Clipmarks | merrie's 'tehran' clips

Vienna-Based Investigators Getting Tough On Iran Now

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:38:02 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Why the emphasis now on sins Iran may have committed in the past? Wasn’t the finding that warhead design stopped in 2003 reassuring enough?

No, say nuclear experts inside and outside the international agency. Candor about Iran’s progress in designing a weapon matters because Tehran’s scientists continue to move forward on a related front. They are learning how to make uranium fuel. And if they already have a good warhead design in hand, the lack of fuel may be the one thing standing between them and the ability to make a bomb.

The American finding last December that Iran suspended its weapon-design work in 2003 created a classic case of a glass that could be seen as either half full or half empty.

That does not mean they have a workable design for the most frightening kind of bomb in today’s world — one miniaturized to about one ton so it can sit atop a missile, which is much faster and harder to stop than any plane

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Last week, the issue crystallized publicly when the inspectors issued an uncharacteristically blunt demand for more information from Tehran and, even more uncharacteristically, disclosed the existence of 18 secretly-obtained documents that suggest Tehran had high interest in designing a nuclear weapon before the program was suspended.

In their report last week, the Vienna-based investigators called the evidence of the early warhead work “a matter of serious concern,” and said that uncovering the real story “is critical to an assessment of the nature of Iran’s past and present nuclear program.”

As they have for years, the Iranians repeated their assertion that there was no such armaments program — that their nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes like generating electricity. But the inspectors showed their impatience with such responses, and with the lack of cooperation from Iran in general, by discussing the 18 suspicious documents.

Tags: tehran, vienna-based investigators, 18 suspicious documents, warhead work, uranium, miniaturized missile,

Suicidal Mystics With Nukes

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:27:05 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks:
After more UN sanctions were threatened, Ahmadinejad stated:

As God promised, the oppressors will have their noses rubbed in the dirt. Now they are fulfilling this promise by themselves... Let it be known that in whatever we do, I see the hand of God and the hidden imam at every moment.

The expansion [of the city of Qom] is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge -- possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran -- to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years.

Clip Source: directorblue.blogspot.com

According to 'Twelver' Shi'a Mulims, Imam Hujjat al-Mahdī ( المهدى) is the twelfth Imam and the Mahdi, the ultimate savior of mankind. Twelver Shi'as believe that Muhammad was born in 868 and has been hidden by God (referred to as occultation) to later emerge to fulfill his mission.

Twelver Shi'as cite various references from the Qur'an and reports (Hadith) from Muhammad and the twelve Shi'a Imams. These texts predict the reappearance of Muhammad al-Mahdi which would, in accordance with God's command, bring justice and peace to the world by establishing Islam throughout the world.

Shi'as believe that Muhammad al-Mahdi will reappear when the world has fallen into chaos and civil war emerges between the human race for no reason.

As mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is reported to have ordered the city council to build a boulevard to prepare for the Mahdi. A year later, as Iran's president, he budgeted $17 million for a blue-tiled mosque in Jamkaran that is directly tied to the Mahdi.

Tags: madhi, tehran, ahmadinejad, islamic republic of iran, nuclear weapons

U.N. Chief Meets With Ahmadinejad

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:39:29 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: particularly the demand that it suspend its uranium enrichment.

"We expect to hear that the secretary-general told the Iranian president that he was in violation of three Security Council resolutions, that he should comply with international demands to stop enriching uranium, and to stop the crazy talk," a spokesman for the American mission to the United Nations, Richard Grenell, said.

Iranian officials increasingly are emphasizing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's prophecy that Israel will be erased from the map of the region, but the Western response has been muted.

The U.N.-affiliated Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the three-day food conference in Rome, where yesterday Mr. Ahmadinejad blamed the "bullying powers" for creating a food crisis and called for the formation of "an independent and powerful body" that would "justly regulate" food distribution.

Mr. Mugabe, who critics say has single-handedly transformed his country from a food exporter into a starving n

Clip Source: www.nysun.com

Yesterday's meeting in Rome underlined the increasingly chaotic state of a U.N. conference on food shortages, at which Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, has been given a platform to disparage perceived enemies such as Britain. Thirty world leaders, gathered in the Italian capital to discuss food aid, have instead heard Mr. Ahmadinejad blame "powerful and international capitalists" for rising food and energy prices.

"Mr. Ban said that Iran needs to resolve its nuclear issue through dialogue and in a way consistent with all relevant Security Council resolutions on the issue."

The European Union's top negotiator with Iran, Javier Solana, has been unable to secure a meeting on the nuclear issue with Tehran's leading mullahs for months.

Secretary of State Rice and other Bush administration officials have said in the past that American and Iranian officials have a number of issues to discuss, but a high-level meeting can take place only after Iran obeys Security Council resolutions,

Tags: u.n. conference, rome, food shortages, zimbabwe, mugabe, ahmadinejad, ki ban-moon, security council, nuclear issue, tehran

Tehran Calls Iranian Kurds "Terrorists"

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:59:10 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: In an exclusive interview with Newsmax recently in Berlin, Ahmadi says that Iran was now working hand-in-glove with Turkey to get PJAK labeled as a terrorist organization.

“Iran knows they can’t make trouble for us directly because they have such bad relations with Europe. That’s why they are going through Turkey.”

The Iranian regime has been telling journalists and diplomats that PJAK and the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) are the same. “But we are an Iranian party, and have nothing to do with Turkey,” he says.

PJAK has become a serious threat to the regime in Tehran because it is fighting to overthrow the clerical regime in favor of a secular republic and because it favors equality between men and women, Ahmadi asserts. The group has around 2,500 armed guerilla fighters, 40 percent of whom are women.

Clip Source: www.newsmax.com

Unable to defeat rebel Kurds in their mountain strongholds in Northern Iraq, the Iranian regime has launched a campaign of terror against its own Kurdish citizens in an effort to paint regime opponents as terrorists.

“The regime is planning to blame this attack on PJAK, even though their own agents carried it out,” a well-placed Iranian source tells Newsmax. “They did the same thing in Sistan-va-Balouchestan province earlier this year, then went to [neighboring] Pakistan demanding the extradition of Balouchi activists.”

A PJAK liaison representative in Washington, D.C. denied that the group had any involvement in the Sanandaj explosion, calling the allegations “an Iranian fabrication.”

“PJAK does not carry out operations against civilians,” Saif Badrakhan tells Newsmax. “Iran is behind this kind of operation to terrorize the Kurdish population.”

PJAK President Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, the prime target of the Iranian regime effort, has lived in Germany for the past 35 years

Tags: iranian kurds, pjak, tehran, turkey, europe, terrorists

Iran's Blueprints For Nuclear Warheads

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:47:25 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Governors of the IAEA meet in Vienna next week to discuss the latest report on Iran by the agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
While the inspectors had been allowed to examine them in the country, Teheran had up to now refused to let the IAEA have a copy for closer perusal.
Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency said the apparent concession was intended to head off the threat of new UN sanctions.

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Handing over the blueprints, which can only be for military use, represents the first step towards meeting the demands of the UN nuclear agency.

The move by Teheran will be seen as an attempt to head off deeper UN sanctions. But it is unlikely to deter Britain and the United States from pressing for tough action from the UN Security Council.

The agency had been seeking possession of the blueprints since 2005, when its inspectors stumbled upon them among a batch of other documents during its examination of suspect nuclear activities.

Iran maintains it was given the papers without asking for them during its black market purchases of nuclear equipment decades ago that now serve as the backbone of its programme to enrich uranium - a process that can generate power or create the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

Diplomats said that the Iranians had failed to meet other key IAEA requests for clarification about their nuclear programme.

Tags: blue prints, nuclear warhead, tehran, elbaradei, uranium, u.n., u.s., britain

President Putin:: Found Iran's Leaders 'Bizarre'

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:56:24 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: "This was the first time that Putin was talking to senior Islamic Republic leaders in a substantive and focused way," says a senior Russian official familiar with what happened. "The president found his Iranian interlocutor weird, to say the least. The Iranians mouthed a lot of eschatological nonsense and came close to urging Putin to convert to Islam. It was clear they lived in a world of their own."
Ahmadinejad gave the impression he sought neither advice nor support from the Russians. All he wanted was to project the Islamic Republic as the regional superpower and invite Putin to acknowledge its new status. "It was as if Russia needed Iran, not the other way round," says the Russian source. "Putin was taken aback. He had not expected what he heard."
"The Iranians think they have already won," reports one Russian source who witnessed the visit. "So intoxicated they appeared with hubris that they did not even ask Putin to help them ward off further United Nations sanctions."

Clip Source: www.nypost.com

Putin appears to have discussed his proposed compromise only with Khamenei and not with Ahmadinejad

only days after his Tehran visit, Putin instructed the Russian delegation at a session of the Five Plus One group (the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) to agree to devise new sanctions against Iran

Putin also didn't give Iran the scientific code for the type of enriched uranium that the Bushehr plant would need as fuel

Putin refused to announce a long-promised scheme under which Russia would train hundreds of Iranian scientists and technicians

Another sign of Putin's disappointment: his last-minute decision not to issue an invitation to Ahmadinejad for a state visit to Moscow

But his trip may have helped him understand the limits of playing the Khomeinist card. A member of Putin's entourage sums up the Russian leader's visit to Tehran: "He came, he saw, he was dismayed!"

Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri is based in Europe.

Tags: putin, khomeini, tehran, bushehr, enriched uranium, fuel, convert to islam, ahmadinejad

Syria And Iran Manipulating Turkey On Iraq?

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:18:16 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Instead of playing charms with Tehran and Damascus, the Kurdestan city of Soleimaniye must reinforce its own deterring force and maintain stability and peace on its northern border with Turkey. Knowing all too well that the new Islamist Government in Ankara is shifting the grounds inside the modernist Kemalist Republic, Iraq’s Kurdish leadership mustn’t offer any reason for a Turkish adventure in their areas.
Hence, it is recommended that the Kurdish leaders of Iraq be the ones to reign in the PKK to avoid having the Turkish Army crossing the borders. The US can – and should - broker arrangements between the Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish military to avoid the rise of an anti-Kurdish Triangle in the region.

Clip Source: www.aim.org

Indeed, the Iranian and Syrian regimes have been pushing the precarious mechanisms of a Turkish military intervention into Northern Iraq for a while now. Logically, a collapse of security in the most secure part of Iraq would lead to a crumbling of the military stabilization of the country, a chief objective of US plans in Iraq.

But the Iran plans for Iraq

An Iranian push in the south,
a Syrian opening for the Jihadists in the center, and
dragging Turkey to a dogfight in the mountains of the north.

Moreover, Iran's Pasdaran - the Revolutionary Guard that provides training and support to terrorist groups throughout the region and abroad - is said to have infiltrated some circles within the PKK, since the latter was based in Syria a few years ago. The PKK suddenly has been waging inexplicable operations inside Eastern Turkey with a new energy, after years of calm.

the “axis” is using all its cards to crumble Iraq’s and Lebanon’s democracies

The north must remain stable and secure

Tags: pkk, iraq, turkey, tehran, damascus, kurdestan, soleimaniye

Tehran’s Atomic Ayatollahs

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:03:24 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Can Iran spark global conflict? Yes, but so can other nations, some of them far less dangerous than the regime run by Tehran’s atomic ayatollahs. It’s not only Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about whom we should be worried. Unfortunately, the international system is so fragile that almost any autocrat can commit the act that brings about global conflagration. Today, we see the same conditions that existed before World Wars I and II.

Clip Source: www.commentarymagazine.com

“We got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel,” said President Bush in response to a question during his press conference yesterday. “So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

Before the Great War, as it was once known, there was a confusingly complex international structure that was too difficult for national leaders to comprehend or control. Moreover, grand alliances pulled nations into war when they might otherwise have remained bystanders to conflict. Before World War II, feckless Western leaders let tyrants commit aggression against their less powerful neighbors.

Will we in fact enter a period of turbulence?

There is one critical difference between this time and the periods before the two great conflicts of the last century

Americans still have the power to preserve the peace.

Tags: tehran, ayatollahs, israel, nuclear

Iran 'Lying' About Nukes Says Rice

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:25:02 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: "There is an Iranian history of obfuscation and, indeed, lying to the IAEA," she said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
U.S. officials have long accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons behind the facade of a civil atomic energy program, charges that Tehran denies. But Rice's strong words, including the blunt reference to Iranian "lying," come at a critical time in dealing with the matter.
She also noted that Russia had in the past demonstrated its concern about Iran's program by limiting its cooperation to prevent Tehran from acquiring a full nuclear fuel cycle that could be used to produce weapons-grade material.
"That concern was seen very clearly in Russia's offer to Iran to enrich and reprocess in a joint venture and to bring back any spent fuel so that the fuel cycle wouldn't be available to Iran," she said. "I think there is a reason for that and that is suspicion about Iran's intentions."

Clip Source: apnews.myway.com

"There is a history of Iran not answering important questions about what is going on and there is Iran pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to nuclear weapons-grade material," Rice told reporters

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week there is no proof Tehran is trying to build the bomb. Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are scheduled to see him in Moscow on Friday.

Even as work on the proposed resolution is to continue at an Oct. 17 meeting of senior diplomats in Europe, Putin said Wednesday that Russia was not convinced Iran is trying to create nuclear weapons.

His comments came after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose government is firmly behind the U.S. sanctions drive, and appeared to deal a new blow to efforts to forge a consensus.

"We have no objective data that Iran is seeking to make atomic weapons," Putin said. "Therefore, we proceed from the assumption that Iran has no such plans."

Tags: nuclear, weapon, iran, rice, sarkozy, putin, tehran, iaea, u.n.sanctions, robert gates

Iraqi Shiite Leaders Seeks US-Iran Talks

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:31:31 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: "We will do our best not to allow a permanent (foreign) military base on our land," al-Hakim told hundreds of supporters gathered outside the party's headquarters in Baghdad's Jadriyah district. In the sermon, al-Hakim also urged the region's Arab countries to support the political process in Iraq by opening diplomatic missions here and he appealed on "other nearby Islamic countries" -- a reference to Iran -- to support Iraq and its people.

Clip Source: www.mail.com

The son of one Iraq's most senior statesmen on Saturday called for more dialogue between the United States and Iran as Shiites took their turn celebrating the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Iraq's Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has long played a delicate balancing act in the bitter rivalry between Washington and Tehran, putting off Iranian calls for a U.S. troop pullout while balking at U.S. pressure to take a

Other World Photos

Iraqi Shiite Leader Seeks US-Iran Talks

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tougher line against Tehran.

The senior al-Hakim attended the prayer service in southeastern Baghdad and was greeted by well-wishers afterward, three days after returning home from his last round of chemotherapy in Iran. He was diagnosed last May with lung cancer following tests in a Texas hospital, but chose to be treated in Iran to be near his family.

Ammar al-Hakim appealed for unity among all Iraqis and a faster build up of the national security forces

Tags: al-maliki, shiites, washington, tehran, senior al-hakim, lung cancer

NO NUCLEAR WEAPON FOR IRAN

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:31:32 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: French President Nicolas Sarkozy piled pressure on Iran at the United Nations Tuesday

Clip Source: www.breitbart.com

Sarkozy added there would be no world peace if the international community "shows weakness in the face of the proliferation of nuclear weapons," in a speech received with loud applause from the rest of the assembly.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said last week that France was preparing for war as a worst-case scenario, but Ahmadinejad described such talk as "a propaganda tool. Why is there a need for a war?" he asked.

The United States is pushing for further UN sanctions on Tehran and would hold talks with the four other members of the Security Council -- France, Britain, Russia and China -- along with Germany on the issue this week.

Kouchner and his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, were meanwhile to meet later Tuesday on the sidelines of the General Assembly, diplomats said.

"For my part, I don't use the word 'war,'" Sarkozy told the Times.

press for "an arsenal of sanctions" to convince Tehran to drop its nuclear ambitions.

Tags: sarkozy, kouchner, bush, un sanctions, tehran, security council, france, britain