Iran has been increasing its involvement and control over Hezbollah's operations since terror operations head Imad Mughniyeh was killed a year ago. Hezbollah has not yet found someone of similar stature to replace Mughniyeh. They say that like it's a bad thing ...
Therefore, the Iranians have taken some responsibility for Hezbollah operations, using a large number of Iranian Revolutionary Guard and intelligence officers in Lebanon.
This means operational cooperation between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah has increased regarding all potential actions against Israel. Iranian officers, most of whom prefer to be based in Syria, often visit Lebanon and tour the Israeli border. Safe in the flesh-pots of Damascus are they ...
The Iranians are directly involved in running Hezbollah operations in southern Lebanon, and in addition, hundreds of Hezbollah militants head for Iran every month for training and exercises.
Senior Israeli defense officials told Haaretz that Mughniyeh's assassination, which Hezbollah blames on Israel, but which may have been done by either Syria or Iran or even as an internal Hezbollah action
left a large hole in the organization. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is now stuck dealing with operational matters he never handled in the past, say the Israeli officials. Let's hope he's as competent at that as he is in giving live speeches ... Continued on Page 47
#5
I wonder if the Israelis have found themselves another car salesman or cell phone shop... that could be why no one stepped up to take over Emir Mughniyeh's portfolio.
Does Iran have enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon? One thing is clear if it doesn't today, it can speed up the process substantially through work that takes little more skill than knowing how to use a plumber's wrench.
The issue has come under renewed scrutiny with the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report a few days ago on the state of Tehran's uranium enrichment program, which can create both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of warheads.
It is also bound to figure in next week's deliberations of the IAEA's 35-nation board, which will focus on Iran's defiance of U.N. Security Council demands that it freeze enrichment and ease fears it seeks to make the bomb.
With the IAEA report issuing the latest figures of nuclear material Iran has processed, attention has turned to whether it could process the 1,010 kilograms 2,222 pounds of low-enriched uranium it is known to have amassed into enough highly enriched uranium to arm one weapon.
Some experts say 1,010 kilograms is close enough to the commonly cited minimum requirement of 1,100 kilograms, or just over 2,400 pounds, for Tehran to make a realistic attempt at making a bomb. Others say that for various technical reasons the 1,100 figure is too low, even if Iran took the unlikely step of reconfiguring its enrichment program to make weapons grade uranium under the nose of IAEA inspectors at the site. Still others are in-between, saying there are too many unknowns to make a clear prediction.
Lost in the argument is an important fact: should it be looking to make a bomb, Iran has the capacity to easily rev up production of enriched uranium to reach whatever amount it needs much more quickly than it is doing now.
It currently has close to 4,000 machines pumping out the low enriched uranium and has produced enough material to bring it at least close to 1,100 kilograms. But in a little noted observation, the IAEA report also said Tehran has 1,600 more centrifuges for enriching uranium gas feedstock on standby.
In numbers roughly tallying with the official IAEA count, Iran on Wednesday announced that 6,000 centrifuges were now "operating" at Iran's enrichment facility in the town of Natanz, including those enriching and those on standby. Iranian nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said Iran hopes to install over 50,000 centrifuges there over the next five years.
Iranian technicians at the vast underground Natanz enrichment plant need to do little more than hook the extra 1,500 machines to the tap feeding the already operating centrifuges. Suddenly, 5,600 centrifuges would be on line instead of 4,000. Daily output of low-enriched, or fuel-grade uranium would rise to just over 3 kilograms 6.6 pounds from about 2.2 kilograms now.
With 5,600 centrifuges enriching, Iran could add about 100 kilograms more than 200 pounds to its established stockpile within a month; or even more, considering it is setting up additional ready-to-go centrifuges every day.
Even those 100 kilograms would give it an estimated low-enriched uranium stockpile of just over 1,100 kilograms the minimum experts believe is required to yield the 25 kilograms, or 55 pounds, of highly enriched weapons grade uranium needed to build one bomb.
However, those figures themselves are contentious.
The Federation of American Scientists argues that experts using the 25 kilogram figure fail to take into account that even if there is that much bomb-quality uranium mixed into their stockpile not all of it is recoverable through enrichment methods.
"The 12 to 13 kilograms they could produce would not be enough for a bomb," says FAS vice president Ivan Oelrich vice president of the FAS Strategic Security Program.
Moreover, the process of making the first uranium metal warhead from enriched uranium can lead to material loss, further reducing the amount left for a nuclear weapon.
Iran, for its part denies such aims, saying it only wants to enrich to low-level nuclear fuel grades for energy purposes. Still, with so many machines available, and more being manufactured daily, why hasn't it pressed all its centrifuges into service? Why has it only put about 200 of them to work between the IAEA's November report and the most recent one?
Even IAEA officials differ on these questions. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei recently suggested Tehran's reticence was "political" implying it was willing to wait on expanding enrichment in exchange for better relations with the new U.S. administration, which has pledged to break with decades of snubbing Iran and talk directly with it.
But some of his technical staff say the reason may have more to do with technical problems at Natanz. They note frequent breakdowns of centrifuges and say the Islamic Republic needs to have at least some ready to substitute for these.
Whatever the reasons, the agency is united in dismissing recent suggestions that Tehran had tried to hide the true amount of low-enriched uranium it was producing by purposely underestimating output between once-yearly IAEA inspections of amounts.
It turns out that the estimates were about a third less than the actual amount of 1,010 kilograms. Still agency officials say the mistake appeared unintentional and within limits of error inherent in such guesswork. And, as usual, in Iran's favor. Again.
"The agency has no reason at all to believe that the estimates of the low enriched uranium produced ... were an intentional error by Iran," according to IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "Iran has provided good cooperation on this matter and will be working to improve its future estimates."
Even diplomats from Western nations accusing Iran of harboring nuclear weapons ambitions agree that at least this time Tehran is not guilty of deception.
Continued on Page 47
#1
IRAN's NUKE CHIEF has already answered the question, i.e. that THE USA + WEST MUST ACCEPT IRAN AS A DE FACTO "NUCLEAR POWER", + Iran also repor STILL plans to enable or empower by Year 2012 as many as 50,000 centrifuges at its NATANTZ NUCPLANT.
IRANIAN = ISLAMIST NUCWEAPS are all but inevitable - the surprise or shock will occur IFF IRAN DOESN'T DEV NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
The Lebanese military on Wednesday found four rockets in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, Lebanese security officials said. The officials said the rockets were discovered in Ein al-Jawz in the southeast - a region facing the Golan Heights.
The discovery comes five days after two Katyusha rockets were fired from southern Lebanon toward northern Israel, one of which wounded five people near a home in the Western Galilee.
The IDF responded immediately to that attack by firing artillery rounds at the source of the fire in southern Lebanon.
No one claimed responsibility for the rocket-fire, in what was the third such cross-border exchange this year.
On Monday night, Israel filed a complaint to the United Nations Security Council following the attack, saying said it held the Lebanese government responsible.
Lebanon on Wednesday released three of seven suspects held over the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the office of public prosecutor Said Mirza told AFP.
The move comes just days before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, set up to try suspects over the Beirut bomb blast in February 2005 that killed Hariri and 22 other people opens its doors in The Hague on Sunday.
The three are Lebanese brothers Mahmoud and Ahmed Abdel Aal and Syrian Ibrahim Jarjura, all civilians who were being held on suspicion of withholding information and misleading the probe into the assassination. The investigating judge Sakr Sakr rejected demands for the release of two other suspects -- former Lebanese security services director Jamil Sayyed and domestic security chief Ali Hajj, a judicial source said.
No reason for release
They are among four Lebanese generals who were pillars of the security apparatus long orchestrated by Syria, the country's then powerbroker which has roundly denied accusations it was behind the assassination.
The other two suspects are Mustafa Hamdan, who headed the presidential guard, and Raymond Azar, who was commander of army intelligence.
The generals have been detained since August 2005 on suspicion of premeditated murder, attempted premeditated murder and carrying out terrorist acts but none of the seven have ever been indicted for the murder,
Sakr released the two Lebanese brothers on bail of about $300 and the Syrian on about $70. They were arrested in October 2005 but no reasons were given for their release.
(AKI) - A retired Syrian general has criticised a decision by the country's Atomic Energy Commission to refuse the United Nations' nuclear watchdog access to inspect the al-Kibar supected nuclear research centre bombed by Israel in September 2007. Musa al-Zaabi, said the decision by Ibrahim Othman, head of the commission, was a "grave error".
"Western countries and the International Atomic Energy Commission will interpret the Syrian refusal as proof that Syria is hiding something and is working on a banned military programme," Zaabi told Adnkronos International (AKI).
"It would be right and proper for Syria to invite the IAEA, European countries and also the United States to have serious dialogue about this matter."
The former general appealed to Syrian leaders in Damascus to "follow what Iran did with its nuclear programme paving the way for lengthy dialogue."
"Thhere would be nothing bad about Syria asking western countries for technical assistance for a peaceful nuclear programme, if it really wanted to head in this direction," Zaabi said.
Regarding scientific aspects of the programme, he said there was nothing to discuss. "Laboratories, analyses and scientific instruments exist that confirm or deny every doubt and hypothesis, and you cannot be skeptical about these results," he stated.
"It would have been better for Syria to provide the IAEA with responses and realistic proof that would not have given rise to doubts or other accusations,"Zaabi said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Does Iran have enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon? One thing is clear if it doesn't today, it can speed up the process substantially through work that takes little more skill than knowing how to use a plumber's wrench.
