The US uses aid to promote non-humanitarian goals, making it only the 15th most effective aid donor, and 13th most generous of top 23 donors, says a new report from DARA, one of the few organisations that monitors aid-money efficiency. Over the last decade, the Pentagon’s share of US development aid has risen from 3.5% to 18%. Washington Post story below highlights Afghan PRTs, which a major aid agency says decreases its security as locals “call into question our impartiality” when NATO military vehicles and soldiers distribute aid. Colin Powell infamously decribed aid NGO’s as “force multipliers” - see MSF’s rejection here
Don’t Bomb Iran
“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” - US National Intelligence Estimate, Dec 2007
Featured News » Latest news and happenings.
Main evidence against Iran may be forged - IAEA questions ’smoking laptop
A ’stolen laptop’ that contains the primary ‘evidence’ that Iran is building a bomb may be a forgery, new evidence reveals. As with Iraq, the IAEA has investigated and dismissed almost all allegations that Iran has a weapons programme. Remaining questions are mostly to do with documents on the ’stolen laptop’ that the US says it found somewhere and gave to the IAEA, insisting that Iran should not be allowed to see the documents. Iran has long said the laptop documents are forgeries, although better forgeries than the crude ‘evidence’ the US produced to ‘prove’ that Saddam bought uranium from Niger. With no guarantee the laptop is authentic, the IAEA has been in two minds, but now evidence is emerging that the laptop is a fake.
Women or machines may be solution to ‘manning bulge’ problems on Trident submarines
Spending years underwater waiting to blow up a few hundred thousand people is not a very fun job, so it is hard find crew for nuclear missile submarines. The British Navy always has trouble getting men for this job (which of course is Necessary to Keep Us Free), but it will need even more crew [...]
US forces in Iran, but only for surveillance, not attacks
US forces have used a classified 2004 Rumsfeld authorisation for about a dozen secret attacks on Syria, Pakistan “and other countries” which are not at war with the United States for at least two years, reports the NY Times. Before this report, it was thought US troops first opened fire in Pakistan and Syria a few weeks ago. Officials say Iran has not been attacked under this Al Qaeda order, but “suggested that American forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives”. I wonder if they were in uniform.
Mid-east pipelines
From “Meeting the Challenge - US policy toward Iranian nuclear development” a blueprint for attacking Iran from the Bipartisan Policy Center. For some reason it does not show the Mosul-Haifa pipeline from northern Iraq to Israel, disused since 1948 and site of the first fighting of the 2003 Iraq invasion, when Australian special forces landed [...]
Iran developing a nuclear weapon - Obama’s first press conference
“Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. And we have to mount a international effort to prevent that from happening”. So said Barack Obama in his first press conference as Commander-in-Chief-Elect, contradicting what he has been told by US intelligence services who say Iran halted any weapons program in 2003. “Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, I think, is something that has to cease” Obama added; it is worth noting here that Obama has appointed a Chief of Staff who fought with the Israeli army and whose father was a member of a terrorist organisation, (Irgun, a radical and violent Zionist group which attacked civilians and blew up the St David Hotel in Jerusalem). Rahm Emanuel also reportedly wants to reintroduce the Draft compelling all young men to do 3 months civil defence training.
Pentagon must test nukes again or build new ones, threatens Gates
US defence secretary Gates tells Congress to stop blocking funds for a new generation of nuclear weapons. “To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent.. without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program,”. “In other words,” Wired’s Nathan Hodge remarks, “fund this thing, mothertruckers, or we start testing”.
Russian scientist ‘helped Iran with nuclear weapons programme’
‘A Russian scientist may have helped Iran to design advanced detonators whose only possible use would be in a nuclear weapon, according to United Nations inspectors’. So say the UK Daily Telegraph and NY Times, citing anonymous sources. Iran denies this but apparently cannot be shown the evidence against it, and this story could simply be about the Russian weapons scientist sent to Iran by the CIA with fake bomb blueprints in the 2001 Operation Merlin fiasco.
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program expanding rapidly
New imagery shows that Pakistan’s second plutonium reactor is nearing completion, which will greatly expand its bomb-making capacity. Expert David Albright of ISIS reports that construction of its third reactor is also continuing. In a similar report last year he wrote that the increased production could be to make smaller weapons able to be fitted on Pakistan’s cruise missiles or to make thermonuclear weapons as “both India and Pakistan appear on the verge of greatly expanding their production of nuclear weapons”. US modellers in April published findings that an India-Pakistan nuclear war would have devastating effects on the global environment, through massive depletion of the ozone layer.
Sarkozy: Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear weapons capability
“Iran is taking a major risk in continuing the process to obtain a military nuclear capacity,” Sarkozy told a meeting in Damascus with the leaders of Syria, Turkey and Qatar. “One day, whatever the Israeli government, we could find one morning that Israel has struck,” Sarkozy added.
“The question is not whether it would be legitimate, [...]
Secret Israel-Georgia airfield deal for Iran attack: UPI
Georgia has agreed to allow Israel to use two airfields for an attack on Iran, says UPI in an article exploring the significant Israeli military support for Georgia in recent years. Flying from Georgia to Natanz is 500km shorter than from Israel, and avoids flying over Jordan and Baghdad
Blasts from the Past: Western Support for Iran’s Nuclear program
The US, France and Germany all supported Irans nuclear programme in the 1970s, with Henry Kissinger saying that compliance with the NPT would prevent proliferation. Iran Affairs collected the following clippings about early contracts, including for 4 reactors to be built by France and Germany.
Blasts from the Past: Western Support for Iran’s Nuclear program
May 30 [...]
US bases worldwide by Mother Jones
Mother Jones has published impressive research on US bases. The Pentagon’s facilities occupy more of the planet than North Korea, including 761 military sites in 39 countries overseas ( worth $119 billion). See the clever world map here and some more statistics here. The White House spends about as much training foreign forces as it [...]
Dutch intel: US to strike Iran in coming weeks
Dutch intelligence has called off an infiltration and sabotage operation on Iran’s nuclear programme, because a US attack is imminent, claims a rightwing Dutch paper. Original story in De Telegraaf is here
AP wrong: says Iran admitted having nuclear weapons programme in 2002
Iran “admitted in 2002 that it had run a secret atomic weapons program for nearly two decades” Associated Press misinformed the world in a major story titled “Iran ends nuclear cooperation with UN nuclear arms probe”. There was no such admission nor evidence for such a claim. So after complaints AP later refined its secret weapons allegation to one of a secret nuclear program “in violation of its commitments”, which is also wrong, as Iran has been openly building a nuclear programme for years with IAEA and Western help - hardly secret - and it was under no IAEA “commitment” to announce its uranium enrichment plans before starting the program (ref?) . One wonders what else of this story to believe.
US top warrior ignores intel, talking of “this issue of nuclear weapons”.
Chair of US Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullin, told Fox news that more international pressure on Iran was needed, so “we can all deal with this issue of nuclear weapons”. His certainty on weapons is odd because his Defense Intelligence Agency is telling him with high confidence that Iran does not have a [...]
Iran attack likely in 4-7 months, or we’ll nuke them later says Israeli academic
“Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months” says hawkish Israeli academic Benny Morris in “Using Bombs to Stave Off War”, NYT, hoping the attack will at least delay that country’s nuclear program” otherwise a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike will be necessary. Note that he thus admits Israel has the bomb (normally forbidden talk in Israel), claims every intelligence agency believes Iran has a bomb program (he forgets that all the US ones dont believe this), and talks of destroying not only the supposed Iranian weapons program but its nuclear program (code for the Bushehr power reactor due to power up this year).
Iran has resumed A-bomb project, says Telegraph
More unsubstantiated allegations from the UK Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin, one of the major scaremongers on Iraq’s non-existent WMD programme. As with the Iraq allegations, note that the article implies that the IAEA cannot find the facilities that unnamed Western intelligence sources say they know exist, and implies that the new P2 enrichment technology is by definition for weapons, and cannot be simply for more efficient fuel production.
CIA supressed intel that Iran had no weapons program, says ex-agent
A former CIA agent says CIA officials ignored evidence that Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003. This is now the official intelligence assessment, but he was sacked for saying so: “On five occasions he was ordered to either falsify his reporting on WMD in the Near East, or not to file his reports at [...]
Iran says Bushehr nuke power plant to go online in October
The Bushehr nuclear power plant being built in Iran will be start operation in October, a high-ranking Iranian nuclear official said on Sunday, reports Russia’s Novosti agency. The last of 82 tons of low-enriched uranium fuel was delivered to Iran in January.
Congress to demand blockade of Iran - an act of war
Congress will soon vote to “demand” the President organise an international blockade of Iran, following heavy pressure by pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC. Such a blockade - involving “stringent” inspection of all persons, planes and ships entering or leaving Iran, would be an act of war without UN Security Council approval, which will not be given. [...]
Oil is likely cause of confrontation with Iran - Kissinger
In a interview with Australian TV, Henry Kissinger advocates discussions with Iran to avoid a controntation over oil (not nukes). He says “at the end of the day the industrialised world will not permit them to dominate all the energy resources so that they will be drawn into a replica of the Iran-Iraq war of [...]
Democrats dropped Iran war bill in 2006 - Israeli lobby pressure, says Ron Paul
Nancy Pelosi’s first act as House Speaker in 2006 was to “deliberately” remove a portion of a legislative spending bill which said the United States “can’t go to war with Iran without getting approval from Congress”, says Democrat lawman Ron Paul. He and others blame Israeli and AIPAC pressure for the u-turn.
“Generous offer rejected” by Iran, says Bush - but they didn’t.
The EU presented a new set of proposals to Iran, and Bush immediately “accused” Iran of rejecting them them out of hand reports the New York Times. Bush was wrong: “Tehran did not formally reject the offer”, and though the US fully expected the offer to be rejected, Bush [...]
Bush changes wording: “we’ll give diplomacy a chance to work”
From Associated Press report on Bush in Germany June 11 2008:
Within the coded language of the U.S. attitude toward Iran, several small changes in Bush’s rhetoric Wednesday added up to a difference. Three times, he called a diplomatic solution “my first choice,” implying there are others. He said “we’ll give diplomacy a chance to work,” [...]
Israel attack on Iran ‘unavoidable’-Olmert deputy
An attack on Iran looks “unavoidable” , an Israeli deputy prime minister said on June 6. “If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz.� Six months earlier, the Israeli ambassador to Britain said such an attack was “inevitable“.
US helped Pakistan get the bomb - new allegations
New books are suggesting that not only did the US keep silent in the 1980s and 90s as Pakistan built uranium and plutonium bombs, but it actually encouraged Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation and covered up for it. It is even alleged that presidential appointees “tipped off the Pakistani government so as to prevent its [...]
Swiss destroy evidence in nuclear smuggling case against Khan network
Switzerland destroyed nuclear arms plans seized as evidence in a case linking a Swiss family to Libya’s now-abandoned atomic program after pressure from the USA. This probably ends the prosecution of the Tinner family who worked for AQ Khan’s nuclear smuggling ring. It is argued that the evidence needed to be shredded because it contained [...]
Where are Iranian arms in Iraq?
IPSnews reports on how few of the arms found in Iraq are Iranian origin: for example, reports by the U.S. command in Iraq over the past 15 months cited only a handful of Iranian weapons out of hundreds counted in caches found in Shiite areas. Nearly 700 mortars and rockets were reported by specific [...]
Pentagon resisting Iran attack - about Lebanon
The American Conservative magazine suggests that the National Security Council is close to authorising a strike on an Al Quds camp near Tehran, in order to send a message about Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Defence Secretary Gates is reported as the only NSC voice in opposition to such a strike
War With Iran Might [...]
Little evidence Iran interfering in Iraq: Time magazine
5/5/2008 Doubting the Evidence Against Iran: TIME magazine
US allegations of Iranian interference are based on speculation and is far from a slam-dunk case says Time , no concrete evidence has emerged in public that Iran was behind the (new EFP) weapons. U.S. officials have revealed no captured shipments of such devices and offered no other [...]
Olmert: we are close to stopping Iran’s nuclear program
A Haaretz report of Bush/Olmert discussion, Olmert said that the end of Iran’s controversial nuclear program was approaching, while Bush agreed Iran was an “existential threat to peace”. Olmert spoke of closer agreement with Bush concerning the means, the time constraints, and the level of American determination in dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, adding [...]
Poll: Iranians think bomb unIslamic, but want nuclear power
A majority of Iranians do not believe their country should produce nuclear weapons, but most still think it is “very important” for Iran to develop nuclear fuel. A poll finds that 58% think that producing nuclear weapons is contrary to Islam, only 23% think it permissible. 66% support uranium enrichment, only 20% want the bomb.
Al-Qaeda : we’ll attack Iran
From Wired’s Dangerroom: Recently, Senator John McCain has repeatedly indicated that Iran and al-Qaeda are in cahoots. The terror group’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would beg to differ. In a long-promised online Q&A session, Zawahiri says it would be “in the interest” of Al-Qaeda to see Iran “sap[ped]” by a fight with the United States. [...]
FBI Whistleblower claims US nuclear secrets leaked to Turkey, Pakistan
A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office. London’s Sunday Times reports that after gagging orders in the USA, she recently took her story to them. Her website implicates US officials and Richard Perle.
Iran arms Taliban says Petraeus with no evidence
Iran ¨sends arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan¨ says General Petreus, with no evidence, despite the fact that Iran opened its airspace for the US attack on the Taliban in 2001, and secured Northern Alliance help to attack the Taliban on the ground for the US.
“It undermines Lebanese hopes for peace by arming and aiding [...]
Ex-CIA official: Israel will attack Iran on its own
“I came back from a trip to Israel in November convinced that Israel would attack Iran,” a former CIA official and senior adviser to three US presidents told Newsweek. Dick Cheney has for some months been saying that the US would “understand” if Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the White House apparently approved Israel’s September attack on alleged nuclear sites in Syria.
CIA in 1974: Israel has bomb and maybe helped Iran with nuclear technology
On the eve of Bush’s trip to Israel, the CIA released secret reports from the 1970s in which US spy agencies reported that Israel had developed nuclear weapons, and was suspected of providing nuclear materials, equipment or technology to Iran” and other countries, reports Haaretz . The CIA’s surprise admission comes after several other high-level admissions that Israel has nukes, and as the US tries to regularise the nuclear status of India in contravention of the NPT.
US special forces ready to seize Pakistan’s nukes
US special forces ’snatch squads are on standby to seize or disable Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’, with the help of volunteers from America’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team, if the West’s favourite military dictator Musharraf loses control of his country. The US has tried to keep ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, out of the nuke control command. But few - if any - journalists are reporting how the US turned a blind eye when Pakistan was building its bomb in the 80s and 90s, in exchange for paying ISI to set up Bin Laden and the mujahadin in Afghanistan. UK Herald story is here. And see this piece for a brief reminder of how Benazir Bhutto bowed to ISI pressure to set up the Taliban with arms and money. Blowback in US policy?
Iran sets summer date for Bushehr nuke plant
Iran says the Bushehr power reactor will start producing electricity by summer. Russia recently made two deliveries of nuclear fuel for the plant, after years of delays. Any attack to militarily disable Bushehr after the reactor is started would cause massive radiation problems.
Israel: War with Iran may be unavoidable
Israel’s new ambassador in London said “that military confrontation is inevitable” if Iran does not “cooperate” on its uranium enrichment program, which he said could produce fissile material by 2009. Ron Prosor, a senior advisor on Iran to Israel’s PM, believes Iran still has a weapons program, hinted that the IAEA does not have “full verification” of Iran’s enrichment program and said that “time is running out”. The British Sunday Telegraph story below also cites an unnamed British intelligence official saying Iran has fooled the US intelligence community about stopping its bomb program.
US intel services: Iran halted weapons program in 2003
“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” is the “key judgement” of the new US National Intelligence Assessment (NIE, page 6), a consensus of all US spy agencies. “We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons”. � This surprise NIE will remove much pressure for preventive strikes on Iran in the near future, and directly contradicts many recent statements from the White House. The NIE has been delayed some months while the the US spy agencies checked their information, which apparently came to light after previous� NIE was published in 2005 -� a report the New York Times describes as “deeply flawed”, which stated that Iran probably had a program� but was at least 10 years from a bomb.
Iran Holocaust drama is a big TV hit
A TV series about Jews rescued by an Ianian in wartime Paris is drawing massive audiences in Iran. The central character is an Iranian diplomat, who provides false Iranian passports to enable Jews to flee the Nazi-occupied France, a sort of the Iranian Schindler. The high-quality production is seen as an attempt to show that Iranians are not anti-Jewish.
Defeated French PM backdated bomb deal with Peres in 1957
A French prime minister who had just lost power, illegally backdated his signature on a 1957 document that committed his country to help build Israel’s bomb, a new, approved biography of the current Israeli President Shimon Peres says. Peres persuaded him to sign it a day losing power after and backdate the document. “If that fact had become known at the time, the agreement would have been annulled.”
US Navy steps up fuel deliveries to Gulf
The U.S. military has stepped up chartering of tankers and requests for extra fuel in the Gulf, shipping and oil industry sources tell Reuters. The three month buildup starting in December “confirms there is going to be a lot of activity, possibly a serious demonstration to Iran” around the Straits of Hormuz, and includes jet fuel stockpiles in Diego Garcia.
Iran hints it could halt nuclear enrichment for a quid pro quo
Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that his country could suspend uranium enrichment if the United States and Western Europe agreed to acknowledge that its nuclear program was peaceful, reports McClatchy Newspapers. Diplomats said Iran is willing to deal, but that it wants something in return, not trusting the US to cease its hostility. “We could suspend nuclear enrichment. We did it before for two and half years. But it wasn’t enough then, and wouldn’t be enough now. We will not suspend enrichment again because there is no end to what the United States will demand.”
US helped Israel with Syrian radar attack?
“The U.S. provided Israel with information about Syrian air defenses before Israel attacked a suspected nuclear site in Syria, Aviation Week and Space Technology reports The U.S. was monitoring the electronic emissions coming from Syria during Israel’s Sept. 6 attack, and while there was no active American engagement in the operation, there was advice provided, [...]
Australian Highly Enriched Uranium stockpile - 350kg in 2003
In 2003 Australia had 0.35 tonnes of HEU in its civilian stockpile, according to the Institute for Science and International Security. See table 2 in
Global Stocks of Nuclear Explosive Materials: Summary Tables and Charts July 2005,
Pentagon trains paramilitaries in Pakistan tribal areas
The Pentagon announces plans to send more special forces ‘trainers’ and ‘non-lethal equipment’ to an 80,000 man paramilitary force in Pakistan’s tribal areas; the Frontier Corps militia is considered more effective than Pakistan’s official army. The announcement is sensitively timed with the Pakistan military dictatorship in meltdown. It is apparently [...]
US secretly helping Pakistan safeguard its nukes
“The Bush administration has spent almost $100 million in the past six years on a classified program to help Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf secure his country’s nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions”. Reuters reports that the US did not share top-secret “permissive action link” technology with Pakistan, which prevents detonation of nukes without foolproof authentication from the White House. If it did share such technology, the US would be in serious breach of the Non Proliferation Treaty which forbids international cooperation on nuclear weapons designs.
