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NYT: "One of the top commanders in Iran's ballistic missile program was among those killed Saturday in an explosion at a base for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the group said in a statement on Monday. The commander, Brig. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, was killed along with 16 other Revolutionary Guards members Saturday at a military site outside Bidganeh, about 25 miles from Tehran. The Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite military force, said the explosion was an accident that occurred while soldiers were transporting munitions at what it characterized as a base mostly used as an ammunition depot. Iranian officials went to pains to emphasize that the explosion was not sabotage or an attack by one of the insurgent groups it is fighting within its borders. Such groups have been responsible for attacks on Iranian military bases in the past, and the government has accused the United States and Israel of sponsoring the groups in their attempts to destabilize the country." http://t.uani.com/tIQEZB
WSJ: "President Barack Obama said he would take no options off the table in confronting Iran, and defended his Iran record in the face of Republican attack, saying the sanctions imposed already have had 'enormous bite and enormous scope.' He held out hope that Russia and China would help pressure Iran on its nuclear program and said these leaders agreed on the problem. But he said further consultations were necessary to determine next steps. Mr. Obama spoke in a wide-ranging news conference held at the completion of an Asia-Pacific economic forum, held in his home state of Hawaii late Sunday... He dismissed Republican criticism of his Iran record, saying there are no easy answers to persuading Iran to abandon its apparent nuclear ambitions. But he said his administration had made progress in uniting the world against the regime... Mr. Obama defended his record on Iran, saying U.S. leadership led to the strongest sanctions ever imposed on Iran. 'When I came into office the world was divided and Iran was unified around its nuclear program. We now we have a situation where the world is united and Iran is isolated,' he said." http://t.uani.com/t73HMG
DPA: "The Iranian parliament called on the government Sunday to revise its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), state television IRIB reported. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani said that after the latest IAEA report, there was an urgent need to revise cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog. He was referring to IAEA report released Tuesday, which stated that Iran had carried out tests 'relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.' Tehran categorically rejected the report as unbalanced and politically motivated. Larijani said the IAEA has become a political tool of the United States and its allies and cooperation with the IAEA should therefore be seriously revised. A special parliamentary committee has reportedly been assigned to explore how the cooperation could be downgraded." http://t.uani.com/uCcwbv
Nuclear Program & Sanctions AFP: "President Barack Obama will Saturday personally impress upon the leaders of Russia and China deep US concerns over a UN watchdog's report that Iran has worked on nuclear weapons systems. But Moscow and Beijing are cool to a US call for more sanctions on Tehran following the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency report which heightened fears of Israeli military action against Iranian nuclear sites. Obama will get his first chance to discuss the report with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and China's President Hu Jintao in his native Hawaii in bilateral meetings on the eve of an Asia-Pacific economic summit. Ben Rhodes, a deputy US national security advisor, said Friday that the president would seek international consensus on new action against Tehran. 'I think the report just recently came out. I think everybody needs to take the time to review the report,' he said, when asked about vehement Russian criticism of the study." http://t.uani.com/vruM7v
Reuters: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a U.N. report that Iran had worked on an atomic weapon design was 'alarming' but sanctions had not been fully exhausted as a means of pressuring Tehran, and Germany would consider a tougher round of measures. In an interview with the Leipziger Volkszeitung published on Saturday, Merkel said opposition to fresh sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme by some countries was 'regrettable'. Russia and China have declared their opposition, limiting the chances of pushing through another U.N. Security Council package. 'I think the methods we can use to force Iran to be more transparent have not been fully exhausted. Sanctions are first in line here. These sanctions should be as broad as possible,' Merkel said. Iran had clearly 'not put all its cards on the table', and she urged the country to act with transparency." http://t.uani.com/tFnsfU
AP: "In a show-and-tell based on secret intelligence, the U.N. atomic agency shared satellite images, letters and diagrams with 35 nations Friday as it sought to underpin its case that Iran apparently worked secretly on developing a nuclear weapon. Iran's chief envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency rejected the presentation as based on material fabricated by the United States and its allies. 'There is no indication and proof that Iran's activities is toward military purposes,' he told reporters, in comments that those inside the closed meeting showing the evidence said essentially matched his statement to that gathering. Western diplomats, in contrast, said that the briefing was a convincing supplement to a report presented earlier this week. Based on 1,000 pages of research and nearly a decade of probing Iran, that document included evidence that the agency says indicates the Islamic republic is working on the clandestine procurement of equipment and designs to make nuclear arms." http://t.uani.com/uL6agB
Reuters: "Iran said on Sunday it had detected the Duqu computer virus that experts say is based on Stuxnet, the so-called 'cyber-weapon' discovered last year and believed to be aimed at sabotaging the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites. The head of Iran's civil defense organization told the official IRNA news agency that computers at all main sites at risk were being checked and that Iran had developed software to combat the virus... News of Duqu surfaced in October when security software maker Symantec Corp said it had found a mysterious virus that contained code similar to Stuxnet. While Stuxnet was aimed at crippling industrial control systems and may have destroyed some of the centrifuges Iran uses to enrich uranium, experts say Duqu appeared designed to gather data to make it easier to launch future cyber attacks." http://t.uani.com/uuYYbg
WashPost: "When the Cold War abruptly ended in 1991, Vyacheslav Danilenko was a Soviet weapons scientist in need of a new line of work. At 57, he had three decades of experience inside a top-secret nuclear facility and one marketable skill: the ability to make objects blow up with nanosecond precision. Danilenko struggled to become a businessman, traveling through Europe and even to the United States to promote an idea for using explosives to create synthetic diamonds. Finally, he turned to Iran, a country that could fully appreciate the bombmaker's special mix of experience and talents. Fifteen years later, the Russian scientist has emerged as a central character in the still-unfolding mystery that is Iran's nuclear program. A report last week by the International Atomic Energy Agency highlighted the role of a 'foreign expert' - identified by Western diplomats close to the U.N. nuclear agency as Danilenko - in Iran's efforts to gain expertise in disciplines essential to building a nuclear warhead. No bomb was built, the diplomats say. But help from foreign scientists such as Danilenko enabled Iran to leapfrog over technical hurdles that otherwise could have taken years to overcome, according to former and current U.N. officials, Western diplomats and weapons experts." http://t.uani.com/sEjjWq
Human Rights BBC: "The BBC has raised fresh fears of Iranian pressure after an independent contributor to its Farsi-language service was arrested at the weekend. An independent commentator, Hasan Fathi, was detained by authorities in Tehran shortly after appearing on BBC Persian in a live broadcast on the Iranian ammunition depot explosion that killed at least 17 revolutionary guard soldiers on Saturday. The arrest comes just weeks after the BBC described a 'dramatic increase in anti-BBC rhetoric' and attempts to intimidate the corporation since it aired a documentary about Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The BBC said Iran had arrested friends and relatives of 10 members of staff and intensified blocking of its Persian channel, which is not authorised to operate in the country. The 10 people in question are now understood to have been released." http://t.uani.com/vKBxqg Foreign Affairs AP: "An alleged Iranian-linked terror cell had contact with the Tehran's powerful Revolutionary Guard and planned attacks against high profile sites, including Saudi Embassy and a Gulf causeway linking Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, authorities in Bahrain claimed Sunday. The allegations from Bahrain's public prosecutor seek to strengthen charges of ties between the suspected underground group and Iran. Bahrain's Sunni leaders have accused Iran of encouraging Shiite-led protests that erupted in February on the island kingdom. The report in the Bahrain News Agency, however, gave no further information on the suspects or other details to back up the allegations. The accusations of links to the Revolutionary Guard - which is closely tied to Iran's ruling clerics - draws parallels with U.S. claims that an elite unit of the Guard was involved in a foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Iran has denied the American charges." http://t.uani.com/vd2LuA
AP: "Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency says Iranian security has detained two Kuwaiti citizens in southwestern Iran for suspected espionage activities. Fars quoted Bahram Ilkhaszadeh, governor of Abadan, a town close to Kuwait, as saying that Iran's security agents detained the two on possession of 'spying equipment.' The news agency did not provide further details. Iran and Kuwait have accused each other in recent years of running spying rings in the other's country. Kuwait in the past accused Iran of masterminding an espionage ring that included surveillance of U.S. and Kuwaiti military sites. Iran denied the claims." http://t.uani.com/vELFP3 Opinion & Analysis
Bloomberg Editorial Board: "The International Atomic Energy Agency's report detailing how Iran has conducted secret activities "specific to nuclear weapons" was a bombshell that surprised nobody... In any case, the report, combined with the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington and Iran's continued sponsorship of terrorism, demands a reaction from the U.S. and its allies. There are three main retaliatory paths to choose among. The first is forging a deal that would allow Iran a uranium- enrichment program for peaceful energy purposes monitored by outside parties. Tehran's record of serial duplicity does not inspire confidence in this approach, and we urge the U.S. and Europe to abandon it. A second, terrifying option is a strike by the U.S. or Israel on Iran's suspected nuclear and weapons sites. Although this is militarily feasible and could buy the world time, the obvious potential downsides (the Middle East engulfed in war) vastly outweigh the potential gains, at least for now. The third path is by far the least bad: to apply enough economic pressure on the mullahs that they are forced to rethink the wisdom not only of a nuclear weapons program, but also of their foreign adventurism and terrorist support. A call for sanctions is inevitably met with skepticism. And it's true that Iran's history of evading measures, the unwillingness of countries such as China and Russia to honor them, and the lure of Iran's oil, make it impossible to shut the country out of the global economy. But the beauty of sanctions is that a total blockade isn't necessary. Rather, the goal is to make economic dealings with Iran such a hassle for the rest of the world that Tehran, faced with a sinking economy and unhappy populace, changes its political calculus. The U.S. and its allies have made significant strides on this front, pushing through the United Nations four rounds sanctions since 2006 targeting individuals and corporations linked to nuclear efforts. Unilateral measures banning most financial transactions have successfully 'increased the cost of doing business, limited foreign direct investment and technology transfer, and have affected international trade and financial transactions,' according to a report in August from the International Monetary Fund. The measures have hit Iran hard: The IMF expects the inflation rate to reach 22.5 percent this year; the economy is growing at only about 1 percent a year; and, though it's not always wise to take statements from Iranian leaders at face value, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad complained to his parliament this month that 'our banks cannot make international transactions anymore.' What more can be done to turn the screws? Russia has said it will veto any serious U.N. measures, but unilateral steps to consider include closing a loophole in current sanctions that allows European refiners to use Iranian crude oil in gasoline exported to the U.S., expanding sanctions to Iranian commercial banks and more individuals, penalizing foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies doing business with Iran, cracking down on shipping and other front companies registered in third-party nations but controlled by Iran, sanctioning Iran's imports of refined gasoline, and requiring nations exporting petroleum products to the U.S. -- the plastic in Chinese consumer electronics, for example -- to prove that no Iranian oil was used in their manufacture." http://t.uani.com/uP41FJ
Jackson Diehl in WashPost: "A weird but wonderful feature of Israeli democracy is that even fateful decisions about national security - like whether to carry out a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - are publicly debated and covered in the press as if they were questions about road building or water rates, complete with vote counts in the cabinet and speculation about political motives. For more than two weeks now, mullahs in Tehran, generals in Washington and anyone else with an Internet connection has been able to read detailed accounts of attempts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to convince their military chiefs and coalition partners that an Israeli strike is both feasible and necessary. Bitter closed-door debates have been chronicled; op-ed pages have been filled with the arguments, pro and con. There's even been polling: Forty-one percent of Israelis were reported to favor an attack vs. 39 percent who were opposed. If it happens, this may be the most unsurprising sneak attack in history. Reports that Israel is on the verge of bombing Iran have been appearing regularly since at least 2008. It's tempting to dismiss the latest flurry as political noise or orchestrated leaks, aimed at focusing Western attention on the need for tougher sanctions against Iran, or at drowning out the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations. That's probably part of it. But it is also, in Israel, a genuine dilemma - and one in which the calculus looks very different than it does in Washington. 'This is a serious debate,' said Shai Feldman, an Israeli expert on nuclear security who made a presentation on the subject at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last week. 'And it's a tough call.' It's worth going through some of the key decision factors cited by Feldman and how they look to Israelis. Start with a threshold question: How much time is there to stop an Iranian bomb? In Washington, the typical answer depends on a projection of how long it would take Iran to finish a weapon and put it on a missile; or perhaps, how long Tehran might need to enrich a sufficient amount of uranium to bomb-grade. Estimates range from 62 days, in the case of uranium enrichment, to several years, for completing a deliverable bomb. Israelis consider another timeline: How long before Iran finishes installing enrichment equipment at its new Fordow facility, which is buried under a mountain near the city of Qom? That plant is a far more difficult target for airstrikes than the buildings in Natanz, where most of the 4.9 tons of enriched uranium Iran has fabricated is now stored. And the latest report from U.N. inspectors suggests that Fordow will be open soon: Centrifuges have been set up, power has been connected and a first delivery of uranium has been made." http://t.uani.com/uPYBTG
Nikolas Gvosdev in WPR: "The latest IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program is a particularly bad piece of news for an Obama administration that is already coping with other brushfires in the Middle East. If President Barack Obama is re-elected next year, then Iran will very likely cross the nuclear finish line on his watch. Given the 'musical chairs' nature of U.S. politics, where the person left standing when the music stops loses, the blame for Tehran getting the bomb will fall squarely on Obama's shoulders, even though one could quite fairly apportion a fair share to the Clinton and Bush administrations. Since 2009, the Obama administration has been struggling to find an effective yet low-cost way to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions. During the 2008 presidential campaign, there were suggestions about using diplomacy to find some sort of 'grand bargain': In return for U.S. security guarantees and economic incentives, Iran would accept stricter IAEA safeguards more likely to prevent weaponization of its civilian nuclear program. After taking office, when the administration's initial diplomatic initiatives didn't work, it shifted to a three-track approach. The first track was to get other countries to sign on to tougher economic sanctions -- both through the U.N. process and through unilaterally adopting more stringent measures designed to choke off Iran's ability to access markets and sources of financing. But that effort seems to have reached its limits, with Russia and China now unlikely to accept further commercial sacrifices -- Iran is a major trading partner of both countries -- to try and prevent it from joining the nuclear club. The second track was to try and encourage Iran's domestic opposition Green Movement, in the hopes that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be forced from office, a successor regime might be more amenable to negotiations. The third track was a series of mysterious incidents -- including the Stuxnet computer virus and a number of assassinations of Iranians known to be involved in the nuclear program -- which led many to believe that covert efforts to damage or delay Tehran's nuclear progress were underway. But the IAEA report suggests that while such actions may have been a major irritant, they have not derailed the Iranian program. As a result, the Islamic Republic is likely to cross the nuclear finish line before its considerable domestic and international problems cause the regime to implode. Moreover, if, in several years time, Iran does possess nuclear weapons and a capacity to deliver them, then even if a combination of deteriorating economic conditions and growing political oppression sparks a popular uprising, there will be no enthusiasm at all for any sort of outside military intervention along the lines of what took place in Libya earlier this year. Washington is thus faced with a series of unpalatable, undesirable choices. One, of course, is to let the process reach its logical conclusion: Allow Iran to become nuclear-weapons capable and shift to a strategy of containment and deterrence similar to U.S. policy toward North Korea. The problem, of course, is that Iran's nuclear capacity does serve two very important strategic goals: circumscribing Israel's -- and America's -- freedom of action. For the past 60 years, the strategic balance in the Middle East has in part been preserved by Israel's ability to field a much more powerful military than its neighbors and to strike unilaterally to destroy or cripple emerging threats. The lack of effective retaliatory capabilities among Israel's neighbors was also part of this equation. Israel has thus had relatively free rein to intervene in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon, and even to occasionally make strikes into other states, such as Iraq in 1981 or Syria in 2007. A nuclear-capable Iran would be able to limit Israel's ability to strike with relative impunity. That would allow Tehran to continue its subrosa support of movements like Hezbollah, while raising the costs should Israel seek to respond to their pinprick pressure against it. A nuclear Iran would also change the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, identified since 1980 by President Jimmy Carter as a 'vital interest' of the United States. Just as Chinese officials have often hinted that, when it comes to Taiwan, the United States would not be willing to trade Los Angeles for Taipei, Iran might similarly seek to raise the costs for the United States to remain forward-deployed in the region. But the Obama administration must also face other sets of realities. The use of large-scale military force to keep Iran from going nuclear would be an expensive and costly proposition, both in terms of resources and lives." http://t.uani.com/v9bfJc
Doyle McManus in LAT: "The United Nations report on Iran's nuclear program released last week should end the debate, if any debate remained, over whether Iran is moving toward acquiring the ability to build a nuclear weapon. In cautious but convincing detail, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency listed evidence that Iran is still conducting research that would lead to an atomic bomb, much of it in secret military laboratories. And Iran has refused to answer the U.N.'s questions or allow U.N. inspectors to see much of what it's doing, the easiest way to refute its critics' charges. But the U.N. report didn't live up to its advance billing on other counts. It didn't say that Iran's leaders have made the decision to build a nuclear device; indeed, U.S. officials say they don't think Tehran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has yet made that choice. Nor did the U.N. report suggest that Iran is any closer to achieving nuclear capability than we already knew. Experts outside the U.S. government estimate that Iran still needs about a year, working at full speed, to build a functioning nuclear bomb - six months to enrich the uranium, longer to fashion it into a weapon. But the U.N. didn't find evidence that such a crash program is underway. A year isn't a long time, but it's still a window of opportunity. That's why the Obama administration's response to the U.N. report was so remarkably muted. There was no statement from the president, no news conference trumpeting a U.N. report that confirmed what the United States been charging for years. Instead, U.S. officials took pains to say that despite the chilling evidence of research on nuclear warheads and detonators, the glass is still half full. 'The IAEA report does not assert that Iran has resumed a full-scale nuclear weapons program,' one senior official told reporters. Iran's current weapons research, he added, 'appears to be relatively uncoordinated and sporadic.' In short, the White House message was this: There's no need yet for Israel or anyone else to go to war. There's still time for less drastic measures - diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions and covert sabotage - to persuade the Iranians to stop. The administration's problem, however, is that its nonmilitary approach hasn't worked either... With more sanctions and more sabotage, the United States and its allies might just succeed in keeping Iran roughly where it is now - a year away from deploying a working nuclear weapon. That doesn't solve the problem; it merely buys time. But as one U.S. official involved in the policy likes to say: In this business, buying time is a form of success." http://t.uani.com/s980La |
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