Iran: Nuclear secrets spilled, panic button pressed ...

WND/ By Reza Kahlili*

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is convening an emergency meeting Monday of his cabinet and others from the Supreme National Security Council over WND’s revelation of the Islamic regime’s secret nuclear facility.

The exclusive WND report on Jan. 7 said the secret facility is in Khondab near the city of Arak in central Iran.

DigitalGlobe Sept. 2012 - Khondab secret nuclear facility

According to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit with access to Iran’s nuclear program, Iran is scrambling to find out who leaked the information. The regime is concerned about international ramifications of yet another secret site being exposed amid pressure and sanctions by the West and the International Atomic Energy Agency ‘s request for inspection and clarification over illicit nuclear activities. The source is the same person who revealed the site’s existence.

The regime has twice been caught red-handed with its covert nuclear activity – in 2002 when its Natanz enrichment facility was exposed and in 2009 with the exposure of the Fordo underground nuclear facility near the city of Qom.

Upon the revelation of the Khondab site on WND, Ahmadinejad issued two directives, according to the source – one to Heydar Moslehi, the head of the Ministry of Intelligence, and another to Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, the head of the regime’s Atomic Energy Organization – requesting immediate investigation into the leak.

The source added that the Intelligence Ministry, which oversees the activity of all employees in the Iranian nuclear program, has begun questioning workers in Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization through its Herasat, an internal security force.

The regime fully knows, the source said, that any revelation of its secret nuclear activity under current circumstances will destroy its claim of peaceful nuclear activity and will embolden Israel’s position internationally that the regime is lying about its activity and that it needs to be confronted immediately.

According to the source, the Khondab facility houses over 2,000 centrifuges that are enriching uranium for Iran’s nuclear bomb program. More cascades of centrifuges are being made operational to add to its capacity.

DigitalGlobe images of the site have been given to organizations that specialize in Iran’s illicit nuclear program for further analysis. However, a retired imagery analyst who cannot be named has looked at two of the images and confirms that the imagery shows “a large surface installation showing characteristics of supporting a co-located underground facility.”

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA analyst and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, an advisory board to Congress, said, “The imagery clearly shows some kind of highly sensitive and fortified installation supporting a deep underground facility inside the mountain.”

DigitalGlobe Sept. 2012 - Entrances to the underground facility

The Atomic Energy Organization’s Abbasi-Davani, in a memorial ceremony on Jan. 10 for the assassinated Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, said the regime continues to enrich uranium to the 20-percent level at both Natanz and Fordo. The 20-percent enriched stock could within weeks be further enriched to weaponization grade.

“We will not accept anything beyond the (Non-proliferation Treaty) framework,” Abbasi-Davani said. “We will not answer undocumented claims. We will (only) respond to the documents we get from them that we find acceptable.”

The IAEA, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, has for months requested access to Iran’s Parchin military site, where it is believed that tests took place on the trigger for an atomic bomb. Regime officials have so far refused, even as satellite images show that Iran has for months started cleaning up the test site.

The latest IAEA report last November stated that the regime has expanded its enrichment program, with over 10,000 centrifuges enriching uranium at Natanz and over 2,700 centrifuges at Fordo.

Though Iran is under severe sanctions by the United Nations, United States and the European Union for its illicit nuclear program, it currently has enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs if further enriched and is working with North Korea on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, WND’s source said Syria has started shipping uranium from Syria to Iran. And according to a Reuters report, Western and Israeli security experts indicate that Syria may have as much as 50 tons of unenriched uranium.

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*Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/iran-has-crisis-meeting-over-wnds-nuke-story/#p1LrzVGRwPG3UHFI.99

Iran to unveil home-made satellite in Feb.: report

spacewar
by Staff Writers Tehran (XNA) Dec 24, 2012

In June, the defense minister said Iran's new space center, named Imam Khomeini Space Center, would be launched in the future and the Iranian scientists and experts from the Aerospace Industry Organization of the Defense Ministry would send into orbit new generation of the Islamic republic's satellites from the center.

Iran Space Agency (ISA) has announced that it will unveil a new home-made satellite in February, Tehran Times daily reported on Sunday.
Director of ISA, Hamid Fazeli, said Saturday that a new domestically-manufactured satellite, named the Nahid, will be unveiled on Feb. 2, 2013, which is Iran's National Space Technology Day, according to the report.
"The project to complete the satellite is going well, and we hope that the satellite will be unveiled on National Space Technology Day," Fazeli said, adding that it is more likely that Fajr (Dawn) and Sharifsat satellites will be sent into space by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, which ends on March 20.
The Iranian official did not elaborate on the technology and mission of the Iranian satellites.
According to the report, the Fajr is the first Iranian satellite that will be put into orbit. It is a reconnaissance satellite powered by solar energy.
On Wednesday, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said that Iran was to unveil new space achievements soon.
Vahidi told reporters that the unveiling ceremony would take place on Feb. 2, Iran's National Space Technology Day.
In June, the defense minister said Iran's new space center, named Imam Khomeini Space Center, would be launched in the future and the Iranian scientists and experts from the Aerospace Industry Organization of the Defense Ministry would send into orbit new generation of the Islamic republic's satellites from the center.
As the first step, Vahidi said, the Dawn satellite would be launched into orbit from the Imam Khomeini Space Center.
Iran, a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, launched its first domestically-made data-processing satellite, the Omid (Hope), into space in 2009.
Iran frequently says that it will push ahead with its space program in the coming years.

A failed president: American Christian Pastor Jailed Visiting Family in Iran

Saeed Abedini is seen with his family

A 32-year-old Iranian who is a U.S. citizen and a Christian convert has been imprisoned without notice of any formal charges while visiting his family in Iran, according to his wife and attorneys in the U.S., who are now hoping that a media campaign will help set him free.

The Rev. Saeed Abedini, who lives in the U.S. with his wife and two young children, was making one of his frequent visits to see his parents and the rest of his family in Iran, his country of origin and where he spent many years as a Christian leader and community organizer developing Iran's underground home church communities for Christian converts.

On this last trip, the Iranian government pulled him off a bus and said he must face a penalty for his previous work as a Christian leader in Iran.

He is currently awaiting trial at Iran's notoriously brutal Evin Prison, where he has been incarcerated since late September.

"When he became a Christian, he became a criminal in his own country. His passion was to reach the people of Iran," Naghmeh, his wife, said in an exclusive interview with Fox News.

"He comes from a very close-knit family, and he loved evangelizing and passing out Bibles on the streets of Tehran. This was his passion," she said.

In July, Abedini left his wife and kids to go to Iran to visit family and continue a humanitarian effort he began years ago to build an orphanage.

After a short visit to a nearby country, Abedini was traveling back into Iran to catch his flight back to the U.S. when members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stopped his bus near the Turkey-Iran border and pulled Abedini from the bus, confiscating his passports and subjecting him to intense interrogation, according to his wife.

After weeks under house arrest and many calls to Iran's passport control office about the status of his confiscated passport, Abedini was told that his case has been referred to the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian government's elite military force.

On Sept. 26, five men kicked open the door of Abedini's parents' residence in Tehran where they collected all communications devices and arrested him while placing the rest of his family members, who are also Christians converts from Islam, under house arrest.

The family remains under house arrest, according to Naghmeh.

Two days before the home raid, Naghmeh reports getting a call to her cellphone in the U.S., from someone she thinks was an Iranian government agent threatening that she would "never see him again."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12/19/american-pastor-imprisoned-without-notice-charges-while-visiting-family-in-iran/#ixzz2FWPH3joD

Iran plans to legalize marijuana

Follow The Money

http://dailycurrant.com/2012/12/14/iran-plans-legalize-marijuana/

The Iranian government announced Thursday that it plans to legalize marijuana for both medical and personal use, according to state media.

Iran’s parliament approved a bill that would allow Iranian citizens to purchase up to 2 ounces of marijuana from private, state-licensed stores and cafés.

The proposed law taxes marijuana up to 25 percent. Commercial marijuana growers would need to apply for a permit from the Iranian Ministry of Agriculture.

Middle East experts say the proposed law is unusual for Iran, an Islamic theocracy that has been governed by a highly conservative clerical elite since 1979. Under Islamic law, the country strictly forbids alcohol and drug consumption.

But the law is endorsed by ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has championed the measure as a way to cut down on Iran’s prison population and to bring in extra revenue to the country, which has experienced a prolonged economic crisis because of economic mismanagement and international economic sanctions.

“Iran’s prisons are filled with thousands of people who have been arrested and imprisoned for possession of what is, quite frankly, a harmless plant,” Mr. Ahmadinejad told the state-run IRIB television. “It doesn’t make sense to spend our resources imprisoning such people when other serious crimes, such as the consumption of alcohol or women disobeying their husbands, are happening each day.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad said the measure will bring an important economic boost for the country’s agricultural sector and raise much-needed revenue for the state through the collection of permits and taxes.

“I was quite impressed when I visited the cannabis coffee shops in Amsterdam (Netherlands),” he said. “I thought, ‘Our country’s soils are quite suitable for the cultivation of marijuana, so why not grow it here and sell it in our coffee shops?’ The evil Western countries have made life in Iran difficult through the sanctions, so marijuana will help our people forget their troubles and relax.”

U.N. official: Alleged nuclear testing site was probably sanitized by Iran

By Joby Warric, 

The United Nations’ chief nuclear official urged Iran on Thursday to allow inspection of a military base where Iranian scientists are suspected of conducting secret nuclear-weapons research, although he acknowledged that any traces of illicit activity have probably been removed.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano said the nuclear watchdog would try again next week to visit the Parchin military base, a sprawling complex where Iran is tho

Iran has repeatedly refused to let IAEA inspectors visit the base, on the outskirts of Tehran. Instead, in the months since the agency requested access, satellite photos have revealed what appears to be extensive cleanup work around the building where tests are alleged to have occurred.

“We are concerned that our capacity to verify would have been severely undermined,” Amano told a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. He noted Iran’s “extensive” cleanup effort at the site, which has included demolishing buildings and stripping away topsoil.

“We cannot say for sure that we would be able find something,” Amano said.

The IAEA chief made the remarks six days before a scheduled visit to Iran by IAEA inspectors to try to resolve a standoff over the country’s refusal to clear up suspicions about research projects conducted by Iranian scientists nearly a decade ago. The experiments, described in documents obtained by Western spy agencies, appear to show Iranian scientists seeking to master specific technologies used in making nuclear weapons. Iran claims the documents are forgeries and insists that the country’s nuclear program is peaceful.

In his remarks, Amano noted a “sense of urgency” in the effort to clear up questions about Iran’s nuclear past. The Obama administration said last month that Iran must fully cooperate with the IAEA’s investigation by March or face the prospect of being brought before the U.N. Security Council for further action, possibly including new sanctions.

The nuclear agency chief also acknowledged that computer hackers have made several attempts to break into the IAEA’s sensitive files in recent months. Agency officials recently disclosed an intrusion by a group that swiped data from IAEA computer networks and posted some of it on a Web site.

Amano said he could not confirm reports that the hackers were Iranians. “The group . . . has an Iranian name, but that doesn’t mean that the origin was Iranian,” he said.

Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America

crethiplethi.com

Just the Facts/ By Sarah Kinosian

On November 15, the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management released a report that examines "the increased presence and influence of Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America and their relationship with drug cartels." It also looks at the turf wars between Mexican drug cartels and the threat they pose to the Southwest border.

The 50-page document, titled “A Line in the Sand: Countering Crime, Violence and Terror at the Southwest Border,” determines that "While Latin American bases serve as a finance mechanism for Hezbollah, it is believed the ability exists to turn operational if the need arises. There is no doubt that the enemy is at our doorstep and we must do something about it now."

While cited evidence from congressional reports, experts and news articles supports some of the report's findings regarding increasing Iranian presence in the region, the subcommittee's broader claims about established links between Mexican drug cartels and Hezbollah/Iran posing an imminent threat are largely unsubstantiated.

Several previous government statements and investigations on transnational crime take note of Iran and Hezbollah's engagement in the region, indicating it is something officials are aware of and monitoring, but show no solid transnational links between the groups or an immediate threat to homeland security.

"A Line in the Sand" details Iranian political and economic involvement in Venezuela and other Latin American countries, funding sources for Hezbollah in the region, incidences of criminal links between Hezbollah-supporting individuals and/or Colombian and Mexican drug trafficking organizations, and a failed 2011 Iranian assassination attempt on the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S.

With regards to Iran, much of the report relays what several other government sources and analysts have found:

• Hezbollah receives funding from individuals, primarily within the large Lebanese population in the region and especially those in the tri-border area between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, who support the group, providing a large portion of its extra-state financing.
  • Of note on this matter is that according to the State Department, this has been occurring since the mid 1980s. However, Iran is Hezbollah’s primary funding source, donating at least $200 million in 2008, with income from criminal enterprises in general only representing a sliver of the group's financing.
• Individuals who support Hezbollah are involved with criminal networks and illicit activities.
  • An important note to this point is that while the cases of individuals arrested for drug trafficking and human smuggling highlighted in the report were linked to Hezbollah, the document did not identify any of them as actual members of the group.
• Iran has increased its cultural and political presence in the hemisphere and now has 11 embassies in the region.
• Iran has been able to circumvent sanctions because of its economic partnership with a few countries in the region, most notably Venezuela. It is either economically involved or looking to become economically involved with several countries in Latin America.
• Iran has strengthened ties with Venezuela, with which it is ideologically aligned. According to testimony from analyst Douglas Farah, a 2011 Univision documentary showed Hezbollah training Venezuelan troops.
  • A testimony from Ambassador Roger Noriega, visiting fellow from the American Enterprise Institute, claims Hezbollah cells and Sinaloa cartel members are operating together in Venezuela, but cites unnamed sources and fails to footnote this part of the testimony.
• In 2011 Iran attempted to hire an alleged member of the Mexican Zeta cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington D.C. for a fee of $1.5 million. The Zeta operative turned out to be a DEA informant and the plot was foiled.

Aside from more detailed expansion on these points, the report in many cases uses these findings t make overreaching conclusions are often not sourced, cite the same subcommittee's previous report or cite individual's previous testimonies with unchecked sources.

In his opening statement to present the report, subcommittee Chairman Michael McCaul sets the stage for the report, claiming "Iran’s strategic migration and its relationships in Latin America are a clear and present danger to American national security" and that it "is also attempting to lay the foundation for military and covert operations within the U.S. by partnering with Mexican drug cartels."

Nowhere in the report are either of these statements corroborated. As security analyst Steven Dudley from Insight Crime and Samuel Logan from Southern Pulse both contend, Mexican criminal groups are not likely to commit acts of political violence in the U.S., much less involve foreign governments.

The document goes on to state, “Iran and Hezbollah have been involved in the underworld of Latin America long enough to become intimately familiar with all of its inhabitants and capitalize on their capabilities.”*

It substantiates this claim with a testimony from former DEA executive Michael Braun, who says, "If you want to visualize ungoverned space or a permissive environment, I tell people to simply think of the bar scene in the first Star Wars movie. Operatives from FTOs (foreign terrorist organizations) and DTOs (drug trafficking organizations) are frequenting the same shady bars, the same seedy hotels and the same sweaty brothels in a growing number of areas around the world. Based upon over 37 years in the law enforcement and security sectors, you can mark my word that they are most assuredly talking business and sharing lessons learned."

According to the report, the 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador was the result of these links established in "shady bars." The incident is the strongest established connection between Iran and Mexican drug cartels that the report examines.

While the plot was real and revealed developments to which policymakers should pay attention, many analysts and major media were skeptical of the details and whether the incident truly denotes Iranian-Zeta links. As Adam Isacson pointed out on border fact check blog, there was no evidence that the Zeta organization knew about the plan.

Insight Crime looked at the details of the case and concluded the failed plot served to show the lack of intimate contact and knowledge between Iran and the Mexican cartels, which many analysts have said are "not interested in committing acts of political violence on U.S. soil." Analyst James Bosworth also examines the case on his blog, saying "the clearly amateurish nature of Iran's involvement here shows that we have less to fear. The fact that an Iranian Qods-linked official is poking around the border looking for Zetas sicarios and ends up with the DEA informant suggests that Iran and Hezbollah have far less ties to the Mexican organized crime scene than some analysts would want you to believe."

In the "2012 Terrorism and Transnational Crime Report," Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said "It remains to be seen whether this alleged plot is indicative of greater crime-terrorism cooperation or a one-time departure from conventional IRGC-QF tactics." He did however note that the plot indicates some Iranian officials are more willing to conduct an attack in the U.S., but said nothing about established links to Mexican cartels.

Other government reports and statements acknowledge Iran and Hezbollah's presence as a potential threat, but not as an imminent danger. Similarly none of the security reports note any direct transnational connection between terrorist organizations and Mexican drug cartels, or highlight Iran's involvement in Venezuela as a threat to national security.

In the "World Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community" Clapper acknowledges the potential for links, but admits that the extent of connection between the groups is unclear. There is no discussion of Venezuelan-Iranian ties as a threat.

The State Department's 2010 "Country Report on Terrorism," published in August 2011, denied the existence of transnational terrorist groups actively operating in the country, saying, "There were no known operational cells of either al-Qaida- or Hezbollah-related groups in the hemisphere."

Similarly, the 2011 "Country Report on Terrorism" indicates no threat of a transnational terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere and discovered "No known international terrorist organization had an operational presence in Mexico and no terrorist group targeted U.S. citizens in or from Mexican territory." It found "no evidence of signs of ties between Mexican criminal organizations and terrorist groups."

The findings from the House's Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act of 2012, passed by the body in September, follows the general trend of government statements by recognizing Hezbollah presence, funding sources and some involvement in illegal activity, but states no known operational links between Hezbollah and Mexican drug cartels, other than the assassination plot and a money laundering scheme between the Zetas and Lebanese Canadian bank, which has since been shut down.

"A Line in the Sand" also concludes that "the FARC is operating with Iran and Hezbollah in Venezuela, and the Venezuelan Government is complicit in these operations." For this reason, the subcommittee gives the recommendation that "the U.S. government should consider designating Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism."

In an interview with Polifact, Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution, who testified in 2009 for the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs on illicit economies, organized crime, and their impact on U.S. and global security, said, "Allegations of al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah contacts with the FARC or these groups' penetration of the Latin American drug trade have not proven robust."

Kevin Casas-Zamora, former vice president of Costa Rica, added, "If Venezuela was indeed harboring a serious Hezbollah operation we would surely know it by now. The U.S. has had for years an official policy of toning down the confrontation with Chavez, but a serious terrorist threat is the one thing that the U.S. would not countenance."

When asked directly about Iran's involvement in the hemisphere during testimony to the Senate in March, former Southern Command leader General Doug Fraser highlighted the continued financial support the organizations receive from the region, saying, “Our concern remains their traditional connections with Hezbollah and Hamas, who do have organizations in Latin America. Those organizations are primarily focused on financial support to organizations back in the Middle East, but they are involved in illicit activity."

As far as the threat of these groups to U.S. security, he did comment on the connection between these groups and illicit activities in the region and said it is something SOUTHCOM will "continue to look for as we watch in the future, that connection between the illicit activity and the potential pathway into the United States," echoing the watchful caution presented in SOUTHCOM's 2012 posture statement.

Towards the end of the section on Iran, “A Line in the Sand” says "it is believed the ability exists to turn operational if the need arises. There is no doubt that the enemy is at our doorstep and we must do something about it now.”

The 2010 "International Terrorism and Transnational Crime: Security Threats, U.S. Policy, and Considerations for Congress," along with other government reports, supports this statement to a degree, noting the potential of Hezbollah supporters in the region to become more involved. It says, “If the organization decided to attack U.S. or Israeli interests in West Africa or South America, it is possible that these sympathizers could play a concrete role.” However no reports give the sense that "the enemy is at our doorstep."

The United States government, along with several security experts, has conducted many investigations into this issue. The overall conclusion seems to be that while the threat of Hezbollah in the hemisphere is there, it is relatively small and something that is being monitored.

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Also Iranian and Hezbollah Involvement in Criminal Activities in Latin America >>

Source: Iran has 'armed' terror groups with chemicals

WND/ Reza Kahlili*

As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas faction is escalating and rockets are hitting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Iran announced Friday that its missiles were being used against the Jewish state.

Rockets hit Tel Aviv Thursday for the first time since the 1991 Persian Gulf War when Iraqi scuds threatened the city. On Friday, Jerusalem also came under rocket fire from Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

According to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence division, Iran has large stockpiles of chemical and microbial weapons and it has armed the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah with them. It also has Quds Forces in Gaza and other Palestinian territories to help Hamas and Islamic Jihad in setting up underground rocket facilities while training and supervising the Palestinians in launching attacks on Israel.

The escalation of the Gaza conflict was ordered by the highest authority in Iran, the source added, and rockets targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are in fact a warning to Israel that its Iron Dome missile defense system cannot thwart Iran’s ballistic missiles and tens of thousands of rockets and missiles in the hands of Hezbollah.

On the day that the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran is set to sharply expand its uranium enrichment in an underground site after installing all the centrifuges it was built for, the message was clear: An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will have destructive consequences for Israel.

The missiles fired by the Islamic Jihad that hit Tel Aviv were Iranian Fajr 5 missiles, according to the Islamic regime’s media outlet Nimrooz, which is close to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran and a possible candidate for president.

The outlet cited a recent quote by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic regime: “From now onward, we will support and help any nation, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world, and we are not afraid of declaring this.”

The outlet said targeting the capital of the “Zionist regime” with this advanced technology is a big victory for the Palestinians and the resistance front — Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

It quoted anonymous military analysts that the Fajr 5 has the longest range compared to other missiles launched from Gaza and then warned that Israel should expect bigger surprises. And the Fars news agency, the media outlet for the Revolutionary Guards, said Friday that 20,000 Basij forces are prepared to fight alongside the Hamas militants, even as Israel called up thousands of reserves for a possible ground operation.

Last month an Iranian drone launched by Hezbollah was shot down over Israel. The Islamic regime claimed that the drone flew hundreds of kilometers into Israeli airspace and got very close to the Dimona nuclear plant. It also claimed that the regime now possesses images of Israel’s sensitive sites.

As reported in August, an alarming commentary by Mashregh, a media outlet for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, claimed that Iran not only has WMDs but has armed its terrorist proxies with them.

The commentary recalled the doctrine of the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: “If they stand against our religion, we will stand against their world. … If all this bloodshed is to provide a better future for Israel, we will destroy their world.”

Mashregh said that in an all-out confrontation with Israel, “groups armed with weapons of mass destruction will surely target Tel Aviv.”

Iranian analysts believe America does not wish a confrontation with Iran and that Israel is on its own. President Obama in his press conference on Wednesday stated that there is still time for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and again reiterated that Iran can enjoy “peaceful nuclear power.”

But Friday’s IAEA quarterly report demonstrates that the Islamic regime is continuing its headlong approach to building nuclear weapons.

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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

Iran behind drones in Syria?

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Iran's goverment controlling national cyberspace

AlJazeeraEnglish 

With presidential elections coming up in 2013, the Iranian government is determined to win the information battle.

Is Iran's currency crisis evidence that sanctions are working?

guardian.co.uk

Shadow Government/ Michael Singh

Both the Obama administration and Iran's President Ahmadinejad have blamed the recent dramatic fall in value of Iran's currency on international sanctions. It is a convenient explanation for both -- for the White House, it suggests that U.S. strategy towards Iran is working; for Ahmadinejad, it deflects responsibility away from his own policy decisions and toward an external scapegoat. 

But as my colleague Patrick Clawson explains, sanctions are only partly to blame for Iran's economic travails. The currency crisis and associated inflationary spiral has its origins in the Ahmadinejad government's mismanaged subsidy reform initiative. Sanctions have indeed exacerbated the problem, both by raising the cost to foreign firms of doing business with Iran and reducing the regime's foreign exchange earnings. The increasing threat of war has also played a role, deepening Iranians' worries about economic stability and increasing their inflationary expectations, and thus leading them to dump rials and seek safe haven in dollars and other hard currency to protect their savings. 

However, the regime's maladroit domestic response to the sanctions (for example, its decision to set up "foreign exchange centers," which sparked the current run on dollars) and its loose monetary and fiscal policies have made matters far worse. This is arguably the result of years of economic mismanagement in Iran, particularly under Ahmadinejad, who has subverted what little independence the Central Bank previously possessed and drained it of economic expertise.

Ironically, however, the Iranian regime is relatively sheltered from the present crisis. Although sanctions have reduced its oil exports, they remain high at 1.2 to 1.5 million barrels per day, meaning that the regime's foreign exchange income is considerable, even if diminished. What's more, it has limited external liabilities, and in any event its oil income is dollar-denominated, protecting it from exchange rate risk. This means that as the rial plunges, the regime's fixed rial-denominated payments become effectively cheaper. Meanwhile, Iran's rampant corruption likely shields elites and their families from the worst of the country's economic woes, such as unemployment and increasing scarcity.

As a result, Iran's economic crisis is unlikely to directly cause the regime to change its nuclear calculus. Instead, the sanctions implicitly depend on domestic Iranian outcry -- or the regime's worries of unrest -- to cause the regime to make the desired strategic shift. However, as bad as Iran's economy is, there are few signs of major unrest, and fewer signs still that the regime is responsive to the concerns of the Iranian people (although this will further diminish Ahmadinejad's standing). This is, after all, the regime that showed no compunction in brutally putting down protests in 2009.

By implication, the United States and our allies should be careful not to count on the current sanctions to resolve the nuclear crisis by themselves. Nor should we abandon our focus on targeted sanctions in favor of a return to broad sanctions, which rarely succeed in inducing policy changes in autocratic regimes. Rather than hoping that giving current sanctions "time to work" will force Iran back to the negotiating table, the United States and our allies should add further pressure to the regime and the elites who comprise it, including through additional targeted economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, bolstering the credibility of our military threat to the regime, and support for the Iranian opposition. 

On their own, sanctions are unlikely to work. Instead, for the United States to succeed in its aims, sanctions must be just one part of a broad, coordinated, and disciplined policy which brings all policy tools to bear on the goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. 

Also: Hyperinflation in Iran  >>

Israel draw a red line on Iran nukes

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UN: Iran accelerates uranium program despite West’s nuke fear

nbcnews.com/

Iran has doubled the number of uranium enrichment machines it has in an underground bunker, a U.N. report said Thursday, showing Tehran has continued to defy Western pressure to stop its atomic work and the threat of Israeli attack.

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its quarterly report on Iran that the number of centrifuges at its Fordow site -- buried deep underground to withstand any such hit -- had more than doubled to 2,140 from 1,064 in May. The new machines were not yet operating, it said.  More >>

The Geography of Iranian Power

geopolitics.blog.lemonde.fr

Stratfor/ By Robert D. Kaplan

The most important facts about Iran go unstated because they are so obvious. Any glance at a map would tell us what they are. And these facts explain how regime change or evolution in Tehran -- when, not if, it comes -- will dramatically alter geopolitics from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

Virtually all of the Greater Middle East's oil and natural gas lies either in the Persian Gulf or the Caspian Sea regions. Just as shipping lanes radiate from the Persian Gulf, pipelines will increasingly radiate from the Caspian region to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, China and the Indian Ocean. The only country that straddles both energy-producing areas is Iran, stretching as it does from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf. In a raw materials' sense, Iran is the Greater Middle East's universal joint. More »

Iran Nuclear Talks Fail

European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton (L) meets with Iran’s Chief Negotiator Saeed Jalili in Moscow, June 18, 2012. — Reuters Photo

Frederick W. Kagan
Director, Critical Threats Project
The threat of Iran's illicit nuclear program is mounting as another round of meetings between the P5+1 and Iran ended in failure this week. Tehran’s continued intransigence suggests that the regime will not compromise on its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, despite the impact of recent economic sanctions.

Iran's ongoing enrichment activities at the Natanz and Fordow facilities are increasing its enriched uranium stockpile, which is now large enough to produce fuel for five nuclear weapons after conversion to weapons-grade, and reducing the time it would need to produce bomb-grade fuel. Iran would need one month to produce 25 kilograms weapons-grade uranium at the larger Natanz enrichment facility (using its 3.5% and 20% enriched uranium stockpiles) and approximately eight months total to produce 25 kilograms weapons-grade at the smaller, buried Fordow enrichment facility (using its 20% enriched uranium stockpile). Iran has already produced enough 20% enriched uranium with which to produce the 15 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium needed to fuel a warhead designed with a high level of technical capability in 2-8 weeks. For technical notes and further information on these estimates, see “The Iranian Nuclear Program: Timelines, Data, and Estimates.”

There is no indication that Iran is prepared to verifiably dismantle its nuclear program (including ending uranium enrichment and heavy water related activities), remove nuclear material from Iran, adhere to the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, or cooperate with the IAEA’s ongoing inquiry into Iran’s weaponization work. Iranian negotiators have continued to invoke the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)--a treaty they are in standing violation of--as the basis for their supposed “right” to enrichment; the NPT does not, in fact, bestow any right to enrichment. Even the limited, short-term proposal put forth by the P5+1 aimed at curbing Iran’s 20% enriched uranium production--which would have limited impact on Iran’s ability to quickly produce weapons-grade fuel and fails to address the broader threat posed by the nuclear program--was dismissed in Moscow by Iran’s negotiator Saeed Jalili.

New malware is 20 times size of Stuxnet

WP/ By Ellen Nakashima

HOW THE STUXNET VIRUS WORKS

Researchers have identified a sophisticated new computer virus 20 times the size of Stuxnet, the malicious software that disabled centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear plant. But unlike Stuxnet, the new malware appears to be used solely for espionage.

Variously dubbed Flame, Skywiper and Flamer, the new virus is the largest and possibly most complex piece of malware ever discovered, which suggests it is state-sponsored, researchers said.

It is loaded with functions, but so far none appear to be destructive, they said.

As with Stuxnet, the creator of Flame remains a mystery, though some analysts say they suspect Israel and the United States, given the virus’s sophistication, among other things.

Some researchers say that certain characteristics common to Stuxnet and Flame suggest that whoever ordered up Stuxnet is also behind Flame.

“It’s very likely it’s two teams working effectively on the same program but using two very different approaches,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher with Kaspersky Labs, a Russian cybersecurity firm, which announced its analysis of Flame on Monday.

Still, much research remains to be done on the new virus, which has also been analyzed by CrySys, a cryptography and system security lab at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. More >>

Analysts play down higher-grade uranium find in Iran

Military Space News/

Fordow nuclear plant of Iran/ Reuters

Analysts on Friday played down the UN atomic agency's discovery of higher-grade uranium traces in Iran, saying it was likely due to a technical glitch rather than a covert attempt to enrich to arms grade.

The agency's latest report, seen by AFP, did however say that satellite imagery showed "extensive activity" at the Parchin military site, which it said could hamper investigating claims of suspected nuclear weapons research there.

The International Atomic Energy Agency also revealed that its head, Yukiya Amano, wanted in a visit to Tehran on May 21 to "conclude" a deal on clarifying accusations of such research.

But Amano returned empty-handed, saying only that he and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili made a "decision" to reach an agreement, and that he expected this to be signed "quite soon."

The agency report said that the traces found at the Fordo site, inside a mountain near Qom, were of uranium enriched to purities of 27 percent.

Iran has told the IAEA that the site was enriching only to 20 percent, which was already of concern to the watchdog since the capability to do so shortens the theoretical time needed to enrich to weapons-grade uranium of 90 percent.

"Iran indicated that the production of such particles 'above the target value' may happen for technical reasons beyond the operator's control," the report said.

"The agency is assessing Iran's explanation and has requested further details. On 5 May 2012, the agency took further environmental samples from the same location.... These samples are currently being analysed," it added.

Analysts played down the discovery, with Mark Fitzpatrick from the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London saying it was "probably a technical glitch."

"There are good reasons to worry about Iran's enrichment work but this probably isn't one of them," he told AFP.

Mark Hibbs, nuclear proliferation expert at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, agreed, telling AFP that the discovery "isn't proof that Iran is clandestinely enriching uranium to over 20 percent."

"It can happen," a senior official who wished to remain anonymous said.

Hibbs added however that Amano "has to be concerned about that possibility because of Iran's track record of concealment and failure to declare nuclear activities."

Parchin Military Site/ currentnewsarticle.com

A diplomat in Vienna told AFP that it was "is possible that 27 percent particles are the result of the start-up of centrifuge cascades."

"It is not necessarily a sign that Iran is enriching to levels beyond what it has declared. We wait for the agency's analysis," the envoy told AFP on condition of anonymity.

They added however that multiple UN Security Council resolutions had called on Iran to cease all enrichment activities because of the IAEA being unable to verify that they were purely for peaceful purposes.

The P5+1 powers -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- proposed in a meeting with Iran this week that Iran stop 20-percent enrichment and a suspension of all activities at Fordo, diplomats said.

Iran is however loath to do any such thing without the prospect that UN and unilateral sanctions imposed on the country in recent years -- more will hit on July 1 -- would be eased.

The P5+1's proposals stopped short of this, offering instead a series of lesser incentives that state media reports in Iran indicated Tehran thought were woefully insufficient.

The two days of intense talks in Baghdad achieved very little other than agreeing to meet again in Moscow on June 18-19.

The IAEA report also said that new satellite imagery indicated "extensive activities" were taking place at buildings at the Parchin military site near Tehran which the IAEA says it would like to inspect but Iran has denied it.

The IAEA said that "virtually no activity had been observed for a number of years" and that the apparent new work "could hamper the agency's ability to undertake effective verification."

Iran says Parchin is not a designated nuclear site and thus it is not obliged to permit IAEA inspections, although it last did so in 2005.

It says if it did allow inspections of the site, they would have to be part of an agreed "road map" that would address the IAEA's concerns in a set order.

Regarding Amano's sought-after accord with Iran, the IAEA report said "some differences remained" but that Jalili, who also represented Iran in Baghdad this week, "made clear that these were not obstacles to reaching agreement."

"The Director General invites Iran to expedite final agreement ... and urges Iran to engage the agency on the substance of the issues as soon as possible, including by providing early access to the Parchin site," it said.

The full report was not made public but was sent to member states. It can be found however at: http://tinyurl.com/d2wb8aa.

Israel ex-spy warns against ’messianic’ Iran war

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Seeking Nuclear Insight in Fog of the Ayatollah’s Utterances

nytimes.com/  By JAMES RISEN

C.I.A. analysts studying the geopolitical gamesmanship now at play over Iran’s nuclear program have expensive and highly classified tools at their disposal, but one of their best sources is free and readily available: the public utterances of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Like much of the information about Iran’s secretive and enigmatic government, Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks are sometimes contradictory, and always subject to widely different interpretations. But as negotiations over the country’s nuclear program begin on Saturday in Istanbul, efforts to divine where Ayatollah Khamenei really stands on the nuclear issue have taken on critical importance.

Underscoring Ayatollah Khamenei’s direct involvement in the issue, Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, arrived in Turkey with a new title: “personal representative of the supreme leader.”

“Dismissing what he says out of hand is not useful for us,” said Greg Thielmann, a former State Department analyst. “I think the U.S. can exploit what he says.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, who is not only the leader of Iran’s government but also the final authority on Islamic law, often uses religious language when he talks about the nuclear issue, which can jar Western analysts trying to gauge the meaning of such strong statements. With tensions over the nuclear program rising in February, he used that language to signal his opposition to nuclear weapons. “Iran is not seeking to have the atomic bomb, possession of which is pointless, dangerous and is a great sin from an intellectual and a religious point of view,” he said.

Then last month Ayatollah Khamenei was reported to have said that “we do not possess a nuclear weapon, and we will not build one.” Ayatollah Khamenei has also issued a fatwa, an Islamic edict, against the acquisition of a nuclear bomb by Iran.  More >>

Iran ships off radar as Tehran conceals oil sales

A general view of an oil dock is seen from a ship at the port of Kalantari in the city of Chabahar, 300km (186 miles) east of the Strait of Hormuz January 17, 2012. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

GoodShit/

LONDON (Reuters) – Iran is concealing the destinations of its oil sales by disabling tracking systems aboard its tanker fleet, making it difficult to assess how much crude Tehran is exporting as it seeks to counter Western sanctions aimed at cutting its oil revenues. Most of Iran’s 39-strong fleet of tankers is now “off-radar” after Tehran ordered captains in the National Iranian Tanker Co (NITC) to switch off the black box transponders that are used in the shipping industry to monitor vessel movements, oil industry, trading and shipping sources said. “Iran, helped by its customers, is trying to obfuscate as much as possible,” said a senior executive at a national oil company that has done business with Iran. And Iran may have countered a reported reduction in its oil sales in March by offering big discounts in the form of free freight, finance and insurance and generous credit terms, the sources said. Europe’s July 1 oil embargo, and U.S. and European financial sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme have seen Tehran’s oil sales drop to most Western destinations and drawn promises from some Asian buyers that they will cut purchases. But cheap, covert sales may have curbed or even reversed the reduction in shipments, the sources say. Discretion is paramount. Ship captains steering NITC supertankers have switched off recognition systems and customers are keeping business strictly under wraps. “People are being very secretive right now. They are not talking about this on email, Yahoo or mobile,” said the head of a crude oil desk at a top oil trading houses. A Reuters’ survey of the Iranian fleet via the ship tracking system AIS Live shows only seven of its 25 very large crude carriers are still operating their on-board transponders, which allow computers to track vessels. Only two of NITC’s nine smaller Suezmax size tankers now have their tracking systems in operation, shipping sources say. “NITC oil tankers are going to operate in stealth mode,” said a shipping official, who declined to be identified. Under normal circumstances, tankers would generally not turn off their tracking systems. Some did so last year during the Libyan civil war in order to trade with the Gaddafi government. As sanctions make it harder to pay for and ship oil from Iran, it is increasingly difficult to gauge how much is moving out of the country’s main terminal at Kharg Island. Iran’s Oil Minister, Rostam Qasemi, has said Tehran’s crude exports are steady at last year’s rate of 2.2 million barrels per day. But that has been hard to square with tanker tracker data and market intelligence.   More >>

El lavado de dinero en las relaciones entre Irán y la ALBA

RunRun.es

Leopoldo Colmenares

Hace pocos días atrás,  el diplomático estadounidense Otto Reich  hacía un llamado de atención sobre los peligros de las relaciones entre la República Islámica de Irán y los países de la denominada ALBA. Realmente, este tema se ha convertido en  un plato común para la prensa hemisférica, no obstante las advertencias de Reich tenían la particularidad de que llamaban  la atención sobre la posibilidad de que Irán, haciendo  uso  de los múltiples convenios y mecanismos bilaterales establecidos con la Alianza Bolivariana, estuviera efectuando operaciones de lavado de dinero en la región.

Los puntos clave aquí son tres:  En primer lugar la procedencia de ese dinero. Para que exista lavado de dinero  debe existir previamente la ejecución de una actividad comercial ilícita, esto es,  la procedencia del dinero debe tener orígenes ilegales, sino, simplemente, no podría hablarse  de tal figura. En segundo lugar, el mecanismo  específico que se estaría empleando para realizar tal actividad y,  finalmente, el destino final del dinero presuntamente lavado.

Sobre el primer y último punto, algunas advertencias han sido realizadas. El problema es que, precisamente,  y  como  apuntamos al principio, estas serían actividades netamente criminales. De hecho estas  operaciones serían más bien del tipo realizado por el crimen organizado transnacional, lo que tiene graves  implicaciones en el ámbito internacional.

Si bien lo anteriormente expuesto podría lucir como una exageración o como una acusación tremendista de los enemigos del régimen iraní, en realidad no lo es. Si existe consenso en un aspecto entre los conocedores del campo del lavado de dinero es, precisamente, en  la similitud  de  los procedimientos empleados  por  los elementos del crimen organizado transnacional y los grupos terroristas internacionales para ejecutar este tipo de operaciones.  Obviamente que cualquier lector medianamente informado conoce las acusaciones, que datan  ya los  20 años, sobre el apoyo de Irán a grupos terroristas del medio oriente, por lo que se cerraría el círculo sobre el destino del dinero lavado.

Simplemente de lo anteriormente  planteado,  podría inferirse la existencia de una imbricada red,  que enlazaría tanto al gobierno de Irán como a grupos terroristas del medio oriente,  en complejas operaciones de ingeniería financiera, con dinero ilícito proveniente o bien del narcotráfico o la venta de armas.  Si lo anterior, repetimos,  suena exagerado, solo es necesario recordar un hecho, de alguna manera bastante  similar,  como lo fue el denominado affaire  Irán-Contras, en la cual el gobierno de los Estados Unidos financiaba a los grupos insurgentes nicaragüense contra el régimen  de Daniel Ortega, con dinero obtenido  por la venta, ilegal,  de armas a Irán.

Adicionalmente,  a finales de 2009 el Fiscal del Distrito de Nueva York, Robert Morgenthau, destacó las posibles operaciones de lavado de dinero que realizaría Irán dentro del sistema bancario venezolano para apoyar a grupos terroristas en el Medio Oriente. Esto es lo que actualmente intenta  confirmar  Otto Reich.

La tremenda presión ejercida por la comunidad internacional contra Irán, resultado  de sus ambición  de desarrollar armamento nuclear, puede traer severas consecuencias, en la forma de sanciones  políticas, comerciales y financieras, a aquellos países que de alguna manera soporten las acciones de Teherán, mas aún si estas involucran a grupos terroristas.