 The Obama administration believes domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Iran's nuclear program make the country's leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions. As US President Barack Obama faces pressure to back up his year-end ultimatum for diplomatic progress with Iran, reports yesterday said strong and immediate new sanctions would initiate the latest phase in a strategy to force Iran to comply with UN demands to halt production of nuclear fuel. The sanctions proposal comes as the administration has completed a fresh review of Iran's nuclear progress. Mr Obama's strategists believe Iran's top political and military leaders were distracted in recent months by turmoil in the streets and political infighting, and that their drive to produce nuclear fuel appears to have faltered, officials told The New York Times. The White House wants to focus the new sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps believed to run the nuclear weapons effort. Although repeated rounds of sanctions over many years have not dissuaded Iran from pursuing nuclear technology, a US administration official involved in the Iran policy said the hope was that the current troubles "give us a window to impose the first sanctions that may make the Iranians think the nuclear program isn't worth the price tag", the paper noted. The Obama administration officials said they believed Iran's bomb-development effort was seriously derailed by the exposure three months ago of the country's secret enrichment plant under construction near the holy city of Qom. Exposure of the site deprived Iran of its best chance of covertly producing the highly enriched uranium needed to make fuel for nuclear weapons. As well, international nuclear inspectors report that at Iran's plant in Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges spin to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, the number of the machines operating has dropped by 20 per cent since the northern summer, a decline that nuclear experts attribute to technical problems. Others, including some European officials, believe the problems may have been accentuated by a series of covert efforts by the West to undermine Iran's program, including sabotage on its imported equipment and infrastructure. These factors have led the Obama administration's policymakers to lengthen their estimate of how long it would take Iran to accomplish what nuclear experts call "covert breakout" -- the ability to secretly produce a workable weapon. "For now, the Iranians don't have a credible breakout option, and we don't think they will have one for at least 18 months, maybe two or three years," the paper quotes one senior administration official as saying. The administration has told allies that the longer time frame would allow the sanctions to have an effect before Iran could develop to the full its nuclear ability. The Australian
 The time is fast approaching when Israel has to decide whether to bomb Iran–a massive undertaking targeting many hardened sites. The consequences and risks cannot be understated: This is a frightening scenario and it has to be the most stressful decision an Israeli leader has ever made. And according to this column, one airstrike in 2004 on the Natanz facility could have prevented or at least pushed this scenario far back.
The writers argue that Iran would have lost a major portion of its stock of low-enriched uranium, significantly delaying Iran’s nuclear program, giving more time for diplomacy, sanctions and internal upheaval to be effective. It seems that whenever we discuss military action, the argument always centers on whether the threat has reached its maximum potential and therefore it is forced.
This column should remind us that sometimes its better to tackle a threat when it’s easier, than wait until its full fruition and face a nightmare when finally being forced to confront it. World Threats
 The United Nations nuclear agency announced that Iran will start up its once-secret nuclear facility outside the holy city of Qom in 2011. Iranian technicians have moved highly sophisticated technical equipment into the uranium enrichment site in preparation for starting it up, the nuclear watchdog reported Monday. The IAEA report offered no estimate of the new plant's capabilities but a senior international official familiar with the agency's work in Iran said that it appeared designed to produce about a ton of enriched uranium a year. That would be enough for a nuclear warhead but too little to fuel the nearly finished plant at the southern port of Bushehr and other civilian reactors Iran is planning to bring on line in the coming years. The IAEA also noted that Iran's enrichment at the Natanz site — revealed by dissidents in 2002 and under agency monitoring — was stagnating, with output remaining at mid-2009 levels. The report did not offer a reason. But the official suggested that nuclear experts previously working at Natanz could now be preoccupied with putting the finishing touches on the newly discovered site, called Fordo. As early as three years ago, Iranian officials had announced that immediate plans for the Natanz site were to install about 8,000 enriching centrifuges, and Monday's report suggested that Tehran had reached that goal Read more at Foxnews 
 A team from the UN's nuclear watchdog has inspected a controversial Iranian uranium enrichment plant near the town of Qom. The four inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the facility on Sunday, Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency said. "The inspectors ... visited the facility in central Iran. They are expected to visit the site again," it said. Iran's disclosure of the Qom plant's existence on September 21 sparked a wave of global outrage. Iran has already been enriching uranium - the most controversial aspect of its nuclear project - for several years at another plant in the central city of Natanz, in defiance of three sets of UN sanctions. Uranium enrichment is the focus of Western concern that Iran's ultimate aim is to manufacture a nuclear weapon, a charge strongly denied by Tehran. Enriched uranium produces fuel for civilian reactors, but in highly extended form can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb. On Saturday, Mehr quoted an unnamed Vienna-based official as saying that the IAEA inspectors would "compare the information given by Iran [about the Qom plant] with the facility during their visit." Hossein Ebrahimi, an Iranian legislator, said the IAEA inspection "shows that Iranian nuclear activities are peaceful and transparent". The inspection comes as Barack Obama, the US president, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, and France's Nicolas Sarkozy pledged support for a separate deal to end the crisis over Iran's uranium enrichment drive. The White House said the three "affirmed their full support" for a UN-brokered deal under which Tehran's existing stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) would be sent abroad. Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, the Iranian capital, said the UN inspectors had only three days to do their job. "They say they are going to use all technical tools available to them to assess whether there has been any recent activity at the plant. The Iranians, of course, deny this. They say that enriching has not started yet," she said.
"But what we understand is that [the] inspectors will be taking environmental swaps at the plant - trying to assess whether there is any military dimension at all.
"And that's really key - to try to prove that Iran's intentions are peaceful or whether the plant was going to be used for military purposes.
"The Iranians say they're going to fill the plant with the latest kind of centrifuges, which will only be able to produce low-enriched uranium. That's what the inspectors will have to assess and report back to Mohamed ElBaradei [head of the IAEA] in November." Tehran missed a Friday deadline for responding to the UN deal about uranium, saying it would give its answer next week. State TV has said Iran would prefer to buy uranium for a reactor that makes medical isotopes, rather than send its own stock abroad for enrichment. Ali Larijani, Iran's parliament speaker, said on Saturday that Western powers are trying to "cheat" Iran through deal. "They are saying we will give you the 20 per cent [enriched uranium] fuel for the Tehran reactor only if you give us your enriched uranium," he told Iran's ISNA news agency.
"I see no links between providing the fuel for the Tehran reactor and sending Iran's low enriched uranium abroad." Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz
Uranium Enrichment Facility in an April 8, 2008 VIENNA — Iran is stonewalling the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency about "possible military dimensions" to its suspect nuclear program, officials said Friday, urging the regime to clarify the mysterious role of a foreign explosives expert and shed light on other issues. A senior Iranian envoy angrily denounced the assessment as "fabrication," insisting his country has gone out of its way to be transparent and cooperative. In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it has pressed the Islamic Republic to clarify its uranium enrichment activities and reassure the world that it's not trying to build an atomic weapon. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and geared solely toward generating electricity. The United States and key allies contend the country is covertly trying to build an atomic weapon. Ahead of Sept. 2 six-power talks on Iran — and a key meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board a week after that — the IAEA acknowledged that Tehran has been producing nuclear fuel at a slower rate and has allowed U.N. inspectors broader access to its main nuclear complex in the southern city of Natanz. Read more here ... Source: FoxNews
 John Lyons, Middle East correspondent THE scene has been set for a race between several Middle Eastern countries to develop a nuclear program after Saudi Arabia yesterday revealed its intention to push ahead with a nuclear industry.Saudi Arabian Minister for Water and Electricity Abdullah al-Hosain revealed that the country was developing its first nuclear power plant. The comment was made to local newspaper Al-Watan. Because newspapers in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia are under state control, the comment was seen as an official acknowledgment of what has been speculated about in the region for some time -- that Saudi Arabia was moving into the nuclear power industry. The development came as Saudi Arabia's rival for supremacy in the region, Iran, surprised the international community by allowing inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit one of its nuclear reactors. According to the Associated Press, the inspectors were permitted to visit the almost completed Arak heavy water reactor and given greater access to the Natanz uranium enrichment site. Saudi Arabia's move raises the nuclear stakes in the Middle East. Israel has been pressing the US to place a clear deadline by which Iran must agree to allow international inspectors into all of its nuclear facilities. Israeli media reported this week that Israel was accusing the UN of hiding evidence that Iran was pursuing plans to develop nuclear weapons. Read more here ...Source: The Australian
The sources said that Iran completed a research programme to create weaponised uranium in the summer of 2003 and that it could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order from its Supreme Leader.
A US National Intelligence Estimate nearly two years ago concluded that Iran had ended its nuclear arms research programme in 2003 because of the threat from the American invasion of Iraq. But intelligence sources have told The Times that Tehran had actually halted the research because it had achieved its aim - to find a way of detonating a warhead that could be launched on its long-range Shehab-3 missiles.
They said that, should Ayatollah Khamenei approve the building of a nuclear device, it would take six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead. The Iranian Defence Ministry has been running a covert nuclear research department for years, employing hundreds of scientists, researchers and metallurgists in a multibillion-dollar programme to develop nuclear technology alongside the civilian nuclear programme.
"The main thing (in 2003) was the lack of fissile material, so it was best to slow it down," the sources said. "We think that the leader himself decided back then (to halt the programme), after the good results."
Iran's scientists have been trying to master a method of detonating a bomb known as the "multipoint initiation system" - wrapping highly enriched uranium in high explosives and then detonating it. The sources said that the Iranian Defence Ministry had used a secret internal agency called Amad ("Supply" in Farsi), led by Mohsin Fakhri Zadeh, a physics professor and senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Council.
The system operates by creating a series of explosive grooves on a metal hemisphere covering the uranium, which links explosives-filled holes opening onto a layer of high explosives enveloping the uranium. By detonating the explosives at either pole at the same time, the method ensures simultaneous impact around the sphere to achieve critical density.
"If the Supreme Leader takes the decision (to build a bomb), we assess they have to enrich low-enriched uranium to highly-enriched uranium at the Natanz plant, which could take six months, depending on how many centrifuges are operating. We don't know if the decision was made yet," said the intelligence sources, adding that Iran could have created smaller, secret facilities, other than those at the heavily guarded underground bunker at Natanz to develop the materials for a first bomb. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency only keep tabs on fissile material produced at monitored sites and not the number of centrifuges Iran has built.
Washington has given Iran until next month to open talks on resolving the nuclear crisis, although hopes of any constructive engagement have dimmed since the regime's crackdown on pro-reformist protesters after June's disputed presidential elections.
Ehud Barak, Israel's Defence Minister, last week reiterated that a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities was still an option, should the talks fail. Israeli officials estimate that a raid on Natanz and a nuclear facility at Arak, in central Iran, would set Iran's nuclear programme back by two to three years.
An Israeli official said that Iran had poured billions of dollars over three decades into what he called a two-pronged "master plan" to build a nuclear bomb. He said that Iran had enriched 1,010kg of uranium to 3.9 per cent, which would be sufficient for 30kg of highly enriched uranium at 95 per cent. About 30kg is needed to build one bomb.
British intelligence services are familiar with the secret information about Iran's experiments, sources at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said. Although British agencies did not have their own "independent evidence" that Iran had successfully tested the explosive component of a nuclear warhead, they said there was no reason to doubt the assessment.
If Iran's leader does decide to build a bomb, he will have two choices, intelligence sources said. One would be to take the high-risk approach of kicking out the international inspectors and making a sprint to complete Iran's first bomb, as the country weathered international sanctions or possible air strikes in the ensuing crisis. The other would be to covertly develop the materials needed for an arsenal in secret desert facilities.
Last week, during a series of high-level US visits to Israel, officials outlined Washington's plans to step up sanctions on Iran, should Tehran fail to agree on talks. Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, and General James Jones, the National Security Adviser, said that Iran had until the end of next month, when the UN General Assembly is to meet, to make a positive move towards engagement.
If Tehran fails to respond, Washington aims to build a tough international coalition to impose harsh sanctions focusing on petroleum products - an area where Iran is particularly vulnerable because it sends almost all of its crude abroad for refinement.
Experts believe that the unrest of the summer will make Iran particularly vulnerable to sanctions. They would also hit the Revolutionary Guards Council, which finances its operations by running a huge conglomerate of international companies, rather than drawing directly from state coffers.
 By Alan Howe | March 02
RIGHT now we are on the cusp of one of the great punctuation marks of humanity.
Soon, millions of lives could be changed in a moment and we and our children might face an unutterably grim future.
One thing's for sure.
It is incumbent on this generation - us, and now - to act to set things right.
Leave this job to our children?
Those who survive will never forgive us.
I'm not talking about the global financial meltdown.
We might all lose our jobs, but after long ago reading John Kenneth Galbraith's Money: Whence It Came, Where it Went, I am convinced, economic dill though I am, that we are experiencing the bottom of the Ferris wheel of a financial euphoria that laps us from time to time.
But much darker events are unfolding.
The clock on this particular nightmare started ticking last Wednesday when Iran's first nuclear power plant was tested.
The Iranians will tell you they just want to generate power.
Western security experts are convinced that the deceitful, dissembling and dishonest Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose measureless hate for the West, Israel in particular, manifests itself regularly, plans nuclear arms and to aim them at Tel Aviv.
Of Israel, he says: "The Islamic world will not let its historical enemy live in its heartland."
Of us?
"Anyone who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nations' fury".
The West and Israel "will vanish, this is a divine promise".
Ahmadinejad is quite clear about his intentions.
Only a fool would fail to see the means by which he plans to execute them.
Then President-elect Barack Obama said in November that the US needed "to ratchet up tough but direct diplomacy with Iran".
At that stage he still believed you could negotiate on an intellectual level with the Iranian leadership.
But since then something has changed and Iran should be wary of the signs, because the most influential Clinton in the White House does not wear a dress.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may well have last week appointed Dennis Ross to be special adviser on the Gulf and Middle East - with a clear focus on Iran - but it betrays the certain hand of her husband, for whom Ross once worked.
Three months ago Obama was keen to talk to the Iranians.
Insiders now say Bill Clinton, who tried and failed, wants the Iranian issue dealt with forcefully in Obama's first term and that the new President is listening.
And that is good news for the rest of us, because Iran is believed by Western security services to be within two years of being able to launch a nuclear strike.
Last week a fascinating man passed through Melbourne almost unnoticed, but I managed to catch up with him to share some fearful insights about his country and our future.
Danny Yatom is retired now, but for many years he served in the Israeli secret services and anti-terrorism squads, rising to be the boss of Mossad.
He retired from politics last year after serving in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, for five years.
He is depressingly convinced of Iran's intentions and is uniquely qualified to assess them.
"Iran remains the greatest threat to world peace," he told me.
"Many regimes in the world make the mistake of thinking and believing that a nuclear-armed Iran is a sole Israeli problem; it is a problem for the entire world."
Yatom believes a nuclear-armed Iran will likely choose to flex its muscle and will also be a threat to the Gulf states.
Iran is already equipped with missiles covering a range of 2500km.
They could fire off rockets this afternoon that would reach the outskirts of Vienna.
"They are in the process of building missiles that will be able to cover 4000km," says Yatom.
"That's almost to London from western Iran.
"The most important thing today is to bring the Americans and the Europeans to understand that it cannot be only the problem of the Israelis."
And confirmation that the Europeans are beginning to understand has come from an unlikely source - the so often unreliable French.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the United Nations that "allowing Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons would be an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world".
Yatom points to Iran's defiance of international laws as evidence it is less interested in bringing power to its villages than in demonstrating power over its neighbours.
"Well, you know they act against all the international decisions, they continue to enrich uranium.
``They do not try to hide it, and explicitly they say it is their right to enrich uranium."
Any attack on Iran's known nuclear sites, particularly at Natanz, south of the capital Tehran, will be from the air - although because they have been hidden beneath the sand, ground troops will also likely be involved.
Such attacks will necessarily involve many civilian casualties.
Iran has, at terrific expense, buried its nuclear "power plants" mostly beneath population centres.
What a great idea. If only we had thought to dig big holes to hide the unsightly Hazelwood and Loy Yang power stations. It never occurred to us!
When the Iranian-backed Hamas recently fought Israel soldiers in Gaza, they hid munitions in sensitive buildings and fired rockets from hospitals and schools, using the locals, especially children, as human shields.
Iran does this on a grand scale at home.
When the time comes, many innocents will die.
Ahmadinejad knows this well.
Indeed, he's planned for it. Source: Herald Sun H/T: Cody
By Daniel Dombey in Washington | February 19
Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.
In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.
They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.
If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.
“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.
When the agency carried out an annual stocktaking of Natanz in mid-November Iran had produced 839kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride – more than 200kg more than previously thought. Tehran produced an additional 171kg by the end of January.
“It’s sure certain that if they didn’t have it [enough] when the IAEA took these measurements, they will have it in a matter of weeks,” Mr Zimmerman said.
Iran’s success in reaching such a “breakout capacity” – a stage that would allow it to produce enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months – crosses a “red line” that for years Israel has said it would not accept.
UN officials emphasise that to produce fissile material Iran would have to reconfigure its Natanz plant to produce high enriched uranium rather than low enriched uranium – a highly visible step that would take months – or to shift its stockpile to a clandestine site.
No such sites have been proved to exist, although for decades Iran concealed evidence of its nuclear programme.
A senior UN official added that countries usually waited until they had an enriched uranium stockpile sufficient for several bombs before proceeding to develop fissile material. He conceded that Iran now had enough enriched uranium for one bomb.
“Do they have enough low enriched uranium to produce a significant quantity [enough high enriched uranium for a bomb]?” he said. “In theory this is possible, [although] with the present configuration at Natanz it isn’t.”
David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: “If Iran did decide to build nuclear weapons, it’s entering an era in which it could do so quickly.” Source: FT Online
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The Obama administration believes domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Iran's nuclear program make the country's leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions. 
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