Reactor brings war with Iran 1 step closer - Page 3

Ray · 08-31-2006, 17:11 PM

And USSR and China?

Anon · 08-31-2006, 21:36 PM

Had nothing to do with the US.

Tronic · 08-31-2006, 23:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by M21Sniper

Yeah in the US's defense the Jews stole our technology, the french developed it on their own, and well, the UK is a suburb of America anyway.

didn't America give the nuclear tech to UK???

Ray · 09-01-2006, 02:17 AM

Well Snipe, they are pointing their goods at you.

And they are the only ones who might reach.

But of course that is not an internal matter with the US, merely external!

highsea · 09-01-2006, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tronic

didn't America give the nuclear tech to UK???

No, it's just on loan.

Anon · 09-01-2006, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tronic

didn't America give the nuclear tech to UK???

UK was a part of the original manhattan project.

They were in it from the beginning...so, no.

Tronic · 09-01-2006, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by M21Sniper

UK was a part of the original manhattan project.

They were in it from the beginning...so, no.

oh yea....

Ray · 09-01-2006, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Highly Enriched Uranium Found at Iranian Plant

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: September 1, 2006

VIENNA, Aug. 31 — The global nuclear monitoring agency deepened suspicions on Thursday about Iran’s nuclear program, reporting that inspectors had discovered new traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian facility.

Iran Remains Steadfast in Pursuing Nuclear Plans as U.N. Deadline Arrives (September 1, 2006)

Inspectors have found such uranium, which at extreme enrichment levels can fuel bombs, twice in the past. The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that at least some of those samples came from contaminated equipment that Iran had obtained from Pakistan.

But in this case, the nuclear fingerprint of the particles did not match the other samples, an official familiar with the inspections said, raising questions about their origin.

In a six-page report to the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, the agency withheld judgment about where the material came from and whether it could be linked to a secret nuclear program.

Iran says that its nuclear program is intended only for the production of energy, which would use uranium enriched at far lower levels than the sample described in the report.

As expected, the report confirmed that Iran had continued producing enriched uranium, but only on a small scale and at relatively low levels, at its vast Natanz facility.

Thursday was the deadline set by the Security Council for Iran to freeze its enrichment-related activities. Iran’s failure to comply means that it is vulnerable to further punitive action, perhaps economic and political penalties, either by the entire Council or a smaller group of countries led by the United States.

In a speech at the American Legion national convention in Salt Lake City, President Bush ratcheted up his warning to the Iranian leadership, saying that the war in Lebanon and Iran’s support for Hezbollah “made it clearer than ever that the world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran.”

He concluded by saying that while he was committed to a diplomatic solution to the confrontation with Iran, “There must be consequences for Iran’s defiance, and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”

The European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, are to meet in Europe next week in a final attempt to seek a way out of the impasse. Afterward, the major world powers will meet in Europe to discuss Iran’s case. But Russia and China are resisting sanctions and Iran has shrugged off all threats, vowing to continue its nuclear activities even as it seeks negotiations.

As in the past, the nuclear agency painted a confusing and incomplete picture of the state of Iran’s nuclear program, underscoring the limits of outside inspectors whose access to Iran’s nuclear sites was curtailed by Iran early this year.

On one hand, the report makes clear that, as the official familiar with the inspections said, “Inspectors have not uncovered any concrete proof that Iran’s nuclear program is of a military nature.”

On the other hand, the report captures the long pattern of confusion, stonewalling, partial disclosure of information and a minimum of cooperation under Iran’s international obligations to the agency and details new suspicious activities.

Since February, when the agency referred the Iran dossier to the Security Council, Iran has drastically reduced the access of the international inspectors. The decision has limited or blocked inspections of hundreds of the country’s atomic sites, programs and personnel; the result is more uncertainty and less information about Iran’s progress in mastering the basics of uranium and plutonium, the foundations for both producing electricity and building bombs.

Most noteworthy in the report was the discovery of particles of highly enriched uranium on a container at a waste storage facility at Karaj, not far from Tehran.

The particles were taken from the container for testing a year ago, but the agency obtained the result only a few weeks ago because of the limited capacity of its verification laboratory.

In late 2003, the discovery of traces of highly enriched uranium in Iran touched off international concern about the country’s nuclear intentions and raised questions about where the material had originated. Another find of the radioactive material earlier this year redoubled the sense of alarm.

But Thursday’s disclosure was different, diplomats said. “This is the first case with no known linkage,” said one European diplomat who could not be quoted by name because of diplomatic rules. “But we have to be careful because over time these things can be explained away, at least in theory.”

Robert Joseph, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, was cautious in talking about the new evidence, but said, “We need to be very concerned that Iran may well be undertaking experiments, and may be undertaking the construction of centrifuge machines, out of sight of I.A.E.A. inspectors.”

Highly enriched uranium, containing 80 percent or more of the rare uranium-235 isotope, is considered bomb grade and can be fashioned into the core of a nuclear weapon.

Iran says its atomic program is meant to enrich uranium to the low levels of up to 5 percent for the production of nuclear power, but the United States calls that effort a cover for the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal.

The agency has written to Iran asking for an explanation of the source of the highly enriched particles, but has not received a response.

The report did not specify the level of the particles or whether they were weapons-grade quality. The official who was discussing the report refused to be drawn into that discussion, suggesting that such a definition was meaningless. “You cannot say weapons-grade, but very high,” he said.

The report also concluded that Iran had continued to produce enriched uranium but on a modest scale, despite claims of various Iranian officials of plans to build and operate thousands of gas centrifuges on an industrial scale.

Indeed, Iran has built and operated only one 164-machine cascade or set of centrifuges, and other isolated machines.

Over the summer, the centrifuges did not produce enriched uranium continuously, but only for a few days and then often operated empty, the report said.

In addition, only a few kilograms of nuclear material was fed into the machines; only a small amount of uranium — tens of grams — was enriched, the official said.

“The qualitative and quantitative development of Iran’s enrichment program continues to be fairly limited,” the official said. He added, “From a technical point of view, we have not seen a very extensive experimentation with those machines.”

The program appears to be lagging behind Iran’s stated deadline to install 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz in the last quarter of this year.

The report documented Iran’s refusal last summer to allow inspectors into an underground part of the Natanz facility and to give inspectors multiple-entry one-year visas for easy access to the country. Iranian officials since have backed down.

The report also faulted Iran for once again failing to answer questions and provide documents and access on a wide range of issues, some of which have been outstanding for more than three years.

“There is a standstill” in resolving these issues, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of normal diplomatic rules. The agency, he added, is losing confidence that it can give the world assurances about the “completeness” of Iran’s program.

William J. Broad and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/wo...in&oref=slogin

Now what?

Sanctions?

And then?

Ray · 09-01-2006, 12:59 PM

Quote:

As deadline passes, US says Iran must pay for its defiance

By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor and James Bone in New York

IRAN failed yesterday to comply with a United Nations deadline to halt its uranium enrichment work, increasing tensions between the country and the international community.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, reported that Iran had continued its controversial enrichment work beyond yesterday’s deadline.

In a confidential report obtained by The Times, it also listed numerous cases of non-co-operation by the Iranian authorities with atomic inspectors. It also reported finding samples of highly enriched uranium at a technical university suspected of conducting military research work.

The findings, set out by Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the IAEA, were seized on by the Bush Administration as evidence that Iran is trying secretly to build a nuclear weapon and should now be punished.

“The report, short and to the point, concludes that, after all these years of trying, the IAEA is still unable to confirm the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme,” said John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the UN.

“Iran is defying the international community. Iran is not suspending its uranium enrichment activities,” he said.

Washington is reported to have drawn up a three-tier sanctions menu that would begin with limited measures to ban the sale of nuclear equipment to Iran, block travel by Iranian officials and seize their foreign assets. If Iran did not comply, the sanctions would be widened and could lead to a ban on commercial flights and an embargo of financial institutions.

President Bush said that Iran must pay a price for defying the international community.

“It is time for Iran to make a choice,” Mr Bush told American veterans in Salt Lake City. “We have made our choice. We will continue to work with our allies to find a diplomatic solution, but there must be consequences for Iran’s defiance and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Washington wants to open the sanctions debate next week at a meeting in Berlin with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. But it faces an uphill battle to persuade other members whose response to yesterday’s report was far less strident.

Philippe Douze-Blazy, the French Foreign Ministry, “deplored” Iran’s “unsatisfactory response” but nevertheless said that negotiations with Tehran should continue.

Russia, which has lucrative trade ties with Iran, including a $1 billion (£520 million) contract to build the main nuclear power station at Bushehr, has repeatedly avoided any move towards sanctions. So, too, has China, which relies heavily on Iran for its energy needs.

Britain made no official response yesterday.

Experts believe that the matter will be resolved probably only later this month at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

There was certainly no suggestion yesterday that more talking would have much impact on changing the defiant mood in Tehran, which insists that it has the right to pursue a civilian nuclear programme.

President Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech yesterday: “The Iranian nation will never abandon its obvious right to peaceful nuclear technology. (The West) should know that the Iranian nation will not yield to pressure and not accept any violation of its rights.”

Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, described the findings in the ElBaradei report as “damning”.

He said: “In addition to the no suspension (of uranium enrichment) I counted 11 times when Iran was failing to co-operate with the IAEA.”

But in Tehran the report was greeted very differently. Mohammad Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, said it showed that Iran had co-operated fully with the IAEA.

IAEA report

“Iran has not addressed the longstanding verification issues or provided the necessary transparency to remove uncertainties associated with some of its activities”

“Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities; nor has Iran acted in accordance with the provisions of the Additional Protocol”

“The agency will continue to pursue its investigation of all remaining outstanding issues relevant to Iran’s nuclear activities”

“However, the agency remains unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify the correctness and completeness of Iran’s declarations with a view to confirming the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme”

“The depleted uranium targets which had been irradiated in the course of the plutonium experiments are stored in containers located at the Karaj Waste Storage Facility. On 8 August 2005, the agency took environmental samples from one of those containers. The results of their analysis, recently finalized by the agency, indicate the presence of high enriched uranium particles”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...338053,00.html

Sanctions have never worked.

There is no doubt that Iran is upto some monkey tricks.

Not only Russia which has a finger in the pie, but also China which has many contracts ongoing including a lucrative oil exploration project.

Therefore, the UN resolution would be something that one should keenly have to watch.

UN resolution or no UN resolution, countries have to gear up to face the challenge with greater resolve than what is happening. Maybe Sniper's attitude is the only answer even though it may cut back the oil in the world.

Swift Sword · 09-01-2006, 13:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by M21Sniper

UK was a part of the original manhattan project.

They were in it from the beginning...so, no.

IIRC, the British had an effort in that direction prior to the Manhattan Project under the code name "Tube Alloys" which was absorbed by by the Manhattan Project.

In 1946, Truman signed the McMahon Act (?) cutting Britain out of the picture.

This lead to a Hurricane in the Monte Bello Islands after which McMillain is reputed to have said:

"We have made a successful start. When the tests are completed, as they soon will be, we shall be in the same position as the United States or Soviet Russia. We shall have made and tested the massive weapons. It will be possible then to discuss on equal terms."

Herein there maybe some insight into the impulse to proliferate.

William

Ray · 09-01-2006, 14:05 PM

Quote:

Iran, Ready For a Test Of Wills

By David Ignatius
Friday, September 1, 2006; Page A21

TEHRAN -- Behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's defiant rhetoric lies a conviction that is widely shared here: Iran is a rising power in the Middle East while the United States is in decline -- and now is the moment for Iran to emerge as a regional superpower.

You hear versions of this cocky nationalism in almost every conversation. And when you look around this surprisingly modern metropolis of 12 million people, it's easy to think that Iran's time may indeed have come. The problem is that its national ambitions are wrapped today in the fanatical language of Ahmadinejad, who emerged from among the hardest of this country's hard-core Islamic revolutionaries. He and his followers seem eager for the confrontation that lies ahead.

The situation in Iraq bolsters Iranian confidence in its test of wills against America. As the Iranians view it, the United States has stumbled into a pit from which it cannot easily escape. There is a disagreement here between pragmatists who see in America's troubles an opportunity to open a mutually beneficial dialogue with the Great Satan and hard-liners who would rather let America suffer.

"Iran thinks in Iraq it has the upper hand -- that is the view of the Iranian military and political establishment," says Kayhan Barzegar, a professor of international relations here who advises some members of the leadership on Iraq. He prepared a recent paper, "Iran's Security Interest in the New Iraq," for Iran's Expediency Council, which is headed by former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and is the center point for the pragmatist faction. Barzegar says that it is precisely because the United States needs Iran's assistance that a dialogue between the two over Iraq makes sense.

"Iraq is the momentous moment, where the two countries can work with each other in tangible ways," argues Barzegar. Iran can play a decisive role not just because of its links with the Shiite-led government and militia groups, he says, but also because of what he calls its "soft power" as the dominant economic, political and cultural player in the region.

Iran officially embraced this idea of dialogue on Iraq early this year, in a statement from Ali Larijani, Iran's national security adviser. But the Bush administration pulled back, worried that talks with Tehran about Iraq would obstruct the administration's larger goal of containing the Iranian nuclear program. The failure of the initiative undercut the advocates of dialogue and emboldened the hard-liners.

Ahmadinejad dismisses the idea of talks with the United States about Iraq. When I asked the Iranian president at a news conference here Tuesday whether he thought the two countries should discuss ways to stabilize Baghdad, he responded with invective. "The people of the [Iraqi] nation hate you now. You should go out and leave them," he said. Running through all of his statements was the same supremely self-confident theme: Iran's moment has come, and America's has gone.

A more nuanced but equally tough view of Iran's "manifest destiny" in the Middle East comes from Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Kayhan newspaper. He meets frequently with Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with whom he shares an interest in Persian poetry. Shariatmadari says the United States is in an impossible bind in Iraq: It has brought to power Islamic parties that are fundamentally opposed to America's interests. When Larijani announced in March that he was ready for talks about Iraq, Shariatmadari immediately countered with a critical editorial. Now, he says, Khamenei has made clear he opposes such negotiations.

How do Khamenei and the other ruling mullahs views Iran's role in the region? Shariatmadari answered thus: "Big changes are on the way. People in the region have understood that the time for bullying and military attacks has passed."

Take a stroll in Iran's old bazaar, for generations the heart of the city's business life, and you sense the public eagerness for Iran's resurgence. You hear many views about Ahmadinejad, including those of people who tell you frankly that they loathe him, but everyone seems to want a stronger Iran.

"We are a powerful country," says Mohammed Rezaie, who fought in the Iraq-Iran war and now sells fabric for men's suits. "We have 2,500 years of history and vast resources -- oil, minerals and hard-working people. If America keeps pushing us, our resistance will just be greater." Hamid Vasheghani, who has a stall selling kitchenware, agrees. In challenging American power, he says, "We are showing the world what kind of nation we are -- in culture, medicine, industry and military power. We have important things to say now."

The trick for America and its allies is somehow to recognize Iran's ambitions to be a regional power without allowing the revolutionary leadership embodied by Ahmadinejad to further destabilize the Middle East. I'm a naturally optimistic person, but right now that looks to me like Mission Impossible.

davidignatius@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...083101446.html

What delusions! LOL

You could knock me down with a feather!

08-31-2006, 17:11 PM	#31 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 26,149 Country:	And USSR and China? __________________ "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination." I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to. HAKUNA MATATA

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08-31-2006, 21:36 PM	#32 (permalink)
Anon New Member Join Date: 08-03-03 Posts: 0	Had nothing to do with the US.

09-01-2006, 02:17 AM	#34 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 26,149 Country:	Well Snipe, they are pointing their goods at you. And they are the only ones who might reach. But of course that is not an internal matter with the US, merely external!

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