cameron, foreign secretary William Hague and Middle East minister Alistair Burt are also Israel’s ardent supporters. Cameron is a self-declared Zionist, Hague a member of the Friends of Israel since he was a juvenile in short trousers, and Burt was not just a member of that fan club but an officer.

Here’s a flavor:

Cameron: “We will not stand by and allow Iran to cast a nuclear shadow over Israel or the wider region” – CST Annual Dinner, 2 March 2011.

Cameron: “I’ve read the reports, and I have had the briefings: they are stockpiling enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon over time. Of course, that’s a huge threat to the world but it’s a particular threat to Israel. Since we came into power we have wasted no time in securing tougher sanctions. We backed tough sanctions in the United Nations – and we championed and led, at meeting after meeting, even tougher sanctions at the European level. Iran needs to know if they continue on this course they will feel international pressure and international isolation”. – CFI Annual Business Lunch, 13 December 2010

Hague: “Iran’s actions not only run counter to the positive change that we are seeing elsewhere in the region; they may threaten to undermine it, bringing about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East or the risk of conflict”. – Middle East Statement, 9 November 2011.

Burt: “Israel’s strength is a regional bulwark for good… Iran does not just threaten Israel. It threatens those who would be Israel’s allies in the Gulf, and in the Arab world who need Israel as part of a common cause against a regime dangerously loose… Israel’s strength is not a regional threat, but an anchor of regional stability. And the world needs Israel’s values, of tolerance and justice…”
– speaking to Bar-Ilan University, Israel, 10 January 2012

Burt: “We share Israel’s determination to prevent Iranian proliferation. Israel is not facing the threat of a nuclear Iran alone…” – same Bar-Ilan meeting.

Burt: “I care as someone who has for decades counted himself as an ardent friend of Israel.” – same Bar-Ilan meeting.

These people at the heart of British government claim Iran is pursuing military objectives through its nuclear programme but provide us with not a shred of evidence. In the circumstances their propaganda offensive linked with Washington’s sounds insane and is unraveling fast because no amount of media lies can hide a crude fabrication. Nobody’s buying it.

If our leaders have trouble understanding the NIE and IAEA reports, help is now at hand. I suggest they get themselves a copy of Dr Morrison’s ‘idiot’s guide’ before they land this country – and indeed the whole West – in more trouble than we can handle and bring down the world’s everlasting hatred on our heads.

Postscript

Just as I was signing off I skimmed Obama’s annual speech to AIPAC. It’s a regular occasion where the American President has to account for his commitment to the Zionist Project and plead for his job. “Over the last three years, as president of the United States, I have kept my commitments to the state of Israel. At every crucial juncture, at every fork in the road, we have been there for Israel. Every single time.”

Bravo.

“When the Goldstone report unfairly singled out Israel for criticism, we challenged it. When Israel was isolated in the aftermath of the flotilla incident, we supported them… and we will always reject the notion that Zionism is racism. When one-sided resolutions are brought up at the Human Rights Council, we oppose them…”

And so forth. As an exercise in groveling it has no equal, and the theme is always the same: Israel’s security. But for “security” read “dominance”, requiring all the other nations in the region to remain vulnerable and unresisting to predatory Israel’s nuclear and military superiority, and its ever expanding borders.

“I’ve made it clear that there will be no lasting peace unless Israel’s security concerns are met,” says Obama. “That’s why we continue to press Arab leaders to reach out to Israel… That’s why just as we encourage Israel to be resolute in the pursuit of peace we have continued to insist that any Palestinian partner must recognise Israel’s right to exist and reject violence and adhere to existing agreements.”

If only Israel would do the same.

And who’d have thought Obama would stoop to making mischief with that old Ahmadinejad mis-quote – saying that “no Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that threatens to wipe Israel off the map.”

And what about this gem: “A nuclear-armed Iran would thoroughly undermine the nonproliferation regime that we’ve done so much to build.”

Obama tells AIPAC the only way to truly solve this problem and end the sanctions pain is for the Iranian government to forsake nuclear weapons, although, as he must have been told time and time again, they don’t have any while Israel is bristling with them.

Obama sure does cut a sad figure these days.

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Iran: How the media got the Parchin access story wrong

Leave a comment Posted by on March 2, 2012

A Cautionary Tale

by GARETH PORTER, source

Washington D.C.

News media reported last week that Iran had flatly refused the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to its Parchin military test facility, based on a statement to reporters by IAEA Deputy Director General, Herman Nackaerts, that “We could not get access”.

Now, however, explicit statements on the issue by the Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA and the language of the new IAEA report indicate that Iran did not reject an IAEA visit to the base per se but was only refusing access as long as no agreement had been reached with the IAEA governing the modalities of cooperation.

That new and clarifying information confirms what I reported February 23. Based on the history of Iranian negotiations with the IAEA and its agreement to allow two separate IAEA visits to Parchin in 2005, the Parchin access issue is a bargaining chip that Iran is using to get the IAEA to moderate its demands on Iran in forging an agreement on how to resolve the years-long IAEA investigation into the “Possible Military Dimensions” of the Iranian nuclear program.

In an email to me and in interviews with Russia Today, Reuters, and the Fars News Agency, the Iranian Permanent Representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said Iran told the high-level IAEA mission that it would allow access to Parchin once modalities of Iran-IAEA cooperation had been agreed on.

“We declared that, upon finalization of the modality, we will give access [to Parchin],” Soltanieh wrote in an email to me.

In the Russia Today interview on February 27, reported by Israel’s Haaretz and The Hindu in India but not by western news media, Soltanieh referred to two IAEA inspection visits to Parchin in January and November 2005 and said Iran needs to have “assurances” that it would not “repeat the same bitter experience, when they just come and ask for the access.” There should be a “modality” and a “frame of reference, of what exactly they are looking for, they have to provide the documents and exactly where they want [to go],” he said.

But Soltanieh also indicated that such an inspection visit is conditional on agreement about the broader framework for cooperation on clearing up suspicions of a past nuclear weapons program. “[I]n principle we have already accepted that when this text is concluded we will take these steps,” Soltanieh said.

The actual text of the IAEA report, dated February 24, provides crucial information about the Iranian position in the talks that is consistent with what Soltanieh is saying.

In its account of the first round of talks in late January on what the IAEA is calling a “structured approach to the clarification of all outstanding issues”, the report states: “The Agency requested access to the Parchin site, but Iran did not grant access to the site at that time [emphasis added].” That wording obviously implies that Iran was willing to grant access to Parchin if certain conditions were met.

On the February 20-21 meetings, the agency said that Iran “stated that it was still not able to grant access to that site.” There was likely a more complex negotiating situation behind the lack of agreement on a Parchin visit than had been suggested by Nackaerts and reported in western news media.

But not a single major news media report has reported the significant difference between initial media coverage on the Parchin access issue and the information now available from the initial IAEA report and Soltanieh. None have reported the language of the report indicating that Iran’s refusal to approve a Parchin visit in January was qualified by “at that time”.

Only AFP and Reuters quoted Soltanieh at all. Reuters, which actually interviewed Soltanieh, quoted him saying, “It was assumed that after we agreed on the modality, then access would be given.” But that quote only appears in the very last sentence of the article, several paragraphs after the reiteration of the charge that Iran “refused to grant [the IAEA] access” to Parchin.

The day after that story was published, Reuters ran another story focusing on the IAEA report without referring either to its language on Parchin or to Soltanieh’s clarification.

The Los Angeles Times ignored the new information and simply repeated the charge that Iran “refused to allow IAEA inspectors to visit Parchin military base”. Then it added its own broad interpretation that Iran “has refused to answer key questions about its nuclear development program”. Iran’s repeated assertions that the documents used to pose questions to it are fabricated were thus dismissed as non-qualified answers.

The Parchin access story entered a new phase today with a Reuters story quoting Deputy Director General Nackaerts in a briefing for diplomats that there “may be some ongoing activities at Parchin which add urgency to why we want to go”. Nackaerts attributed that idea to an unnamed “Member State”, which is apparently suggesting that the site in question is being “cleaned up”.

The identity of that “Member State”, which the IAEA continues to go out of its way to conceal, is important, because if it is Israel, it reflects an obvious interest in convincing the world that Iran is working on nuclear weapons. As former IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei recounts on p. 291 of his memoirs, “In the late summer of 2009, the Israelis provided the IAEA with documents of their own, purportedly showing that Iran had continued with nuclear weapon studies until at least 2007.”

The news media should be including cautionary language any time information from an unnamed “Member State” is cited as the source for allegations about covert Iranian nuclear weapons work. It could very likely be coming from a State with a political agenda. But the unwritten guidelines for news media coverage of the IAEA and Iran, as we have seen in recent days, are obviously very different.

GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.

Iran, Politics , , , ,

Azerbaijan safe haven for Mossad terrorists: Report

Leave a comment Posted by on February 18, 2012

Press TV

The Azerbaijani government has reportedly aided a terrorist element, involved in the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists, who belongs to the Israeli spy agency of Mossad.

According to the report, the Jewish man who worked as a Mossad agent in Baku using the assumed name Javidan had a major role in the assassination of Iranian nuclear experts Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan and Massoud Ali-Mohammadi.

Ahmadi Roshan was killed in January after a motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car in Tehran. He served as the deputy director of marketing at the Natanz nuclear facility.

According to the report, Azeri secret service helped Mossad agents in terrorist attacks against Iranians by providing technical and logistical support.

Last year, Majid Jamali Fashi, who assassinated Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, confessed to having received forged documents in Azerbaijan’s Heydar Aliyev Airport to travel to Tel Aviv.

Professor Ali-Mohammadi, a lecturer at Tehran University, was killed when an explosive-laden motorbike was detonated with a remote-controlled device near his home in northern Tehran in January 2010.

Last week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Azeri envoy to Tehran, Javanshir Akhundov, to object to Baku granting asylum to the Mossad-trained assassins of Iranian nuclear scientists.

According to a report published in The London Times on Saturday, Israel is using Azerbaijan, a small Eurasian country which shares a border with Iran, as a base to spy on Iran.

Israel has resorted to various terrorist tactics to stop Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, which is under full observation of the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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IAEA leaking confidential data which served in Roshan’s killing

Leave a comment Posted by on January 20, 2012

Al Manar

Iran said it was clear that inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are providing the US and Israeli officials with confidential information on Iranian scientists and thus will be mulling new ways to interact with the watchdog.

Iran’s deputy UN ambassador Eshagh Al Habib told the Security Council that Ahmadi-Roshan recently met with IAEA inspectors, “a fact that indicates that these UN agencies may have played a role in leaking information on Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientist.”

He also accused the world body of failing to observe secrecy over its inspections of nuclear facilities. “There was a high suspicion that … terrorist circles used the intelligence obtained from United Nations bodies, including the sanctions list of the Security Council and interviews carried out by IAEA with our nuclear scientists, to identify and carry out their malicious acts.”

Member of Iran’s Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, Zohreh Elahian, said on Thursday that members of the committee and some other Iranian officials have discussed the presence of the IAEA inspectors in Iran, and it has been proven that the IAEA inspectors are transferring Iran’s confidential information to the United States and Israel.”

Iran should revise the way it interacts with the agency and its inspectors as the current approaches are by no means acceptable, she added.

She emphasized that evidence of previous terrorist attacks against Iranian scientists proved the direct role of the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, in the killings and that even the perpetrators of such acts had been trained in the Zionist entity.

Roshan, who was assassinated after a magnetic bomb attached to his car exploded, was the deputy director of marketing at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

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Clinton revives charge of ‘covert’ site

Leave a comment Posted by on January 12, 2012

by Gareth Porter, source

WASHINGTON – United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s charge on Tuesday that Iran had intended to keep its nuclear facility at Fordow secret until it was revealed by Western intelligence revived a claim the Barack Obama administration made in September 2009.

Clinton said Iran “only declared the Qom facility to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] after it was discovered by the international community following three years of covert construction”. She also charged that there was no “plausible reason” for Iran to enrich to a 20% level at the Fordow plant, implying that the only explanation was an intent to make nuclear weapons.

Clinton’s charges were part of a coordinated US-British attack on Iran’s enrichment at Fordow. British Foreign Minister William Hague also argued that Fordow was too small to support a civilian power program. Hague also referred to its “location and clandestine nature”, saying they “raise serious questions about its ultimate purpose”.

The Clinton-Hague suggestions that the Fordow site must be related to an effort to obtain nuclear weapons appear to be aimed at counter-balancing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s statement only two days earlier that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons.

The Clinton and Hague statements recalled a briefing for reporters during the Pittsburgh Group of 20 summit meeting on September 25, 2009, at which a “senior administration official” asserted that Iran had informed the IAEA about the Fordow site in a September 21 letter only after it had “learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised”.

That administration claim was quickly accepted by major media outlets without any investigation of the facts. That story line is so deeply entrenched in media consciousness that even before Clinton’s remarks, Reuters and the Associated Press had published reports from their Vienna correspondents that repeated the official Obama administration line that Iran had revealed the Fordow site only after Western intelligence had discovered it.

But the administration never offered the slightest evidence to support that assertion, and there is one major reason for doubting it: the United States did not inform the IAEA about any nuclear facility at Fordow until three days after Iran’s September 21, 2009, formal letter notifying the IAEA of the Fordow enrichment facility, because it couldn’t be certain that it was a nuclear site.

Mohammed ElBaradei, then director general of the IAEA, reveals in his 2011 memoir that Robert Einhorn, the State Department’s special advisor for non-proliferation and arms control, informed him on September 24 about US intelligence on the Fordow site – three days after the Iranian letter had been received.

An irritated ElBaradei demanded to know why he had not been told before the Iranian letter. Einhorn responded that the United States “had not been sure of the nature of the facility”, ElBaradei wrote.

The administration’s claim that Iran announced the site because it believed US intelligence had “identified it” was also belied by a set of questions and answers issued by the Obama administration on the same day as the press briefing. The answer it provided to the question, “Why did the Iranians decide to reveal this facility at this time?” was “We do not know.”

Greg Thielmann, who was a top official in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research until 2003 and was on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the 2009 episode, told Inter Press Service (IPS) the evidence for the claim that Iran believed the site had been discovered was “all circumstantial”.

Analysts were suspicious of the Iranian letter to the IAEA, Thielmann said, because, “it had the appearance of something put together hurriedly”.

But there is an alternative explanation: the decision to reveal the existence of a second prospective enrichment site – this one built into the side of a mountain – appears to have reflected the need to strengthen Iran’s hand in a meeting with the “Iran Six” group of states led by the United States that was only 10 days away. (The other members are Britain, France China, Russia and Germany.)

The Iranian announcement that it would participate in the meeting on September 14, 2009, came on the same day that the head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, warned against an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The idea that Iran was planning to enrich uranium secretly at Fordow assumes that the Iranians were not aware that US intelligence had been carrying out aerial surveillance of the site for years. That is hardly credible in light of the fact that the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), the armed opposition group with links to both US and Israeli intelligence, had drawn attention to the Fordow site in a December 2005 press conference – well before it had been selected for a second enrichment plant.

The MEK had also revealed the first Iranian enrichment site at Natanz in an August 2002 press conference, which had been the kickoff for the George W Bush administration’s propaganda campaign charging Iran had maintained a covert nuclear program ever since the 1980s.

But when the MEK identified the Natanz facility, Iran’s only commitment under its safeguards agreement with the IAEA was to inform the agency of any new nuclear facility 180 days before the introduction of nuclear material. That date was then still far in the future.

In November 2003, the Bush administration engineered the passage of resolution at the IAEA Governing Board meeting condemning Iran for “18 years of covert nuclear activity”.

In fact, Iran had announced openly in 1982 that they intended to have the capability to convert yellowcake into reactor fuel. In 1983, Iran asked the IAEA to help it build a pilot plant for uranium enrichment, but the US government intervened to prevent the agency from doing so.

It was that US political interference that forced Iran to purchase black market centrifuge technology from the network of Pakistani Abdul Qadeer Khan in 1987. But Iran openly negotiated with China, Argentina and six other governments for the purchase of nuclear energy and facilities in the 1980s and 1990s.

Despite those well-known facts, the Bush administration charge that Iran had operated a “clandestine nuclear program” for “18 years” quickly become an accepted fact inserted in many stories by major newspapers such the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

In asserting that there was “no plausible justification” for Iran’s enrichment to 20%, Clinton sought to refute Iran’s explanation that the 20% enrichment is supply fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).

“The P5+1 [Iran Six] has offered alternatives for providing fuel for the TRR,” Clinton said.

The proposal made by the Iran Six in 2009, however, was explicitly aimed at stripping Iran of the bulk of its stock of low-enriched uranium – a prospect that was widely criticized even among critics of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, including Mir Hossein Mousavi , his rival in the contested June 2009 presidential election.

The main reason for the resistance to the proposal appears to have been that Iran would have been deprived of its bargaining chips in relation to eventual negotiations with the United States.

When Iran agreed to a joint Brazilian-Turkish proposal for a swap in 2010 in June 2010, the Obama administration rejected it, because it left Iran with too much low enriched uranium.

It was after that rejection that Iran vowed to enrich uranium to 20% unless it obtained a supply through other means. Iran also demonstrated at the 2011 IAEA Governing Board meeting that it was working on producing its own fuel plates for the TRR, according to former IAEA nuclear inspector Robert Kelley.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

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