Iran

[doug]

updated 7:18 p.m. ET Sept. 17, 2009
Election in Iran
Ahmadinejad refuses to rule out weapons
Iran won’t stop work on ‘peaceful’ nuclear programs, president tells NBC
EXCLUSIVE
By Ann Curry and Robert Windrem
NBC News
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused Thursday to explicitly rule out development of nuclear weapons and said in an interview with NBC News that he would “never” halt Tehran’s work on peaceful nuclear programs to mollify Western skeptics.

In the interview, which was conducted by NBC News’ Ann Curry on the grounds of the Presidential Compound in Tehran, Ahmadinejad also defended the legality of his re-election last spring, which was met with days of violence in the streets.

“The law prevails,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “I don’t see any problems.”

NBC News released excerpts of the interview Thursday afternoon. Fuller excerpts were being aired Thursday evening on “NBC Nightly News” and Friday morning on TODAY, and the entire interview was scheduled to air Sunday at 1 p.m. ET on MSNBC TV.

The interview was conducted a week before Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly and two weeks before multilateral talks get under way on Iran’s nuclear program, the first involving Iran since a 2008 session in Geneva foundered over its refusal to discuss its research on enriched uranium.

The Associated Press, citing a secret document it had seen, reported Thursday that the International Atomic Energy Agency had concluded that Iran does have the ability to make a nuclear bomb. The agency later issued a statement, saying it had “no concrete proof” of a nuclear weapons program.

Ahmadinejad did not clear anything up, rebuffing repeated requests to affirm that there were no scenarios under which it would develop nuclear weapons. He said only that such weapons were “not a part of our programs and plans” because “we don’t need such a weapon.”

And he was adamant that he would not yield to pressure from the United Nations, the United States and European governments to put an end to what he maintains are peaceful programs, which have aggravated tensions and led to three sets of Security Council sanctions.

“We have always believed in talking, in negotiating — that is our logic. Nothing has changed,” Ahmadinejad said.

But “if you are talking about the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes, this will never be closed down here in Iran,” he said.

Nor will Tehran take any steps that might weaken its defenses against “the Zionists” — a reference to Israel — and “the warheads which have been stockpiled in Britain, in the U.S., in a handful of other countries,” he said.

“Who started the Iraq war, or Afghanistan, for that matter?” Ahmadinejad asked. “What parties supported Saddam against Iran? Today, who are behind the killing of the Palestinians?”

Ahmadinejad: Protests proof of freedom
The president was similarly unforthcoming when he was pressed to justify the credibility of his re-election June 12, saying he did not “see any problems.”

Opponents have insisted that Mir Hossein Mousavi won the voting and that the government faked the balloting in Ahmadinejad’s favor. Thousands of opponents poured into the streets but were met with a heavy government crackdown.

Opposition leaders say at least 72 protesters were killed, while government officials maintain that 36 died in the unrest, the worst in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.


Ahmadinejad accused the U.S. and British governments of trying to “damage and hurt the Islamic Republic of Iran” by encouraging the riots.

“They were totally wrong in their assumption,” Ahmadinejad said of statements of support for the protesters from President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “What they did was heinous.”

The post-election protests and accusations of fraud were not evidence that the election was tainted, Ahmadinejad said, but proof that “any person can express his or her point of view ... within the confines of the law.”

“The legal frameworks inside Iran are very clear, and if a person has an opinion to express within the confines of the law, they are free to express such opinions,” he said.

Iran’s election laws are built on “the strongest ... foundations,” he said, and “the law prevails. I don't see any problems.”

President calls on U.S., Britain to reform
Large protests are expected when Ahmadinejad addresses the U.N. General Assembly next week.

Ahmadinejad would not preview the themes of his address in New York, saying, “Let’s wait for next week, and you will hear what I have to say.”

But he again accused the United States and Britain of encouraging the opposition, even though he insisted it is not he who needs to reform. Rather than press Tehran over its policies, Western leaders should scale back their own ambitions, he said.


“We think the danger lies in the warheads which have been stockpiled in Britain, in the U.S., in a handful of other countries,” he said, claiming that Washington was spending 200 times as the budget of Iran” on weapons even though its population was only four times larger — “much more money compared to China, Japan, Russia and Iran altogether.”

Ahmadinejad said he would bring a message of “logical behavior and fair play and justice” to the United Nations and would “call on everyone to become friends.”

“Mr. Obama came into office with the slogan of change, and we have welcomed that slogan, and the people of the U.S. also welcomed that slogan,” he said.

“We think that the world and U.S. policies need to fundamentally and seriously change,” he added. “We have also announced that if serious change happens, we welcome that.

“We think for one or two countries to think that they own the world and they are the ones that make the major global decisions and others should follow — that period has come to an end.”

Ann Curry of NBC News reported from Tehran, Iran. Investigative producer Robert Windrem reported from New York. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com contributed to this report.

© 2009 MSNBC.com

[doug]

updated 11:34 a.m. ET Sept. 18, 2009
Violence rises in dueling rallies in Iran
Opposition leader pushed to ground as rival groups march in Tehran

Iranian protesters chant anti-U.S. and anti-Israel slogans during a rally marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day in Tehran on Friday.
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
TEHRAN, Iran - Hard-liners attacked senior pro-reform leaders in the streets as tens of thousands marched in competing mass demonstrations by the opposition and government supporters. Opposition protesters, chanting "death to the dictator," hurled stones and bricks in clashes with security forces.

The opposition held its first major street protests since mid-July, bringing out thousands in demonstrations in several parts of the capital. In some cases only several blocks away, tens of thousands marched in government-sponsored rallies marking an annual anti-Israel commemoration.

The commemoration, known as Quds Day, is a major political occasion for the government — a day for it to show its anti-Israeli credentials and its support for the Palestinians. During a speech for the rallies, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against Israel and the West, questioning whether the Holocaust occurred and calling it a pretext for occupying Arab land. Quds is the Arabic word for Jerusalem.

But the opposition was determined to turn the day into a show of its survival and continued strength despite a fierce three-month-old crackdown against it since the disputed June 12 presidential election.

A day earlier, in an interview with NBC, Ahmadinejad defended the legality of his re-election last spring, which was met with days of violence in the streets. “The law prevails,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “I don’t see any problems.”

The four top opposition leaders joined Friday's protests, in direct defiance of commands by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who barred anti-government demonstrations on Quds Day. That could provoke an escalation in the crackdown: hard-line clerics have been demanding the past week that any leader backing the protests should be arrested.

Former president attacked

Tens of thousands joined the government-organized marches, starting in various parts of the capital and proceeding to Tehran University. Police and security forces, along with pro-government Basij militiamen, fanned out along main squares and avenues and in many cases tried to keep nearby opposition protesters away from the Quds Day rallies to prevent clashes, witnesses said.

But at one of the several opposition rallies around the city, a group of hard-liners pushed through the crowd and attacked former President Mohamad Khatami, a cleric who is one of the most prominent pro-reform figures, according to a reformist Web site. The report cited witnesses as saying the opposition activists rescued Khatami and quickly repelled the assailants.

Another reformist Webs site said Khatami's turban was disheveled and he was forced to leave the march.

Hard-liners tried to attack the main opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, when he joined another protest elsewhere in the city, a witness said. Supporters rushed Mousavi into his car when the hard-liners approached, and the vehicle sped away as his supporters pushed the hard-liners back, the witness said. He and other witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation.

In one of the main Tehran squares, Haft-e Tir, baton-toting security forces tried to break up one of the opposition marched, and were met with protesters throwing stones and bricks, witnesses said. Several policemen were seen being taken away with light injuries. At least 10 protesters were seized by plainclothes security agents in marches around the city, witnesses said.


The opposition claims that Ahmadinejad won the June election by fraud and that Mousavi is the rightful victor. Hundreds of thousands marched in support of Mousavi in the weeks after the vote, until police, Basij and the elite Revolutionary Guard crushed the protests, arresting hundreds. The opposition says 72 people were killed in the crackdown, thought the government puts the number at 36. The last significant protest was on July 17.


‘Not Gaza, not Lebanon — our life is for Iran’

On Friday, opposition supporters poured out on the streets in green T-shirts and wearing green wristbands — the color of the reform movement — and marched with fingers raised in the V-sign for victory, chanting "Death to the Dictator."

Others shouted for the government to resign, carried small photos of Mousavi, while some women marched with their children in tow.

There were also chants of: "Not Gaza, not Lebanon — our life is for Iran" — a slogan defying the regime's support for Palestinian militants in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla.

Two other opposition leaders appeared at the protests — Mahdi Karroubi, who also ran in the June election, and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency. Rafsanjani is a senior cleric in Iran's leadership but has been a behind-the-scenes supporter of Mousavi.

His appearance at the rally is a rare overt show of backing for street protesters. It comes after Rafsanjani was banned this year from his customary role delivering the Friday prayers on Quds Day, which he has done the past 25 years. On Friday, the prayer sermon was delivered by a hard-liine supporter of Ahmadinejad, Ahmad Khatami.

Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust

In sheer numbers, the opposition turnout was far smaller than the mass pro-government Quds Day marches — not surprising given the state's freedom to organize the gathering. Customarily on Quds Day, Tehran residents gather for pro-Palestinian rallies in various parts of the city, marching through the streets and later converging for the prayer ceremony. The ceremony was established in 1979 by the leader of the Islamic Revolution and founder of present-day Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Just hundreds of yards away from opposition protesters on the main Keshavarz Boulevard, thousands of Ahmadinejad supporters marched carrying huge photographs of the president and Supreme Leader Khamenei. Some in the government-sponsored rally chanted: "Death to those who oppose the supreme leader!"


At the climax of the occasion, Ahmadinejad addressed worshippers before Friday prayers at the Tehran University campus, reiterating his anti-Holocaust rhetoric that has drawn international condemnation since 2005. He questioned whether the "Holocaust was a real event" and saying Israel was created on "false and mythical claims."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 2:47 a.m. ET Sept. 24, 2009
Iran offers U.S. access to nuclear scientists
Ahmadinejad says he wants to buy uranium from U.S. for medical purposes
By Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post
UNITED NATIONS - Iran is willing to have its nuclear experts meet with scientists from the United States and other world powers as a confidence-building measure aimed at resolving concerns about Tehran's nuclear program, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday.

At international talks next week on its nuclear ambitions, Iran also will seek to buy from the United States enriched uranium needed for medical purposes, Ahmadinejad told reporters and editors from The Washington Post and Newsweek. Agreement by the Americans, he suggested, would demonstrate that the Obama administration is serious about engagement, while rejection might give Iran an excuse to further enrich its stock of uranium.

"These nuclear materials we are seeking to purchase are for medicinal purposes. . . . It is a humanitarian issue," Ahmadinejad said in the interview. "I think this is a very solid proposal which gives a good opportunity for a start" to build trust between the two countries and "engage in cooperation."

Nuclear research reactors are used to create radioactive isotopes for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The Iranian president said that about 20 medical products are created at a reactor in Tehran but that more fuel is needed.

Ahmadinejad made his proposal against the backdrop of increasingly urgent efforts by the United States and other major powers to prod Iran to fully disclose its nuclear program or face stricter sanctions. On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday discussed the possibility of what Obama called "serious, additional sanctions," while France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, told French television that the "dialogue is achieving nothing. There will be a timeline, a date limit. In my mind, it's the month of December."

Medvedev, echoing a statement he made last week, said: "Russia's position is simple: Sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable."

On Oct. 1, a senior Iranian diplomat will meet counterparts from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in Geneva to discuss the nuclear program, and Ahmadinejad said he will bring the new proposal. In a meeting Wednesday evening at the United Nations, foreign ministers and senior officials from the six countries met to plot strategy for the session.

"We expect a serious response from Iran" and will decide on "next steps" if it is not forthcoming, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement approved by the six nations.

Obama singled out Iran and North Korea as nuclear outliers in his speech before the General Assembly on Wednesday. "If they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East, then they must be held accountable," he said as Ahmadinejad sat in the fifth row of the chamber. "The world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced. We must insist that the future does not belong to fear."

‘Implied blackmail’
Iran's medical reactor was supplied by the United States during the shah's rule. But according to David Albright, a former weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, Iran received additional uranium only from Argentina after the 1979 revolution. Argentina cut off those supplies sometime in the 1980s.

Albright said Iran's latest move is "clever" because there is "implied blackmail" behind the idea. If the material is not supplied, Iran could announce that it has no choice but to make the material, which is nearly 20 percent enriched; the material Iran is now producing is 3 to 5 percent enriched and suitable only for energy purposes. Allowing Iran to purchase the new material would require a waiver of international sanctions.


While weapons-grade material is more than 90 percent enriched, making material for the medical reactor could put Iran on the next step to reaching that level.

Albright said the proposal to make Iran's nuclear experts available to answer questions from international scientists is also potentially significant because Iran has not previously allowed such a meeting, even in an unofficial setting.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the proposal. The Iranian president did not mention the proposal during a speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday night; instead, he spent much of the address ranting against Israel and capitalism. Many diplomats, including those from the United States, left the chamber.


Challenging the interviewers
In the one-hour interview, Ahmadinejad appeared relaxed and confident, frequently bantering with and challenging the interviewers as he spoke through an interpreter. He also talked in detail about various technical reports on Iran's nuclear programs by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He insisted that Iran has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons but did not directly answer whether his government would pledge never to acquire them. "We fundamentally believe nuclear bombs are the wrong thing to have," he said.

He also asserted that the attention focused on Iran's uranium enrichment is misplaced, because, he said, it is only for electricity and cannot be used for bombs. "Don't you think it is hilarious to say that it is potentially dangerous for Iran to possess one nuclear warhead for the whole world, but that the fact that the United States possesses 10,000 of them poses no threat whatsoever?" he jibed.

Ahmadinejad expressed some hope for a change in relations with the United States with the election of Obama, but he warned that the new administration should not simply repackage old proposals with new language.

"Cosmetic or superficial changes will not be able to resolve any of the problems we face today. It will only complicate them," he said.

"We hope Mr. Obama is seeking real change," he added. "We are of the belief that if he decides he will at least be able to change at least a segment of the changes he had his mind set on. And we are willing to help bring about those changes."

At that point in the interview, Ahmadinejad announced Iran's readiness to purchase nuclear material from the United States and to have its nuclear experts hash out issues with other experts. "Why not just let them sit and talk and see what kind of capacity they can build? I think it is good thing to happen," he said.

Afghan ‘defeat,’ 9/11 ‘blood’
When the subject turned to the war in Afghanistan, Ahmadinejad seemed almost to gloat about the dilemma facing the United States.

"Everyone knows that NATO is close to final defeat in Afghanistan," he said. "We could just stay silent about it and be an onlooker because at the end of the day, some NATO states happen to be our enemies. So we can be happy they are getting defeated there. But we are not happy. It saddens us."


But, he said, "we are ready to assist, provided, though, that the policies being pursued change. . . . Afghanistan does not have a military solution to it."

Ahmadinejad expounded at some length about the sad history of foreign invaders in Afghanistan. When it was pointed out to him that more than 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he shrugged.

"Have they managed to sort of reappear and be alive again after the crimes that were carried out in Afghanistan?" he said. "Not only that, but tens of thousands after have been killed as a result. You cannot wash blood with blood."

Staff writer Colum Lynch contributed to this report.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

[doug]

updated 2:53 p.m. ET Sept. 25, 2009
Obama demands Iran open plant to inspectors
Iranian president says Obama will regret statements over secret facility
NBC News and news services
PITTSBURGH - President Barack Obama demanded Friday that Iran open up a previously covert nuclear fuel facility to international inspectors, saying "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country had complied with rules of the U.N. nuclear agency that require disclosure of any new facility six months before uranium enrichment becomes operational.


He told a news conference Friday that the new facility won't be operational for 18 months so Iran has not violated any requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency, however, said Iran must notify it when the nation begins designing such a facility.

With talks on the Iranian nuclear program set for Oct. 1, Ahmadinejad said President Barack Obama will regret his statement.

The Iranian leader was peppered with questions about the nuclear program after Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke at the opening of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, disclosing intelligence that showed Iran was constructing the new enrichment facility near Qom, the Shiite Islam holy city about 100 miles southwest of Tehran.

The three leaders said the revelation of the facility puts heavy new pressure on Tehran to quickly disclose all its nuclear efforts — including any moves toward weapons development — "or be held accountable."

The Iranians said in March 2007 they were "suspending" the agreement requiring early notification. But the IAEA countered that a government cannot unilaterally abandon such an agreement.

'A growing concern'

Speaking at an overflowing news conference, Ahmadinejad dodged a question about whether Iran had sufficient enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear weapon, but said Tehran rejects such armaments as “inhumane.”

Ahmadinejad said he thought Obama represented change. "Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Brown are not that important to us," he said.

Earlier, Obama, flanked by Brown and Sarkozy, said the site "deepens a growing concern" that Iran has failed to live up to its international obligations.

Obama said the "size and configuration" of the site was inconsistent with a peaceful facility, which is a direct challenge to Tehran's claim that its nuclear plants are designed for civilian purposes.

The three leaders made the announcement before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

'Line in the sand'

Speaking after Obama, Sarkozy said Iran must comply with international demands by December or face a new round of sanctions. "Everything must be put on the table now," the French leader said.

Brown bluntly accused Iran of engaging in "serial deception" that would "shock and anger" the world.

The Western powers had "no choice but to draw a line in the sand" on Iran's nuclear program, Brown said.

Separately, Russia said Friday that Iran's construction of a second uranium enrichment plant violated U.N. Security Council decisions and should be investigated immediately by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

A statement by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on Iran to cooperate with the proposed probe and said Moscow remained committed to dialogue with Tehran on nuclear issues. He urged Tehran to prove that its program is intended for peaceful purposes.

The statement made no mention of sanctions. However, earlier this week, Medvedev opened the door to backing potential new sanctions as a reward to Obama's decision to scale back a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe.

A senior administration official said Obama told Medvedev about the facility during their meeting this week in New York. The Chinese were informed about 48 hours ago and are "just absorbing these revelations," the official said.

Before the scheduling of the Oct. 1 meeting, the U.S. had long avoided direct talks with Tehran over its nuclear program.

Raising the pressure

The Obama administration wants to ratchet up pressure on Iran on the eve of the talks to make clear that Tehran has not been forthcoming about its nuclear activities, officials told NBC.

Earlier, senior administration officials noted that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty requires countries to disclose such facilities at the beginning of construction. This plant, located about 20 miles from the holy city of Qum, would also be in violation of U.N. resolutions requiring Iran to halt enrichment activities.

U.S. officials said that the proximity to Qum would make a strike on the facility very difficult politically as it would likely spark an uproar in the Muslim world.


Later Friday, Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, confirmed that Tehran was "now in the process of building" what he called "a semi-industrial plant for enriching nuclear fuel," according to the state news agency IRNA.

But Salehi, who said the plant would "be in the framework of the measures" of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave no details on the facility, including its name or location.

Iran had previously said it was operating only one plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.


Disclosure on Monday

Iran has kept the facility, 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from weapons inspectors until a letter it sent to the IAEA on Monday, which was publicly disclosed for the first time Friday.

But the U.S. has known of the facility's existence "for several years" through intelligence developed by U.S., French and British agencies, a senior White House official said. Obama decided to gather allies to talk publicly about it after Iran's letter made clear it had become aware that Western intelligence knew of the project, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to let the statements from Obama and the leaders remain the focus.

The plant would be about the right size to enrich enough uranium to produce one or two bombs a year, but inspectors must get inside to know what is actually going on, the official said.

Obama hopes the disclosure will increase pressure on the global community to impose new sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop its nuclear program.

Beyond sanctions, the leaders' options are limited and perilous; military action by the United States or an ally such as Israel could set off a dangerous chain of events in the Islamic world. In addition, Iran's facilities are spread around the country and well-hidden or buried, making an effective military response logistically difficult.

The leaders did not mention military force. But Sarkozy said ominously, "Everything, everything must be put on the table now. We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the motors are running."

The disclosure comes on the heels of a U.N. General Assembly meeting at which Obama saw a glimmer of success in his push to rally the world against Iranian nuclear ambitions. And it comes just days before Iran and six world powers are scheduled to discuss a range of issues including Tehran's nuclear program.

'Grave development'

Germany is one of those six powers, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Friday that her country views the revelation of the second nuclear site as "a grave development" and called on Iran to answer IAEA questions about it "as quickly as possible."

She said Germany, Great Britain, France and the United States had consulted on the issue and agreed to a joint response. Merkel did not appear with Obama, Sarkozy and Brown because she had an already-scheduled meeting with Russian President Medvedev at the same time.


Address to U.N.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made no mention of the facility while attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week. But he insisted that his country has fully cooperated with international nuclear inspectors. Iran denies that it is enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb — as the West suspects — and says it is only doing so for energy purposes.

However, Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single publicly known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.

Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential, said that Iran's letter to the IAEA contained no details about the location of the second facility, such as when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.

But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was underground and is the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year. The U.S., British and French officials provided detailed information to the IAEA on Thursday, Obama said.

"The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program," he said.

Iranian semiofficial new agency ISNA on Friday confirmed reports on a second enrichment plant.

An August IAEA report said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium at the first facility, also underground and located outside the southern city of Natanz. The report said that only about 4,600 centrifuges were fully active.

The Islamic Republic insists that it has the right to the activity to generate fuel for what it says will be a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors.

But because enrichment can make both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will use the technology to generate the fissile material used on the tip of nuclear warheads.

NBC's Savannah Guthrie, Andrea Mitchell and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

© 2009 MSNBC.com

[doug]

updated 5:56 p.m. ET Sept. 25, 2009
Obama: World united on Iran
Iranian president says suspect nuke plant in compliance; agency disagrees
NBC News and news services
PITTSBURGH - After accusing Iran of secretly building an underground nuclear facility, President Barack Obama said Friday that the world has never been more united in standing up to the Islamic Republic's nuclear threat.

Obama said the international community had spoken and it' was up to Iran to either choose to give up what the U.S. says is the desire for nuclear weapons and abide by international standards, or continue down a path toward confrontation.

The president would not rule out military options, but he said his preferred course of action is to resolve the standoff diplomatically.

Earlier, Obama and the leaders of France and Britain, in Pittsburgh for a world economic summit, accused Iran of clandestinely building an underground plant to make nuclear fuel. Obama called the international response “an unprecedented show of unity.”

The leaders demanded that Iran open all nuclear sites for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.


"Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow," Obama declared. "The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program."

Unbowed, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country had done nothing wrong and Obama would regret his accusations.

Brown: "Serial deception'

At a news conference in New York, Ahmadinejad said the plant wouldn't be operational for 18 months but sidestepped a question about whether Iran had sufficient enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear weapon. Still, he said Tehran rejects such armaments as "inhumane."

The plant, near the holy city of Qom southwest of Tehran, would be about the right size to enrich enough uranium to produce one or two bombs a year, but inspectors must get inside to know what is actually going on, one U.S. official said.

Disclosure of the site added urgency to a diplomatic standoff with Iran over the nature of its nuclear program, a subject sure to be raised at a meeting next week in Geneva between Iran, the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. It also appeared to increase the likelihood of new U.N. sanctions against Iran for what Obama called a troublesome pattern of cheating on its international nuclear obligations.

"We will not let this matter rest," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who accused Iran of "serial deception."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Iran has until December to comply with demands for a fuller accounting of its program or face new sanctions.

On Capitol Hill, three senators — Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana, Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — issued a joint statement condemning Iran.

"Given Iran's consistent pattern of deceit, concealment and bad faith, the only way to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions is to make absolutely clear to the regime in Tehran that its current course will carry catastrophic consequences," the senators said. "We must leave no doubt that we are prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Iran's nuclear breakout."

Suspicion surround intentions

Iran had previously acknowledged having only the one uranium enrichment plant, under international monitoring, and had denied allegations of undeclared nuclear activities.

Said Obama: "The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law."


A few hours later, the head of Iran's nuclear program suggested U.N. inspectors would be allowed to visit the site. Ali Akbar Salehi called the facility "a semi-industrial plant for enriching nuclear fuel" that is not yet complete, but he gave no other details, according to the state news agency IRNA.

Iran has stuck to its story of wanting nuclear power only for energy generation, not to build bombs. But suspicion of its intentions have been fueled by Tehran's reluctance to meet international demands for more transparency. Friday's disclosure appeared to deepen that worry.

Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he doubts Iran will now feel compelled to be more open.

"The lesson they are likely to take from this is: ‘We have to try even harder at hiding these things,'" Clawson said in a telephone interview.

James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said a consensus has developed that if Iran were to decide to manufacture nuclear weapons the key material probably would be produced in a clandestine facility.

"This should persuade any doubters that Iran's program is not for peaceful purposes," Acton said.

Ahmadinejad, before his news conference, told Time magazine his nation was keeping nothing from international inspectors and needn't "inform Mr. Obama's administration of every facility that we have."

Pressing his country on such matters "is definitely a mistake," he said. "We have no secrecy."


'Serious concerns'

U.S. intelligence believes the facility is on a military base controlled by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, according to a document that the Obama administration sent to U.S. lawmakers. It was provided to The Associated Press by an official on condition of anonymity because, though unclassified, it was deemed confidential. The military connection could undermine Iran's contention that the plant was designed for civilian purposes.

Beyond tougher economic sanctions, options for acting against Iran are limited and perilous.

Military action by the United States or an ally such as Israel could set off a dangerous chain of events in the Islamic world. In addition, Iran's facilities are spread around the country and well hidden, making an effective military response difficult.

Iran kept the facility, located 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from IAEA weapons inspectors until revealing it in a letter to the agency on Monday. The U.S. has known of the facility's existence for several years through intelligence developed by U.S., French and British agencies, a senior White House official said.

Obama decided to gather allies to talk publicly so as not to let Iran have the only word, officials said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in Pittsburgh with other world leaders for the G-20 summit meeting, said the newly disclosed uranium enrichment facility is "a source of serious concerns." He called on Tehran to act quickly to gain the trust of the international community and "demonstrate readiness for full-scale cooperation," according to a statement quoted by the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass.

Sergei Karaganov, Kremlin-connected head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, an advisory body, speaking in an interview with The Associated Press in Moscow, said, "Russia, even though it doesn't believe in economic sanctions, will go for a new round of sanctions that will stop short of economic warfare or a military solution."

China, too, urged Iran to cooperate, but a senior official batted down the idea of punishing Tehran. "I think that all the issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation," Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said.


Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single publicly known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.

Tehran maintains right

The Islamic Republic insists that it has the right to the activity to generate fuel for what it says will be a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors.

But because enrichment can make both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will use the technology to generate the fissile material used on the tip of nuclear warheads.

Officials said Iran's letter to the IAEA contained no details about the location of the second facility, when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.

But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year.

NBC's Savannah Guthrie, Andrea Mitchell and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

© 2009 MSNBC.com

[dmholmes]

updated 12:14 a.m. ET Sept. 26, 2009
Politics
Obama's focus shifts from engaging Iran
Emphasis moves toward international consensus for tougher action
ANALYSIS
By Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - The disclosure of a second uranium enrichment site in Iran has led the Obama administration to shift the emphasis in its dealings with the Islamic republic -- away from engagement and toward building an international consensus for sterner action against Tehran.

The effort to directly engage Iran was a hallmark of the early months of the administration, with President Obama offering a televised greeting in honor of the Persian New Year and sending private letters to the country's supreme leader. But the gestures went largely unreciprocated. Now, while not shutting the door on engagement entirely, the United States and its allies plan to forcefully press the case that Tehran has been caught, red-handed, in yet another violation of international rules.

Officials hope that the pressure -- to be applied at previously scheduled talks Thursday in Geneva -- will force Iran into a broader discussion about its program and then into a serious set of negotiations.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, sharing the stage with Obama at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, said Friday that time is running out for Iran to avoid answering questions.

December deadline
"Everything must now be put on the table," he said bluntly. "Let us not allow the Iranian leaders to buy time while the centrifuges are turning. And if by December there is no significant change in policy on the part of the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken."

The talks in Switzerland will involve diplomats from Iran, as well as those from the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China. U.S. officials, in particular, appear determined to make clear that tougher action against Iran should not be seen solely as "made in America" but rather as the collective will of other countries involved in the effort to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

In his comments Friday, Obama took a strikingly less strident tone than either Sarkozy or British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suggesting a deliberate strategy to entice Russia and China -- skeptics of sanctions.

Obama said that since the start of his administration, he has argued that "by keeping the path of diplomacy open, that would actually strengthen world unity and our collective efforts to then hold Iran accountable.

"I think you're starting to see the product of that strategy unfold during the course of this week," he told reporters.

Indeed, Russia's initial reaction to the new Iranian disclosure was unusually forceful.

Russia calls for probe
"Iran's construction of a uranium enrichment plant violates decisions of the United Nations Security Council," according to an official statement from the Kremlin, which demanded that the International Atomic Energy Agency "investigate this site immediately" and that Iran "cooperate with this investigation."

Iran has denied that the newly discovered site represents a violation of its international obligations, so the Kremlin's dismissal of that claim must have been particularly gratifying to Washington. During the Bush administration, Russia -- after much haggling -- agreed three times to support U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran, but it insisted on watering them down and then would claim the sanctions were not effective.


Now the question is whether Russia -- which has long had close ties with Iran -- will be prepared to take even tougher action if Tehran resists full disclosure, such as canceling fuel shipments to the Bushehr reactor, which Moscow constructed.

"So much depends on the Russians," said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He noted that sanctions to date have been used in an attempt to change Iran's behavior, without much success. Now, tougher sanctions may need to be used as punishment.

China probably remains the most difficult obstacle to broad new international sanctions. The Chinese reaction on Friday was much weaker than Kremlin's.

"We hope that the IAEA will deal with the matter according to its terms of reference and its mandate," Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a brief statement. "It is also our hope that Iran will cooperate with the IAEA on this matter."


Chinese official: Negotiate
Another official, He Yafei, the vice foreign minister, stressed the need for negotiations. "You talk about punishment, and personally I don't like the word 'punishment,' and I think all issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation," he told reporters.

London's Financial Times reported Tuesday that Chinese state companies this month began supplying refined gasoline to Iran and now provide up to one-third of the country's imports, effectively filling the gap left by such companies as BP and India's Reliance as they stopped selling gasoline to Iran in the past year. Iran is one of the world's biggest oil producers, but it does not have enough refineries, forcing it to rely on gasoline imports for nearly one-quarter of its consumption.

Lawmakers in Congress have pressed for new sanctions on Iran to include a ban on gasoline imports, but the rush by Chinese companies to sell to Iran demonstrates how difficult it might be to erect an effective sanctions regime. Moreover, within a couple of years, Iran will have improved its refining capacity to such an extent that it may no longer need to import gasoline, said Ray Takeyh, a Council on Foreign Relations scholar who until recently was a senior adviser on Iran at the State Department.

In any case, he said, increased sanctions are unlikely to influence Iran's thinking.

Sanctions best option
"I just don't think it will fundamentally change the Iranian regime's priorities," Takeyh said. "My gut feeling is the regime is willing to absorb that cost" to acquire nuclear weapons.

But for the Obama administration, sanctions are the best option.

The discovery of the secret plant, after all, suggests that any military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear program will not solve the problem; another plant can always be built in secret.

In an interview to be broadcast Sunday on CNN, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that if Iran's program were destroyed by force, it would take the country one to three years to get it running again.

"The reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time," he said.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

[doug]

updated 1:25 p.m. ET Sept. 26, 2009
Iran: UN inspectors OK at nuke site
Western leaders accuse Tehran of constructing secret underground facility
The Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will allow the U.N. nuclear agency to inspect a newly revealed and still unfinished uranium enrichment facility, the country's nuclear chief told state television Saturday.

Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi didn't specify when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency could visit the site, but said it has to be worked out with the agency under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty rules.

Iran's newly revealed enrichment site is said to be in the arid mountains near the holy city of Qom, inside a heavily guarded, underground facility belonging to the elite Revolutionary Guard.

The small-scale site is meant to house no more than 3,000 centrifuges — much less than the 8,000 machines at Natanz, Iran's known industrial-scale enrichment facility. Still, the enriching machines in Qom facility will produce nuclear fuel — or possibly the payload for atomic warheads.

President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran on Friday of constructing a secret underground uranium enrichment facility and of hiding its existence from international inspectors for years.

But Salehi said there was nothing secret about the site and that Iran complied with U.N. rules that require it to inform the world body's nuclear agency six months before a uranium enrichment facility becomes operational.

"Inspection will be within the framework of the regulations ... we have no problem with inspection (of the site). We will work out this issue with the agency and will announce the date of the inspection later after reaching an agreement with IAEA," Salei told state television Saturday.

Salehi, who is also the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said Tehran should be praised, not condemned, for voluntarily revealing the existence of the nuclear facility.

"Under (NPT) rules, we are required to inform the IAEA of the existence of such a facility 180 days before introducing materials but we are announcing it more than a year earlier. Still, we see there is controversy. We are astonished," he said.

'Blind the eyes of the enemies'
Iran says the new facility won't be operational for 18 months so Iran has not violated any IAEA requirements.

The Iranians claim to have withdrawn from an agreement with the IAEA requiring them to notify the agency of the intent to build any new nuclear facilities and instead are now only subject to the six-month notification requirement before a facility becomes operational.

But the IAEA says Tehran cannot unilaterally withdraw from that bilateral agreement and should have announced just the intent to build the facility.


A close aide to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said said Saturday that the Qom facility will be operational "soon," perhaps even ahead of the 18 month figure cited by Salehi.

"This new facility, God willing, will become operational soon and will blind the eyes of the enemies," Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani told the semi-official Fars news agency.

Salehi said that by reporting the existence of the site voluntarily to the IAEA, Iran "pre-empted a conspiracy" against Tehran by the U.S. and its allies who were hoping to reveal the site as evidence that Iran was developing its nuclear program in secret.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has foiled their planned conspiracy," he said.

Salehi said construction of the Qom facility was a "precautionary measure" to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from possible attacks.

"Given the threats we face every day, we are required to take the necessary precautionary measures, spread our facilities and protect our human assets. Therefore, the facility is to guarantee the continuation of our nuclear activities under any conditions," he told the television.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 5:48 p.m. ET Oct. 3, 2009
NYT: U.N. report says Iran has data for a nuke
Secret U.N. analysis confirms Tehran’s ability to design, produce warhead

Iran's newly disclosed uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom is pictured in this GeoEye satellite photograph.
By William J. Board and David E. Sanger
The New York Times
Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.

The report by experts in the International Atomic Energy Agency stresses in its introduction that its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations.

But the report’s conclusions, described by senior European officials, go well beyond the public positions taken by several governments, including the United States.

Two years ago, American intelligence agencies published a detailed report concluding that Tehran halted its efforts to design a nuclear weapon in 2003. But in recent months, Britain has joined France, Germany and Israel in disputing that conclusion, saying the work has been resumed.

A senior American official said last week that the United States was now re-evaluating its 2007 conclusions.

The atomic agency’s report also presents evidence that beyond improving upon bomb-making information gathered from rogue nuclear experts around the world, Iran has done extensive research and testing on how to fashion the components of a weapon. It does not say how far that work has progressed.

The report, titled “Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program,” was produced in consultation with a range of nuclear weapons experts inside and outside the agency. It draws a picture of a complex program, run by Iran’s Ministry of Defense, “aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system,” Iran’s medium-range missile, which can strike the Middle East and parts of Europe. The program, according to the report, apparently began in early 2002.

If Iran is designing a warhead, that would represent only part of the complex process of making nuclear arms. Experts say Iran has already mastered the hardest part, enriching the uranium that can be used as nuclear fuel.

While the analysis represents the judgment of the nuclear agency’s senior staff, a struggle has erupted in recent months over whether to make it public. The dispute pits the agency’s departing director, Mohamed ElBaradei, against his own staff and against foreign governments eager to intensify pressure on Iran.

Dr. ElBaradei has long been reluctant to adopt a confrontational strategy with Iran, an approach he considers counterproductive. Responding to calls for the report’s release, he has raised doubts about its completeness and reliability.

'No concrete proof'
Last month, the agency issued an unusual statement cautioning it “has no concrete proof” that Iran ever sought to make nuclear arms, much less to perfect a warhead. On Saturday in India, Dr. ElBaradei was quoted as saying that “a major question” about the authenticity of the evidence kept his agency from “making any judgment at all” on whether Iran had ever sought to design a nuclear warhead.

Even so, the emerging sense in the intelligence world that Iran has solved the major nuclear design problems poses a new diplomatic challenge for President Obama and his allies as they confront Iran.

American officials say that in the direct negotiations with Iran that began last week, it will be vital to get the country to open all of its suspected sites to international inspectors. That is a long list, topped by the underground nuclear enrichment center under construction near Qum, that was revealed 10 days ago.

Iran has acknowledged that the underground facility is intended as a nuclear enrichment center, but says the fuel it makes will be used solely to produce nuclear power and medical isotopes. It was kept heavily protected, Iranian officials said, to ward off potential attacks.

Iran said last week that it would allow inspectors to visit the site this month. In the past three years, amid mounting evidence of a possible military dimension to its nuclear program, Iran has denied the agency wide access to installations, documents and personnel.


In recent weeks, there have been leaks about the internal report, perhaps intended to press Dr. ElBaradei into releasing it.


The report’s existence has been rumored for months, and The Associated Press, saying it had seen a copy, reported fragments of it in September. On Friday, more detailed excerpts appeared on the Web site of the Institute for Science and International Security, run by David Albright, a nuclear expert.

In recent interviews, a senior European official familiar with the contents of the full report described it to The New York Times. He confirmed that Mr. Albright’s excerpts were authentic. The excerpts were drawn from a 67-page version of the report written earlier this year and since revised and lengthened, the official said; its main conclusions remain unchanged.

“This is a running summary of where we are,” the official said.

“But there is some loose language,” he added, and it was “not ready for publication as an official document.”


Most dramatically, the report says the agency “assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” based on highly enriched uranium.

Weapons based on the principle of implosion are considered advanced models compared with the simple gun-type bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima. They use a blast wave from a sphere of conventional explosives to compress a ball of bomb fuel into a supercritical mass, starting the atomic chain reaction and progressing to the fiery blast. Implosion designs, compact by nature, are considered necessary for making nuclear warheads small and powerful enough to fit atop a missile.

The excerpts of the analysis also suggest the Iranians have done a wide array of research and testing to perfect nuclear arms, like making high-voltage detonators, firing test explosives and designing warheads.

The evidence underlying these conclusions is not new: Some of it was reported in a confidential presentation to many nations in early 2008 by the agency’s chief inspector, Ollie Heinonen.

Iran maintains that its scientists have never conducted research on how to make a warhead. Iranian officials say any documents to the contrary are fraudulent.

But in August, a public report to the board of the I.A.E.A. by its staff concluded that the evidence of Iran’s alleged military activity was probably genuine.

It said “the information contained in that documentation appears to have been derived from multiple sources over different periods of time, appears to be generally consistent, and is sufficiently comprehensive and detailed that it needs to be addressed by Iran with a view to removing the doubts” about the nature of its nuclear program.


The agency’s tentative analysis also says that Iran “most likely” obtained the needed information for designing and building an implosion bomb “from external sources” and then adapted the information to its own needs.

It said nothing specific about the “external sources,” but many intelligence agencies assume that Iran obtained a bomb design from A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani black marketer who sold it machines to enrich uranium. That information may have been supplemented by a Russian nuclear weapons scientist who visited Iran often, investigators say.

The I.A.E.A.’s internal report concluded that the staff believed “that non-nuclear experiments conducted in Iran would give confidence that the implosion system would function correctly.”

This article, "Report Says Iran Has Data To Make Nuclear Bomb," first appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright © 2009 The New York Times

[doug]

updated 2:44 p.m. ET Oct. 10, 2009
Iran sentences three to death over unrest
First executions set after start of trials in August involving 100 protesters

The post-election protests that shook Iran included activists who set vehicles on fire. This supporter of opposition presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi holds a piece of paper during a June 13 protest that reads "We write Mousavi, they read Ahmadinejad" — a reference to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Associated Press
TEHRAN - Three defendants in Iran's mass trial of opposition figures accused of fueling the country's postelection unrest have been sentenced to death, an Iranian news agency reported Saturday.

Two of them were convicted of membership in a monarchist group seeking to topple Iran's Islamic Republic and restore a monarchy, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported, quoting judiciary official Zahed Bashiri Rad.

The third defendant was convicted of having ties to a terrorist group for his alleged links to the People's Mujahedeen, an armed opposition group, ISNA quoted Rad as saying.

The three are the first defendants to be sentenced to death since the trial began in August.

More than 100 prominent opposition figures and activists are accused of offenses ranging from rioting to spying and seeking to topple Iran's Islamic rulers through what authorities have called a planned "soft overthrow."

The days of street protests were triggered by allegations of fraud in the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The judiciary official would only identify the three sentenced to death by their initials, the news agency reported. He said their lawyers have been informed of the rulings and that they can appeal the sentences, ISNA reported.

On Friday, Amnesty International identified one of those sentenced to death as Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani.

Amnesty said the 37-year-old was convicted of "enmity against God" through membership in a monarchist group. It also said he was convicted of making propaganda against the ruling regime and of leaving the country illegally to meet with U.S. military officials in Iraq.

Amnesty said it was concerned that the ruling against Zamani could open the way for more death sentences for those accused of similar crimes, and the rights group appealed to the authorities to rescind the ruling.


Zamani testified in August that he met with a U.S. intelligence agent called "Frank" in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's self-governing Kurdish region, and received money and a phone from him in return for information on the Iranian government and student movements, according to state media reports at the time.

Rights groups and opposition figures in Iran have criticized the proceedings, calling them a "show trial" and saying such confessions are coerced.


© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 7:04 a.m. ET Oct. 18, 2009
Suicide attack targeting Iran troops kills 31
Officials blame Britain, ‘foreign elements’ linked to U.S. after bombing

Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's ground force, was among the victims of a suicide attacker on Sunday.
NBC News and news services
TEHRAN, Iran - A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guard and at least 26 others in an area of southeastern Iran on Sunday, state media reported.

The official IRNA news agency said the dead included the deputy commander of the Guard's ground force, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, as well as a chief provincial Guard commander for the area, Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh. The other dead were Guard members or local tribal leaders. Dozens of others were wounded, the report said.

The commanders were inside a car on their way to a meeting with local tribal leaders in the Pishin district near Iran's border with Pakistan when an attacker with explosives blew himself up, IRNA said.

Iran's state-owned English language TV channel, Press TV, said there were two simultaneous explosions: one at the meeting and another targeting an additional convoy of Guards on their way to the gathering.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the region in Iran's southeast has been the focus of violent attacks by a militant group from Iran's Sunni Muslim minority called Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, which has waged a low-level insurgency in recent years.

Tehran accuses the United States of backing Jundallah to create instability in the country but Washington denies this.

Jundallah accuses Iran's Shiite-dominated government of persecution and has carried out attacks against the Revolutionary Guard and Shiite targets in the southeast.

State broadcaster IRIB said the attack occurred in the morning at the gates of a conference hall in the city of Sarbaz in Sistan-Baluchistan. The province is the scene of frequent clashes between security forces, Sunni rebels and drug traffickers.

However, the Guard themselves accused "foreign elements" linked to the United States of involvement and state television also pointed the finger at Britain, another traditional foe of Iran.

'Professional terrorists'

The attack and the allegations of foreign involvement are likely to raise tension between Iran and the West, a day before nuclear talks in Vienna including Iranian, U.S., French and Russian officials.

"Some informed sources said the British government was directly involved in the terrorist attack ... by organizing, supplying equipment and employing professional terrorists," state television said.

The television report said analysts believed the aim of the attack was to "re-direct" parts of the West's problems in Afghanistan across the border to Iran.

A Foreign Office spokesman in London declined to comment directly on the Iranian comments and instead issued a statement, saying: "The British government condemns the terrorist attack in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan in Iran and the sad loss of life which it caused.

"Terrorism is abhorrent wherever it occurs. Our sympathies go to those who have been killed in the attack and to their families," it said.


The Guard is an elite force seen as fiercely loyal to the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution. It handles security in sensitive border areas.

The Guard commanders targeted Sunday were heading to a meeting with local tribal leaders to promote unity between the Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

Comprising Sunnis from the Baluchi ethnic minority, Jundallah have waged a low-level insurgency in recent years, accusing the mostly Shiite government of persecution.

In May, the group took credit for a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque that killed 25 people in Zahedan, the capital of Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province, which has witnessed some of Jundallah's worst attacks. Thirteen members of the faction were convicted in the attack and hanged in July.

Jundallah has carried out bombings, kidnappings and other attacks against Iranian soldiers and other forces in recent years, including a car bombing in February 2007 that killed 11 members of the Revolutionary Guard near Zahedan.

Jundallah also claimed responsibility for the December 2006 kidnapping of seven Iranian soldiers in the Zahedan area. It threatened to kill them unless members of the group in Iranian prisons were released. The seven were released a month later, apparently after negotiations through tribal mediators.

The Associated Press, Reuters and NBC News contributed to this report.

© 2009 MSNBC.com

[doug]

updated 3:42 a.m. ET Oct. 24, 2009
Iran site spurs U.S. to rethink assessment
Tehran to open Qom nuke facility to inspectors amid concerns over its role
By Joby Warrick
The Washington Post
VIENNA - Early Sunday, if all goes as planned, U.N. nuclear inspectors will travel to a military base near Qom, Iran, for a first look at one of the country's most closely guarded nuclear secrets. Inside bunkers dug into the side of a mountain, the visitors will be escorted through a nearly completed uranium plant that Iran's president has termed "very ordinary."

But less than a month after its existence was publicly revealed, many U.S. and European intelligence officials say they are increasingly convinced that the site was intended explicitly for making highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

The Qom site has undermined one of the U.S. intelligence community's key assessments of Iran's nuclear program: the assumption that Tehran had abandoned plans to enrich uranium in secret, according to two former senior U.S. officials involved in high-level discussions about Iran.

A landmark U.S. intelligence assessment in 2007 concluded that any secret uranium-processing activities "probably were halted" in 2003 and had not been restarted. Other key judgments of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, including the view that Iran has suspended research on nuclear-warhead design, are also being reevaluated in light of new evidence, the two former officials said.

"Qom changed a lot of people's thinking, especially about the possibility of secret military enrichment" of uranium, said one of the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the assessments remain classified.

In interviews, intelligence officials from the United States and allied nations said their scrutiny of the Qom site was longer and deeper than previously acknowledged, and included acquiring detailed plans on how the facility would be outfitted and operated.

Intercepted communications revealed a key piece of data: Iranian plans to place only 3,000 centrifuge machines in the plant. That number is too small to furnish fuel for a civilian power plant, but just big enough to supply Iran annually with up to three bombs' worth of weapons-grade fuel, the former officials said.

Insights into the spy community's evolving views about Qom were provided by current and former intelligence and government officials in interviews in the United States, Central Europe and several Middle Eastern countries. In nearly all cases, the officials spoke on the condition that their names and nationalities not be revealed, citing the secrecy of the ongoing assessments of Iran's nuclear program.

No ‘smoking-gun’ evidence

The officials acknowledged that the Qom complex is not yet operational and that no uranium had been enriched at the time the site was revealed last month. They also acknowledged there is no "smoking-gun" evidence that Iran plans to make bomb-grade uranium. But the officials said the Qom site was structurally suited for that purpose, and they concluded that there is no plausible role for the plant in Iran's civilian nuclear power infrastructure.


Iran officially notified the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency about the existence of the Qom site in a letter on Sept. 21. U.S. and European officials say Iranian officials learned that the United States was aware of the site and rushed to disclose the facility's existence to head off accusations that it was running a covert nuclear program.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the Qom site is part of Iran's legitimate, civilian nuclear power program, contending that he planned all along to disclose the facility to the U.N. nuclear watchdog and to allow international oversight.

Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads Iran's civilian Atomic Energy Organization, said the facility was built underground at a military installation to shield it from foreign attack, and also to save money. The intention was "to safeguard our nuclear facilities and reduce the cost of an active defense system," Salehi told reporters in Tehran.

Chipping away at a secret

For at least the past five years, the complex at Qom has been both a closely guarded secret and one of the heavily scrutinized pieces of real estate on Earth.

It is, in some ways, a perfect spot for a hidden nuclear facility. The nearby city of Qom has been known since medieval times as a Shiite religious center; it contains notable religious schools and shrines but no known nuclear facilities. The country's other uranium-enrichment plant, near Natanz, is 60 miles away. Two military bases for medium-range Shahab missiles and antiaircraft batteries lie just beyond the outskirts, and one of these, in a mountainous area about 10 miles north of town, is pocked with tunnels and bunkers used for storing rockets.

Exactly when the order was issued to build the Qom facility is unclear, but intelligence officials say they have studied the site at least since 2004.

An exiled opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, first publicly revealed the existence of Iran's much larger uranium facility at Natanz in 2002. It highlighted Qom's tunnels at a December 2005 news conference and later supplied details to U.N. officials, according to a spokesman for the group. Iran said the site was a closed military property, and no nuclear inspections were permitted.

But from the air and ground, Western satellites and spies scoured its every portal and ventilator shaft, collecting terabytes of data about the facility, including communications intercepts. The CIA teamed up with intelligence operatives from U.S.-allied countries for sophisticated eavesdropping operations, officials confirmed. By last year, a series of breakthroughs confirmed that the Iran was building a secret uranium-enrichment plant, and also yielded precise details about how it would be operated, including the number of centrifuges Iran planned to use and how much electricity the facility would consume.

A retired senior U.S. intelligence official who followed the case closely said the evidence was unusually good, with many "verified sources" providing data "beyond the visible light spectrum," or beyond satellite images and spy-plane photos. "It was truly a multi-discipline effort, and it went on for a long period of time," the retired official said. "The more we learned, the more confident we became."

CIA Director Leon Panetta, in response to questions from The Washington Post, said in a statement that the agency was able over time to "draw a clear picture of Iran's activities and intentions at this site."

Better centrifuges

Iran has revealed that it planned to use a more sophisticated centrifuge machine at Qom -- one that can produce enriched uranium at twice the rate as the older-model machines it uses at the Natanz plant. Even so, the amount of uranium eked out annually by Qom's 3,000 centrifuges would be far short of the quantity needed to fuel a commercial nuclear reactor.

Intelligence analysts calculated that it would take Qom's high-end centrifuges at least 20 years to produce enough low-enriched uranium to meet the needs of a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear power reactor for a year.

If configured for weapons, however, Qom could produce enough bomb-grade fuel for two to three bombs annually, intelligence officials said.

"There is no Iranian document saying the facility is designed for a military program, but what else can it be good for?" said a senior Middle East-based intelligence official involved in Iran analysis.


The official, and other intelligence officers interviewed, said they rejected the possibility that the Qom site was intended as a pilot plant or testing facility for new types of centrifuges. Iran already has two such facilities, at Natanz and in Tehran, and neither runs at anything close to capacity, they said.

Intelligence officials say it is unlikely that Iran will try to manufacture weapons-grade uranium at Qom, now that the site has been revealed . But Western spy agencies say they do not know where Qom's supply of uranium feedstock -- uranium hexafluoride, or UF6 -- was supposed to come from. If Iran were to try to divert UF6 from its existing stockpile to a secret facility, U.N. inspectors would almost certainly detect the change.

"Is there another secret facility somewhere? said the senior Middle East-based intelligence officer. "I'd now have to say yes, almost certainly."

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

[doug]

updated 8:51 a.m. ET Nov. 4, 2009
Protesters clash with police in Tehran
Violence mars rally marking 30th anniversary of U.S. Embassy storming
AP
A photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, shows anti-government protestors chanting slogans on the sidelines of state-sanctioned rallies Wednesday.
NBC News and news services
TEHRAN - Iranian security forces beat anti-government protesters with batons and fired tear gas Wednesday on the sidelines of state-sanctioned rallies to mark the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover, witnesses and state media reported.

The counter-demonstrations were the opposition's first major show of force on the streets of Tehran since the mid-September rallies that coincided with state-backed protests against Israel.

Many marchers wore green scarves or wristbands that symbolized the campaign of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the June election from him through fraud. Mousavi and his allies, including former President Mohammad Khatami, appeared to encourage opposition protesters to stay on the streets.

The contrasts in the latest protest wave were stark: people chanting "Death to America" outside the former embassy while opposition marchers nearby cried "Death to the Dictator."

At the Embassy, security force personnel outnumbered pro-government supporters, while opposition supporters lined the streets in the area, NBC News reported. Large numbers of basij militia patrolled the protest area on motorbikes to maintain order.

Witnesses told The Associated Press that security forces — mainly paramilitary units from the elite Revolutionary Guard — swept through several hundred demonstrators at Haft-e-Tir Square in the city center, clubbing, kicking and slapping protesters. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals from authorities.

Pro-reform Web sites said police fired into the air to try to clear the square — about half a mile from the annual anti-American gathering outside the former U.S. Embassy. The report could not immediately be independently verified.

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported police also used tear gas to disperse protesters in other parts of the city.

There was no independent information on injuries or arrests, but state-run Press TV said no one was hurt.

Phones blocked
The size of the protests were difficult to determine, but they appeared significantly smaller than the hundreds of thousands who streamed into the streets in the weeks after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Media restrictions now limit journalists to covering state media and government-approved events, such as the rally outside the former embassy. Mobile phones and Internet access were apparently blocked in a repeat of tactics used by authorities after the election.

Authorities appeared determined to avoid opposition rallies overshadowing the anniversary of the embassy takeover. They had warned protesters days in advance against attempts to disrupt or overshadow the annual gathering outside the former embassy, which was stormed by militants in 1979 in the turbulent months after the Islamic Revolution.

Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days in a crisis that began a three-decade diplomatic freeze between the two nations.

Security forces fanned out around Tehran at daybreak on Wednesday after opposition leaders refused to call off their appeals for counter demonstrations.


Volunteer militiamen linked to the Revolutionary Guard patrolled the streets on motorcycles — a familiar sight during the unrest touched off by the claims of election fraud.

The full extent of the opposition marches was not immediately clear. Hundreds were seen in Haft-e-Tir Square, some chanting "Death to the Dictator" or marching silently and flashing the V-for-victory sign.

Reformist Web sites also said one of the leading opposition figures, Mahdi Karroubi, was beaten by security forces before being led away by his bodyguards. Neither Karroubi nor his aides could be immediately contacted.

Other witnesses — also speaking on condition of anonymity — said about 2,000 students at Tehran University faced off against security forces, but there were no immediate reports of violence.

Obama marks anniversary
Outside the former U.S. Embassy, meanwhile, thousands of people waved anti-American banners and signs praising the Islamic Revolution.

The main speaker, hard-line lawmaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, denounced the United States as the main enemy of Iran. He did not mention the talks with the West, including the United States, on Iran's nuclear program.

But he labeled opposition leaders as dangerous for the country, saying they claim to support the ideals of the Islamic Revolution but aid Iran's perceived enemies.

In Washington, President Barack Obama noted the anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy and urged the two countries to move beyond the "path of sustained suspicion, mistrust and confrontation."

The hostage crisis "deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice," Obama said in a statement.

NBC News' Ali Arouzi and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

© 2009 MSNBC.com

[doug]

updated 7:26 a.m. ET Nov. 6, 2009
Paper: Iran tested advanced nuke warhead
U.K. paper says U.N. watchdog has asked Tehran to explain new evidence
Reuters
LONDON - The U.N. nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting the Islamic Republic's scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian reported in its Friday edition.

The newspaper, citing what it describes as "previously unpublished documentation" from an International Atomic Energy Agency compiled dossier, said Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of a "two-point implosion" device.

The IAEA said in September it has no proof Iran has or once had a covert atomic bomb program.

The Vienna-based IAEA was not immediately available for comment on Thursday.

Iran's Foreign Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran were also unavailable for comment when contacted by Reuters.

The IAEA statement in September followed reports from The Associated Press quoting what it called a classified IAEA document saying agency experts agreed Iran now had the means to build atomic bombs and was heading toward developing a missile system able to carry a nuclear warhead.

Secret technology in U.S., Britain

The Guardian report said that even the existence of two-point implosion nuclear warhead technology is officially secret in both the United States and Britain.

The technology allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads, making it easier to put a warhead on a missile, the newspaper said.

Extracts of the dossier have been published before, but it was not known the dossier included documentation of such a sophisticated warhead, the newspaper said.


U.N. inspectors found "nothing to be worried about" in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in remarks released on Thursday.

ElBaradei also told The New York Times that he was examining possible compromises to unblock a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and three major powers that has foundered over Iranian objections.

A nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity.

Copyright 2009 Reuters

[doug]

updated 4:36 p.m. ET Nov. 11, 2009
Israel: Photos show Iran link to arms
Contends confiscated weapons cache was destined for Hezbollah militants

A picture released by the Lebanese army shows the Antigua-flagged vessel Francop approaching the port of Beirut on Nov. 6. The ship was intercepted by Israel, which says it was carrying Iranian weapons destined for Hezbollah.
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM - The Israeli military on Wednesday released documents and photos it said proved Iran was behind a huge shipment of weapons Israeli navy commandos intercepted last week.

Israel has said the cargo ship its troops seized off the coast of Cyprus was carrying 500 tons of Iranian-made weapons for Lebanese Hezbollah militants. The ship had dozens of containers with Iranian markings on it.

On Wednesday, the military released what it said was the ship's manifest that showed it was handled by "Islamic Republic of Iran's Shipping Lines." It also produced labeling from the containers indicating the ship originated in Isfahan, Iran, and a customs form stamped by the Iranian armed forces.

Both Iran and Hezbollah have denied the Israeli claims. Officials at Iran's Foreign Ministry were not immediately available for comment Wednesday.

An international expert who examined the documents and pictures of the weapons said the arms came from Iran, but it was not possible to determine whether the Iranian government was directly involved. Another was not prepared to pinpoint the source of the weapons.

On Tuesday, the United States accused Iran of violating a U.N. arms embargo by secretly sending the weapons aboard the "Francop" — a merchant ship flying the flag of Antigua and destined for the Syrian port of Latakia.

Tracing the source
Israel has showcased the haul as proof of its long-standing contention that Iran is supplying large quantities of arms to Hezbollah and Hamas militants in Gaza.

Israel says the confiscated arms cache — the largest it has ever seized — did not include any new types of weapons for Hezbollah. However, the arms would have given Hezbollah a month's worth of firepower in time of war. Israel has urged the world to focus on the threat from the Lebanese militants' chief backer — Iran.

Among the arms Israel says it found aboard the vessel were 9,000 mortar bombs, 3,000 Katyusha rockets, 3,000 anti-tank shells, 20,000 grenades and more than a half million rounds of small arms ammunition.

Israel also says that a close examination of the munitions themselves conclusively point to Iran as the source of the shipment.

The containers were stuffed with sacks of polyethylene pellets used to conceal the munitions, Israel said. According to the markings, the polyethylene was produced by Iran's National Petrochemical Co. It included a telephone number that begins with 98 — which is Iran's international dialing code.

Also discovered were thousands of rounds of mortar bombs and artillery rockets manufactured by the Iranian defense industry, such as 107 mm "Haseb" artillery rockets that are identical to those used by Iranian-armed Iraqi insurgents.

Israel also said it found a large number of AZ111-A2 fuses, which, according to Jane's Ammunition Handbook, is Iranian ordnance developed specifically to meet its military requirements.

Iranian government involvement?
The Associated Press showed the documents and pictures of the weapons supplied by Israel to two independent arms experts for their assessment.

The pictures included markings in English on a 107mm rocket with "IRISL" letters stenciled on the sides of containers — which the Israelis said stands for "Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines." There were also pictures of boxes labeled "Ministry of Sepah," which Israel said signified the Iranian military, and cases of AZ111-A2 fuses the Israelis said were made in Iran.

"Sepah" is a term that sometimes refers to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. A reference to an Iranian "Ministry of Sepah" is found in a February 2008 document composed by the International Agency for Atomic Energy.

Defense expert James Lewis at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said the arms Israel captured "were indeed Iranian," but it couldn't be determined whether the Iranian government had ordered the shipment.

He said Iran's Revolutionary Guard could have acted on its own or that even a rogue element in Iran could have orchestrated the shipment. "The number of people who decided to do this are more than one," Lewis said.

The capture of one shipment won't change much, Iranian shipments have "been going on for years and no one has been able to stop it," Lewis said. "Iran will deny it and no one is going to get involved."


Alex Vatanka, IHS Jane's security editor, who also examined the Israeli photographs, said the significance of the Francop capture — if proven Iran was behind it — was its timing, since it comes as Iran faces stepped up pressure over its controversial nuclear program.

"What does that tell us about their threat perception, about their own security priorities?" he said. "It seems to be an indicator of a certain hardline interest in Iran being almost careless about the consequences of their actions."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[doug]

updated 1:38 a.m. ET Dec. 2, 2009
Report: Tehran releases 5 British sailors
Men were arrested Nov. 25 after their yacht strayed into Iranian waters

Britain's Foreign Office says a yacht, owned by Sail Bahrain and carrying five U.K. nationals, may have strayed inadvertently into Iranian waters as it sailed to Dubai to take part in a race.
msnbc.com news services
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran released five British sailors detained after their racing yacht was stopped in the Persian Gulf after entering Iranian waters last week.

The official IRNA news agency said the yachtsmen were let go after an interrogation by Iranian authorities found that their entry into Iranian waters had been a mistake.

The report said the British were released early Wednesday.

Late on Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and called for formal consular access to the men and their speedy release. They were detained on November 25.

"After getting necessary guarantees, Iran released the five," Iranian state radio said. It gave no further details.

Tough talk

Earlier Tuesday, Iran warned that it would prosecute the five if it were proven they had “bad intentions” when their 60-foot racing craft entered its waters, in what the U.K. says was an innocent case of a vessel accidentally going astray in the Gulf.

London made efforts to keep the incident from getting tangled up in politics — not only in the rancor between Tehran and the West over Iran’s nuclear issue but also the country’s own internal postelection turmoil, which has pumped up the leadership’s fears of foreign plots.


Such tensions have already snarled attempts to free three Americans arrested by Iran this summer after they strayed across the border from Iraq. Washington and their families say the three unintentionally crossed into Iran while hiking, but Tehran — after investigating them for months — recently accused them of espionage.

The yacht is the pride of a high-profile racing program sponsored by the king of the tiny Arab island nation of Bahrain, which has been trying to build itself as a financial and sporting powerhouse.

The vessel was on its way from Bahrain to Dubai last Wednesday for the start of its first off-shore race when it had a problem with its propeller, according to Andrew Pindar, chairman of Sail Bahrain. It drifted into Iranian waters and was seized by the elite Revolutionary Guard near the Iranian island of Sirri, which lies near the mouth of the narrow Hormuz Strait off Dubai.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

© 2009 MSNBC.com