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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in remarks broadcast yesterday reaffirmed a call for world powers to detail their stance on Israeli nuclear policy before Tehran joins new negotiations over its own atomic work, Reuters reported (see GSN, July 27).

The demand could a prove a significant obstacle to new talks with Iran, Western diplomats suggested. Israel is the only Middle Eastern state believed to hold nuclear weapons, though it refuses to confirm or deny the existence of its presumed stockpile. The United States and its allies, meanwhile, have for years sought to halt Iranian nuclear activities they suspect are geared toward weapons development; Tehran has insisted its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

The five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany must also specify whether they want congenial or antagonistic relations with Iran and permit additional countries to take part in the discussions, Ahmadinejad said (Robin Pomeroy, Reuters, July 27).

In a Monday broadcast, though, Ahmadinejad said his country would participate in negotiations over its nuclear work regardless of whether the demands are satisfied, the Associated Press reported.

"Any response they give us would not matter. We prefer their response to be constructive, but if their response is not constructive, we would follow negotiations accordingly," the Iranian president said (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press/Google News, July 27).

Ahmadinejad reissued the conditions after the European Union imposed new unilateral economic penalties on Iran. "The logic that they can persuade us to negotiate through sanctions is just a failure," he said in the Tuesday broadcast.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has not commented on the Iranian demands, according to Reuters (Pomeroy, Reuters).

A prominent Iranian lawmaker yesterday urged the six world powers to abandon their use of punitive measures against Iran before talks on the nuclear standoff resume, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

"The European Union's call for the continuation of nuclear talks with Tehran is in direct contradiction to its recently approved package of anti-Iran sanctions," state media quoted Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, as saying (Xinhua News Agency, July 27).

Meanwhile, Russia yesterday commended Iran's stated willingness to join separate talks on a plan developed in May for exchanging Iranian uranium, RIA Novosti reported. The plan -- negotiated by Iran, Brazil and Turkey -- calls for Iran to store 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey for one year; other countries would be expected within that period to provide nuclear material refined for use at a Tehran medical research reactor in exchange for the Iranian material.

The arrangement appeared similar to another proposal, formulated in October by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that was intended to defer the Middle Eastern state's enrichment activities long enough to more fully address U.S. and European concerns about its potential nuclear bomb-making capability. Tehran ultimately rejected the IAEA proposal worked out with France, Russia and the United States. Those nations, known as the "Vienna group," subsequently expressed concerns about the later agreement.

"We are prepared for this technical meeting. We reaffirm the importance of Brazil and Turkey's participation," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in released remarks. "The successful implementation of this scheme will help restore confidence that Iran's nuclear program has only peaceful purposes."

"We again call on Tehran to start a dialogue with the [six world powers] to settle the situation around the Iranian nuclear program," the Foreign Ministry statement added (RIA Novosti, July 27).

A letter submitted by Tehran to the International Atomic Energy Agency on the fuel talks this week does not address the Vienna group's concerns about the agreement brokered by Brazil and Turkey, said one diplomat with knowledge of the matter.

The uranium exchange negotiations appeared unlikely to begin again until September, the month when Tehran recommended resuming more sweeping discussions of its nuclear work, diplomats told Reuters. (Pomeroy, Reuters).

In the United States, Representative Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) last week introduced a bill that would require U.S. firms to report Iran-related investments in periodic reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"This legislation will substantially increase pressure on companies doing business in Iran, and, in turn, on the Iranian regime," Deutch said in a statement (U.S. Representative Ted Deutch release, July 23).

Republican lawmakers introduced a separate House of Representatives resolution backing Israel's right "to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.," Russia Today reported today.

“Obviously we are reaching silly season in Washington with the elections in November and for that there have already been some signs that Israel is going to be a major element that some Republicans will use to get both voters as well as finance, donations to campaigns, away from the Democrats,” said Woodrow Wilson Center policy scholar Trita Parsi.

"Even silly season has real repercussions on the real world," though, and the resolution could counter statements of opposition by the Obama administration and U.S. armed forces to an Israeli attack on Iran, said Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (Russia Today, July 28).

Elsewhere, Iran indicated it was capable of tapping its petroleum resources despite new international penalties targeting its energy industry, United Press International reported.

"Over the past 31 years, Iranian companies and workers in Iran's oil industry have developed this industry in the country and even if new sanctions are imposed by the European Union, our (oil) production will not drop," Iranian Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi told state media (United Press International I, July 27).

Some experts expressed an opposing view, the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday.

"Heretofore, European IOCs (international oil companies) played a key role in ... bringing in advanced technology and keeping production at least on a plateau," Eurasia Group analyst Cliff Kupchan said before the European Union formally adopted its new penalties this week. "That golden bullet for the Iranians is about to disappear."

"It would be hard for Iran to maintain its current production without a serious influx of foreign investment, and it's hard to imagine that happening under the current circumstances," added Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Former National Security Council Middle East adviser Flynt Leverett, though, suggested China was already helping to meet Iranian demands for material support and technical expertise created by the withdrawal of European firms and funding. "I wouldn't assume that the Iranians don't have options ... to keep things rolling along," he said.

Kupchan countered that "a lot of what Iran needs, China cannot provide" (Kristen Chick, Christian Science Monitor, July 27).

In Washington, the nominee to head U.S. Central Command yesterday said Iran's nuclear work poses a security threat to the Middle East and wider world, UPI reported.

"(Iran) continues to threaten regional and global stability by pursuing a nuclear weapons program and by funding and arming militant proxies throughout the region," Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis said. "The task of Central Command will be to counter the Iranian regime's destabilizing activities, to deter the regime from aggression, and to work in concert with our partners in the region to advance our shared security interests" (United Press International II, July 27).

Russian-built Iran nuclear plant on schedule: official
by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) July 27, 2010
The construction of Iran's first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr is on schedule and preparatory work should be completed by the end of August, a Russian official said Tuesday.

"Everything is on time. As was planned, by the end of August all work for the first stage of the physical launch should be completed," the head of Russia's nuclear agency Sergei Kiriyenko said according to RIA Novosti.

He said this first stage would involve putting nuclear fuel in the plant's reactor.

The plant, being built by Russia in a much delayed project, does not fall under the UN sanctions agreed by Russia and other world powers to punish Tehran's defiance in the nuclear crisis.

Iran launches bid for fusion reactor

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

by Staff Writers
Tehran (UPI) Jul 27, 2010
Iran says it has launched a program to develop a nuclear fusion reactor, an ambition deemed unrealistic by Western analysts.

Officials from the Islamic Republic this past weekend unveiled the program, which will have a budget of $8 million, the BBC reports. The powerful nuclear fusion process is used to make hydrogen bombs but has never been successfully harnessed for commercial-scale power generation.

At a ceremony to mark the beginning of the project, the head of the fusion research institute, Asghar Sediqzadeh said 50 scientists would be working on the project. Initial studies will last for two years, with construction of a test reactor taking another 10 years, Sediqzadeh said.

"Iran is one of the first countries to begin research in this field," he was quoted as saying by the BBC. "We built one installation about 30 years ago. We had some delays in the past 10 years (but) we can quickly make up for this time."

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said his country had launched a serious bid into fusion energy, a technology long sought after by the West.

"It takes 20 to 30 years before this process can be commercialized but we have to use all the capacity in the country to provide the necessary speed for fusion research," Iranian news agency ISNA quoted Salehi as saying.

International observers are less optimistic.

"If the Iranians had this wonderful technological edge over the rest of the world, and they were about to produce a nuclear reactor that does fusion in a commercially viable fashion, bless them," Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Iran's nuclear program with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies told Voice of America. "But the fact that nobody else has done it so far suggests that maybe the Iranians are up to just playful banter."

Ottolenghi suggested the program might not serve energy but military purposes.

"If one looks at what the reality of a military program is, if you want to have thermonuclear weapons, you need to master the technology for fusion," he said. "And while fusion is not commercially viable for civilian purposes, fusion allows you to build infinitely more powerful nuclear weapons."

Observers hope that nuclear fusion can one day produce CO2-free base-load power on a large scale.

Fusion plants would fuse together atoms inside a reactor to produce electricity. Conventional nuclear power reactors do the opposite, harnessing energy released from splitting atoms.

Once the technical challenges -- and there are many -- are overcome, fusion power has potential advantages including the existence of abundant fuel, a relatively safe energy generation producing only low-level waste and no greenhouse gases.

Yet scientists haven't yet found a way to build a reactor that produces more energy than it consumes.

An international scheme to build a nuclear fusion reactor in France has come under fire for ballooning costs. Costs for the ITER test reactor project, led by a consortium including the European Union, China Japan, Russia, India and the United States, have soared from $7 billion to around $18 billion.

 

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Iran has linked together two sets of uranium enrichment centrifuges, enabling the nation to more quickly refine nuclear material, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security reported in an analysis Friday (see GSN, Aug. 6).

 (Aug. 9) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, examines equipment at his country's Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2008. Iran has connected two enrichment centrifuge "cascades" at the site, a move that could bolster the efficiency of its disputed atomic efforts, according to experts (Getty Images).

The nation began operating the connected centrifuge "cascades" after preparing the second set for use in recent weeks at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, Reuters reported. The link allows unrefined uranium left after each pass through a centrifuge cascade to be more easily moved into another set of machines for further processing.

Tehran could modify the second cascade to produce weapon-grade uranium, according to Western diplomats. Iran has insisted its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

"If Iran enriches to weapon-grade uranium ... it is expected to use the same type of procedure," the ISIS analysis states. "Thus, Iran's current actions, while superficially justified on civil grounds, mainly make sense in the context of learning how to make significant quantities of highly enriched uranium efficiently" (Sylvia Westall, Reuters, Aug. 6).

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that “the scope and reach” of economic penalties adopted against Iran in recent months “have had real bite,” the New York Times reported. The U.N. Security Council in June passed its fourth sanctions targeting Iran's disputed nuclear work, and Washington and other governments have since that time leveled separate, unilateral measures against the Middle Eastern nation (David Sanger, New York Times, Aug. 7).

"We remain open to engagement [with Iran]. But they do know what they have to do. They have to reassure the international community by words and actions as to what their nuclear program is intended for," Agence France-Presse quoted Clinton as telling the Times.

"And so whether it would take six months, a year, or five years, it's that deep concern about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons that is the preoccupation of our friends and partners," Clinton said.

Still, the United States would continue penalties "regardless of any issue of timing, because we think it's got the best potential for changing Iranian behavior," she said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Aug. 8).

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano is expected in the near future to designate a date for new negotiations on a potential exchange of Iranian uranium, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said yesterday.

One plan -- negotiated in May by Iran, Brazil and Turkey -- calls for Iran to store 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey for one year; other countries would be expected within that period to provide nuclear material refined for use at a Tehran medical research reactor in exchange for the Iranian material.

The arrangement appeared similar to another proposal, formulated in October by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that was intended to defer the Middle Eastern state's enrichment activities long enough to more fully address U.S. and European concerns about its potential nuclear bomb-making capability. Tehran ultimately rejected the IAEA proposal worked out with France, Russia and the United States. Those nations, known as the "Vienna group," subsequently expressed concerns about the later agreement.

Amano "is preparing a letter to set a date for talks with the Vienna Group," the Xinhua News Agency quoted Mottaki as saying. Iran is fully prepared to take part in discussions of the plan it negotiated with Brazil and Turkey, the official added (Xinhua News Agency, Aug. 9).

The talks "will likely be held within the next two weeks," analyst Mehdi Mohammadi told Iran's Fars News Agency on Saturday (Fars News Agency, Aug. 7).

China pledges Iran cooperation as oil minister visits
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Aug 6, 2010
Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang met Iran's oil minister in Beijing on Friday, pledging continued cooperation with Tehran to "protect global security", state television reported.

Massoud Mirkazemi arrived in Beijing on Thursday seeking new investments in Iran's energy sector, including funding for new refineries, according to the Iranian oil ministry's news agency Shana.

But Friday's state television report made no mention of any agreements.

"China is willing... to maintain dialogue, communication and coordination with Iran on major international and regional issues and to protect regional and global peace and stability," Li told Mirkazemi.

In recent years Beijing has emerged as Iran's main economic partner, filling the gaps in the country's energy sector left by Western firms forced out by international sanctions.

China backed the fourth set of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions, but Beijing has consistently urged world powers to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

Last week, it opposed the latest unilateral sanctions on Iran imposed by the European Union, which are also designed to strike at the vital energy sector, as well as its banking and transport segments.

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North Korea yesterday said it would not accept a plan for reunification with the South that requires the regime first to give up its nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Aug. 16).

(Aug. 18) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, shown in an undated photo released in June. Pyongyang yesterday rejected a South Korean unification strategy that would require the North to abandon its nuclear arsenal (Getty Images).

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Sunday put forth a three-stage unification proposal that would begin with peace and nuclear disarmament, followed by the integration of the neighbor's economies and ultimately reunification.

"This is nothing but ridiculous rhetoric to force (North Korea) to disarm itself and realize the ambition for invading (North Korea) together with the U.S.," Pyongyang's Committee for Peaceful Reunification said in comments carried by state-controlled media.

Pyongyang also condemned as "very unsavory" Lee's suggestion of implementing a tax to pay for unification expenses.

Lee's proposal arrived amid deteriorated inter-Korean relations that followed the March sinking of a South Korean warship. Seoul has blamed the incident and the deaths of 46 sailors on Pyongyang, while the Stalinist state has maintained its innocence (Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Aug. 17).

Meanwhile, South Korean news organizations reported that Seoul had dismissed the North's proposal for an inter-Korean summit due to the poor state of relations, according to AP

The Dong-a Ilbo reported today that South Korea informed the North in 2009 it would be given economic assistance in exchange for participating in the summit. However, when Pyongyang recently sought confirmation on whether the summit proposal was still good, it was informed the environment for a high-level meeting was not right.

A South Korean Unification Ministry spokeswoman said there were presently no official North-South communications regarding a meeting and Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said in the Maeil Business that the timing was off for a summit (Kwang-Tae Kim, Associated Press II/Washington Examiner, Aug. 18).

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said yesterday the government would continue to lean on Pyongyang, the Yonhap News Agency reported. The North should apologize for attacking the Cheonan and prove that it is open to denuclearization if it hopes to see reduced pressure from Seoul, he said.

"It is not the right time for us to talk about resuming the six-party talks or other exit strategies," Yu told the Shinmun newspaper.

The six-party process is a stalled effort by China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States to convince North Korea to shutter its nuclear weapons program in exchange for large infusions of foreign aid and security pledges. Multilateral talks last took place in December 2008. Beijing has called for a quick return to the nuclear negotiations but Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have insisted the North first demonstrate its sincerity on resolving the nuclear standoff.

"It would be reasonable to maintain a two-track policy of continuing to apply pressure while at the same time leaving open the arena of dialogue for the time being," Yu said (Yonhap News Agency, Aug. 17).

Even as Seoul readies a final report on the conclusions of a multinational investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan, some scientists maintain the probe's findings do not add up, Time magazine reported today.

The Seoul-led probe announced in May it had determined that a North Korean submarine-fired torpedo caused the ship to sink. Some observers have criticized those findings as not being scientifically sound.

"To me this challenges the integrity of science," University of Virgina physicist Seung-Hun Lee said. He called the probe's findings "absurd."

The chemical debris that Seoul maintains was produced from the torpedo detonation has "nothing to do with the explosion, but are just aluminum hydroxide that can be naturally formed by corrosion when aluminum is exposed to water for a long time," Lee said.

Lee and others have called on the U.N. Security Council to seek a new probe.

U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Thomas Eccles, an engineer who represented the United States on the probe panel, said recently that "I can tell you conclusively that an explosion that correlates to a 250-kilogram maritime weapon at a placement that's ideal for breaking this ship occurred in the same place and I think at the same time as not only objective recorded information ashore, but where and when a piece of torpedo -- which is a perfect correlation of a North Korean weapon of the exact same size -- was found" (Mark Thompson, Time, Aug. 18).

South Korea to Discuss Nuke Rumors With Myanmar

Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010

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South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Monday rumors about nuclear collaboration between North Korea and Myanmar would be discussed when a high-level envoy from Seoul travels to the Southeast Asian nation this week, the Yonhap News Agency reported (see GSN, July 23).

"Our government is keeping a close eye on possible military cooperation between Myanmar and North Korea, including nuclear cooperation," ministry spokesman Kim Young-son said. "We're working with the United States and other relevant states but we have not yet confirmed anything regarding nuclear ties. But [South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Shin Kak-soo] will have discussions on North Korea-Myanmar relations of late during his visit."

Shin is slated to visit the isolated junta-controlled state tomorrow through Saturday.

Records smuggled out of Myanmar suggest the junta is in the early stages of building a nuclear weapons program with technical support from Pyongyang.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Washington does not "see the transparency" in relations between "serial proliferator" North Korea and Myanmar (Yonhap News Agency/BurmaNet News, Aug. 17).

Environment threatens Pakistani state: US report
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Aug 18, 2010
Environmental woes as witnessed in Pakistan's devastating floods threaten the unity of the nation, exacerbating the threat of Islamic extremists, a US government report said.

The study prepared for US lawmakers warned that Pakistan's ecological problems would likely get worse due to climate change, potentially inflaming tensions with nuclear-armed adversary India.

The report said that Pakistan faced critical risks to food security in the coming decades due to a number of reasons including water scarcity, population growth and mismanagement.

"The combination of these factors could contribute to Pakistan's decline as a fully functioning state, creating new, or expanding existing, largely ungoverned areas," the Congressional Research Service said.

The growth of lawless areas of the type seen now in Pakistan's tribal northwest is "not in US strategic interests given the recent history of such areas being used by the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups," it said.

The Congressional Research Service is tasked with advising US lawmakers, although its reports do not necessarily reflect US policy. The Pakistan report was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.

Pakistan is suffering from the worst floods in its history, affecting 14 million people. Some Islamist groups have tried to raise their profile in the relief operations after criticism of the government response.

While the report was written largely before the flooding, it warned of future disasters as climate change leads to a melting of Himalayan glaciers, the source of most of the water in the Indus River.

But Pakistan's environmental decision-making is held up by corruption and rivalry between civilian and military leaders, the report said.

The report noted that the United States has increasingly sought to assist Pakistan on water and other environmental issues.

The United States last year approved a five-year, 7.5 billion-dollar aid package for Pakistan, hoping to stabilize the nation at the frontline of the fight against Islamic extremism.

Water has increasingly been a point of friction between Pakistan and India, which have fought three full-fledged wars since their separation at birth in 1947.

Many Pakistanis accuse India of stealing water; India denies the charges and says that Pakistani mismanagement is to blame.

Commentary: Guns of August?

Israel has 'eight days' to hit Iran nuclear site: Bolton Washington (AFP) Aug 17, 2010 - Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said. Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia's help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant's core. At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians. "Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they're in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it," Bolton told Fox Business Network. "So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days." Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, "Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor." But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical. "I don't think so, I'm afraid that they've lost this opportunity," he said. The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized Russia's role in the development of the plant, saying "the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle." "The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America's eye always figures prominently in Moscow," he added. Iran dismissed the possibilities of such an attack from its archfoes. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that "these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning." "According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences," he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran. Iranian officials say Iran has stepped up defensive measures at the Bushehr plant to protect it from any attacks. Russia has been building the Bushehr plant since the mid-1990s but the project was marred by delays, and the issue is hugely sensitive amid Tehran's standoff with the West and Israel over its nuclear ambitions. The UN Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions on June 9 over its nuclear programme, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran's banking and energy sectors. The Bushehr project was first launched by the late shah in the 1970s using contractors from German firm Siemens. But it was shelved when he was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution. It was revived after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, as Iran's new supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his first president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, backed the project. In 1995, Iran won the support of Russia which agreed to finish building the plant and fuel it.

by Arnaud De Borchgrave
Washington (UPI) Aug 17, 2010
For the first two weeks of August, the Internet buzzed with "inside knowledge" of an Israeli airstrike against Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of the month. One of most quoted warnings came from Philip Giraldi, a polyglot former CIA operative who writes for the American Conservative and is no friend of Israel.

"We spend $100 billion on intelligence annually and then ignore the best judgments on what is taking place," Giraldi's wrote on his blog recently and "might as well use an Ouija board. Not only would we save a lot of money but with an Ouija board there is always the chance you could arrive at the right decision."

Five years ago, Giraldi wrote, "it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration that brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran."

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, he wrote, had tasked the Strategic Command with drawing up a contingency plan in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan was for a large-scale air assault on Iran (never mind if Iran wasn't involved) employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. More than 450 major strategic targets were listed in the plan -- evidently leaked to Giraldi by "appalled" senior U.S. Air Force officers.

Tehran's propaganda machine has taken a leaf out of Bush 43's lexicon -- "bring 'em on." The Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guards, trotted out their latest acquisition -- the 51-foot "Bladerunner," the world's "fastest warship," capable of 82 mph.

The Iran Times, published in Washington in both English and Farsi, reported only two such "high-tech" speedboats had been built and that Iran was now planning to mass-produce them. The one acquired by Iran was purchased in South Africa and loaded onto a container ship. The Financial Times said the United States was prepared to board it but the operation was called off without explanation.

One Bladerunner was used to set a record for circumnavigating the British Isles in 2005, when it averaged 61.5 mph over 27 hours.

For the past 20 years, Iran's seagoing Republican Guards have been accumulating small, swift boats with a view to swarming U.S. warships going in and out of the Hormuz Strait, and to mining the narrow waterway used by supertankers that move 40 percent of all seaborne traded oil (which is 20 percent of all oil traded worldwide). Moving through the mile-wide exit channel is also three-quarters of all of Japan's oil needs.

Iran also has an endless supply of seagoing suicide "volunteers." Hundreds were used to walk across minefields during the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88).

Hormuz is the world's most important chokepoint and Iran's principal naval base, Bandar Abbas, is smack in the middle. The Defense Intelligence Agency knows from a former Iranian naval intelligence officer that there are detailed plans to close the strait to supertankers that move some 17 million barrels a day to the rest of the world. Oil would then quickly shoot up from $80 a barrel where it is today to $400 or $500.

In January 2008, five Iranian speedboats darted in and out of a line of three U.S. warships as they entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait, dropping white boxes ahead of the vessels, forcing them to take evasive action.

The USS Port Royal, a 9,600-ton cruiser, the 8,300-ton guided missile destroyer USS Hopper and the 4,100-ton frigate USS Ingraham were prepared to blast the Iranian boats out of the water with close-range, rapid-fire Phalanx Gatlings but word came from the Pentagon to hold their fire.

The white boxes were designed to simulate mines. There is little doubt one or two U.S. warships could have been damaged and the United States would have found itself involved in a third war in the region.

The suicide boat attack against the 8,600-ton USS Cole, at anchor in Aden Harbor in October 2000, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and immobilized a $1 billion warship for two years of repairs, demonstrated vulnerability to small craft laden with explosives.

To demonstrate that fresh international sanctions won't weaken Iranian resolve, Tehran published a new law mandating the production of higher-enriched uranium and further limiting cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

At the same time, Iran and Russia announced they would begin loading "before the end of August" Russian-supplied fuel into Iran's first nuclear power plant. A cacophony of tweets amplified Giraldi's Guns of August scenario.

If Israel has decided to strike against what most Israelis see as an existential threat, it would presumably wait until the U.S. Congress' return from vacation Sept. 10. A resolution (HR 1553) is winding its way through Congress that endorses an Israeli attack on Iran, which, writes Giraldi, "would be going to war by proxy as the U.S. would almost immediately be drawn into conflict when Tehran retaliates."

Leading neo-conservatives pooh-pooh Iran's asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities as overblown anti-Israeli rhetoric. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a neo-con commentator, predicts Iran's response would be minimal and recommends Israel attack Iran to "rock the system" to make the regime "lose face" and suffer a military defeat from which its recovery would be doubtful.

This reporter first began covering Iran in August 1953 when the Shah fled a revolutionary upheaval (returning 10 days later after a military crackdown and covert CIA assistance).

There is little doubt that an Israeli attack on Iran would trigger mayhem up and down the Persian Gulf and trigger a third war that would be yet another force multiplier for the U.S. deficit: Federal spending is now at $3.6 trillion; the national debt, $13.4 trillion; cost per citizen $43,000; cost per taxpayer $120,000. Check the debt clock online -- in real time.

Gulf and other Arab rulers who wish secretly for aerial bombing action against Iran's nuclear facilities will be the first to denounce Israel and its only ally when and if the first Iranian target is hit.

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China and Russia yesterday pressed Iran to help the International Atomic Energy Agency monitor the Middle Eastern nation's nuclear program, Reuters reported (see GSN, Sept. 7).

Tehran's longtime economic allies issued the call one day after the U.N. nuclear watchdog noted in a report that Iran had vetoed the appointment of certain inspectors for its atomic work.

Iran has consistently denied allegations by the United States and other nations that its nuclear program is geared toward weapons production (see related GSN story, today).

"We hope that Iran and the agency can fully cooperate, and establish the trust of the international community in the peaceful nature of their nuclear plants," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

The official called for further dialogue aimed at achieving a "long-term and appropriate resolution" to the atomic standoff.

"The IAEA must continue its work ... Iran must answer the demands of the IAEA," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said (John Irish, Reuters, Sept. 8). "We exhort Iran to prove it is acting in good faith and to respond to the requests by the IAEA," Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying (Agence France-Presse I/Now Lebanon, Sept. 7).

Experts said Tehran appeared to taking a more aggressive nuclear stance in response to a fourth sanctions resolution adopted this summer by the U.N. Security Council, the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday.

“What we are seeing is an accelerating loss of transparency into Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle program,” said Shannon Kile, an atomic analyst with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “I’m not surprised ... that the Iranians are becoming even less cooperative than before. Everyone expected after the last (U.N. vote) that the Iranians would find some way to retaliate.”

“The fear is that the Iranians are going down a path that has been trodden before, (in which) the outcomes have not been happy ones,” Kile said. North Korea “basically stonewalled the IAEA for 5 1/2 years ... from the time they signed the" Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see related GSN story, today).

“This is typical Iranian hardball tactics, saying ‘Two sides can play tough, what are you going to do about it?’” added Shahram Chubin, an analyst for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I hesitate to say they are reading the letter of the (safeguards) agreement -- they are even reading less (and) are certainly not holding to the spirit, which is to have inspectors reassure the agency of what you are doing.”

“The regime is moving on as fast as it can [in its uranium enrichment program] -- neither faster nor slower than usual -- just as fast as it can. And eventually it will get [a nuclear-weapon capability],” Chubin said. “They think they are not going to get a clean bill of health, whatever they do -- that’s really the bottom line.”

The expert urged Washington and allied governments to offer Tehran additional incentives in exchange for atomic cooperation.

“I don’t think the West has asked: ‘What will we give them?’ I know it sounds like rewarding proliferation and so on, but what [Iranian nuclear capabilities] can we live with?” Chubin asked. “(Iran) will get there, unless the West comes up with a package (and decides) what they would accept as a bottom line” (Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 7).

Moscow indicated the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany might alter their proposed terms for settling the nuclear dispute, RIA Novosti reported.

"We have been maintaining contacts with the Iranian side on the basis of the position of the [P-5+1], which was agreed on three years ago, but it would, most likely, not hurt to re-examine this document as part of preparations for restarting talks, to see to what extent it, in all its parts, accurately reflects the essence of the current situation," Lavrov said (RIA Novosti, Sept. 7).

The Kremlin's top diplomat called for Russian, U.S. and French delegates to meet soon to discuss a potential exchange of Iranian uranium, according to Interfax.

One plan -- negotiated by Iran, Brazil and Turkey -- calls for the Middle Eastern state to store 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium in Turkey for one year; other countries would be expected within that period to provide nuclear material refined for use at a Tehran medical research reactor in exchange for the Iranian material.

The arrangement appeared similar to another proposal, formulated in October by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that was intended to defer Iran's enrichment activities long enough to more fully address U.S. and European concerns about its potential nuclear bomb-making capability. Tehran ultimately rejected the IAEA proposal worked out with France, Russia and the United States. Those nations, known as the "Vienna group," subsequently expressed concerns about the later agreement.

"The Vienna group has a consolidated position that has been agreed upon with the IAEA," he said. "The Iranian side announced its readiness to discuss this issue, and we expect to hear a constructive and rapid response" (Interfax, Sept. 7).

Meanwhile, South Korea today announced it would penalize 102 Iranian organizations -- including the Revolutionary Guard and the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines -- as well as 24 people to pressure Iran over its nuclear activities, the Associated Press reported.

Seoul indicated it would target its ties with Iranian financial institutions, hitting 15 Iranian banks with punitive measures and banning the establishment of new offices in South Korea. Bank Mellat, one of the penalized institutions, has "facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions for Iranian nuclear, missile and defense entities" though its Seoul office, the South Korean government said in a statement (Sangwon Yoon, Associated Press/Google News, Sept. 8).

Bank Mellat, responsible for 70 percent of South Korea's exports to Iran, must now receive permission from the Asian country's central bank to carry out any financial transaction, the New York Times reported. The firm's Seoul office would no longer be permitted to carry out wire transfers to Iran from another nation. In addition, Seoul is expected to halt all work at the bank for an undisclosed period; South Korean media reported the suspension would last two months.

“The Seoul branch cannot operate normally anymore,” a high-level South Korean Foreign Ministry official said (Choe Sang-hun, New York Times, Sept. 8).

The United States is said to have urged Seoul to shut down the bank's office, the Wall Street Journal reported (Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal I, Sept. 8).

“With these measures, we hope for the Iranian government to take part in international efforts on nuclear nonproliferation, and also faithfully implement its duties under the U.N. resolution,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Young-sun said (Kim Ji-hyun, Korea Herald I, Sept. 8).

Iran did not react right away today to the sanctions announcement, the Korea Herald reported.

“There is nothing to disclose over the issue for the time being,” said an Iranian Embassy official representing Mohammad Reza Bakhtiari, the nation's ambassador to South Korea. The embassy “has no immediate plans” to comment on the new penalties, the official added (Shin Hae-in, Korea Herald II, Sept. 8).

Elsewhere, the United States yesterday placed Iran's European-Iranian Trade Bank AG on its list of targeted entities, the Journal reported. The institution is now prohibited from access to the U.S. financial network.

"As one of Iran's few remaining access points to the European financial system, EIH has facilitated a tremendous volume of transactions for Iranian banks previously (blacklisted) for proliferation," U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said (Peter Fritsch, Wall Street Journal II, Sept. 8).

Iran's supreme religious leader yesterday said his nation would sidestep the new penalties, AFP reported.

"The enemies of the nation seek to frustrate the people with economic pressures so the people blame the government for them and ties are cut between the government and the people," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech. "But the nation and officials will undoubtedly circumvent the sanctions and render them ineffective just as (they have) in the past three decades" (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Sept. 7).

Iran has carried out an emergency response to international sanctions, obviating Tehran's need to purchase gasoline from abroad as of last week, the Xinhua News Agency quoted Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi as saying yesterday.

"By implementing the plan, the daily production of gasoline was increased to [17.6 million gallons]," state media quoted the official as saying (Xinhua News Agency, Sept. 7).

Sanctions Unlikely Yet to Sway Iran on Nuke Program, U.S. Official Says

Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2010

By Martin Matishak

Global Security Newswire

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WASHINGTON -- Iran is likely to continue developing its illicit nuclear-weapon programs despite sustained political and economic pressure from the international community, a senior U.S. Energy Department official said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 7).

 (Sep. 8) - A military helicopter flies over Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment complex in 2005. A senior U.S. Energy Department official yesterday said diplomatic and financial measures were not yet likely to prompt Tehran to alter its atomic policies (Henghameh Fahimi/Getty Images).

Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman addressed Tehran's contested atomic program and the nuclear-weapon activities of North Korea during an event at the Henry L. Stimson Center.

"In respect to either or both of them, if they can have their cake and eat it too, they will," he said. "I do not expect the government of Iran or the government of North Korea to do anything other than keep pressing ahead until such a point that they find sufficient pain" in the form of international isolation.

History "indicates that you can buy time [but] I don't think you can necessarily buy a conversion on the Road to Damascus," he told the audience, making a metaphorical reference to a radical change of heart that would lead Tehran or Pyongyang to suddenly abandon their nuclear ambitions.

Poneman offered his comments one day after the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report asserting Tehran has undermined investigations into the country's nuclear operations.

The United States and other Western powers have long suspected that the Middle East nation's uranium enrichment activities are conducted with an eye toward weapons production. Iran says its program is intended only for civilian energy purposes.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog's report states that Iran recently barred two experienced inspectors from observing the nation's nuclear program. The pair claimed they had discovered undisclosed atomic work, but Tehran said they were banned because their findings were erroneous.

Overall, Iran has "not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," the report says.

Iran has also stockpiled 2,803 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and 22 kilograms, or 49 pounds, of material enriched to 20 percent, according to the report, a quarterly document prepared for the agency's 35-nation governing board focused on the nation's observance of monitoring actions. Observers worry Tehran's enrichment operations could put it on the road to refining material to weapon-grade levels.

Poneman said the international nuclear standoff is more than a political problem, as Tehran has often contended, because "I don't think they're coming to this court of world opinion with clean hands."

"The fundamental problem is that Iran is engaged in a series of actions that are extremely consistent with a nuclear weapons program but not extremely consistent with a nuclear energy program," Poneman said.

He noted that the Middle East nation concealed the existence of a secret nuclear facility at Natanz for nearly 20 years before it was uncovered in 2002. Construction of another clandestine facility was discovered near the city of Qum last year (see GSN, Nov. 17).

Iran is also "messing around with a heavy-water facility which looks like it's well-suited for producing bomb-grade plutonium," Poneman said, referring to a heavy-water plant at Arak.

Tehran to date has shrugged off four U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions aimed at curbing its uranium enrichment effort, along with unilateral actions by the United States and other nations. The newly minted IAEA report shows that Iran's defiance of the global community's calls to come clean about its nuclear activities is "getting worse not better," according to Poneman.

The document also confirms that Tehran is enriching more material "every single day," bringing the Middle East nation closer to possessing nuclear weapons, he said.

"Everything we're doing is trying to slow that day from coming but I think that is the course that it is trending toward and we're just going to have to ... do what we can to try to slow it up," he said. "There is no magic bullet that I see that's going to suddenly get them to reverse course at this point, given the political nature of that regime."

The Energy Department's No. 2 said he is generally in favor of engagement as a strategy and "finding as many channels that are fruitful."

"I don't think it's useful to have a lot of cul-de-sacs where you have people just talking and providing an excuse to avoid compliance with international obligations," Poneman said.

Iran's Khamenei vows to circumvent nuclear sanctions

UN report underscores concerns about Iran nuclear plans: US Washington (AFP) Sept 7, 2010 - The United States said Tuesday that a new report by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reinforces US concerns about Iran's nuclear program. "The IAEA is documenting that Iran continues to fail to cooperate with IAEA," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters. The report "underscores our concern about ongoing Iranian enrichment, the continued construction of a heavy-water research reactor, concerns about cooperation with the IAEA, access of inspectors to key sites," he said. The UN watchdog said Monday that Iran is hampering a long-running investigation into its controversial nuclear drive by vetoing the nomination of certain UN inspectors. It also said that a number of its seals had been broken on equipment at Iran's main uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Nonetheless, Crowley said the United States still believes that the fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions adopted in June, coupled with measures taken by individual governments, "is having an impact on the ground in Iran." Crowley also suggested the six countries checking Iran's nuclear ambitions -- Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France -- will take place on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly in New York at the end of September.

by Staff Writers
Tehran (AFP) Sept 7, 2010
Iran will circumvent international sanctions aimed at halting its controversial nuclear programme, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed on Tuesday.

"The enemies of the nation seek to frustrate the people with economic pressures so the people blame the government for them and ties are cut between the government and the people," Khamenei said.

"But the nation and officials will undoubtedly circumvent the sanctions and render them ineffective just as (they have) in the past three decades," state media quoted him as saying in a speech.

Khamenei, who has the final say on all key policy issues, called for the creation of a "really resistant economy" in the face of international pressure, state television said.

Iran's economy is heavily dependent on oil revenues.

On June 9, the UN Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions over Iran's controversial programme of uranium enrichment, which many Western states believe may be a covert bid to make a nuclear bomb, a charge Tehran denies.

The United States and European Union have since unilaterally imposed even tougher measures, which contain provisions to penalise Tehran's trading partners.

US sanctions Germany-based bank for Iran trade
Washington (AFP) Sept 7, 2010 - The United States on Tuesday announced sanctions against a German bank accused of handling "billions of dollars worth of transactions" for the Iranian government and of aiding its nuclear program.

The Treasury Department said the Hamburg-based Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank was a "key financial lifeline for Iran" that helped proliferate weapons of mass destruction.

The bank is accused of facilitating a series of transactions linked to Iranian weapons programs including a three million dollar transaction for Iran's missile program in league with the Export Development Bank of Iran.

The bank, also known as EIH, will now be banned from the US financial system and US banks will be banned from trading with it.

"EIH has acted as a key financial lifeline for Iran," said the Treasury Department's sanctions tsar Stuart Levey.

"As one of Iran's few remaining access points to the European financial system, EIH has facilitated a tremendous volume of transactions for Iranian banks previously designated for proliferation."

It is the latest round of US sanctions to target Iran's nuclear program, which Washington says is cover for building a nuclear bomb.

Iran says the program is for civilian purposes.

"The United States has closely consulted with the German government in taking today's action against EIH and is aware that the German government is also taking steps under its national authorities," the Treasury Department said.

Russia urges Iran to work with UN nuke watchdog
Paris (AFP) Sept 7, 2010 - Russia urged Iran to allow United Nations inspectors access to its nuclear programme on Tuesday amid a new dispute between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"We exhort Iran to prove it is acting in good faith and to respond to the requests by the IAEA," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, after talks in Paris with his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner.

Moscow has traditionally been a wary ally of Tehran, and has helped the Islamic regime's efforts to develop civilian nuclear power, but has become increasingly frustrated with Iran's defiance of international oversight.

The IAEA -- the UN atomic watchdog -- released a new report on Monday accusing Iran of undermining and delaying a long-running investigation into its nuclear drive by vetoing the nomination of some inspectors.

Earlier this year, Iran banned two IAEA inspectors from entering the country, accusing them of filing a "false report."

The Iranian foreign ministry responded angrily on Tuesday, insisting it has a right of veto over UN personnel granted access to its facilities.

Many in the international community suspect Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons behind the facade of its civilian power programme and Tehran has been hit with international sanctions over its failure to negotiate.

Gen. David Petraeus: 'Burn a Koran Day' Could 'Endanger Troops'

Florida Pastor Terry Jones' 'Burn a Koran Day' Sparks Protests in Afghanistan

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By MARTHA RADDATZ

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 7, 2010

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Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan warned that a Florida pastor's plan to burn Korans at his church on Sept. 11 could be increasing the danger to his troops.

The so-called "Burn a Koran Day" ignited a protest for a second day in a row by hundreds of Afghans, who burned American flags and shouted "Death to America."

The crowd in downtown Kabul reached nearly 500 on Monday, with Afghan protesters chanting, "Long live Islam," and, "Long live the Koran," and burning an effigy of Terry Jones, senior pastor from the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, who is planning the event.

While Jones has an approximately 50-member following in Gainesville, Florida, protesters in Afghanistan were well aware of the pastor's inflammatory comments, such as, "Islam is an evil religion," because they have spread wide on the Internet. Jones also has authored a book, "Islam Is of the Devil."

"America cannot eliminate Muslims from the world," one Afghan man told ABC News.

On Monday, the angry crowd pelted a passing U.S. military convoy with rocks.

Gen. Petraeus said he is outraged by the pastor's decision to burn the Koran, which he said could "endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort here."

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"It puts our soldiers in jeopardy, very likely," he told ABC News Tuesday. "And I think, in fact, images from such activity could very well be used by extremists here and around the world."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs echoed Petraeus' remarks.

"We know that that type of activity's being transmitted back to places like Afghanistan, where Gen. Petraeus obviously is our lead commander," Gibbs said. "As he said, it puts our troops in harm's way. And obviously ... any type of activity ... that puts our troops in harm's way would be a concern to this administration."

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The South Korean Defense Ministry declared today that North Korea was "restoring" nuclear infrastructure at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon complex, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Oct. 4).

 (Oct. 5) - The now-demolished cooling tower at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex, shown in 2007. Pyongyang has undertaken new construction near the site where the tower once stood, according to multiple reports (Siegfried Hecker/Stanford University).

"North Korea is restoring nuclear facilities and continuing maintenance activities at Yongbyon," Defense Minister Kim Tae-Young was said to have told lawmakers. "It is engaged in new construction and large-scale excavation."

Satellite images captured last week indicated significant construction or excavation activity at the one-time location of a cooling tower for the site's nuclear reactor. The tower was destroyed in 2008 as part of the North Korean denuclearization process. Pyongyang withdrew from the six-party talks in spring 2009 and announced it would reverse course on the disarmament steps.

"There are some activities going on but we have no information on what these are for," South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Young-sun said. "The government is watching closely the activities there and exchanging information with other countries."

Citing an unidentified government official, the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported that two buildings were being constructed adjacent to the location of the demolished cooling tower. The U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security in a report last week also identified apparent construction of two small buildings in the area (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Oct. 4).

Institute President David Albright, who co-authored the report, speculated the construction work could indicate the North was preparing to resume operations at Yongbyon to bolster its assessed stockpile of less than 80 pounds of plutonium, the Washington Post reported.

The North is estimated to possess enough fissile material to make at least six weapons though it is not known to have the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon in an attack.

The activities could also be a ruse, intended "to pull our chains," said former State Department official Joel Wit.

"North Korea is well aware that its nuclear facilities are under almost constant surveillance by both intelligence and commercial satellites," Wit said.

Pyongyang has warned for months it would continue its nuclear weapons work.

"It is by no means clear what is happening, but any new construction at Yongbyon cannot be a good thing," U.S. Naval War College analyst Jonathan Pollack said. The site work could also be a reward for the North Korean military, whose support would be crucial as ailing leader Kim Jong Il seeks to pass power to his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, he speculated.

Analysts cautioned the United States to take North Korea's nuclear abilities seriously.

"It's a serious mistake to believe that they are not capable of doing anything to step up their nuclear arsenal," Wit said (John Pomfret, Washington Post, Oct. 4).

Meanwhile, the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency announced today that Kim Jong Il was accompanied at a military drill by Kim Jong Un, the New York Times reported.

The public appearance is thought to be the son's first since receiving several high-profile political and military positions last week. The new appointments support international beliefs that a power transfer process has begun from father to son.

Though few details were provided about the live-fire exercise, Kim Jong Un's announced attendance is notable because it demonstrates a government campaign to portray him as a competent military officer, Seoul-based analysts said. The son is in his late 20s and not known to have any military experience prior to being made a four-star general.

Kim Jong Il's sister and brother-in-law were also reported to have attended the military drill. They both received key promotions last week. The two could act as de facto regents should Kim Jong Il die before his son is thought ready to take full power, experts say.

South Korean defense officials said today that Pyongyang appears to be readying for a series of large-scale naval, air force and army exercises, the Times reported.

Through state-controlled media, the Stalinist regime blasted last week's bilateral maritime exercises between South Korea and the United States as being bad for inter-Korean relations (Mark McDonald, New York Times, Oct. 5).

Iranian President Mocks Nuclear Penalties

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today dared other nations to hit his country with more economic penalties and contended such measures would no effect on Iran's nuclear efforts, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Oct. 4).

The U.N. Security Council in June adopted its fourth sanctions resolution aimed at pressuring Iran to halt atomic activities that could support weapons development, and the European Union and a number of countries have since adopted independent punitive measures to the same end. Tehran has maintained its nuclear ambitions are strictly non-military in nature.

When Ahmadinejad visited the United States last month to attend a U.N. General Assembly meeting, some observers "were insisting that the sanctions have affected us," the Iranian leader said in a televised speech.

"And I, on your behalf, insisted and told them, 'The sanctions have had no effect, and whatever the heck you want to do in the next two years, do it now so we see what you are capable of,'" he said (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Oct. 5).

"The U.S. first started a psychological war in the form of financial sanctions in order to weaken our country and is blatant enough even to threaten us that the military attack option was still on the agenda," Deutsche Presse-Agentur quoted him as saying.

"Whoever dares to endanger Iran, whoever dares to do anything at all against Iran, should raise its arm and the Iranian nation will instantly cut it off," Ahmadinejad said. "We therefore advise the U.S. to stop their inhuman crimes and leave the region. If they don't, then the regional people will eventually take care of that" (Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Monsters and Critics, Oct. 5).

Meanwhile, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi yesterday discussed his country's atomic activities at a meeting in Moscow with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Interfax reported.

The envoys "discussed the current situation around Iran's nuclear program in the context of" talks held by delegates from the five permanent Security Council member nations and Germany during the recent General Assembly meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a press release (see GSN, Sept. 22; Interfax, Oct. 4).

Tehran yesterday played down a recent Kremlin order barring Iranian entities from holding financial stakes in Russian uranium enrichment activities, Iran's Press TV reported.

"Iran has never contemplated investing in Russian uranium enrichment and will not do so (in the future). The Islamic Republic's investments in enrichment are purely domestic," Iranian Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi told state media.

"For more than three decades, we invested in Eurodif (a French-organized multinational enrichment consortium) but to date we have never used the tiniest bit of its enrichment services," Salehi said.

"This bitter experience was the reason we began enrichment at home, since we could not rely on foreign promises and pledges ... the government decided to guarantee fuel production for its nuclear power plants," he said (Press TV I, Oct. 4).

Elsewhere, Iran's Foreign Ministry today said the "Stuxnet" computer worm was one component of a clandestine effort by Western governments to sabotage the Middle Eastern nation's nuclear work, the Associated Press reported. Iranian officials last week said the worm, designed to target industrial control systems, had infected staff computers at the country's Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast's assertion was Tehran's most accusatory statement to date on the malicious software, according to AP.

The worm would not force Iran to "give up or stop" its atomic work, the official added (Associated Press/Google News, Oct. 5).

Freely available materials name 16 companies that have allegedly sold refined oil products to Iran since the beginning of last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report made public yesterday. The United States and other Western powers have sought to curb shipments of such material to Iran, which has a limited refining capacity (U.S. Government Accountability Office release, Oct. 4).

Turkey yesterday reaffirmed its decision not to abide by independent Iran penalties devised by the United States, Press TV reported.

"Turkey will act in line with U.N. decisions. But decisions made by the United States on its own do not bind us," Turkish State Minister for Foreign Trade Zafar Caglayan said (Press TV II, Oct. 4).

N.Korea's nuclear threat reaches "alarming level": official
by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Oct 6, 2010
North Korea's nuclear programme has reached a "very alarming level" and could cause havoc in South Korea if Pyongyang develops smaller mobile weapons, a senior Seoul presidential aide says.

"North Korea's nuclear threat has progressed at a rapid pace and reached a very alarming level, while the nuclear programmes are evolving even now," JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted Kim Tae-Hyo as telling a forum Tuesday.

Kim, the president's deputy national security adviser, confirmed the comments to AFP Wednesday.

The aide said Pyongyang was believed to be operating all its nuclear programmes, including the Yongbyon nuclear reactor which produces weapons-grade plutonium, and a separate highly-enriched uranium project to make bombs.

"If the nuclear warheads are made compact and deployed to the field, they could wreak immense havoc on South Korea regardless of their precision level," JoongAng quoted him as saying.

The North closed down Yongbyon in 2007 under a six-nation disarmament deal, but quit the pact in April 2009 and announced it would restart operations at the complex.

In September 2009 it said its experiments with uranium enrichment had reached their final phase.

South Korea's defence minister said this week the North was restoring facilities at Yongbyon.

He was speaking after a private US research institute, citing satellite photos, said new construction or excavation is under way there.

Presidential aide Kim Tae-Hyo also warned of potential dangers from the leadership succession process which has begun in the North.

Kim Jong-Un, youngest son of leader Kim Jong-Il, has been appointed a four-star general and been given powerful party posts.

The untested young protege may be "tempted to launch provocations or other daring moves" to showcase his presence to the world during the power transition, the aide warned.

"It is important to make him aware that making such choices would put inter-Korea relations in irreversibly significant jeopardy."

The North's current plutonium stockpile is estimated to be enough for six to eight bombs. It tested atomic weapons in October 2006 and May 2009.

Its Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil-Yon told the United Nations last week his country must strengthen its nuclear deterrent in the face of what he called threats from the United States.

The North has indicated willingness in principle to return to the six-party forum chaired by its ally China. But it says it wants separate talks with the United States about signing a permanent peace treaty on the peninsula.

South Korea will next week stage a naval exercise with the United States, Japan and Australia off the southern city of Busan, the defence ministry said.

The drill is part of the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to intercept shipments of weapons of mass destruction including nuclear arsenals.

The ministry said the October 13-14 exercise would practise how to stop and inspect ships suspected of carrying such weapons.

The North has vehemently criticised the South's decision to join PSI, calling it a "declaration of war".

"The exercise scenario is not targeting a specific country," Yonhap quoted a defence ministry official as saying.

N.Korea's heir apparent watches military drill with father
Seoul (AFP) Oct 5, 2010 - The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has watched a military exercise along with his father, state media said Tuesday, his first such inspection since he was confirmed as heir apparent.

The report signalled a rapid rise to public prominence for Kim Jong-Un. The son's name and photograph had never appeared in official media until last week, when he was made a four-star general and given powerful ruling party posts.

The live-fire drill, also attended by top party and military officials, was staged ahead of a ruling party anniversary this Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency reported.

It did not say when or where the drill took place but referred to the younger Kim as vice-chairman of the party's central military commission, one of the posts he took last week.

"The troops powerfully displayed the power of the Korean People's Army that grew into invincible forces through training and under the guidance of General Kim Jong-Il," it said.

"This report shows to the outside world that Jong-Un has a firm position as heir apparent," Dongguk University professor Kim Yong-Hyun told AFP.

"By accompanying his father during field trips, the son is now being trained openly as successor. The drill also implies the son will inherit the father's army-first policy."

The North has a 1.2-million-member standing military whose welfare takes priority over civilians under the Songun (army-first) policy.

South Korean Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young predicted on Monday that the son would now begin public activities, as eventual successor to his ailing 68-year-old father.

The minister said the North appeared to be using the anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party on October 10 to celebrate "the formation of a succession platform", and planned a major military parade and war games.

The leader-in-waiting of the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation remains a mystery to the outside world. The Swiss-educated Jong-Un, thought aged around 27, is not known to have held any formal posts before last week.

South Korea said it was closely monitoring work detected on satellite images at the North's Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of its weapons-grade plutonium.

Minister Kim said the North was restoring some facilities at the plant, closed in 2007 under a disarmament deal which Pyongyang angrily renounced in April 2009. A month later, it staged a second nuclear test.

Cross-border relations have been icy since the South accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships and killing 46 sailors in March, a charge it denies.

The South has warned of further possible provocations by the North as it puts its succession plan firmly in place and in the run-up to the G20 summit in Seoul in November.

The defence minister told parliament Tuesday the South would launch a full-scale propaganda war in response to any fresh provocation.

The South's military printed hundreds of thousands of leaflets and installed border loudspeakers as part of reprisals for the warship sinking.

Minister Kim said preparations were under way to float the leaflets and small radios by balloon across the tense and heavily fortified border.

"We will immediately switch loudspeakers on and launch leaflets" if there is a new provocation, or if a political decision is made to apply pressure on North Korea, he told legislators.

The North has threatened to open fire at the loudspeakers if they are switched on.

The minister also said that a North Korean jamming device capable of disrupting guided weapons poses a fresh threat to the South's security.

He said the North had imported Russian equipment to jam South Korea's Global Positioning System reception.

In one positive note, the two sides have agreed to resume reunions late this month for families separated by war 60 years ago.

Ahmadinejad taunts West to put more pressure on Iran

US 'disappointment' over continued logjam in nuclear pact United Nations (AFP) Oct 5, 2010 - The United States on Tuesday expressed "disappointment" over an impasse in global disarmament talks that have set back efforts to limit access to materials that can be used to build a nuclear weapon. Rose Gottemoeller, US assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance, alluded to foot-dragging by nuclear-armed Pakistan and warned "our patience will not last for ever." "I have to tell you that I expressed some disappointment at the fact that the conference on disarmament over the last years has been less energetic in terms of pursuing its overall agenda," she told reporters after the meeting. "We will do everything so that we can have talks go forward -- there is no reason to stand still," Gottemoeller added. She spoke after a meeting at the United Nations that failed to make progress toward an agenda for disarmament talks, including a proposed Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would limit access to materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons. "We will definitely continue to press" for an accord, she said. "We regard this delay as unwarranted and out of step with the expectations of the wide majority of states seated here today," she said. Since last year, Pakistan has blocked a resumption of negotiations on the nuclear agenda for the Disarmament Conference, fearing that an agreement would lock in an imbalance in its nuclear arsenal vis-a-vis that of India.

by Staff Writers
Tehran (AFP) Oct 5, 2010
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged the West on Tuesday to put more pressure on Iran, which he said would fail to make any impact on the Islamic republic or its atomic programme.

Ahmadinejad, in an address to the people of the northeastern province of Golestan, said that during a trip he made last month to the United States, people there "were insisting that the sanctions have affected us."

"And I, on your behalf, insisted and told them 'The sanctions have had no effect, and whatever the heck you want to do in the next two years, do it now so we see what you are capable of'," he said in the speech broadcast live on state television.

Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials repeatedly dismiss the effects of sanctions imposed on Tehran for pursuing its atomic programme.

The United Nations Security Council imposed a fourth set of sanctions against Iran on June 9, which were followed by tougher measures from the United States, the European Union and some other countries.

The West led by Washington suspects that Iran is seeking to make atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, a charge denied by Tehran.

Ahmadinejad visited New York last month to attend the UN General Assembly meeting, where he infuriated Washington by raising questions over the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.

earlier related report
N.Korea restores facilities at nuclear reactor: S.Korea
Seoul (AFP) Oct 5, 2010 - North Korea is restoring facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of weapons-grade plutonium in the past, South Korea's defence ministry said Tuesday.

"North Korea is restoring nuclear facilities and continuing maintenance activities at Yongbyon," a spokesman quoted Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young as telling parliament on Monday. "It is engaged in new construction and large-scale excavation."

The foreign ministry said the South is closely monitoring the work.

"There are some activities going on but we have no information on what these are for," said spokesman Kim Young-Sun. "The government is watching closely the activities there and exchanging information with other countries."

An unidentified government official was quoted by Dong-A Ilbo newspaper as saying that two rectangular buildings were being built next to the site of a cooling tower demolished in 2008.

A private US research institute reported last week that new construction or excavation was under way at Yongbyon.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said tracks made by heavy machinery along with construction or excavation equipment were visible in satellite photos.

ISIS said there appeared to be ongoing construction of two small buildings next to the former tower, which the North blew up in June 2008 in front of foreign media to dramatise its commitment to nuclear disarmament.

The institute said the purpose of the work is unclear but bears watching.

The North's current plutonium stockpile is believed to be enough for six to eight bombs.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil-Yon told the United Nations last week his country must strengthen its nuclear deterrent in the face of what he called threats from the United States.

The North shut down Yongbyon in July 2007 under a six-nation aid-for-disarmament accord. The following summer it destroyed the tower.

But six-party talks became bogged down in December 2008 over ways to verify the North's denuclearisation. In April 2009 Pyongyang abandoned the talks and said it had resumed reprocessing spent fuel rods to make plutonium.

In May 2009 it conducted an atomic weapons test, its second.

The North has indicated willingness in principle to return to the six-party forum chaired by its ally China. But it says it wants separate talks with the United States about signing a permanent peace treaty on the peninsula.

South Korea and the United States, which accuse the North of a deadly March attack on a South Korean warship, have responded warily. Japan and Russia are also members of the forum.

Iran muscles into the UAV battlefield

Japan eyeing U.S. drones Tokyo (UPI) Oct 5, 2010 - Japan is considering buying at least three U.S.-made spy aircraft to monitor China's military buildup and North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. The Kyodo News reported that the Japanese defense ministry was considering the purchase of three Global Hawk drone aircraft into its Midterm Defense Program for fiscal 2011 through 2015. Each of the unmanned high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft are estimated at $50 million Kyodo reported, citing unnamed defense ministry sources. The same sources said they expected the cost to surge by several million dollars for the creation of necessary ground facilities. "Japan hopes to use the camera-equipped unarmed aircraft to boost the officially pacifist nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities, watch remote islands and monitor suspicious ships in and near its waters," the news agency report said. Japan is at odds with China over contesting claims to territorial waters close to a group of islands in the East China Sea. As a result, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been strained and Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan is to address his country's case against China at an upcoming meeting of Asians and European leaders. Meantime, Japan and the United States are planning to conduct a military exercise later this year, in a war-game scenario involving the protection of Japan's remoter islands. Mounted with sophisticated communication capabilities, the Global Hawk can cruise at an altitude of 60,000 feet for more than 30 hours. That's twice the capability afforded by a commercial passenger aircraft. The data it gathers can be sent almost instantly to command facilities on the ground, analysts say. Plus, its ability to fly at such high altitude allows the drone to spy deeper into the territories of China and North Korea. Should Japan proceed with the purchase, analysts say it would stoke tensions even further with China, when relations were vexed last month with the arrest of a Chinese trawler captain in the disputed waters. The Japan Times reported that defense ministry officials were considering using the spy craft as part of a defense shield. The U.S. government has been sounding out Japan about acquisition possibilities through multiple channels. "The defense ministry has yet to decide which section should be put in charge of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, partly because officials are concerned that money will be cut from existing programs if the new program comes under their authority," The Japan Times reported, citing anonymous defense sources.

by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Oct 5, 2010
The United States and Israel lead the field in developing unmanned aerial vehicles, including missile-armed drones used extensively against their enemies in an evolving form of remote-control warfare.

But their common foe, Iran, is in the race, too, and that has serious implications for the military balance in the Middle East.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled a long-range, bomb-carrying drone called the Karar, Farsi for "assailant," in August that reputedly has a range of 600 miles and can carry a military payload of 450 pounds.

That's not enough for the jet-powered UAV to reach Israel -- but it could if it was launched from Lebanon or Syria by Iran's allies.

With the Levant simmering amid rising tension over Iran, Iraq and the Middle East peace process, the Iranian drive to develop long-range UAVs is causing concern in Israel and pro-Western Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah of Lebanon, Iran's main proxy in the Arab world, allegedly has as many as 45,000 rockets and missiles provided by Iran and its ally Syria and since 2004 has operated the Iranian-built Mirsad-1 UAV.

This has been used to carry out aerial reconnaissance over Israel, much to the annoyance of the Jewish state's military. Mirsad is an early generation, relatively unsophisticated system with little endurance capability and doesn't, as far as is known, carry weapons.

But the more advanced versions of the Karar, which Iran presumably has in the works, would be a very different story.

It could, conceivably, be upgraded to perform the kind of deadly remote-control attacks that the U.S. MQ-1 Predator or its successor, the MQ-9 Reaper, are conducting in Afghanistan and Pakistan against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

These craft are produced by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

Global security analyst Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Britain's Bradford University, noted recently that the current phase of developing these craft as instruments of war is to apply the stealth and weapons technologies developed for the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk and the Northrop Grumman B-2 bombers.

By giving UAVs radar-evading capabilities, these craft could fly over Iran or other hostile states "with impunity, and with minimal fear of interception," Rogers observed.

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is planning a new generation of fast and heavily armed UAVs.

"A current project is to adapt the Fairchild A-10 -- among the world's most powerful close-air support planes -- for autonomous operations," Rogers wrote.

The A-10, known as the "Warthog" because of its seemingly ungainly lines, carries a fearsome array of weapons that include a 30mm cannon, laser-guided rockets, AGM-56E Maverick air-to-ground missiles and GPS-guided bombs.

The next-generation UAV platform would thus combine "the intense firepower and high subsonic speed of the A-10 with an endurance of up to 18 hours," Rogers noted.

The Israelis, considered to be the second-ranking UAV producer after the United States, is the world's top drone exporter with more than 1,000 sold to 42 countries, says Jacques Chemia, chief engineer at the UAV division of state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, flagship of Israel's defense industry.

Israel's military employs a wide array of UAVs, including armed craft deployed against Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas militants.

It is also reported to fly surveillance drones over Iran, presumably to locate targets for threatened pre-emptive strikes against the Islamic Republic's nuclear infrastructure.

Israel reportedly used long-endurance IAI Heron drones to spot Iranian arms consignments bound for Hamas in Gaza across the Red Sea to Sudan in early 2009 -- and to destroy two convoys loaded with weapons in the desert.

With Iran now pushing its growing technological expertise to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles and spy satellites, its efforts to produce long-range UAVs may not be too far off.

"The Karar may well be unarmed and have limited intelligence capabilities," says Rogers, "but its very existence will reverberate Â…

"If the Iranians have been able to develop a long-range drone, then it is more likely that they will attempt to launch reconnaissance drone sorties against Israeli territory -- at a time of their own choosing.

"The military effect will be minimal but the political impact will be very great Â… The role of drones in asymmetric warfare -- or even just asymmetric psychological warfare -- may come much sooner than many expect."

N.Korea restores facilities at nuclear reactor: S.Korea

Around 100,000 N.Koreans hiding out in China: Seoul minister Seoul (AFP) Oct 5, 2010 - An estimated 100,000 North Koreans are believed to be hiding out in China after fleeing their poverty-stricken homeland, South Korea's unification minister said Tuesday. "We estimate that the number of North Koreans who renounced the North and live in China could be some 100,000," Hyun In-Taek told legislators during an annual parliamentary audit, according to Yonhap news agency. Asked about media reports that Chinese and North Korean security authorities work together to catch refugees in China, Hyun said the South Korean government "has made diplomatic efforts and will continue such efforts" to protect them. The vast majority of refugees cross the border river into China, since escape across the heavily fortified inter-Korean frontier is very difficult. But under an agreement with its ally Pyongyang, Beijing treats those North Koreans it catches as economic migrants rather than refugees and sends them home, where they can face harsh punishment. The policy has been criticised by rights and refugee groups. About 20,000 North Koreans have defected to the South, mostly via China, since the end of the 1950-53 war. They usually travel on clandestinely to third countries, often in Southeast Asia, before reaching Seoul.

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Oct 5, 2010
North Korea is restoring facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of weapons-grade plutonium in the past, South Korea's defence ministry said Tuesday.

"North Korea is restoring nuclear facilities and continuing maintenance activities at Yongbyon," a spokesman quoted Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young as telling parliament on Monday. "It is engaged in new construction and large-scale excavation."

The foreign ministry said the South is closely monitoring the work.

"There are some activities going on but we have no information on what these are for," said spokesman Kim Young-Sun. "The government is watching closely the activities there and exchanging information with other countries."

An unidentified government official was quoted by Dong-A Ilbo newspaper as saying that two rectangular buildings were being built next to the site of a cooling tower demolished in 2008.

A private US research institute reported last week that new construction or excavation was under way at Yongbyon.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said tracks made by heavy machinery along with construction or excavation equipment were visible in satellite photos.

ISIS said there appeared to be ongoing construction of two small buildings next to the former tower, which the North blew up in June 2008 in front of foreign media to dramatise its commitment to nuclear disarmament.

The institute said the purpose of the work is unclear but bears watching.

The North's current plutonium stockpile is believed to be enough for six to eight bombs.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil-Yon told the United Nations last week his country must strengthen its nuclear deterrent in the face of what he called threats from the United States.

The North shut down Yongbyon in July 2007 under a six-nation aid-for-disarmament accord. The following summer it destroyed the tower.

But six-party talks became bogged down in December 2008 over ways to verify the North's denuclearisation. In April 2009 Pyongyang abandoned the talks and said it had resumed reprocessing spent fuel rods to make plutonium.

In May 2009 it conducted an atomic weapons test, its second.

The North has indicated willingness in principle to return to the six-party forum chaired by its ally China. But it says it wants separate talks with the United States about signing a permanent peace treaty on the peninsula.

South Korea and the United States, which accuse the North of a deadly March attack on a South Korean warship, have responded warily. Japan and Russia are also members of the forum.

earlier related report
N.Korea's heir apparent watches military drill with father
Seoul (AFP) Oct 5, 2010 - The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has watched a military exercise along with his father, state media said Tuesday, his first such inspection since he was confirmed as heir apparent.

The report signalled a rapid rise to public prominence for Kim Jong-Un. The son's name and photograph had never appeared in official media until last week, when he was made a four-star general and given powerful ruling party posts.

The live-fire drill, also attended by top party and military officials, was staged ahead of a ruling party anniversary this Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency reported.

It did not say when or where the drill took place but referred to the younger Kim as vice-chairman of the party's central military commission, one of the posts he took last week.

"The troops powerfully displayed the power of the Korean People's Army that grew into invincible forces through training and under the guidance of General Kim Jong-Il," it said.

"This report shows to the outside world that Jong-Un has a firm position as heir apparent," Dongguk University professor Kim Yong-Hyun told AFP.

"By accompanying his father during field trips, the son is now being trained openly as successor. The drill also implies the son will inherit the father's army-first policy."

The North has a 1.2-million-member standing military whose welfare takes priority over civilians under the Songun (army-first) policy.

South Korean Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young predicted on Monday that the son would now begin public activities, as eventual successor to his ailing 68-year-old father.

The minister said the North appeared to be using the anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party on October 10 to celebrate "the formation of a succession platform", and planned a major military parade and war games.

The leader-in-waiting of the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation remains a mystery to the outside world. The Swiss-educated Jong-Un, thought aged around 27, is not known to have held any formal posts before last week.

South Korea said it was closely monitoring work detected on satellite images at the North's Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of its weapons-grade plutonium.

Minister Kim said the North was restoring some facilities at the plant, closed in 2007 under a disarmament deal which Pyongyang angrily renounced in April 2009. A month later, it staged a second nuclear test.

Cross-border relations have been icy since the South accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships and killing 46 sailors in March, a charge it denies.

The South has warned of further possible provocations by the North as it puts its succession plan firmly in place and in the run-up to the G20 summit in Seoul in November.

The defence minister told parliament Tuesday the South would launch a full-scale propaganda war in response to any fresh provocation.

The South's military printed hundreds of thousands of leaflets and installed border loudspeakers as part of reprisals for the warship sinking.

Minister Kim said preparations were under way to float the leaflets and small radios by balloon across the tense and heavily fortified border.

"We will immediately switch loudspeakers on and launch leaflets" if there is a new provocation, or if a political decision is made to apply pressure on North Korea, he told legislators.

The North has threatened to open fire at the loudspeakers if they are switched on.

The minister also said that a North Korean jamming device capable of disrupting guided weapons poses a fresh threat to the South's security.

He said the North had imported Russian equipment to jam South Korea's Global Positioning System reception.

In one positive note, the two sides have agreed to resume reunions late this month for families separated by war 60 years ago.

Police fear trained German terrorists

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

by Staff Writers
Berlin (UPI) Oct 5, 2010
German police fear attacks by foreign-trained European extremists as a U.S. drone killed several German militants in Pakistan.

Monday's drone strike in Pakistan's tribal belt killed at least five Germans of Arab descent and three other people, British newspaper The Guardian reports, citing an unnamed Pakistani security official. The drone reportedly fired two missiles into farmhouse in North Waziristan that provided shelter to a group of foreign extremists.

The attack came shortly after the United States, Britain and Japan issued terrorism-related travel alerts for Europe. German and U.S. media reports suggest they're based on intelligence gathered during the interrogation of Ahmed Sidiqi, a German of Afghan descent who was arrested in Afghanistan this summer.

Fox News reported over the weekend that targets singled out by the extremists include several private and public landmarks, including the posh Adlon Hotel and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

German security officials said they are taking the alerts seriously but warned against alarmism.

"There is no concrete evidence for imminent attacks in Germany," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Monday in Berlin. The Fox News report, he added, was based on old intelligence.

German police are nevertheless taking the warnings very seriously. Konrad Freiberg, the head of the German police union, said he is especially concerned about an increased number of home-grown extremists who travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to receive training in arms and explosives.

"More and more people from Germany have traveled to terrorist training camps -- and a large part of them has come back and now lives here," Freiberg told German daily Passauer Neue Presse. "You have to expect terrorist attacks."

An estimated 40 trained and violent extremists are in Germany ready to commit attacks, Freiberg said, adding that the police aren't sufficiently staffed to constantly monitor all of them.

One German didn't make it back: Sidiqi, who left Hamburg in 2009, was captured by U.S. forces this summer and has since been interrogated by U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan.

During the past weeks, the media leaked supposed information from the interrogation, including speculation that Sidiqi was part of a group of terrorists planning commando-style attacks on cities in France and Germany.

The plans, the media reports suggested, mimic the coordinated attacks by gunmen on several targets in Mumbai in late 2008. The terrorists stormed several public and private buildings, including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and killed 165 people.

The Pakistani security official in an interview with The Guardian said there was only a small presence of terrorists in North Waziristan, where U.S. counter-terrorism drone attacks have surged in recent weeks.

"There are Turks, Germans and Americans in" the tribal belt and no more than 100 of them, he told The Guardian. "It's not as if an army of foreigners is being trained there. Nothing of the sort."

The official added that the U.S. travel alert is part of an orchestrated plan to pressure Pakistan into staging a major military operation in North Waziristan.

"They're insisting that we go in now, which we can't," he said. "We're telling them we'll go in on our own time."

Iran muscles into the UAV battlefield

Japan eyeing U.S. drones Tokyo (UPI) Oct 5, 2010 - Japan is considering buying at least three U.S.-made spy aircraft to monitor China's military buildup and North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. The Kyodo News reported that the Japanese defense ministry was considering the purchase of three Global Hawk drone aircraft into its Midterm Defense Program for fiscal 2011 through 2015. Each of the unmanned high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft are estimated at $50 million Kyodo reported, citing unnamed defense ministry sources. The same sources said they expected the cost to surge by several million dollars for the creation of necessary ground facilities. "Japan hopes to use the camera-equipped unarmed aircraft to boost the officially pacifist nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities, watch remote islands and monitor suspicious ships in and near its waters," the news agency report said. Japan is at odds with China over contesting claims to territorial waters close to a group of islands in the East China Sea. As a result, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been strained and Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan is to address his country's case against China at an upcoming meeting of Asians and European leaders. Meantime, Japan and the United States are planning to conduct a military exercise later this year, in a war-game scenario involving the protection of Japan's remoter islands. Mounted with sophisticated communication capabilities, the Global Hawk can cruise at an altitude of 60,000 feet for more than 30 hours. That's twice the capability afforded by a commercial passenger aircraft. The data it gathers can be sent almost instantly to command facilities on the ground, analysts say. Plus, its ability to fly at such high altitude allows the drone to spy deeper into the territories of China and North Korea. Should Japan proceed with the purchase, analysts say it would stoke tensions even further with China, when relations were vexed last month with the arrest of a Chinese trawler captain in the disputed waters. The Japan Times reported that defense ministry officials were considering using the spy craft as part of a defense shield. The U.S. government has been sounding out Japan about acquisition possibilities through multiple channels. "The defense ministry has yet to decide which section should be put in charge of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, partly because officials are concerned that money will be cut from existing programs if the new program comes under their authority," The Japan Times reported, citing anonymous defense sources.

by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Oct 5, 2010
The United States and Israel lead the field in developing unmanned aerial vehicles, including missile-armed drones used extensively against their enemies in an evolving form of remote-control warfare.

But their common foe, Iran, is in the race, too, and that has serious implications for the military balance in the Middle East.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled a long-range, bomb-carrying drone called the Karar, Farsi for "assailant," in August that reputedly has a range of 600 miles and can carry a military payload of 450 pounds.

That's not enough for the jet-powered UAV to reach Israel -- but it could if it was launched from Lebanon or Syria by Iran's allies.

With the Levant simmering amid rising tension over Iran, Iraq and the Middle East peace process, the Iranian drive to develop long-range UAVs is causing concern in Israel and pro-Western Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah of Lebanon, Iran's main proxy in the Arab world, allegedly has as many as 45,000 rockets and missiles provided by Iran and its ally Syria and since 2004 has operated the Iranian-built Mirsad-1 UAV.

This has been used to carry out aerial reconnaissance over Israel, much to the annoyance of the Jewish state's military. Mirsad is an early generation, relatively unsophisticated system with little endurance capability and doesn't, as far as is known, carry weapons.

But the more advanced versions of the Karar, which Iran presumably has in the works, would be a very different story.

It could, conceivably, be upgraded to perform the kind of deadly remote-control attacks that the U.S. MQ-1 Predator or its successor, the MQ-9 Reaper, are conducting in Afghanistan and Pakistan against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

These craft are produced by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

Global security analyst Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Britain's Bradford University, noted recently that the current phase of developing these craft as instruments of war is to apply the stealth and weapons technologies developed for the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk and the Northrop Grumman B-2 bombers.

By giving UAVs radar-evading capabilities, these craft could fly over Iran or other hostile states "with impunity, and with minimal fear of interception," Rogers observed.

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is planning a new generation of fast and heavily armed UAVs.

"A current project is to adapt the Fairchild A-10 -- among the world's most powerful close-air support planes -- for autonomous operations," Rogers wrote.

The A-10, known as the "Warthog" because of its seemingly ungainly lines, carries a fearsome array of weapons that include a 30mm cannon, laser-guided rockets, AGM-56E Maverick air-to-ground missiles and GPS-guided bombs.

The next-generation UAV platform would thus combine "the intense firepower and high subsonic speed of the A-10 with an endurance of up to 18 hours," Rogers noted.

The Israelis, considered to be the second-ranking UAV producer after the United States, is the world's top drone exporter with more than 1,000 sold to 42 countries, says Jacques Chemia, chief engineer at the UAV division of state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, flagship of Israel's defense industry.

Israel's military employs a wide array of UAVs, including armed craft deployed against Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas militants.

It is also reported to fly surveillance drones over Iran, presumably to locate targets for threatened pre-emptive strikes against the Islamic Republic's nuclear infrastructure.

Israel reportedly used long-endurance IAI Heron drones to spot Iranian arms consignments bound for Hamas in Gaza across the Red Sea to Sudan in early 2009 -- and to destroy two convoys loaded with weapons in the desert.

With Iran now pushing its growing technological expertise to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles and spy satellites, its efforts to produce long-range UAVs may not be too far off.

"The Karar may well be unarmed and have limited intelligence capabilities," says Rogers, "but its very existence will reverberate Â…

"If the Iranians have been able to develop a long-range drone, then it is more likely that they will attempt to launch reconnaissance drone sorties against Israeli territory -- at a time of their own choosing.

"The military effect will be minimal but the political impact will be very great Â… The role of drones in asymmetric warfare -- or even just asymmetric psychological warfare -- may come much sooner than many expect."

 

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North Korea seems to be making progress in its military uranium enrichment program, which would give the nation another pathway to building nuclear weapons and a valuable technology to sell on the black market, a U.S. think tank said in a report today (see GSN, Oct. 7).

 (Oct. 8) - South Korean activists demonstrate at a rally in Seoul last week against plans for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to pass power to his youngest son. Pyongyang appears to be acquiring new uranium enrichment capabilities, says an independent analysis released today (Jung Yeon-je/Getty Images).

The Institute for Science and International Security report, "Taking Stock: North Korea's Uranium Enrichment Program," asserts that the North "has moved beyond laboratory-scale work" and is equipped to erect a centrifuge "pilot plant" for uranium enrichment. The report relies on information from news reports, the intelligence community and government officials, according to the Washington Post.

Drawing on information about North Korean equipment acquisitions abroad, report co-author and ISIS President David Albright said the Stalinist state might have between 500 and 1,000 centrifuges. Most specialists think the North would require 3,000 centrifuges to enrich enough uranium for one weapon (see GSN, Jan. 6).

Previously, U.S. nuclear negotiators had primarily concerned themselves with Pyongyang's plutonium production activities while uranium enrichment was considered a secondary concern.

"But this would indicate that uranium must be included in the engagement no matter what," Albright said.

With uranium enrichment capabilities, Pyongyang could boost its supply of weapon-ready fissile material, which currently consists of processed plutonium. The North could use both nuclear materials together in a single bomb to make it more deadly or build a thermonuclear weapon.

"A growing concern is that North Korea would provide centrifuge equipment, facilities, and technical know-how or even HEU (highly enriched uranium) to other countries or groups," the report states.

Pyongyang has a history of proliferation. The North is widely thought in the West to have assisted Syria in building a suspected nuclear reactor that was demolished in a 2007 Israeli airstrike. The isolated state also sold nuclear goods to Libya and Washington is worried Pyongyang is helping Myanmar set up a nuclear weapons program.

In February, former National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told lawmakers that Pyongyang had some ability to enrich uranium "in the past."

The ISIS report, however, argues the North maintained uranium enrichment efforts by operating fraudulent firms, some in China, that purchased needed materials from locations such as Europe (John Pomfret, Washington Post, Oct. 7).

"There is no evidence that the Chinese government is secretly approving or willfully ignoring exports to North Korea's centrifuge program in an effort to strengthen North Korea's nuclear weapons program," the report says. "Nonetheless, China is not applying enough resources to detect and stop North Korea's illicit nuclear trade" (Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Oct. 8).

The largest mystery is where the North has stashed its centrifuges. One Western intelligence official reportedly told Albright that there were "thousands of sites in North Korea" where the devices could be located (Pomfret, Washington Post).

Meanwhile, a senior North Korean political official today appeared to support international opinion that ailing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has selected his youngest son to become the nation's next ruler, the Associated Press reported.

Workers' Party Central Committee member Yang Hyong Sop told the television channel APTN that "our people take pride in the fact that they are blessed with great leaders from generation to generation."

"Our people are honored to serve the great President Kim Il Sung and the great leader Kim Jong Il," he continued. "Now we also have the honor of serving young Gen. Kim Jong Un."

Kim Jong Un is in his late 20s and not known to have any military experience before his father appointed him a four-star general last week (Associated Press II/Yahoo!News, Oct. 8).

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South Korea's top defense official today said North Korea remained a "grave challenge" to the security of the sector and that regional collaboration was important to curtailing Pyongyang's missile and nuclear activities, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Oct. 18).

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young offered his remarks during a four-day gathering in Seoul of senior defense officials from 27 Asia-Pacific states. Pyongyang's "irrational military threats,\" were a topic of serious concern for participants, Kim said.

The presumed March submarine attack on the South Korean warship Cheonan is an example of North Korea's provocative track record, Kim said.

"Military provocations like the Cheonan incident not only threaten South Korea but also pose grave challenges and threats to the region's peace and stability and the world order," Kim said.

Pyongyang has insisted on its innocence in the incident, which was a significant blow to inter-Korean ties and undermined chances for relaunching multilateral talks aimed at North Korea's permanent nuclear disarmament (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Oct. 19).

"North Korea's nuclear program, as well as its weapons of mass destruction, is the biggest threat" to Asia-Pacific peace and security, South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Han Min-koo said yesterday on the sidelines of the military meeting.

It was not apparent if Han's comments were premised on recent satellite images of apparent new construction activity at North Korea's plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear site, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

Han said South Korea's armed forces would enhance collaboration with the Japanese and U.S. militaries to exchange information on North Korea's nuclear development activities.

The aspiring nuclear power is thought to have processed enough plutonium to power a minimum of six warheads. The Stalinist state has carried out two nuclear test blasts but is not believed to have yet developed the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead (Kim Deok-hyun, Yonhap News Agency, Oct. 18).

Five participants in the six-party North Korean denuclearization talks -- China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States -- today affirmed their commitment to seeing the Korean Peninsula freed of nuclear weapons, the Korea Herald reported. North Korea did not participate in the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue in Seoul, though it has in recent months expressed support for relaunching the nuclear negotiations.

Negotiations were last held in December 2008. Pyongyang pulled out of the talks in spring 2009 and not long after carried out its second nuclear test.

"We actively discussed various aspects and necessities of resuming the six-party talks," South Korean Foreign Ministry official Kim Hong-kyun said to reporters following the meeting (Shin Hae-in, Korea Herald, Oct. 19).

I’m talking on a cell phone that’s more sophisticated than the guidance systems we have on some of our nuclear weapons.

--U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), calling for funding to modernize the nation's nuclear arsenal to be increased by billions of dollars.

Pakistani Spy Agency Said to Have Aided Mumbai Attacks

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010

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Pakistani intelligence agents helped plan the terrorist attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai, according to testimony from a confessed planner of the 2008 incident (see GSN, Oct. 18).

The Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people, have been attributed to the Pakistani-based extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The terrorist assault resulted in India withdrawing from peace talks with its nuclear-armed rival Pakistan, the Associated Press reported.

Former Chicago resident David Headley admitted in March that he helped Lashkar-e-Taiba by scouting out Mumbai locations ahead of the attacks. Headley is in U.S. custody and was interviewed by Indian investigators in June.

The powerful Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency assigned operatives to manage senior Lashkar members and supplied them with financial and other support, according to an Indian government report on Headley's interrogation.

Senior Lashkar military commander Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi was said to have close ties to ISI Director General Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. Headley said he also had an ISI manager, Major Iqbal.

"According to Headley, every big action of LeT is done in close coordination with ISI," the report states.

A high-ranking Pakistani intelligence officer said the charges in the report were without merit (Nessman/Sharma, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 19).

White House Official Puts Pakistan at Top of Proliferation Threats

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010

By Martin Matishak

Global Security Newswire

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WASHINGTON -- A senior White House adviser yesterday gave a sobering assessment of the nuclear nonproliferation challenges that face the Obama administration as it works toward a world free of atomic weapons (see GSN, Oct. 6).

 (Oct. 19) - Pakistani security officials conduct a controlled detonation of an explosive device in April following a gunfight with militants. Pakistan has sought to augment its nuclear-weapon capabilities in an atmosphere of domestic political turmoil and other "very serious" security challenges, a top White House arms control official said yesterday (Getty Images).

"The thing that keeps me up at night? Pakistan," White House Coordinator for WMD Counterterrorism and Arms Control Gary Samore. "This is a country that is facing very serious internal and external security threats, has a dysfunctional political system [and] is seeking to expand its nuclear weapons program."

Recent satellite images show Pakistan has made significant progress toward completing its third heavy-water reactor at Khushab, even while the country is racked with insurgency and recovering from devastating floods. The nation is estimated to have as many as 80 nuclear warheads in its arsenal.

Samore said the United States has been "lucky" that nuclear war has not erupted between Pakistan and its atomically armed rival India, or that the civilian government in Islamabad has not lost control of its stockpile. However, "things could go very badly in South Asia very quickly," he said during a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"We have extremely limited policy tools to affect that," he told the audience. "We can't occupy countries and hope to secure all of their nuclear material. That's really beyond our capacity."

Samore later admitted his nightmare scenario is a "toss-up" between Pakistan falling into political chaos and North Korea selling its nuclear material and expertise to other countries.

The United States already suspects Pyongyang of helping Syria to construct a nuclear reactor for producing weapon-grade uranium, a charge Damascus has refuted (see GSN, Oct. 14). The site was bombed by Israel in 2007. Pyongyang is also alleged to be helping Myanmar develop a potential nuclear weapons program (see GSN, July 22).

North Korea and Pakistan are among only a "handful" of nations that hold nuclear materials and face the threat of government collapse, Samore said. The challenges such states pose to the international nonproliferation regime, though, are "very, very dramatic," he argued.

Samore said the United States would continue to work with Islamabad to improve the country's nuclear security by providing additional training or equipment.

"Obviously in the case of North Korea we can't do that," Samore said. "We are at the mercy of forces we have very little control over."

The isolated Stalinist state has conducted two nuclear test blasts to date and is believed to hold sufficient plutonium for about six weapons. It withdrew from six-nation talks on its nuclear program in April 2009 and is a widely recognized proliferator.

Samore noted that North Korea and Iran have a documented history of cooperation on ballistic missile systems. Tehran could easily request assistance for its nascent nuclear reactor program, which has experienced a string of setbacks, he said.

Claims by the Middle Eastern state that its nuclear activities have no military component are "a lie," he told the audience.

Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons "would have an utterly catastrophic effect" on the region, possibly triggering war if Israel attempted to bomb any facilities and potentially driving neighboring countries to seek their own atomic arsenals, according to Samore.

In addition, it would make President Obama's vision of a nuclear weapon-free world "almost impossible" because existing nuclear powers would not want to give up or reduce their stockpiles, the WMD coordinator said.

A nuclear Iran would also "undercut" the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and other "international instruments" for managing the use of atomic materials, according to Samore.

"Trying to stop Iran is my No. 1 job," he added, touting the administration's work obtaining additional economic sanctions against the Middle East nation (see related GSN story, today).

Iran, thus far, has shrugged off four U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions aimed at curbing its uranium enrichment effort, along with unilateral actions by the United States and other nations.

For his part, Samore said he did not know if the latest economic punishment would quell Tehran's nuclear ambitions but that such efforts, as well as U.S. import and export controls, have slowed Iran's program by years.

The Inside Threat

Alongside proliferation concerns posed by nations, a potentially greater risk is the "insider threat" posed by professionals who decide to steal, sell or use nuclear or radiological substances they work with, Samore said. He acknowledged that there are certain countries the United States is concerned about but refrained from offering names.

"You need to have good personnel reliability programs and the challenge for us internationally is to convince other governments that that's the threat they really need to put resources against," he told the audience. "Once you establish a sort of baseline for physical security, it becomes much more about the people."

However, Samore stopped short of saying there should be universal standard for physical security and personnel reliability efforts for nuclear facilities around the globe.

"In a perfect world we would like to have universal standards, we would like to have an international organization that had the authority and the competence" to check and make sure governments had put in place adequate physical protection and personnel reliability programs, he said. "But that's not possible in this world."

He said countries often regard protecting their nuclear materials as a sovereign right and would be hesitant to join an international regime that would legally bind them to certain standards akin to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards requirements for its member nations.

Rather than creating new treaties or institutions, the United States and other nuclear powers must work toward a more "consensual" system to provide security assistance to other countries, according to Samore.

"I wish it were otherwise, but that's the reality we're dealing with," he added.

To better address the threat, Obama this spring convened a two-day summit in Washington with 47 heads of state and dignitaries to discuss ways to improve nuclear security. Participants agreed to lock down the world's loose nuclear material within four years (see GSN, April 14).

Samore described the nuclear summit as "the best thing to happen" to him in the last year.

A second summit is scheduled for 2012 in South Korea. The administration expects to have four rounds of experts meetings before then, including one by the end of the calendar year in Buenos Aires.

Samore said that over the next four years he would like to see additional countries join existing international regimes that focus on atomic materials, such as the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. The 1980 compact establishes measures on the prevention, detection and punishment of offenses relating to nuclear material, according to an IAEA fact sheet.

He would also like to see the U.N.'s atomic watchdog strengthened in order to more actively provide security assistance and training to countries.

There is also more work that could be done to increase cooperation among the law enforcement and intelligence communities to better prevent cross-border nuclear smuggling, according to Samore. He did not elaborate or cite specific instances in which better cooperation would have helped.

Samore gave thanks that nuclear security is a far less contentious issue than others in his portfolio.

"Every government agrees that nuclear weapons and nuclear materials should be adequately protected so that terrorists or criminals can't get their hands on them," he said.

"Almost everything else I work on, whether it's nuclear disarmament or nonproliferation ... are highly contentious and there is no international consensus," Samore added.

While there might be disputes between countries over the likelihood of a nuclear security breach "everybody agrees that it's worth investing resources to make sure that nuclear weapons and materials don't fall out of government control."

Saudis tell France about al-Qaida threat

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

by Staff Writers
Paris (UPI) Oct 18, 2010
Saudi Arabian intelligence officials have warned France of a terrorist threat from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said.

Hortefeux, in a Sunday radio interview, said he had received the terror warning just a few days ago.

He described it as "a new message from the Saudi services telling us that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was, without doubt, active or planned to be active" in Europe, "and France in particular."

"The threat is real and our vigilance is total," he added.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as the terrorist network's branch based in Yemen is called, is gathering strength, observers say. The group has claimed responsibility for plots targeting Western interests, including a failed Christmas Day plan to blow up a passenger plane over Detroit, and is now locking in on European targets, it seems.

Last week, Hortefeux met with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in talks that surely centered on counter-terrorism efforts.

European intelligence and security officials have been vigilant for the past weeks after terror-related travel alerts were issued by the United States, Britain and Japan at the beginning of this month.

Media reports suggested that the travel alerts were based on intelligence gathered from Ahmed Sidiqi, a German of Afghan descent in custody of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The man from Hamburg had told U.S. interrogators about commando-style plans to attack high-profile landmarks in several cities in Europe.

The plans reportedly mimic the coordinated attacks by gunmen on several targets in Mumbai in late 2008. The terrorists stormed several public and private buildings, including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, and killed 165 people.

German security officials played down the warnings, with German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere saying there was no concrete evidence for imminent attacks.

Yet a day after the U.S. alert was issued, an American military drone killed what officials said were several militants, some of them German nationals, at a hideout in Pakistan. The operation is linked to the alerts, observers say.

The latest warnings from Saudi Arabia have observers worried.

"If this information is coming indeed from the Saudis, one can expect that it is serious and reliable," Raphael Perl, the head of anti-terrorism for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, told The New York Times.

Terror, cyber attacks 'biggest security threats' in Britain

Stonesoft finds new threat to company computer networks Paris (AFP) Oct 18, 2010 - The Finnish company Stonesoft said Monday it had found new techniques that bypass current security systems which cyber-criminals could use to gain access company productivity applications. Stonesoft said that as a result of the advanced evasion techniques (AETs) "companies may suffer a significant data breach including the loss of confidential corporate information." In addition these AETs "could be used by organised crime and cyber-terrorists to conduct illegal and potentially damaging activities," the company said in a statement. These AETs are a sort of "stealth plane that isn't detectable by radar and which leaves the door open to cyber-criminals and gives them the time and leisure to test various vulnerabilities" in corporate systems, Stonesoft's director in France and the Benelux countries Leonard Dahan told AFP. By bypassing today's network security systems the AET's provide cyber-criminals with a "master key" to access vulnerable systems such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, said the company. Stonesoft said it had notified CERT-FI, which is charged with globally coordinating response to vulnerabilities among network security vendors and ICSA Labs which offers third-party testing and certification of security products and network-connected devices. Dahan said that "given the enormity of what has been discovered, it is important for Stonesoft that one can work together with other R and D teams to move as quickly as possible to develop solutions." "When one looks at the news over the past 10 months, such as a student who managed to penetrate NASA's network or that one can gain control of Siemens systems in Iran by bypassing all known security systems, that is because hackers use evasion techniques that are not detectable today..." said Dahan. A self-replicating piece of malware called Stuxnet was publicly identified in June lurking on Siemens industrial systems, particularly in Iran, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Analysts say Stuxnet may have been designed to target Iran's nuclear facilities, especially the Russian-built first atomic power plant in the southern city of Bushehr.

by Staff Writers
London (AFP) Oct 18, 2010
International terrorism and cyber attacks pose the biggest threats to British security, a new government strategy said Monday, just before deep cuts to the defence budget are unveiled.

Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition identified these as "tier one" threats in a new national security strategy alongside natural hazards such as flu pandemics or floods, and foreign military crises that may involve Britain.

The strategy was unveiled before Cameron announces details of a defence review Tuesday, which is set to outline cuts of around eight percent in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget.

Those cuts are part of Wednesday's comprehensive spending review which could see government-wide savings of up to 25 percent as the coalition, which took office in May, battles to pay off Britain's huge deficit.

In a foreword to the security strategy, Cameron warned that Britain was entering an "age of uncertainty" where threats to its national interests were constantly changing.

"All of this calls for a radical transformation in the way we think about national security and organise ourselves to protect it," he wrote.

He added that the previous Labour government, which took Britain into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, had left "a defence and security structure that is woefully unsuitable for the world we live in today".

The new strategy arranges the risks to Britain's security into three tiers which are likely to reflect how budget resources are allocated, although officials insist all the threats named were important and would be addressed.

The top tier includes international terrorism, which Cameron says is the "most pressing threat we face today".

This comes principally from Al-Qaeda, which the strategy says has been weakened in Afghanistan and Pakistan thanks to international military action but can exert its influence through affiliates in Somalia, Yemen and Iraq.

The document also warns of the threat of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, saying that "the activities of residual terrorist groups (opposed to the peace process) have increased in the last 18 months".

Cyber attacks are also considered a top tier threat, particularly given how dependent British businesses and services are on the Internet and with the 2012 Olympic Games in London likely to be a particular target.

"Cyberspace is already woven into the fabric of our society. It is integral to our economy and our security," the strategy says.

Last week, the head of Britain's electronic spying agency warned the country faced a "real and credible" threat of a cyber attack from hostile states or criminals.

In rare public comments in London, Iain Lobban -- director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) -- said infrastructure such as power grids and emergency services was at risk.

Elswhere in tier one are natural incidents, such as major flooding or the recent flu epidemic, and foreign military and humanitarian crises that could force Britain to intervene to protect its strategic interests.

On tier two, signalling a lower level of importance, is the risk of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack in Britain by a foreign state or proxy.

This comes above the risk of a large-scale conventional military attack, which was included in tier three alongside threats to energy security, the disruption of food supplies or a nuclear accident on British soil.

The war in Afghanistan, where Britain has almost 10,000 troops fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents, was not mentioned specifically but officials insisted it remained a defence priority.

"This is about the future," a government official said on condition of anonymity.

Call for Israel's destruction places IDF, Syrian Lebanese armies on alert
DEBKAfile Special Report

13 Oct. DEBKAfile's military and Iranian sources report:  Towards the end of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first day in Lebanon Wednesday Oct. 13, a high alert was declared in the Israeli, Syrian, Lebanese armies, the Hizballah militia and the UN peacekeeping force ahead of his tour of the Lebanese-Israeli border Thursday.
In the speech he delivered Wednesday night from the Al-Raya Stadium in the Shiite district Dahya district of Beirut, Ahmadinejad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared their common goal was Israel's destruction. Nasrallah did not appear in the flesh but on a video screen.
Israel's only response to the vicious attacks showered on its head from Lebanon came from an official in the bureau of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who said: The President of Iran's Lebanon visit is like that of a commander reviewing his troops - the terrorists of Hizballah who act as Iran's military arm in the region. Anyone who cares about peace and freedom must be filled with alarm by the Iranian provocation. Lebanon deserves calm and prosperity instead of which it has become the servant of Iranian aggression spearheaded by Hizballah."
Washington's response was still milder. The White House commented that the Ahmadinejad visit to Lebanon marked his provocative behavior, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it would lead to greater regional instability.

By its inaction, Israel permits Iran's annexation of Lebanon
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

14 Oct. The Netanyahu government chose silence in the face of the imperialist Shiite energy Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expended in his all-conquering visit to Lebanon. On his first day in Beirut he showed the world that Tehran calls the shots in Beirut - and that would be just for starters. DEBKAfile's sources find in Israel's inaction today a regrettable analogy with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's handover of Czechoslovak Sudetenland to Germany in 1938 so ushering in World War II.
Addressing tens of thousands of cheering Lebanese Shiites in the Hizballah stronghold of Dahya in Beirut Wednesday night, Ahmadinejad and his puppet, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, pledged to make Israel "disappear" and declared nothing and no one can stop this happening. How and when is up to Tehran.
He also announced the formation of a new Islamic bloc, a revival of the old Eastern Front, composed of Iran, Syria, Turkey, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Iraq. It would be dedicated to fighting not only Israel but also America.
For the Iranian ruler, Israel is small change compared with the task of destroying America's Middle East presence and usurping its big power role.

Iranian president announces formation of new Eastern Front against Israel · Its members are Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestinians and Iraq · He made the announcement in Beirut on Day One of his visit to Lebanon amid unprecedented security measures ·

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North Korean military officers today abruptly exited a meeting with South Korean colonels that was intended to set the stage for higher-level talks between the two rivals and potentially a discussion about Pyongyang's nuclear weapons work, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, Feb. 8).

 (Feb. 9) - South Korean Col. Moon Sang-gyun, shown yesterday before meeting with a North Korean counterpart at the Demilitarized Zone. The North withdrew today from the military talks between the Koreas (Jung Yeon-je/Getty Images).

Today was the second day of initial colonel-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone to set the stage for a meeting between the North and South Korean defense ministers addressing provocative acts by Pyongyang. The alleged 2010 torpedo attack on a South Korean warship and the shelling of the South's Yeonpyeong Island killed 50 South Koreans and renewed the specter of war on the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul wants Pyongyang to take responsible measures for its attack on the island and to apologize for the sinking of the Cheonan, which the North continues to deny committing.

"The talks failed to narrow differences over the agenda for a high-level meeting," South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said. He added that officials were also not able to agree on a date for additional colonel-level talks.

The North Korean officers "unilaterally walked out of a meeting room," Kim said.

Experts said the failure of the military talks is a bad sign for the fragile detente that has ruled the peninsula since a U.N.-brokered 1953 armistice agreement halted the Korean War. Following the November artillery barrage of Yeonpyeong Island, the South Korean military amended its posture to allow for a more aggressive and speedy response to any future North Korean provocations.

Pyongyang has long used brinkmanship tactics to provoke crises on the peninsula in hopes of drawing economic aid and other concessions in negotiations. Conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak drastically scaled back subsidies to the North in 2008 when he decided that previous administrations' "Sunshine Policy" had failed to produce notable moves by Pyongyang toward denuclearization.

"Both official and public opinion in South Korea seem to be moving toward a position of 'enough is enough,'" Boston University international relations Professor William Keylor said. "Pyongyang's tried-and-true strategy of increasing military tension on the peninsula as a means of extracting economic aid from the South, and then agreeing to talks to reduce the tension, may have run its course" (John Glionna, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 9).

Seoul has acceded to foreign urging that inter-Korean relations stabilize, Dongguk University academic Kim Yong-hyun said. "South-North Korean relations won't be extreme again like last year," the Associated Press quoted him as saying (Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press/The Hindu, Feb. 9).

While North Korea has for some time voiced its willingness to return to the six-party talks it abandoned in spring 2009, Japan, South Korea and the United States have said they would not resume the aid-for-denuclearization negotiations until they are assured of the Stalinist state's intention to shutter its nuclear weapons program. That hope was thrown into further doubt when the aspiring nuclear power unveiled a high-tech uranium enrichment plant late last year. Uranium enrichment can produce both nuclear reactor fuel and bomb-grade material.

Seoul has requested separate talks with the North to discuss its nuclear work, but Pyongyang has yet to give an answer.

"Without having the bilateral talks between the two Koreas, holding six-party talks also looks unclear now," analyst Kim Seung-hwan told Reuters (Laurence/Cho, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Feb. 9).

China, which hosts the six-party talks and is North Korea's leading benefactor, is thought by many observers to have pressed Pyongyang into meeting with the South. The longtime alliance between the two communist nations could be fraying to some degree, with Pyongyang's repeated provocations placing the Chinese government in an uncomfortable position with the international community, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

Continued Chinese economic assistance to the North could be at risk if Pyongyang fails to show that is done with its brinkmanship tactics, International Crisis Group Korea analyst Dan Pinkston said. "The key question is, will this be perceived by the Chinese as a legitimate and sincere effort by the North to reconcile with the South?"

"We kept our position that we are willing to hold a high-level military talk if North Korea accepts our agenda and level of official," the South Korean Defense Ministry said today in a statement (Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 9).

Separately, a North Korean dissident group yesterday said a brigade of North Korean military uranium mine workers in mid-January stopped working after being deprived of sustenance for three days due to a lack of new food supplies, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

"Security authorities were immediately sent to the unit to clamp down on the soldiers refusing to work," said Kim Seung-kwang, head of the South Korea-based defector organization North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity. He cited a high-ranking North Korean officer as the source of the information (Sam Kim, Yonhap News Agency, Feb. 8).

Elsewhere, North Korea requested a meeting with U.S. special envoy Stephen Bosworth during his trip to China early last month, the Asahi Shimbun reported today.

Washington turned down the proposal due to the short duration of Bosworth's stay in Beijing.

Pyongyang wants to unofficially meet with U.S. officials late next month in Europe, an insider said. Though a U.S. think tank would probably act as the facilitating third-party, the North is willing to dispatch its No. 2 representative to the six-party talks, Ri Gun, should any other ex-senior U.S. officials also participate (Yoshihiro Makino, Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 9).

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U.S. intelligence officials are informing the heads of some of the country's most powerful financial entities that Yemeni-based al-Qaeda operatives could be plotting terrorist strikes against Wall Street banks or their top managers, NBC News reported on Tuesday (see GSN, Dec. 21, 2010).

 (Feb. 4) - Traders work last month at the New York Stock Exchange, one site scouted out previously by suspected extremists for possible terrorist strikes. Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen might be planning attacks on Wall Street financial entities or their leaders, U.S. intelligence officials have warned (Ramin Talaie/Getty Images).

Security sources are emphasizing the danger is not specific and that there "is no indication of a targeted assassination plot" toward any banking leaders. Officials, though, worry that foreign-based extremists have talked about targeting specific individuals.

Intelligence researchers said there is a nonspecific but increasing fear that extremists in Yemen could make another attempt at shipping hidden explosive devices or chemical and biological weapons materials to New York financial institutions. U.S. authorities think extremists operating from Yemen were responsible for the packaged bombs addressed to Chicago-based synagogues in late October. The explosive devices -- hidden inside printer cartridges -- were intercepted in the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom but officials think they could have been designed to detonate in midflight (see GSN, Nov. 3, 2010).

Al-Qaeda's official magazine, "Inspire," in its most recent issue included a mention of attempting to deploy the biological pathogen anthrax in a terror strike, officials said.

Al-Qaeda member Abu Suleiman al-Nasser in a recent blog post exhorted, "Rush my Muslim brothers to targeting financial sites and the program sites of financial institutions, stock markets and money markets."

Law enforcement officials are advising Wall Street banking firms to improve security protocols inside and surrounding their mail departments and for the handling of packages, particularly those intended for senior firm officials.

Following the September 11 attacks, the New York Police Department significantly enhanced Wall Street security measures. Suspected extremists have been found in the past conducting surveillance of sites including the New York Stock Exchange and the Citicorp Center (Jonathan Dienst, NBC News, Feb. 1).

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WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, which planned and executed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has morphed into an array of regional terrorist groups that are using the Internet to recruit and train members at home, according to a report released yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 4).

The 25-page report even coins a term for the disparate groups -- AQAM, for “al-Qaeda and Associated Movements.” Groups lumped under that acronym include al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for mailing bombs disguised as printers in cargo packages last year, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is believed to have orchestrated the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India (see GSN, Nov. 3, 2010).

“What was once a hierarchical organization composed of Osama bin Laden and his close associates has grown to include an array of regional terrorist groups, small cells, and even individuals,” according to the report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Al-Qaeda has been diminished and has lost support, but its message still energizes diverse groups around the globe.

“The emergence of affiliates and nonaffiliated cells and individuals also presents a troubling paradox for the United States and its partners: Despite extensive counterterrorism successes against the group responsible for 9/11, the al-Qaeda ‘brand’ now resonates with an increasingly diverse (though still narrow) cross-section of Muslims around the world,” the report said.

The document specifically cites the Internet as a critical and growing tool terrorist groups in recruiting, training, and funding individuals to carry out attacks.

The proliferation of social-media websites with user-generated content, for example, "has enabled AQAM to develop a new set of capabilities centered on the dissemination of propaganda and recruitment."

The Internet transcends geographical boundaries, so individuals no longer have to travel to terrorist training camps. They can sit at home with their computers, watch training videos on YouTube, interact with terrorist leaders on Facebook, and receive instructions via e-mail, the report warned.

The report notes that terrorist operative Anwar al-Awlaki has used the Internet to recruit individuals (see GSN, Feb. 2). "Once an al-Awlaki, or a YouTube video of terrorist violence, helps spark radicalization, e-mail, Facebook, and other forms of online communication can forge links between terrorist operatives and recruits thousands of miles apart," the report said.

Rick (Ozzie) Nelson, director and senior fellow of the CSIS Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program, said that the U.S. should take into consideration that some of its counterterrorism policies may be fueling anti-American sentiment and inspiring groups or individuals to carry out terrorist acts.

Although the report does not single out specific policies that might be inflaming violent Islamic extremism, a follow-on effort later this year is expected to examine that issue, said Juan Zarate, a CSIS senior adviser who spoke on a panel with Nelson about the report.

Groups under the AQAM banner disagree about goals and ideology, such as who they consider their primary enemy, whether it’s appropriate to kill Muslims, and what strategic approaches to follow. But, overall, the report concluded that the groups identify with al-Qaeda’s narrative that Western civilization, led by the United States, is at war with Islam.

“Indeed, bin Laden and other senior leaders have seized on the presence of U.S. and allied forces in Muslim-majority countries, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq, to underscore al-Qaeda's stock narrative that the West is at war with Islam,” the report said. “That narrative is central to the shared ideology that unifies AQAM’s disparate components.”

Nelson, who coauthored the report, said he believes that the most dangerous groups are al-Qaeda in Iraq, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He said he believes Lashkar-e-Taiba has the potential to destabilize the South Asian region and bring about a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India (see GSN, Feb. 7).

The report is part of a larger project by CSIS supported by the Defense Department and the Singapore government.

Iran Tests Antiship Ballistic Missile

North Korea Blames South For Failed Talks

U.S. Intelligence Fears Al-Qaeda Plotting to Strike Wall Street

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Recent satellite images indicate Pakistan might be building its fourth plutonium-production reactor, amid other indications the South Asian nation has significantly ratcheted up its nuclear arms efforts, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 2).

 (Feb. 10) - Pakistan's Khushab nuclear complex, shown in 2008. Satellite photography suggests a fourth plutonium-production reactor is under construction at the site, a new report says (Aamir Qureshi/Getty Images).

The January photographs of the Khushab nuclear complex reveal work on a new installation that has similar parameters as two other nearby heavy-water reactors, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said in a report released yesterday.

The structure "appears to be a fourth reactor" for producing fissile material, ISIS researchers wrote. The new plant would enable Pakistan to process "more plutonium for nuclear bombs," according to the report.

Washington-based Pakistani diplomats would not discuss the ISIS report. A U.S. nonproliferation official who examined the satellite images would also not address the institutes's analysis, but said intelligence organizations had been following work at the nuclear complex for a period of years and were "aware of this facility."

Pakistan's nuclear buildup has raised worries about a competition for strategic superiority in South Asia. Some U.S. intelligence analyses estimate that Pakistan holds no fewer than 90 fielded nuclear arms and possibly more than 110, which would make the country's nuclear arsenal larger than the stockpile held by neighboring India.

The two nations over the decades have fought three wars. Islamabad and New Delhi announced today, however, that they were returning to a peace process that had been broken off for more than two years (see related GSN story, today).

"Another reactor just hammers the point that Pakistan is determined to make a lot of plutonium for nuclear weapons, frankly far more than they need or is healthy for the region and the world," ISIS President and report co-author David Albright said.

Khushab's initial heavy-water reactor went online in 1996 and a second plant began operating in 2010. The two reactors' combined plutonium generating capacity is projected to be 48.5 pounds annually -- sufficient material for a maximum of four warheads. A third plutonium reactor is being built close to the second reactor.

Pakistan's continued struggle with militants within its borders has led to concerns about the security of its nuclear arsenal and fissile materials. Islamabad and Washington have repeatedly expressed confidence in Pakistani nuclear security.

Ex-International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards director Olli Heinonen said the fourth reactor was "worrying, given the unstable situation there."

"Commissioning of additional plutonium-production reactors and further construction of reprocessing capabilities signify that Pakistan may even be developing second-strike capabilities," Heinonen said (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Feb. 9).

Meanwhile, Pakistan has ruled out in the near term accepting a fissile material cutoff treaty in the Conference on Disarmament, but allowed that negotiations could move forward once it has achieved strategic parity with India, the Karachi-based Business Recorder reported today (see GSN, Jan. 28).

"We may accept the FMCT in about five to seven years down the road because by then, we will have built up a proportional fissile reserve to India's as a result of our plutonium production picking up," Pakistani Strategic Technology Resources head Shireen Mazari told journalists.

Decisions at the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament are made by consensus. Lacking Islamabad's approval, negotiations have been stymied for an accord to end all production of plutonium and uranium for weapons purposes.

Pakistan has argued that moves by the United States and other nuclear powers to open atomic trade with India have upset the strategic balance in South Asia (Business Recorder, Feb. 10).