Eye on Iran: Iran Has Enough Uranium for 5 Bombs

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.    Top Stories Reuters: "Iran has significantly stepped up its output of low-enriched uranium and total production in the last five years would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons if refined much further, a U.S. security institute said. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think-tank which tracks Iran's nuclear program closely, based the analysis on data in the latest report by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which was issued on Friday... Friday's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based U.N. body, showed Iran was pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of U.N. resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity. It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 tons of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5 percent since it began the work in 2007 - some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material. This is nearly 750 kg more than in the previous IAEA report issued in February, and ISIS said Iran's monthly production had risen by roughly a third. 'This total amount of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons,' ISIS said in its analysis." http://t.uani.com/JKCeTO WashPost: "In November, the tide of daily cable traffic to the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan brought a chilling message for Ambassador Matthew Bryza, then the top U.S. diplomat to the small Central Asian country. A plot to kill Americans had been uncovered, the message read, and embassy officials were on the target list. The details, scant at first, became clearer as intelligence agencies from both countries stepped up their probe. The plot had two strands, U.S. officials learned, one involving snipers with silencer-equipped rifles and the other a car bomb, apparently intended to kill embassy employees or members of their families. Both strands could be traced back to the same place, the officials were told: Azerbaijan's southern neighbor, Iran. The threat, many details of which were never made public, appeared to recede after Azerbaijani authorities rounded up nearly two dozen people in waves of arrests early this year. Precisely who ordered the hits, and why, was never conclusively determined. But U.S. and Middle Eastern officials now see the attempts as part of a broader campaign by Iran-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over a span of 13 months. The targets have included two Saudi officials, a half-dozen Israelis and - in the Azerbaijan case - several Americans, the officials say." http://t.uani.com/LBx6ft   WSJ: "Italian automaker Fiat SpA and its sister company Fiat Industrial SpA said Friday they would stop doing business in Iran in line with a trade embargo imposed by the West... Fiat exports cars to Iran while Fiat Industrial exports buses and trucks under its Iveco brand... United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S.-based pressure group, has led a spirited campaign calling for Fiat to exit the Iranian market. For the past year, the group placed advertisements in New York newspapers, and it held a protest at the New York International Auto show. 'Fiat has finally made the responsible decision to end its most egregious ties with the Iranian regime,' said Nathan Carleton, a spokesman for United Against Nuclear Iran, in an email. 'We call on Fiat to now fully end all of its business in Iran, including the sale and manufacturing of all Fiat and Maserati vehicles.'" http://t.uani.com/JKGEtS      UANI in the News  AP: "Italian automaker Fiat SpA, which controls Chrysler, said Friday that it and subsidiaries will immediately halt sales to Iran, following similar moves by other carmakers under pressure to cut ties to Tehran over its disputed nuclear program... The auto industry has been under pressure from the anti-nuclear lobby group United Against Nuclear Iran to cut off business dealings with Iran. UANI says that the global auto industry is the second-largest source of foreign currency for the Iranian government, after oil, and also a source of foreign technology. The decision by Fiat to halt sales 'is a step in the right direction, and it shows the effectiveness of public pressure against these companies,' UANI spokesman Nathan Carleton said from New York... The announcement follows similar ones in recent months by French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen SA, which has entered an alliance with General Motors Co., South Korean automaker Hyundai and German sports carmaker Porsche... 'No car company should be doing business in Iran,' Carleton said. 'The international community is trying to isolate the Iranian regime from the rest of the world, and any company doing business with Iran is providing a lifeline.'" http://t.uani.com/KO86Ev   Dow Jones: "Supporters of trade sanctions against Iran said Friday that Italian auto maker Fiat SpA's (F.MI) decision to stop doing business in Iran represented a major victory in a campaign to align European companies against Iran's nuclear program and human-rights violations. Fiat and its sister companies, Fiat Industrial and CNH Global N.V. (CNH), said they will cease business activities in Iran in support of diplomatic efforts to convince the leaders of Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which is widely suspected of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has denied that it is making nuclear weapons... United Against Nuclear Iran, a New York-based lobbying group, said Fiat's decision is a milestone in its campaign to convince multinational corporations to stop selling products in Iran. 'We welcome this announcement and are pleased that Fiat's subsidiary Iveco will no longer sell trucks to the Iranian regime, which has used them to transport ballistic missiles and perform gruesome public executions,' the group said in a written statement." http://t.uani.com/KpvXuT  Fox News: "After facing an onslaught of criticism that even involved Jennifer Lopez, Fiat has announced that it is halting sales to Iran. The Italian automaker, which controls Chrysler, said in a statement on Friday that it 'supports international efforts for a diplomatic solution' regarding Iran. The international community in the last year has been increasing diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran to back down on its nuclear program. Singer Lopez had been repeatedly asked by United Against Nuclear Iran to renounce her relationship with Fiat after filming a series of commercials for the Fiat 500 minicar last year... Fiat's announcement follows similar ones by Hyundai and Porsche. The auto industry has been under pressure from the anti-nuclear lobby group, United Against Nuclear Iran, to cut ties with the regime." http://t.uani.com/JynEOb  MLive: "Fiat SpA today said it will suspend sales to Iran... According to the Associated Press, the auto industry has been under pressure from the anti-nuclear lobby group, United Against Nuclear Iran, to cut ties with the regime. UANI CEO Mark Wallace spoke earlier this year about UANI's Auto Campaign before a hearing on Iran sanctions held by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (video embedded above)." http://t.uani.com/LPqFIQ     Nuclear Program     NYT: "Iran's nuclear chief, reversing the country's previous statements, said on state television on Sunday that the country would not halt its production of higher-grade uranium, suggesting that the Iranian government was veering back to a much harder line after talks in Baghdad with the West last week ended badly. The official, Fereydoon Abbasi, said there would be no suspension of enrichment by Iran, the central requirement of several United Nations Security Council resolutions. He specifically said that applied to uranium being enriched to 20 percent purity - a steppingstone that puts it in fairly easy reach of producing highly enriched uranium that can be used for nuclear weapons. 'We have no reason to retreat from producing the 20 percent, because we need 20 percent uranium just as much to meet our needs,' Mr. Abbasi said, according to Iranian state television." http://t.uani.com/KDKx0r Reuters: "The U.N. nuclear watchdog has not yet given good enough reasons to visit an Iranian site where it suspects there may have been experiments for developing nuclear weapons, Iranian media said. The Parchin complex is at the centre of Western suspicions that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability despite Tehran's repeated denials of any such ambition. A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week said satellite images showed 'extensive activities' at Parchin. Iranian officials have refused access to the complex, southeast of Tehran, saying it is a military site. 'The reasons and document have still not been presented by the agency to convince us to give permission for this visit,' the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, was quoted as saying by Fars news agency on Saturday." http://t.uani.com/LukJC5 ABC: "During an interview for 'This Week,' Defense Secretary Leon Panetta assured me that the United States has readied plans to carry out a military strike on Iran to prevent the regime from obtaining nuclear weapons if diplomacy fails to dissuade the country from its current path. 'One of the things that we do at the Defense Department, Jake, is plan.  And we have - we have plans to be able to implement any contingency we have to in order to defend ourselves,' Panetta said... During our interview, Panetta expressed hope that the nuclear standoff with Iran could be solved peacefully, but left no doubt as to the position of the United States: An Iran with nuclear weapons is not on the table. 'The fundamental premise is that neither the United States or the international community is going to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.  We will do everything we can to prevent them from developing a weapon,' he said." http://t.uani.com/JS3J7E AFP: "Iran is to build a new nuclear power plant, alongside its sole existing one in the southern city of Bushehr, by early 2014, state television reported on Sunday, quoting the head of the country's Atomic Energy Organisation. 'Iran will build a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bushehr next year,' the television quoted Fereydoon Abbasi Davani as saying. He was referring to the Iranian calendar year running from March 2013 to March 2014. The Mehr news agency suggested the timeline could be longer, quoting Abbasi Davani as saying: 'We will begin plans for a 1,000-megawatt plant in Bushehr next year.' He said foreign contractors would be needed for its construction." http://t.uani.com/JrrpQI Wired: "A massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation. The malware, discovered by Russia-based anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab, is an espionage toolkit that has been infecting targeted systems in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, the Israeli Occupied Territories and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa for at least two years. Dubbed 'Flame' by Kaspersky, the malicious code dwarfs Stuxnet in size - the groundbreaking infrastructure-sabotaging malware that is believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran's nuclear program in 2009 and 2010. Although Flame has both a different purpose and composition than Stuxnet, and appears to have been written by different programmers, its complexity, the geographic scope of its infections and its behavior indicate strongly that a nation-state is behind Flame, rather than common cyber-criminals - marking it as yet another tool in the growing arsenal of cyberweaponry. The researchers say that Flame may be part of a parallel project created by contractors who were hired by the same nation-state team that was behind Stuxnet and its sister malware, DuQu." http://t.uani.com/KpdSxl Sanctions Reuters: "The Department of Commerce is investigating Chinese telecommunications equipment maker ZTE Corp for allegedly selling embargoed U.S. computer products to Iran. The investigation was launched following reports by Reuters in March and April that ZTE had signed contracts to ship millions of dollars worth of hardware and software from some of America's best-known tech firms to Telecommunication Co of Iran (TCI) and a unit of the consortium that controls it along with the Iranian regime. TCI is Iran's largest telecom carrier. 'We've been pursuing it very aggressively,' said a Commerce Department official. Investigators already have met with representatives of ZTE... The U.S. product makers - which included Microsoft Corp, IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co, Oracle Corp and Dell Inc, among others - have all said they were not aware of the Iranian contracts. The Commerce Department official said there is no evidence the American companies were complicit in the transactions." http://t.uani.com/LukJC5 Reuters: "African mobile operator MTN said on Tuesday it is working with U.S. authorities to manage compliance with sanctions against Iran, one of its biggest markets. The telecoms giant is facing a $4.2 billion suit in U.S. courts over allegations by rival Turkcell that it used underhand tactics in acquiring the Iranian licence... 'MTN is working with the U.S. authorities to manage its compliance with U.S. sanctions against Iran. MTN also continues to retain international legal advisors to assist the group in remaining compliant with applicable EU, U.S. and UN sanctions,' MTN said in a statement ahead of an annual general meeting."  http://t.uani.com/M23L3S  Bloomberg: "Iran put in place a system for international transactions after being cut off by Swift, the global bank-transfer messaging service, Press TV reported, citing Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani. Iran already activated the system, Bahmani said yesterday, according to a report published by the state-run news agency. He didn't provide further details. On March 17, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as Swift, halted service for about 24 Iranian lenders sanctioned by the European Union, including the central bank. The cutoff was a response to EU regulations issued a day earlier that ban financial-messaging services for entities subject to an EU asset freeze." http://t.uani.com/Kw6fne WSJ: "South Korea sharply boosted imports of Iranian crude oil in April ahead of a European Union embargo that is scheduled to go into effect July 1, a surprising development given that the South Korean government has been trying to secure a waiver from U.S. Iran-related sanctions in exchange for curtailing shipments from the Islamic Republic. Imports of Iranian barrels rose 42% on year and 57% on month in April after having fallen 22% in the first quarter. January-April shipments were down 10% from the same period a year earlier. 'The April volume includes a portion of what should have been processed through Customs in the months of May and June,' said Korea National Oil Corp.'s spokesman, who wasn't immediately able to confirm the percentage of the April volume--7.5 million barrels, based on preliminary data KNOC issued Tuesday--that represented May and June barrels." http://t.uani.com/KXHmit Human Rights Iran Human Rights: "One prisoner identified as Amirhossein Hosseini was publicly executed in a city square in Ilam (the capital city of the province of Ilam) on the morning of May 24, reported the Iranian state-run news agency Fars. According to Fars, Amirhossein Hosseini was charged with the murder of a 13-year-old. Since May 15, the Iranian authorities have executed at least 59 people." http://t.uani.com/LBxv1F Domestic Politics AP: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the country's newly-elected parliament on Sunday to stand with him against 'evil ones' who he says have encircled the nation. The president's address to the opening session of the parliament was seen as an appeal to conservative opponents who crushed Ahmadinejad's allies in voting that ended earlier this month. 'Today, evils have been mobilized from all directions to put the Iranian nation under pressure. Removing and resisting the pressures, and cooperation, are the main priority today,' Ahmadinejad told lawmakers without elaboration. State TV broadcast the speech live." http://t.uani.com/JFw96C Foreign Affairs Guardian: "A senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards has admitted that Iranian forces are operating in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Ismail Gha'ani, the deputy head of Iran's Quds force, the arm of the Revolutionary Guards tasked with overseas operations, said in an interview with the semi-official Isna news agency: 'If the Islamic republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale.' Isna published the interview at the weekend but subsequently removed it from its website. It quoted Gha'ani as saying: 'Before our presence in Syria, too many people were killed by the opposition but with the physical and non-physical presence of the Islamic republic, big massacres in Syria were prevented.'" http://t.uani.com/JruNek AFP: "Bahrain will stop broadcasting its channels on satellite operator Arabsat to protest an Iran-led 'hostile' media campaign, the state news agency BNA reported on Saturday. 'The Information Affairs Authority (IAA) decided to stop broadcasting Bahrain bouquet on Arabsat, starting from June 1,' BNA said quoting an English language statement. IAA criticised Arabsat for failing to heed repeated requests 'to take an official measure' against Iranian channels which also broadcast on Arabsat." http://t.uani.com/KeR1UV Opinion & Analysis WashPost Editorial Board: "In recent weeks the Obama administration has radiated optimism about the possibility of a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. The latest round of talks in Baghdad this week should lower those expectations. Tehran's negotiators rejected a package offered by the United States and its five partners covering proposed confidence-building measures, and it demanded recognition of an Iranian 'right' to enrich uranium, a concession U.S. officials say they are unprepared to make. The only substantive agreement was on holding another meeting next month in Moscow. For now prolonging diplomacy serves both sides. Iran is able to continue its nuclear work: Reports based on recent international inspections say that it is continuing to add centrifuges to an underground facility called Fordow. The United States and its allies, meanwhile, can hope that the approaching implementation at the end of June of tough new sanctions - including a European embargo on Iranian oil - will provide more leverage. Both sides wish to head off a military strike by Israel, which is unlikely to act as long as talks continue. Some U.S. patience is warranted. But extended negotiations will only benefit Iran, by allowing it to continue work on the Fordow underground facility, which may be nearly immune to Israeli military attack. What's most concerning about the Baghdad talks is that they failed to show that the regime of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has made a strategic decision to strike a bargain. Instead, Tehran sought something for nothing: acceptance by the West of its uranium enrichment in return for assertions that it is not seeking nuclear weapons and promises to cooperate with international inspectors. In fact no 'right' to process uranium exists under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and multiple resolutions of the U.N. Security Council have ordered Iran to cease enrichment. The Obama administration rightly has taken the position that it will consider accepting Iranian uranium enrichment only at the end of a negotiating process; even then such a concession would be highly risky and probably unacceptable to Israel. For now, the crucial question is whether even an interim, time-buying deal is possible." http://t.uani.com/KNZTjS Bret Stephens in WSJ: "In May 1981, John Kifner, a reporter for the New York Times who had covered the Iranian hostage crisis from start to finish, wrote a lengthy story seeking to explain how the embassy seizure had come about and why it dragged out for 444 agonizing days. Thirty-one years later, it still makes for timely reading: 'The early attempts at negotiations,' Mr. Kifner wrote, 'all sank on the rock of Ayatollah Khomeini's moral absolutism. 'This is a war of Islam against blasphemy,' [Khomeini] said. He dismissed the possibility of armed attack, saying that much of the population was 'looking forward to martyrdom,' and he brushed off the threat of economic sanctions: 'We know how to fast.'' Give the late ayatollah his due: He had the courage of his convictions-and he had the West's number. So does his regime. The Islamic Republic has insisted all along that nuclear enrichment is its right. It has consistently responded to threats and sanctions by expanding its nuclear program, bearing the economic sacrifice while forcing the West to bargain for less and less. Yes, the regime is almost certainly lying when it says it has no interest in nuclear weapons. But since when have nations laid bare their secrets or revealed their intentions to the enemy? Altogether, the regime has treated the West the way a shark would a squid: with the combination of appetite and contempt typically reserved for the congenitally spineless. And so it was last week, when the U.S. and its partners arrived in Baghdad for another round of talks with Tehran, confident they were at last about to turn the diplomatic corner. The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency had just announced that he and his Iranian counterpart had all but inked a deal to inspect sites suspected of illicit nuclear work. The looming threat of oil sanctions and the possibility of an Israeli strike were said to be weighing heavily on Iranian minds... The larger question is why the U.S. continues to believe that there's a grand bargain to be struck with the mullahs, and that it lies just inches out of reach. Western analysts have become experts in explaining why Tehran has rejected every diplomatic overture made to it-bad timing, bad mood music, niggardly terms-without ever alighting on what Mr. Kifner noted in 1981: The mullahs believe they have a cause worth fighting for. They take our concessions as evidence of weakness, and our pragmatism as proof of corruption. They're not entirely mistaken. For 33 years, Iran has dealt with us as an enemy. Until we return the favor, we will be fooled again." http://t.uani.com/JKGZg9 Laura Rozen in Al-Monitor: "Recently resumed Iran nuclear talks almost collapsed in Baghdad, just a couple hours before the chief international negotiator announced that the parties had agreed to hold a third meeting in Moscow next month, Western diplomats told Al-Monitor Friday. The first Iran nuclear talks in over a year, held in Istanbul last month, were roundly praised by all parties as constructive and held in a positive atmosphere. The Baghdad meeting got off to a tense and difficult start Wednesday (May 23), after Iran gave a decidedly chilly reception to a proposed international package of inducements for curbing its 20 percent uranium enrichment. However, it was late on the talks' second day (May 24) when the diplomatic process almost totally broke down, European diplomats told Al-Monitor. Nor has it been previously reported that a key impasse was not just between Iran and the six-nation negotiating group known as the P5+1; but rather among members of the P5+1 themselves about the language of the final statement. Specifically, the diplomats disagreed over whether to issue a final statement that might risk not moving to another meeting or trying to gain acceptance by Iran to the P5+1 statement, so the diplomatic process could move ahead, diplomats said. 'The danger of a breakdown came in the afternoon of the second day,' a European diplomat told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity Friday. 'We just didn't look like we had agreement, enough compromise.' At the very end, the final statement reflected a sufficient level of compromise so they could go forward, he said. Other nations had thought they should take a harder line. The diplomat declined to identify which nations in the P5+1 - the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China - pushed for taking a harder line. But he did say that lead international negotiator, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, was ultimately able to find a compromise in working out the text of the final document that every member of the group unanimously endorsed. The statement said while significant gaps remain between Iran and the P5+1, there was enough common ground to move to another meeting to try to advance areas of agreement." http://t.uani.com/Kpgr2e Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.