Iran has stockpiled enough low-enriched uranium for 1-2 nuclear arms but it would not make sense for it to cross the bomb-making threshold with only this amount, a former top U.N. nuclear official was quoted as saying.
In unusual public remarks about Iran’s disputed nuclear programme Olli Heinonen, the former chief of U.N. nuclear inspections worldwide, told Le Monde newspaper that Iran’s uranium reserve still represented a “threat.”
Until he stepped down earlier this month for personal reasons, Heinonen was deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and head of its nuclear safeguards department, which verifies that countries’ nuclear programmes are not being diverted for military use.
A no-nonsense Finn, he was one of the U.N. agency’s leading experts on Iran, which denies Western suspicions that its nuclear programme is aimed at making bombs despite intelligence indications to the contrary, which he investigated for years.
osmoothie
You need to know
Iran has material for 1-2 atom bombs
Iran is nuclear
Israel said Saturday the fueling of Iran’s first nuclear reactor was “totally unacceptable” and urged greater world pressure to force Tehran to cease any uranium enrichment.
“It is totally unacceptable that a country that so blatantly violates (international treaties) should enjoy the fruits of using nuclear energy,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy said in a statement.
With Russian help, Iranian engineers began loading fuel into the country’s first nuclear power plant Saturday, marking a milestone in Tehran’s development of what it insists is a peaceful nuclear energy program.
A top Iranian official, however, was quoted saying Iran will continue to enrich uranium on the side — despite a White House warning that Iran does need the enrichment program once the new Bushehr reactor is online if its intentions are indeed peaceful.
Iran threatens to block Straits of Hormuz if attacked
A senior Iranian military official says Iran will take full control of the Strait of Hormuz should Washington opt to launch aggression against Iran.
“The country’s armed forces which are under the (Islamic Revolution) Leader’s command are in the highest state of preparedness.” head of the Operations Department of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Ali Shademani was quoted by Mehr News Agency as saying on Tuesday.
“Three measures are in store to counter any potential aggression against the country”, he said.
“The first action would be to take full control of the Strait of Hormuz whereby we wouldn’t allow any move by anybody”, the top military official underlined.
He said the enemy ‘will be brought to its knees’ as soon as it makes a move.
Bolton: ‘Israel has days to strike Bushehr’
Israel has only mere days to launch an attack on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor if Russia makes good on its plan to deliver fuel there this weekend, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned Tuesday.
He said that once Russia has loaded the fuel into the reactor — slated for Saturday – Israel would no longer be willing to strike for fear of triggering widespread radiation in an attack.
“This is a very, very big victory for Iran,” Bolton told The Jerusalem Post. “This is a huge threshold.”
Bolton, who also once oversaw US non-proliferation policy, said that when Russia announced the plans to load the fuel last Friday, “the element of surprise was essentially taken away” from Israeli calculations.
Bolton noted that he doesn’t “have a clue” as to whether Israel would actually attack, but he said, “If Israel was right to destroy the Osiraq reactor, is it right to allow this one to continue? You can’t have it both ways.”
Forget START: Russia to provide Iran with nuclear material next week
AP,
Russia announced Friday it will begin the startup next week of Iran’s only atomic power plant, giving Tehran a boost as it struggles with international sanctions and highlighting differences between Moscow and Washington over pressuring the Islamic Republic to give up activities that could be used to make nuclear arms.
Uranium fuel shipped by Russia will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on Aug. 21, beginning a process that will last about a month and end with the reactor sending electricity to Iranian cities, Russian and Iranian officials said.
“From that moment, the Bushehr plant will be officially considered a nuclear energy installation,” said Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency.
Ahmadinejad: Sept. 11 exaggerated
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were exaggerated in a fresh broadside at the United States just days after President Barack Obama voiced willingness to talk to Iran.
Well-known for his anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric, the hardline populist Ahmadinejad also repeated his denial of the Holocaust, on which the consensus of historians is that six million Jews were exterminated by Nazi Germany.
Ahmadinejad said the Sept. 11 attacks with hijacked airliners on New York and Washington D.C. had been trumped up as an excuse for the United States to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ahmadinejad survives assasination attempt
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad survived an attack with a homemade explosive device on his motorcade during a visit to the western city of Hamadan on Wednesday, a source in his office said.
The source said Ahmadinejad’s convoy was targeted as he was traveling from Hamadan’s airport to give a speech in a local sports arena and the president was unhurt but others had been injured in the blast.
One person had been arrested, the presidency source said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
The populist, hard-line Ahmadinejad has accumulated enemies in conservative and reformist circles in the Islamic Republic as well as abroad.
Iran snubs sanctions, will export gasoline
Iran’s oil minister has shrugged off sanctions against the country, saying the country will raise its daily gasoline output to 170 million liters in 4 years.
“Iran will not beg foreigners for undertaking its oil, gas and petrochemical projects,” Massoud Mirkazemi said on Wednesday at the inaugural ceremony of two new projects in Morvarid Petrochemical Complex and Pardis Petrochemical Company in the southern Iranian port city of Assalouyeh in Bushehr Province.
He added that Iran will turn into a gasoline exporter after its daily gasoline production reaches 170 million liters.
“Iran has currently the main know-how in petrochemical industries,” the Iranian minister said.
U.S. paid Iranian nuclear scientist $5 million for information
The Iranian nuclear scientist who claimed to have been abducted by the CIA before departing for his homeland Wednesday was paid more than $5 million by the agency to provide intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program, U.S. officials said.
Shahram Amiri is not obligated to return the money but might be unable to access it after breaking off what U.S. officials described as significant cooperation with the CIA and abruptly returning to Iran. Officials said he might have left out of concern that the Tehran government would harm his family.
“Anything he got is now beyond his reach, thanks to the financial sanctions on Iran,” a U.S. official said. “He’s gone, but his money’s not. We have his information, and the Iranians have him.”
Iranian nuclear scientist returns to Tehran
The mystery surrounding Mr. Amiri has fed those tensions. Mr. Amiri disappeared during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June 2009. It remains unclear how Mr. Amiri reached the U.S., or even obtained a visa; officials familiar with the matter said he defected.
One year after his disappearance, Iranian state media aired a video in which Mr. Amiri alleges he was being held against his will in the U.S. after being captured by U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. Iran filed a complaint to the U.S., according to Iranian media. American officials denied Tehran’s charge that he was kidnapped.
In a second video that surfaced on the Internet, Mr. Amiri appeared to contradict that, saying he was in the U.S. of his own free will, but denying he had defected to the U.S.
In a third video, Mr. Amiri says he is in Virginia, and he isn’t a free man. “If any thing happens to me the United States is responsible. I want my family to know that I never ever betrayed my country.”
Iran-backed group eyed attack on US bases in Iraq
AFP,
Iranian-backed militants recently received specialist training inside Iran to help mount an attack on American military bases in Iraq, the top US commander in Baghdad said on Tuesday.
General Ray Odierno detailed a plot in which he said Ketaib Hezbollah, a Tehran-sponsored Shiite insurgent group, had planned an attack in recent weeks, prompting the US army to increase its security measures.
“There has been some intelligence of Iranian surrogates attempting to attack US bases, which we are watching very carefully,” Odierno told reporters at Camp Victory, a giant US base west of the capital.
“In the last couple of weeks there has been an increased threat of a potential Iran attack … so we have increased our security in some of our bases,” said the general, who commands all 74,000 US troops stationed in Iraq.
“This is another attempt by Iran and others to attempt to influence the US role here inside of Iraq,” he added, naming Ketaib Hezbollah as the militant group behind the conspiracy, and describing the threat as “consistent”.
Iran offers modest new haircut guidelines for men
An Iranian fashion organization has issued a new list of culturally appropriate haircuts for men, possibly indicating a new crackdown on male attire after years of strict rules for women, Iranian media reported.
Although the Ministry of Culture has yet to officially adopt the styles presented by the Veil and Modesty Festival, the private organization said approval is pending. It would be the first such rules for men’s hair styles since 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“We introduced the hairstyles to the Culture Ministry,” said Jaleh Khodayar, head of the group, telling Iranian newspapers Tuesday that it had been approved informally and an official statement would soon be made.
Iran postpones any nuclear talks until late August
Iran will not hold talks with the West over its nuclear program until late August to “punish” world powers for imposing tougher sanctions against the country, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday.
He also vowed that Iran will retaliate should its ships be searched over suspicions that the cargo may violate the new sanctions, which were approved by the U.N. Security Council earlier this month.
The European Union and U.S. Congress followed with new punishing measures in a bid to show the Iranian government that notions of becoming a nuclear power could be accompanied by a steep economic price. Tehran insists its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
Iran to send blockade-busting ship to Gaza
Iran said Tuesday it would send a blockade-busting ship carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists to Gaza, fueling concern in Israel, where commandos were training for another possible confrontation at sea.
Israel warned archenemy Iran to drop the plan. The Iranian announcement came days after Israel eased its three-year-old blockade of Gaza under international pressure following its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla last month.
“No one in their right mind can believe that a ship sent by the ayatollahs and their Revolutionary Guards has anything to do with humanitarian aid,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. “I don’t think there is one single country in this region and beyond that would let such an ayatollah ship come near its coasts.”
Egypt allows 11 US warships to pass through Suez as Iranian flotilla approaches Gaza
The warships may exercise the right to inspect the Iranian boat for the illegal transport or weapons. Newsweek reported that Egyptian authorities could stop the ship for weeks, using technicalities such as requiring that any official documents be translated from Farsi into Arabic.
The magazine’s website also reported that the Iranian navy is the weakest part of its armed forces. Tehran has already backed down from announced intentions to escort the Iranian ships with “volunteer marines” from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.