The reason for the destruction -- which reportedly took place shortly after midnight on February 18 -- is not clear, but it comes amid growing pressure on dervishes, who practice the Sufi tradition of Islam, and other religious minorities in Iran. The rats are eating each other... Continued on Page 47
The Sufi are far less likely to be violent. There are exceptions, but in general Sufi is one of the less virulent and violent forms of Islam and has a large amount of inner focus and some pacifism. It is certainly a better one for the West to deal with, than Shia fundamentalism or Salaffih and Wahabbih.
It is no small wonder the Iranian mullah wish to demolish them, the Sufi are a direct threat to the Mullahs by competing as an alternative for the Shia fascistic version of Islam.
Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.
I thought we had a National Intelligence Estimate that said this wasn't possible? Oh well, mistakes happen ...
In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought. They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.
If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material enough for a bomb.
It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb, said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UNs nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Irans production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated. When the agency carried out an annual stocktaking of Natanz in mid-November Iran had produced 839kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride more than 200kg more than previously thought. Tehran produced an additional 171kg by the end of January.
Its sure certain that if they didnt have it [enough] when the IAEA took these measurements, they will have it in a matter of weeks, Mr Zimmerman said.
Irans success in reaching such a breakout capacity a stage that would allow it to produce enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months crosses a red line that for years Israel has said it would not accept.
UN officials emphasise that to produce fissile material Iran would have to reconfigure its Natanz plant to produce high enriched uranium rather than low enriched uranium a highly visible step that would take months or to shift its stockpile to a clandestine site. No such sites have been proved to exist, although for decades Iran concealed evidence of its nuclear programme.
That's why they're called 'clandestine' ...
A senior UN official added that countries usually waited until they had an enriched uranium stockpile sufficient for several bombs before proceeding to develop fissile material. He conceded that Iran now had enough enriched uranium for one bomb. Do they have enough low enriched uranium to produce a significant quantity [enough high enriched uranium for a bomb]? he said. In theory this is possible, [although] with the present configuration at Natanz it isnt.
David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: If Iran did decide to build nuclear weapons, its entering an era in which it could do so quickly.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
After Afghan/Pakistan Iran should have been our next target in the WOT!
#2
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Thursday, February 19, 2009
EXCLUSIVE: Spy agency focus of shakeup
Bill Gertz
Two senior U.S. counterintelligence officials have left positions inside the agency that coordinates America's efforts to root out foreign spies after an inspector general review identified management problems, government officials said.
Marion E. "Spike" Bowman, a veteran intelligence lawyer for the Navy and FBI, told The Washington Times that he stepped down last month as the No. 2 official inside the National Counterintelligence Executive Office (NCIX) after an inspector general's management review raised questions about his leadership and ethics issues. Mr. Bowman declined to be more specific.
NCIX chief of staff Robert L. Hubbard also was reassigned to another post in the aftermath of the IG review, officials said. Mr. Hubbard declined to comment through an agency spokesman.
The agency's chief, National Counterintelligence Executive Joel F. Brenner, told The Times that neither official was dismissed but that it was his decision to prompt the moves. "I felt it was time to make a change in NCIX management," he said, declining to be more specific because of personnel privacy issues.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the committee was informed that the IG probe had uncovered problems and recommended some management changes inside NCIX.
"We're going back to take a second look at this as part of our oversight responsibilities, " Mr. Hoekstra said.
Mr. Bowman had been granted a waiver from federal rules to return from his retirement from the Navy and FBI and work for NCIX under contract, officials familiar with the arrangement said. The officials said a decision was made not to renew his contract after the IG issued an eight-page management review of the office. The review raised issues involving management capabilities but did not purport any misconduct or abuses, the officials said.
Mr. Bowman said in an interview that he had planned to leave the agency for months but his departure ultimately was prompted by "ethical issues" uncovered during the IG inquiry. He declined to elaborate. He said his background was mainly working as an intelligence operator and that Mr. Brenner needed a deputy who was a better administrator.
NCIX is a little-known agency that was created under a December 2000 presidential directive in the aftermath of the CIA's Aldrich Ames spy case. After the FBI's Robert P. Hanssen spy case in 2001, the office was given greater stature under 2002 law aimed at improving counterspy efforts.
The office is staffed by people from other intelligence agencies. It conducts damage assessments of spy cases and helps coordinate counterintelligence policies.
However, the agency and its leaders cannot direct anti-spying operations or budgets, which are controlled mainly by the major counterintelligence agencies, the FBI domestically and the CIA abroad.
Mr. Brenner took over the agency in 2006 and removed most of the staff who had worked under the previous director, Michelle Van Cleave, former NCIX officials said.
NCIX was made one of three major "centers" when the office of the Director of National Intelligence was created by a 2004 law.
Miss Van Cleave recently published an article stating that NCIX and other U.S. efforts to counter foreign spies remain ineffective while the problem of foreign spying is growing.
Miss Van Cleave, writing in The Washington Post on Feb. 8, identified concerns about U.S. counterintelligence while she was at NCIX for three years during the Bush administration. The article noted problems that she outlined in a report made public in September by the Project on National Security Reform, a private research group.
"I am hopeful that the new DNI will give counterintelligence the priority attention it deserves," Miss Van Cleave told The Washington Times. "As a former four-star combatant commander, Admiral Dennis Blair [the new director of national intelligence] well understands the value of strategic clarity, which is what the NCIX job is all about."
Despite the damaging spy cases, U.S. intelligence agencies have "no coherent game plan" for identifying and stopping foreign spy activities, she stated in the article in The Post.
Miss Van Cleave also said U.S. counterintelligence agencies failed to find out how Chinese spies obtained U.S. nuclear weapons secrets. "The Chinese stole the design secrets to all - repeat, all - U.S. nuclear weapons, enabling them to leapfrog generations of technology development and put our nuclear arsenal, the country's last line of defense, at risk," she said. "To this day, we don't know quite when or how they did it, but we do know that Chinese intelligence operatives are still at work, systematically targeting not only America's defense secrets but our industries' valuable proprietary information. "
Mr. Brenner declined to comment on the criticism. He said he has no plans to leave the counterspy position as the result of the arrival of Mr. Blair under the new administration of President Obama.
Mr. Bowman spent 11 years as the national security general counsel at the FBI and was involved in the prosecutions of Soviet spy John A. Walker Jr., who passed naval codes, and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, a naval intelligence analyst, as an attorney for the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Mr. Bowman recently signed a Supreme Court brief opposing the holding of Ali Saleh al Marri, an al Qaeda suspect arrested in Illinois in 2001 who has been held without being charged in a military brig in South Carolina as an enemy combatant. Mr. Bowman told the Daily News that "coercive interrogations don't work and fall outside the legal and moral obligations that this nation assumed in 1776."
Mr. Bowman, a retired Navy captain, also has opposed detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay prison, which Mr. Obama recently ordered closed.
Senate Judiciary Committee members criticized Mr. Bowman several years ago for his failure to authorize counterterrorist surveillance in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, a suspected al Qaeda terrorist who was detected by the FBI taking flight lessons in Minnesota and who some officials suspect was supposed to have been one of the Sept. 11 hijackers but was arrested before he could take part.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said in a statement that he has heard conflicting reports on why Mr. Bowman and Mr. Hubbard left the NCIX. "This isn't the first time Mr. Bowman has been at the center of controversy, so I hope the Inspector General will provide its report to Congress so that we can determine whether it contains any cause for concern about potential misconduct," Mr. Grassley said.
The senator stated in a 2003 letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that giving Mr. Bowman the Presidential Rank Award sent the wrong message to the FBI because of problems related to the FBI's mishandling of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests. The FBI's FISA problems "are not Mr. Bowman's fault, but many of them have occurred during Mr. Bowman's tenure," Mr. Grassley stated.
#3
Only one? Just the acknowledged centrifuges can produce enough HEU for a bomb every 6-12 months.
Posted by: ed ||
02/20/2009 9:00 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The country needs accuracy from reporters. Loose lips sink ships and loose reporting sinks reputations. Would Bill Gertz consider his report "ethical" when it falls short of accurate?
#6
Well Mr. Hope and Change, this albatross is on your neck now. BS it or deal with the threat. You have the presidency, now you have the responsibility for the sh*t that will happen.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/20/2009 18:41 Comments ||
Top||
#7
If the Mullahs only have enough fissile material for one warhead and they do a "use it or lose it", I think it is an open question as to whether the warhead could make it to Israel at all. The Israelis realize that with Hussein as POTUS, they are on their own and they have spent a lot of time and money on ABM defense. I expect the Mossad and IAF have a bunch of "go to Hell" plans to deal with even the fueling of an IRBM in Iran.
#8
Israel is at a difficult point politically, Shieldwolf. PM Olmert is a very lame duck indeed, but I understand that there is a two month window to successfully put together a coalition government.
U.N. inspectors found graphite and more uranium traces in test samples taken from a Syrian site Washington says was a covert graphite nuclear reactor almost built before Israel bombed it in 2007, it emerged on Thursday.
The first word that graphite particles had turned up came with the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency's second report on Syria in three months. But U.N. officials familiar with it said the IAEA inquiry remained inconclusive. Still, one senior U.N. official said the discovery of additional uranium traces was "significant". That, together with graphite traces that are undergoing more tests, raised pressure on Damascus to provide evidence for its denials of wrongdoing.
The IAEA's November report said the site bore features that would resemble those of an undeclared nuclear reactor.
Thursday's report said Damascus, in a letter to the IAEA this month, had repeated its position that the desert complex destroyed by Israel, known as al-Kibar or Dair Alzour, in September 2007 was a conventional military building only. But Syria, it said, was still failing to back up its stance with documentation or by granting further access for IAEA sleuths to the bombed location and three others cited in U.S. intelligence handed to the U.N. watchdog last year.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
02/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Damascus, in a letter to the IAEA this month, had repeated its position that the desert complex destroyed by Israel, known as al-Kibar or Dair Alzour, in September 2007 was a conventional military building only.
The former German chancellor has urged direct talks between Iran and the US but said he had no message from Washington for Tehran.
Speaking upon his arrival in Tehran on Thursday, Gerhard Schroeder said he would be 'very happy' if Iran and the US held direct talks and expressed hope that the two countries 'choose a new approach'.
Tehran and Washington have had no diplomatic ties since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. US President, Barack Obama, has vowed to begin talks with Iran to thaw relations between the two countries.
The former German chancellor denied he was carrying any message from Washington for Iran, but said he would discuss 'political issues' with Iranian leaders.
Schroeder, who is in Tehran to inaugurate a neuroscience center, is to meet Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his four-day visit.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
02/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Angling for another gas deal Gerhard?
Posted by: ed ||
02/20/2009 8:03 Comments ||
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#2
To paraphrase Don Corleone, Ahmadinejad is a pimp. Khamenei is Iran's Barzini. If you can't talk with Barzini, don't waste time with Tataglia.
A senior Iranian official has criticized Iran's "subsidized economy", saying the system is the root of the corruption in the country.
Head of Iran's General Investigation Organization Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi called on the government to loosen its grip on the economy and implement Article 44 of the Constitution to ensure economic development.
According to Article 44 of the Iranian Constitution, the economic system shall be based on public, cooperative and private sectors, with proper and sound planning.
All large-scale industries, mother industries, foreign trade, large mines, banking, insurance, power supply, dams and large irrigation channels, radio and television, post, telegraph and telephone, aviation, shipping, roads, rails and the like are public property and at the disposal of the government.
"What the country is witnessing in the field of the economy is the fruit of inexpert analysis ... that created many problems for the country," Fars news agency quoted the former interior minister as saying.
Iran's Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani on Feb. 14 urged the Ahmadinejad administration to loosen its hold on economic affairs and let the country move toward privatization.
"For the sake of the country's economic development, the government should allow the people to take control of economic affairs," said Larijani.
Iran's economy, which is controlled by the government, is vastly dependent on oil as it accounts for 80 percent of the country's foreign exchange revenues.
#2
Subsidized economy is also at the root of why the mullahs are still in power. They will happily run the entire nation into the ground in order to stay in power.
#3
Subsidized economy is also at the root of why the mullahs are still in power. They will happily run the entire nation into the ground in order to stay in power.
To those who knew him, the Hizbullah-supporting car dealer from Nabatiyeh seemed an unlikely Israeli spy. But as Marwan Faqih adjusts to life in military custody, new details have emerged about his secret double life as an undercover agent for the Jewish state. Sources close to Hizbullah quoted by the Al-Balad daily on Thursday.
Sources close to Hizbullah quoted by the Al-Balad daily on Thursday gave a fascinating glimpse into the secret world of international espionage inhabited by Faqih. The paper said that Faqih was accredited as a "safe" supplier of vehicles to Hizbullah after winning the trust of party officials in Nabatiyeh by making regular donations to the group. During the summer 2006 war with Israel, he even handed control of his petrol station over to Hizbullah fighters.
No-one suspected that every car he sold them was fitted with a satellite monitoring device that allowed Israeli intelligence agents to track their every move. In the end, the paper's sources say, it was a routine repair that led to the discovery of Faqih's secret double life.
According to the report, an auto electrician was trying to fix a problem with a Hizbullah vehicle when he discovered an "unfamiliar device" attached to the electrical system that he thought might have been causing the problem.
Thinking that it may have been fitted by Hizbullah, the electrician had a discreet word with the vehicle's owner, pointing out that the device was interfering with the car. But whatever it was, it had not been placed by Hizbullah, and a search of the party's fleet of vehicles revealed dozens of the mystery devices.
Investigations revealed that they were satellite wire tap devices and they were only present on vehicles supplied from one particular car dealer in Nabatiyeh: Marwan Faqih. Years of gathering intelligence about notoriously secretive Hizbullah on behalf of their sworn enemies were about to come to an end.
It had begun in France in the mid-1990s, when Faqih was approached by Mossad agents who asked him to gather information about Hizbullah and the Lebanese army in return for payment. He returned to Lebanon to begin his task, and over the years, the Israelis developed what was to become a prime intelligence asset located in the heartland of their most bitter and formidable enemies.
They provided Faqih with specialist software that allowed him to establish secure internet connections so he could send the intelligence he gathered, and met with him on his frequent trips to France. They even took him to Israel on four separate occasions, to train him in the latest espionage communications technology. And all the while, he sold bugged cars to Hizbullah that helped Israeli agents to build a picture of movements and conversations of the party's officials.
If it hadn't been for the discovery of the satellite device, the deception might have gone unnotcied. But once Hizbullah had traced the origins of the equipment to Faqih, his days of freedom were numbered. A senior Lebanese security official told The Daily Star on Thursday that Hizbullah conducted an investigation into Faqih and discovered that he "was using the internet and other complex technological devices" to communicate with Israeli agents.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
02/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Not only that, he also buggered the unfortunate cars.
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Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.
To those who knew him, the Hizbullah-supporting car dealer from Nabatiyeh seemed an unlikely Israeli spy. But as Marwan Faqih adjusts to life in military custody, new details have emerged about his secret double life as an undercover agent for the Jewish state. Sources close to Hizbullah quoted by the Al-Balad daily on Thursday.
