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Iran “Reminded” with Deployment of USS Abraham Lincoln
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates “REMINDS” Iran with a second carrier group in the Persian Gulf.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that sending a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf could serve as a “reminder” to Iran, but he said it is not an escalation of force.
Speaking to reporters after meeting with Mexican leaders, Gates said heightening U.S. criticism of Iran and its support for terrorist groups is not a signal that the administration is laying the groundwork for a strike against Tehran.
Still, he said Iran continues to back the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“I do not have a sense at this point of a significant increase in Iranian support for the Taliban and others opposing the government in Afghanistan,” Gates said. “There is, as best I can tell, a continuing flow, but I would still characterize it as relatively modest.”
In other words, the United States is now exposing the “PROXY WAR” which Iran has been conducting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The slow playing of an Iranian conflict MAY be drawing to a close.
Stay tuned………
Aircraft from Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2 fly in formation over the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) during an air power demonstration. Lincoln, embarked CVW-2, and the rest of Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 9 are on a seven-month deployment to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class James R. Evans, March 30, 2008Previous:
Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Demands Azerbaijan Deliver Russian Nuclear Shipment
Shocker: Iran Threatens To Eliminate Israel
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Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Demands Azerbaijan Deliver Russian Nuclear Shipment
United Nations sanctions might actually be enforced?
Iran demanded Sunday that Azerbaijan deliver a Russian shipment of nuclear equipment blocked at its border with Iran for the past three weeks.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in his weekly briefing that his country has asked the Azerbaijani ambassador in Iran to get his government “to deliver the shipment as soon as possible.”
The blocked nuclear equipment “is in the framework of Iran-Russia cooperation” and there should be “no ban on it,” he said about the shipment destined for a Russian-built nuclear reactor in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.
Azerbaijan has said it was seeking more information about the shipment due to fears that it might violate any of the three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran over its failure to halt uranium enrichment.
On Monday, Russian state-run company Atomstroiexport said that one or two trucks carrying the equipment for Iran were stopped two weeks ago at the town of Astara, on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border.
Company spokeswoman Irina Yesipova said officials were holding talks with both Azerbaijan and Iran about the incident. She said the shipment contained “heat-isolating equipment” essential to the plant’s operation but that the holdup was not likely to delay the startup of the plant.
Flap cannot help but think that something other than “heat-isolating equipment” is involved here.
Stay tuned…….
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Hillary Clinton Watch: Totally Obliterating Credibility
Michael Ramirez on Hillary Clinton “Totally Obliterating Iran”
News Item: Clinton says U.S. could “totally obliterate” Iran
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.
On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel),” Clinton said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,” she said.
“That’s a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic,” Clinton said.
Hillary was and is pandering to Jewish voters in Pennyslvania, Florida and New York. Who is she trying to kid?
HRC has no credibility on the right and the left thinks she is a sabre-rattler and warmonger.
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Shocker: Iran Threatens To Eliminate Israel
Michael Ramirez on Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions
New Item: Iran Threatens to Eliminate Israel
Iran will eliminate Israel if it attacks the Islamic Republic, Iran’s deputy army chief warned Tuesday in words conjuring up Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats to wipe Israel off the map.
“Should Israel take any action against Iran, we will eliminate Israel from the scene of the universe,” Gen. Muhammad Reza Ashtiani said in Teheran on Tuesday.
Ashtiani’s statement followed Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer’s comment last week warning Iran that any attack on Israel would result in the “destruction of the Iranian nation.”
Ashtiani claimed Israel was “very vulnerable” and dismissed allegations that Iran was worried about Israeli maneuvers.
And, let’s see Iran President Ahmadinejad says Britain, Israel and the United States are to disappear as the Pharaohs. Yet, the United Nations writes meaningless sanction resolutions and the uranium enrichment centrifuges continually spin at Natanz.
One of these days, someone in the world will take Iranian threats seriously.
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Shocker: Secret Launch Site for Iranian Long Range Missiles
Missile Defense Watch: Bush Wins NATO Endorsement of European Missile Defense Shield
Iran Nuclear Watch: 6000 Uranium Enrichment Centrifuges
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Shocker: Secret Launch Site for Iranian Long Range Missiles
New spy photographs reveal the “SHOCKING” truth.
The secret site where Iran is suspected of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe has been uncovered by new satellite photographs.
The imagery has pinpointed the facility from where the Iranians launched their Kavoshgar 1 “research rocket†on February 4, claiming that it was in connection with their space programme.
Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).
A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran’s long-range programme, was revealed by Jane’s Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.
Have to unload all of those uranium enrichment centrifuges somewhere, right?
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Missile Defense Watch: Bush Wins NATO Endorsement of European Missile Defense Shield
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Iran Nuclear Watch: 6000 Uranium Enrichment Centrifuges
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks with photographers while waiting for a meeting at the presidential palace in Tehran. Iran is starting work to install 6,000 new uranium-enriching centrifuges at its nuclear plant in Natanz, Ahmadinejad announced on Tuesday, according to state media.
Years of negotiations with Iran and three sets of United Nations Security Council sanctions later, Iran President Ahmadinejad announced today that Iran will be installing 6,000 new uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz.
Iran has begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, state television quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying Tuesday.
Iran already has about 3,000 centrifuges operating in Natanz, and the new announcement is seen as a show of defiance of international demands to halt a nuclear program the United States and its allies say is aimed at building nuclear weapons.
“The president announced the start of the phase of installing 6,000 new centrifuges in Natanz,” state television reported.
Centrifuges are machines that can enrich uranium to a low level to produce nuclear fuel or a high level for use in a weapon. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and solely focused on the production of energy.
Ahmadinejad made Tuesday’s announcement as he toured the Natanz facility in central Iran. State television also quoted Ahmadinejad as saying that “other activities have been carried out” in Natanz that he would announce later Tuesday.
The president’s trip was scheduled to coincide with Iran’s National Day of Nuclear Technology, marking the second anniversary of Iran’s first enrichment of uranium.
Ahmadinejad is widely expected to confirm for the first time that Iran has installed hundreds of more sophisticated centrifuges that can enrich uranium faster.
The workhorse of Iran’s enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate.
So, you have many more Iran nuclear centrifuges and more sophisticated ones that enrich uranium faster despite the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.
Here are the United Nations Security Council resolutions that Iran has defied (in pdf format):
It looks to Flap that the Bush administration, woefully unsuccessful in convincing China, and Russia to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons has decided to punt the issue to the next President while bolstering missile defense to protect America from ICBM’s launched from Iran. A Cold War containment strategy is the holding pattern for now.
Is this why Europe is now interested in an American deployed anti-missile defense, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic?
You bet……
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Iran Nuclear Watch: United Nations Security Council Sanctions Round 3
Iran Nuclear Watch: Ahmadinejad – Iran is Number One
Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA’s ElBaradei’s Agenda Criticized
Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA Report – Iran Continues Uranium Enrichment
Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Pursuing a Secret Nuclear Program
Iran Nuclear Watch: Cancerous Israel to Vanish Soon
Iran Nuclear Watch: U.S. Intel – Iran Directly Engaged in Manufacture of a Nuclear Weapon
Iran Nuclear Watch: Uranium Gas Goes Into Iran’s Centrifuges
Iran Nuclear Watch: Israel – Iran Moving Forward with Nuclear Weapons
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Iran Nuclear Watch: United Nations Security Council Sanctions Round 3
Iranian technicians prepare to wash the reactor of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in 2007. The Security Council tightened UN sanctions on Iran Monday for refusing to halt nuclear fuel work as six major powers offered to resume talks with the Islamic Republic to end the standoff.
A third round of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council against Iran for their nuclear program, including continuing uranium enrichment were adopted today at the United Nations.
A prominent Revolutionary Guards commander close to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and a long list of figures involved in Iran’s nuclear program are among those the U.N. Security Council targeted Monday with sanctions.
While the two previous Security Council resolutions were aimed at top figures and well-known companies involved in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, the new sanctions reach deeper into the hierarchy of Iran’s nuclear program staff and Revolutionary Guards, mainly targeting technical officials.
The most well-known figure targeted in Monday’s resolution is Brigadier-General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a top member of the elite Revolutionary Guards who now works at the Armed Forces General Staff for Logistics and Industrial Research.
Brigadier-General Mohammad Reza Naqd
So, what are the new sanctions?
- calls on all states to act under Article 41 of the U.N. Charter’s Chapter 7.
- reaffirms that Iran shall without further delay take the steps required by the December 2006 resolution calling for suspending uranium enrichment.
- decides that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent the entry into or transit through their territories of individuals who are related to Iran’s proliferation sensitive nuclear activities or for the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems.
- calls on all states to exercise vigilance over the activities of financial institutions in their territories with all banks domiciled in Iran, in particular with Bank Melli and Bank Saderat.
- calls on all states to inspect the cargoes to and from Iran, of aircraft and vessels, at their airports and seaports, owned or operated by Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line, provided there are reasonable grounds to believe that the aircraft or vessel is transporting prohibited goods.
- requests that IAEA submit a further report on whether Iran has established full and sustained suspension of all enrichment activities within 90 days.
- reaffirms that it shall adopt further appropriate measures under Article 41 of the U.N. Charter’s Chapter 7 if the report shows Iran has not complied with three resolutions.
Previous United Nations Security Council resolutions on Iran:
Does ANYONE really think Iran will change their nuclear program one iota because of these sanctions? They haven’t complied previously, so why now?
Toothless and meaningless sanctions imposed by the United Nations, when will the United States and Israel take action?
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Iran Nuclear Watch: Ahmadinejad – Iran is Number One
Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA’s ElBaradei’s Agenda Criticized
Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA Report – Iran Continues Uranium Enrichment
Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Pursuing a Secret Nuclear Program
Iran Nuclear Watch: Cancerous Israel to Vanish Soon
Iran Nuclear Watch: U.S. Intel – Iran Directly Engaged in Manufacture of a Nuclear Weapon
Iran Nuclear Watch: Uranium Gas Goes Into Iran’s Centrifuges
Iran Nuclear Watch: Israel – Iran Moving Forward with Nuclear Weapons
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Iran Nuclear Watch: Ahmadinejad – Iran is Number One
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seen here in January 2008, has declared that Iran is the world’s “number one” power. Ahmadinejad made the statement as he launched a bitter new assault on domestic critics he accused of siding with the enemy.
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran is the “number one world power.”
“Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech to families who lost loved ones in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
“Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place,” he added in the address broadcast live on state television.
Ahmadinejad’s comments come amid renewed Western efforts on the UN Security Council to agree a third package of sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to suspend sensitive nuclear activities.
When the world understands that Iran should NOT possess nuclear weapons because of their “unbalanced” leaders” the safer the world will be.
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Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA’s ElBaradei’s Agenda Criticized
Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA Report – Iran Continues Uranium Enrichment
Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Pursuing a Secret Nuclear Program
Iran Nuclear Watch: Cancerous Israel to Vanish Soon
Iran Nuclear Watch: U.S. Intel – Iran Directly Engaged in Manufacture of a Nuclear Weapon
Iran Nuclear Watch: Uranium Gas Goes Into Iran’s Centrifuges
Iran Nuclear Watch: Israel – Iran Moving Forward with Nuclear Weapons
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Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA’s ElBaradei’s Agenda Criticized
Chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei. Iran said it saw no legal basis for a new UN Security Council resolution over its nuclear activities after the UN atomic watchdog reported it had made progress in its probe.
If evaluation of Iran’s nuclear weapons program is left up to the IAEA and ElBaradei, Iran will soon develop BREAKOUT CAPABILITY.
In a scathing critique of El Baradei’s agenda in leading the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Danielle Pletka and Michael Rubin in today’s Wall Street Journal write about the IAEA whitewash of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
IAEA technical experts have complained anonymously to the press that the latest report on Iran was revamped to suit the director’s political goals. In 2004, Mr. ElBaradei sought to purge mention of Iranian attempts to purchase beryllium metal, an important component in a nuclear charge, from IAEA documents. He also left unmentioned Tehran’s refusal to grant IAEA inspectors access to the Parchin military complex, where satellite imagery showed a facility seemingly designed to test and produce nuclear weapons.
The IAEA’s latest report leaves unmentioned allegations by an Iranian opposition group of North Korean work on nuclear warheads at Khojir, a military research site near Tehran. It also amends previous conclusions and closes the book on questions about Iran’s work on polonium 210 — which nuclear experts suspect Iran experimented with for use as an initiator for nuclear weapons, but which the regime claims was research on radioisotope batteries. In 2004, the IAEA declared itself “somewhat uncertain regarding the plausibility of the stated purpose of the [polonium] experiments.” Today it finds these explanations “consistent with the Agency’s findings and with other information available.”
The United States opposed ElBaradei’s appointment as Director of the IAEA. He has undercut and undermined efforts to expose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This is just the excuse Russia and China require to bog down any talk of sanctions in the United Nations Security Council.
The United States, EU and Israel have an obligation to work outside the obviously biased IAEA, impose their own sanctions on Iran or face the likely probability of a military option.
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Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA Report – Iran Continues Uranium Enrichment
Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Pursuing a Secret Nuclear Program
Iran Nuclear Watch: Cancerous Israel to Vanish Soon
Iran Nuclear Watch: U.S. Intel – Iran Directly Engaged in Manufacture of a Nuclear Weapon
Iran Nuclear Watch: Uranium Gas Goes Into Iran’s Centrifuges
Iran Nuclear Watch: Israel – Iran Moving Forward with Nuclear Weapons
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Iran Nuclear Watch: IAEA Report – Iran Continues Uranium Enrichment
Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani is pictured at Tehran University. The top Iranian cleric has told the UN Security Council to stay out of the crisis over Tehran’s contested nuclear drive, ahead of a key report by the UN atomic watchdog.
The long awaited IAEA report on Iran nuclear program has just been released and it details Iran’s continuing uranium enrichment and development of centrifuges.
Flap will update as more details are available.
Update:
Iran more open on atom work, bomb fears remain: IAEA
Iran has shown new openness about nuclear advances earlier off-limits to U.N. monitors but not enough to prove the program is not geared to making bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday.
While an IAEA report painted a more positive picture of Iranian cooperation than before, it also confirmed Iran was testing technology that could give it the means to enrich uranium much faster — in further defiance of demands to halt all sensitive nuclear activity or be hit with wider U.N. sanctions.
The IAEA findings, which also said Iran had failed to clear up all outstanding questions by an agreed February deadline, may be branded negative on balance by big powers and spur the U.N. Security Council to adopt more sanctions as early as next week.
So, in other words, Iran has NOT been forthcoming and has not cleared up any ambiguity whether they are developing a nuclear weapon. Look for an American and EU call for more UN sanctions which WILL be either watered down or blocked outright by Russia and China.
Key graph:
- “The (weaponization) studies is a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program,” said the confidential report, obtained by Reuters.
“The agency will not be in a position to make progress towards providing credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran before reaching some clarity on the nature of the alleged (weaponization) studies, and without implementation of the Additional Protocol (wide-ranging, snap inspections).”
Without that, it said, there could be “no confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the program.”
If Iran has clean hands they would immediately open up their nuclear program to inspections.
But, Iran won’t.
Previous:Iran Nuclear Watch: Iran Pursuing a Secret Nuclear Program
Iran Nuclear Watch: Cancerous Israel to Vanish Soon
Iran Nuclear Watch: U.S. Intel – Iran Directly Engaged in Manufacture of a Nuclear Weapon
Iran Nuclear Watch: Uranium Gas Goes Into Iran’s Centrifuges
Iran Nuclear Watch: Israel – Iran Moving Forward with Nuclear Weapons
- “The (weaponization) studies is a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program,” said the confidential report, obtained by Reuters.