NightBlogger

Debkafile
The Georgia quarrel has all but derailed US-Russian cooperation on the Iran issue. Moscow is not only pulling out of the diplomatic and sanctions front against Iran’s nuclear program; according to DEBKAfile’s Russian sources, Moscow has decided to finally finish building Iran’s nuclear reactor in the southern town of Bushehr before the end of the year, after holding back for five years at Washington’s insistence. More

ABC News
Obama told the caucus, according to an attendee, “Nobody said this to me directly but I get the feeling from my talks that if the sanctions don’t work Israel is going to strike Iran.” Others in the room recall this as well. The notion that Israel is preparing for such an action against Iran’s myriad nuclear facilities is not new, with conjecture heating up in May after an Israeli military exercise featuring 150 aircraft flying almost a thousand miles over the Mediterranean Sea in what was seen as a dress rehearsal for an air strike. More

Thinkprogress
CBS News reports, “Israel is building up its strike capabilities amid growing anxiety over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and appears confident that a military attack would cripple Tehran’s atomic program, even if it can’t destroy it.” The country has also “purchased 90 F-16I fighter planes that can carry enough fuel to reach Iran, and will receive 11 more by the end of next year.” According to the Times of London, President Bush has given an “‘amber light‘ to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties.”

Webster G. Tarpley
…the United States and NATO now escalating the hopeless and unwinnable Afghan war, and is preparing to send US and NATO forces on the ground to seize parts of Pakistan, a country which is almost 3 times more populous than Iran, and possesses a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. The Bush-Cheney-neocon era in foreign policy is over, and the Brzezinski-Trilateral-Rockefeller-Soros phase of aggression has begun; the US hit list now features Chinese allies like Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan. Brzezinski is striving to put together some huge provocation for the Beijing Olympics, to make the Chinese government lose face and begin disintegrating. The ultimate targets of the new Obama-Brzezinski foreign policy are Russia, China, and the other members and friends of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main pole of resistance in the world to the designs of Washington and London. The stakes are now much higher than a mere conventional clash in the Persian Gulf. Brzezinski’s adventurism goes far beyond that of the neocons, and objectively places the danger of a thermonuclear exchange on the world agenda. Watch for the Polish-Czech-Lithuanian missile crisis, a Balkan crisis, and a crisis between Georgia and Russia to point the world in this ominous new direction.

The US government is now being run by the Principals’ Committee, an interagency cabal that includes Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary Of State Rice, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson, and other operatives of the Trilateral Wall Street financier faction. It is clear that under the new policy, Iran will be able to continue to process uranium: ‘The Bush administration’s decision to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with “More news and information about Iran.” Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country’s nuclear program. First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it would meet face to face with Iran only after that country suspended its uranium enrichment, as demanded by the “More articles about Security Council, U.N.” United Nations Security Council. Second, an American partner at the table injects new importance to the negotiating track of the six global powers confronting Iran - France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States - even though their official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until uranium enrichment stops. The increased engagement raised questions of whether the Bush administration would alter its stance toward Iran as radically as it did with North Korea, risking a fresh schism with conservatives who have accused the White House of granting concessions to so-called rogue states without extracting enough in return.’ (New York Times, July 17, 2008) This gambit of appeasing Iran is being done in the hopes of turning Iran against Russia and China ­ a project of incalculable folly. Brzezinski is glad to see the Iranians have nukes, because he thinks he can keep them, pointed at Moscow. More

Source: BBC News
Waste containing unenriched uranium has leaked into two rivers from a nuclear plant in southern France. Officials banned people in three nearby towns from fishing, using water from wells, swimming in the rivers or using river water on their crops. The accident happened at the Tricastin nuclear site at Bollene, some 40km (25 miles) from the city of Avignon. The French nuclear safety agency said the substance was toxic but the risk to human health was slight. Uranium concentrations in the Gaffiere river were initially about 1,000 times higher than normal levels but were falling rapidly, spokeswoman Evangelia Petit said. Some 30,000l (7,925 gallons) of solution containing 12g of uranium per litre spilled from an overflowing reservoir at the facility - which handles liquids contaminated by uranium - into the ground and into the Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers. Anti-nuclear campaign group Abandon Nuclear Power said it thought the authorities were underplaying the danger posed by the nuclear waste leak. “It is impossible that such a spill, containing uranium, does not have important consequences for the environment and for health,” it said. France is one of the world’s most nuclear-dependent countries, with 80% of its electricity coming from nuclear power.

Source: BBC
The US has imposed new financial sanctions on Iranian individuals and companies suspected of involvement in the country’s nuclear programme. A senior defence ministry scientist and several companies thought to be linked to Iran’s arms industry were among those placed on the restricted list. The move will ban US companies from trading with those on the list, who will also have US assets frozen. It came as G8 leaders called for Iran to halt uranium enrichment work. Western leaders have been attempting to convince Tehran to stop enriching uranium, which it has continued despite the imposition of sanctions by the UN and the European Union. Iran denies Western assertions that it is developing nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear programme is intended for peaceful purposes. Correspondents say the latest sanctions move is intended to increase the pressure on Tehran to comply with the calls to end enrichment.

Iran on Sunday dismissed reports that Israel had been practicing for air strikes against its nuclear drive as “psychological operations” but warned of a limitless response to any attack. The New York Times on Friday cited US officials as saying that a major Israeli military exercise over Greece earlier this month appeared to be a dry run for a potential strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. “It seems that a series of psychological operations have been taken to intimidate the Islamic republic and force it to renounce its absolute and legitimate right” to nuclear power, Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar said.

“But Iran will not be intimidated by these threats and will not renounce its right,” he added, quoted by the Fars news agency. An official with the Greek air force’s central command confirmed the substance of the report, stating that it had taken part in “joint training exercises” with Israel off the Mediterranean island of Crete. “Iran will not begin any conflict but will punish any aggressor with force. With determination and using all the options — without limit in time and space — we will give a destructive response to any hostile action,” Najar said. His comments came after the UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei warned on Saturday that an attack on Iran would turn the region into a “ball of fire.” More

Timesonline.co.uk
Iran has moved ballistic missiles into launch positions, with Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant among the possible targets, defence sources said last week. The movement of Shahab-3B missiles, which have an estimated range of more than 1,250 miles, followed a large-scale exercise earlier this month in which the Israeli air force flew en masse over the Mediterranean in an apparent rehearsal for a threatened attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Israel believes Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at acquiring nuclear weapons.

The sources said Iran was preparing to retaliate for any onslaught by firing missiles at Dimona, where Israel’s own nuclear weapons are believed to be made. Major-General Mohammad Jafari, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, told a Tehran daily: “This country [Israel] is completely within the range of the Islamic Republic’s missiles. Our missile power and capability are such that the Zionist regime – despite all its abilities – cannot confront it.” More

An engineer is on trial in Germany for allegedly attempting to help Libya develop a nuclear bomb. But the network the man was allegedly part of was under surveillance by intelligence agencies, with the CIA getting involved early on. The Swiss government has even gone so far as to eliminate evidence by secretly shredding thousands of documents.

The story should really begin in Stuttgart, the southern Germany city where the case has now been on trial for the past two weeks, where defendant Gotthard Lerch, 65, can be seen on Thursdays and Fridays in Courtroom 18, and where an international smuggling ring, which sought to sell the makings of a nuclear bomb to Libya between 1997 and 2003, is acquiring a face. It’s the wrong face if you go by Lerch’s defense lawyers, but the right one, according to the federal prosecutors. The face of the defendant, at any rate, is that of an elegant older man with grey hair and an occasional smirk. He stands accused of having been part of a ring of which US President George W. Bush once said he would capture and eliminate, “each and every one.” More

Photo davi sommerfeld

Joby Warrick
Washington Post

Global Interest in Energy May Presage A New Arms Race

VIENNA — At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations. At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts. Read more

Photo courtesy of Simon

Oil again…

The Sun
“Admiral James Stavridis, who oversees military affairs for Latin America, told Congress on March 6 that he backs plans to designate a new fleet, led by a nuclear aircraft carrier, to patrol the waters of the Caribbean and Latin America in support of counter-terrorism operations. The move comes as South American nations, including Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador, boost military spending to counter tensions and protect oil reserves.”
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