The Dangerous Pakistani Horn (Daniel 8:8)

Safety and Security of Pakistan’s Nuclear Installations

March 30, 2015 9:44 am

Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is primarily based on the policy of ambiguity. There are different speculations regarding the exact number of its nuclear weapons however the accurate number is yet unknown. By and large, it is assessed that Pakistan could have 90 to 120 nuclear warheads.

The numbers debate aside, Pakistan has taken numerous steps to ensure security of its nuclear weapons and other related assets. A number of initiatives have been taken in this regard. The weapons are apparently kept separate from their delivery systems just to minimize chances of any catastrophe. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former President, affirmed that Pakistan warheads and missiles are not ready to fire with a button in hand.

The concerns regarding the accidental launch of the nuclear weapon are also addressed by attaching nuclear warheads with a code lock device ‘Adaptation of Permissive Action Links’ (PALs). By doing this, any nuclear-lunched decision is not plausible unless the decision is taken be two or three men who are authorized to do so. Such a strictest procedure shows Pakistan’s maturity and competence in keeping its nuclear weapons safe.

Measures have also been taken to secure fissile material under the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) net. Not a single incident has been reported regarding the mishandling or mismanagement of fissile material produced within Pakistan. There is also a tight security of nuclear facilities with highly trained personnel and electronic devices. Like advanced nuclear weapons states, Pakistan has also taken strong measures to make its fissile material security perfect.

SPD conducts external audits on all nuclear inventories inside the country. SPD also launches regular and surprise inspections of the nuclear facilities to check and confirm its control and accounting of fissile material. SPD is also accountable for the Physical protection of nuclear facilities. Under the Inner perimeter security and outer perimeter security, protection of facilities has been ensured.

Pakistan also ratified the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials (CPPNM) in October 2000 and all transportation of its sensitive nuclear materials comes under the guidelines of this convention.

Four nuclear facilities of Pakistan, KANUPP, the Pakistan Atomic Research Reactors I and II at Rawalpindi and Chasma-1 power reactor, are working under the safeguards of the IAEA. Other non-attached facilities also bind themselves with strict safeguards procedures of the IAEA.

Pakistan has taken all the necessary measures to affirm secured transportation of fissile material. As fissile material is highly radioactive in nature especially when it is burnt out in a nuclear reactor, so on that stage transportation of that material becomes very much risky. As far as the transportation of fissile material in Pakistan is concerned, most of the nuclear reactors and reprocessing units are at the same places which eradicate probability of any mishap. Pakistan follows international norms of transporting such material.

Like USA, Pakistan also follows Personnel Reliability Program. This program deals with personnel screening and clearance, who work in nuclear facilities, strategic organizations and other related installation.

In western discourse, a concern which is often expressed regarding the security of Pakistan nukes is that, terrorist may attack or get hold of its nuclear installations. However, factual assessment clearly reveal that not a single terrorist attack or other related incident has been recorded to date.

The initiatives taken by Pakistan to provide foolproof security to its nuclear assets shows the country’s strong commitment, capability, and credibility to be a responsible nuclear state. No one should remain under the illusion that terrorists could attack Pakistan’s nuclear installations. To attack the GHQ and the Mehran Navel Base located in congested cities like Rawalpindi and Karachi is different than attacking Pakistan’s nukes that are scattered and under multi-layered command and control system.

Babylon The Greatest Breacher Of The Non-Proliferation Treaty (Ezekiel 17)

Who Are the Nuclear Scofflaws?

Lawrence S. Wittner / History News Network @myHNN
March 30, 2015

Surprise: The US is on the list. So is Russia. But Iran? Nope

Given all the frothing by hawkish U.S. Senators about Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons, one might think that Iran was violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
But it’s not. The NPT, signed by 190 nations and in effect since 1970, is a treaty in which the non-nuclear nations agreed to forgo developing nuclear weapons and the nuclear nations agreed to divest themselves of their nuclear weapons. It also granted nations the right to develop peaceful nuclear power. The current negotiations in which Iran is engaged with other nations are merely designed to guarantee that Iran, which signed the NPT, does not cross the line from developing nuclear power to developing nuclear weapons.

Nine nations, however, have flouted the NPT by either developing nuclear weapons since the treaty went into effect or failing to honor the commitment to disarm. These nine scofflaws and their nuclear arsenals are Russia (7,500 nuclear warheads), the United States (7,100 nuclear warheads), France (300 nuclear warheads), China (250 nuclear warheads), Britain (215 nuclear warheads), Pakistan (100-120 nuclear warheads), India (90-110 nuclear warheads), Israel (80 nuclear warheads), and North Korea (10 nuclear warheads).
Nor are the nuclear powers likely to be in compliance with the NPT any time soon. The Indian and Pakistani governments are engaged in a rapid nuclear weapons buildup, while the British government is contemplating the development of a new, more advanced nuclear weapons system. Although, in recent decades, the U.S. and Russian governments did reduce their nuclear arsenals substantially, that process has come to a halt in recent years, as relations have soured between the two nations. Indeed, both countries are currently engaged in a new, extremely dangerous nuclear arms race. The U.S. government has committed itself to spending $1 trillion to “modernize” its nuclear facilities and build new nuclear weapons. For its part, the Russian government is investing heavily in the upgrading of its nuclear warheads and the development of new delivery systems, such as nuclear missiles and nuclear submarines.

What can be done about this flouting of the NPT, some 45 years after it went into operation?

That will almost certainly be a major issue at an NPT Review Conference that will convene at the UN headquarters, in New York City, from April 27 to May 22. These review conferences, held every five years, attract high-level national officials from around the world to discuss the treaty’s implementation. For a very brief time, the review conferences even draw the attention of television and other news commentators before the mass communications media return to their preoccupation with scandals, arrests, and the lives of movie stars.

This spring’s NPT review conference might be particularly lively, given the heightening frustration of the non-nuclear powers at the failure of the nuclear powers to fulfill their NPT commitments. At recent disarmament conferences in Norway, Mexico and Austria, the representatives of a large number of non-nuclear nations, ignoring the opposition of the nuclear powers, focused on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. One rising demand among restless non-nuclear nations and among nuclear disarmament groups is to develop a nuclear weapons ban treaty, whether or not the nuclear powers are willing to participate in negotiations.

To heighten the pressure for the abolition of nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament groups are staging a Peace and Planet mobilization, in Manhattan, on the eve of the NPT review conference. Calling for a “Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just, and Sustainable World,” the mobilization involves an international conference (comprised of plenaries and workshops) on April 24 and 25, plus a culminating interfaith convocation, rally, march, and festival on April 26. Among the hundreds of endorsing organizations are many devoted to peace (Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi, Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Veterans for Peace, and Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom), environmentalism (Earth Action, Friends of the Earth, and 350NYC), religion (Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Unitarian Universalist UN Office, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist General Board of Church & Society), workers’ rights (New Jersey Industrial Union Council, United Electrical Workers, and Working Families Party), and human welfare (American Friends Service Committee and National Association of Social Workers).

Of course, how much effect the proponents of a nuclear weapons-free world will have on the cynical officials of the nuclear powers remains to be seen. After as many as 45 years of stalling on their own nuclear disarmament, it is hard to imagine that they are finally ready to begin negotiating a treaty effectively banning nuclear weapons―or at least their nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, let us encourage Iran not to follow the bad example set by the nuclear powers. And let us ask the nuclear-armed nations, now telling Iran that it should forgo the possession of nuclear weapons, when they are going to start practicing what they preach.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. He is the author of “Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement” (Stanford University Press).

Iran Will Keep Their Uranium For The End (Rev 15:2)

White House: Negotiators still working on Iran’s enriched uranium

BY: Brian Hughes March 30, 2015 | 12:02 pm

The White House Monday hit back at the suggestion that Iran had agreed to and then backed out of a deal to send its stockpile of enriched uranium abroad, saying the issue could still be overcome ahead of the Tuesday deadline for talks.

“The idea that there had been an agreement that Iran had backed away from in the last 24 hours is not true,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One, as President Obama traveled to Boston for an event honoring the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

“In terms of what’s going to happen with that stockpile, that is something our negotiators are working through, but it’s not accurate to say there had been an agreement that was then backtracked. As we’ve said all along, nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi told reporters late Sunday that his country would not send its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia for storage, which had been sought by P5+1 nations to keep Iran at least a year away from being able to develop a nuclear weapon.

Negotiators insist the Iranian position is not a deal breaker but concede that a number of issues remain with the Tuesday deadline swiftly approaching.

Critics, however, say the development is proof that Iran can’t be trusted to live up to terms of an agreement keeping it from building a nuclear weapon.

Schultz reiterated Monday that Obama would indeed walk away from the deal if the framework did not meet his conditions.

Iran Program Similar To India’s Program 15 Years Ago

Iran Talks Shed Light On Nuclear Tensions Between India, Pakistan

MARCH 30, 2015 4:46 PM ET

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NPR’s Robert Siegel talks with Frank O’Donnell, a doctoral candidate at King’s College London, about how nuclear powers India and Pakistan manage their bilateral relationship.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

One fear of Iran potentially developing a nuclear weapon is that it would lead to a regional nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Israel already has a nuclear arsenal, although it maintains a policy of neither confirming nor denying its existence. It’s often said that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey might pursue nuclear weapons if their regional rivals in Iran had them. We thought we’d check in on a neighboring region where there has been a nuclear arms race, India and Pakistan. Neither country is signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both have nuclear weapons. Frank O’Donnell of King’s College London has studied nuclear weapons in South Asia and joins us now. Welcome to the program.

O’DONNELL: Thank you. Glad to be here.

SIEGEL: And does the experience of India and Pakistan present any lessons for the Middle East and nuclear weapons?

O’DONNELL: I think it does. A lot of the analysis I read about the Iran talks will say that this could pave the way toward a realignment of the United States and the Middle East. This could bring Iran in from the cold. However, the Iran deal, if it goes forward, is just a technical agreement, and in India and Pakistan, there are similar technical agreements which are quite limited. One – both states will exchange a list on New Year’s Day each year of the nuclear installations which is part of an agreement not to target each other’s nuclear facilities. One is that they notify each other of any missile tests, and one is that the leadership and also the militaries have a hotline to each other.
The story with India and Pakistan is they still have growing nuclear arsenals. These limited technical agreements have not produced the kind of foundation for that broader relationship that some of the analysis talking about Iran seems to expect.
SIEGEL: What do you make of the argument that countries that acquire nuclear arsenals, even if they sound remarkably belligerent before that time, tend to behave fairly responsibly once they do have nuclear arsenals?

O’DONNELL: Well, I mean, to that I can only say look at the example of North Korea. You know, it’s one of the most irresponsible states in the world. It’s always making nuclear threats. If a state has nuclear weapons, that doesn’t automatically guarantee a certain format of behavior.

SIEGEL: And the India-Pakistan conflict – I mean, do you think of it as one that actually has the potential of turning into a nuclear exchange anytime in the even distant future?

O’DONNELL: I don’t see that getting to the level of a nuclear exchange. However, what concerns me is that there is not a sustainable, ongoing dialogue to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan. What has happened in recent years is that both sides adopt a tough stance and start escalating, and they both wait for the United States to come in and provide both of them the face-saving exercise that the United States will intervene and bring them both down. There are not mechanisms to de-escalate once a crisis emerges.

SIEGEL: Yeah.

O’DONNELL: That is what I find most concerning about the situation there.

SIEGEL: That addressing the question of nuclear weapons can be a remarkably compartmentalized and technical development and really have no implications for a more peaceful relations between countries.

O’DONNELL: I think that India and Pakistan developed nuclear weapons out of both of their own sense of security threat. And for there to be some measures of reducing nuclear tensions, this has to be part of a broader political dialogue involving what both of their own threat perceptions are, and also, I argue, including China as well because China is very much part of the South Asian strategic environment. It’s very much a player in the region.

SIEGEL: Do you see any parallels between Iran today and Pakistan and India at the point where they were intent on developing nuclear weapons?

O’DONNELL: The main parallel I see with Iran – up until really the Obama administration came in, the activities it was conducting up to that point seemed to me very reminiscent of what India was doing – the position it had up until it conducted testing in 1998. For a long period – say, from about the mid ’80s and up until 1998, what India did was it had the capability. It had all the material. It had the knowledge. It had, you know, the missiles all sitting disassembled in its basement. By doing that, it meant that it would not be sanctioned as it was after 1998 for conducting the nuclear tests. However, it could in some ways behave like a nuclear-weapon state. It could throw its weight around a bit more. And I wonder if Iranians who are, you know, running the program did look at India’s experience as a guide.

SIEGEL: Frank O’Donnell, thanks for talking with us.

O’DONNELL: Thank you.

SIEGEL: Frank O’Donnell is a doctoral candidate in defense studies at King’s College London and a research associate with the Center for Science and Security Studies.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

Don’t Be Surprised If NO Deal (Ezekiel 17)

Former U.S. Ambassador: Iran Deal ‘Hard to Sell’

The former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq acknowledged on Sunday morning that some of the pessimism surrounding the Iran nuclear talks was warranted, calling the potential deal “hard to sell.”

Christopher Hill, who was also the chief disarmament negotiator in the failed nuclear talks with North Korea, said that both the United States and Iran will have a hard time convincing their people that the deal is a good one.

“Certainly from the U.S. vantage point, they need to go back to Washington and kind of oversell the deal,” argued Hill in an appearance on “Meet the Press.”

“The deal is so hinged on technical issues that it is going to be hard to sell,” Hill said.

Hill added that the Iranians will have to tout the lifting of sanctions back in Tehran, but that neither side will achieve a “very nice and clean deal.”

“Both sides are going to have a heck of a time selling it back in capitals,” he added. “And so I think some of this pessimism is very real.”

The former ambassador also addressed the concern that allies like Saudi Arabia have that Iran will be strengthened both through the nuclear deal and through partnering in the fight in Yemen. “From the Saudi perspective, they look at this deal with Iran and they see something that goes beyond just the nuclear issue,” Hill said. “They see some kind of … re-emerging partnership with the U.S. and Iran.”

A Hypocrite Would Know A Hypocrite (Rev 13)

Boehner: Iran has ‘no intention’ of keeping its word on nuclear deal

Dominic Rushe in New York

@dominicru

Sunday 29 March 2015 10.34 EDT

Iran has “no intention” of keeping its word on an agreement being negotiated in Switzerland over its nuclear programme, House speaker John Boehner said on Sunday.

The top Republican’s comments came as negotiations in Lausanne approached the 31 March deadline for the drafting of a framework for a deal, under intense criticism from Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Speaking on CNN, Boehner said he had serious doubts about the talks. 

“We’ve got a regime that’s never quite kept their word about anything,” he said. “I just don’t understand why we would sign an agreement with a group of people who have no intention of keeping their word.”

If there was no agreement, Boehner said he would move “very” quickly to impose new sanctions on Iran.

“The sanctions are going to come and they are going to come quickly,” he said.

Boehner deepened a rift with President Barack Obama when he invited Netanyahu to address Congress earlier this month without first informing the White House. The invite strained Obama’s already awkward relationship with the Israeli premier.

“I think the animosity exhibited by this administration toward the prime minister of Israel is reprehensible,” said Boehner. “And I think the pressure they have put on him over the past four or five years frankly pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.”

Boehner said Netanyahu had clearly highlighted the threat he said Iran’s nuclear programme represents, “not only to the Middle East but to the rest of the world”.

Netanyahu denounced the talks once again on Sunday. “I am deeply troubled by the emerging agreement with Iran in the nuclear talks,” he said at the start of a cabinet meeting. “The agreement confirms all of our fears and even worse.”

Boehner said: “The president doesn’t want to talk about [Iran]. Doesn’t want to talk about the fact that he has no strategy to deal with it. When you begin to see all these leaks that presumably came out of the White House about what the Iranian deal was going to be, there is a lot of concern in Congress on a bipartisan basis.”

Saudi Arabia Guaranteed Nukes (Daniel 7:7)

Saudi Arabia Will Not Stop Building or Acquiring Nukes

Mao Factolerin | Mar 29, 2015 02:28 AM EDT

Saudi Arabia will not stop building or acquiring nuclear weapons, the country’s ambassador to the United Stated said.

CNN News asked the Arabian ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir whether Saudi Arabia would ever build nulear weapons, he said that the subject is not for them to discuss publicly. “This is not something that I can comment on, nor would I comment on,” he added.

The discretion of the ambassador in ruling out a military nuclear programme may rekindle the concerns that the autocratic monarchy has its eye on a nuclear arsenal.

The Independent reports that the Western intelligence agencies suppose that the Saudi monarchy funded about 60% of Pakistan’s nuclear programme in return for the ability to purchase warheads for itself at short notice.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia maintain close relations and sometimes said to have a special relationship. At present, the two countries have close military ties and conduct joint exercises.

The Saudi Arabian administration already possesses medium-range ballistic missiles as well in the form of the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force. In addition to this, it has a civilian nuclear programme of the kind that Iran says it wants to obtain.

A senior Saudi told the Times newspaper in 2012 that it would be completely politically unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom.

\A deal with Iran on its nuclear programme is possible, according to the US and other Western allies. However, Iran denies that it is building nuclear weapons.

At present, Saudi’s military operation against the moving Shia Houthi group in Yemen has been joined by Egyptian, Jordanian, as well as Moroccan forces.

Read more: http://en.yibada.com/articles/22989/20150329/saudi-arabia-will-not-stop-building-or-acquiring-nukes.htm#ixzz3VqBDX7zD

Babylon The Great’s Ultimate Hypocrisy (Ezekiel 17)

US wants nuclear transparency, but not for its own bombs

• The first US hydrogen bomb test is shown in the Pacific at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands, November 1, 1952. AP Photo

Tony Karon Mar 29, 2015

Amid all of last week’s headlines parsing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as the deadline for a potential deal with world powers drew near, it was easy to miss the item in the Science section of The New York Times. It was about the US hydrogen bomb programme.

The H-bomb, the paper reminded readers, is a thermonuclear device. Its destructive power is 1,000 times that of the bomb that instantly killed 80,000 people in Hiroshima in 1945. And it has long been a feature in the ­arsenals of nuclear-armed states.

The news peg was a memoir by one of the founders of the US H-bomb programme, Kenneth W Ford. But even though he cited publicly available material, US Department of Energy censors blocked the book.

Transparency, of course, has never been deemed a virtue in any nuclear weapons programme anywhere in the world. That said, Iran’s leaders might see the irony in being held to stringent transparency requirements while states with well-established nuclear-weapons capability are absolved of the equivalent accountability.

But the basic hypocrisy of the major world powers’ application of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is well-established. Five of the countries currently negotiating with Iran, which is an NPT signatory, are acknowledged to have nuclear weapons. The NPT requires signatories to submit their nuclear facilities to constant inspections to verify their commitment to refrain from building weapons. Meanwhile, the established nuclear weapons states are meant to negotiate their way to disarmament. But 45 years after they adopted the NPT, the established nuclear powers have not ended their addiction to nuclear weapons.

In that period, four non-signatories – India, Pakistan, Israel and South Africa – developed nuclear weapons, although post-apartheid South Africa signed the NPT and allowed the dismantling of its nukes. Meanwhile, a fifth country, North Korea, developed nuclear weapons after withdrawing from the NPT .

So the negotiations with Iran are not aimed at keeping the Middle East free of nuclear weapons as much as to maintain America and Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region.

But the censoring of Ford’s book reveals a deeper peril in America’s national conversation about nuclear weapons – or, more accurately, the absence of a national conversation about nuclear weapons.

It can never be forgotten that the US was the first – and, mercifully, remains the only – country to have detonated nuclear weapons in anger. On August 6, 1945, that bomb instantly killed one quarter of Hiroshima’s civilian population. Three days later, it detonated a second device over Nagasaki, killing 40,000.

The decision to use weapons of mass destruction to destroy civilian population centres has not been exhaustively debated in the US. It was simply accepted as part of the national mythology that obliterating two Japanese cities was necessary to save many more lives.

When Washington’s Smithsonian Institution planned, in 1995, an exhibit depicting the impact of the bomb through photographs taken on the ground in Hiroshima, the effort was blocked by Congressional Republicans. They denounced it as “anti-American propaganda”. They did so, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, explained, because “most Americans … are sick and tired of being told by some cultural elite that they ought to be ashamed of their country”.

America’s nuclear arsenal now includes weapons a thousand times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. Most of its 4,650 active nuclear warheads are between 10 and 50 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Yet, the decision to nuke the Japanese city is one that American politicians don’t want their people to discuss. No surprise then, that there’s not much public discussion today on the place of nuclear weapons in the nation’s security doctrine.

During the 2008 campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, then-Senator Hillary Clinton rebuked her rival, Barack Obama, for ruling out the use of nuclear force against Al Qaeda in Pakistan. “Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrents to keep the peace,” Mrs Clinton said, rejecting any “blanket statements with regard to use or non-use.” This was the view of the politician who might be in pole position in the 2016 race for the White House.

In April 2009, president Obama made a historic speech in Prague committing to pursue a “a world without nuclear weapons”and to reduce the number of warheads in the US arsenal. But he also pledged, in light of continued nuclear capability by rival powers, to ensure that the US maintains an “effective arsenal”.

That commitment has now translated, according to the budget he submitted to Congress last month, into a massive modernisation scheme, which would cost $348 billion (Dh 1.28 trillion) over the next 10 years and as much as $1 trillion over a 30-year period.

Still, don’t expect to see much public debate over just what the US is building, and the circumstances in which it might conceivably decide – once again – to destroy a civilian population centre in a matter of minutes.

The world would be a much safer place if, as the NPT intended, efforts to stop new countries acquiring nuclear weapons were matched by the attempt to hold accountable those that already have them.

Tony Karon teaches in the graduate programme at the New School in New York

Iran Deal Heading Towards The End (Rev 15:2)

Expected Iranian nuclear deal worse than Israel feared

13 HOURS AGO BY AGENCIES 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned on Sunday the framework Iranian nuclear agreement being sought by international negotiators, saying it was even worse than his country had feared.

Israel has mounted what it terms an “uphill battle” against an agreement that might ease sanctions on the Iranians while leaving them with a nuclear infrastructure with bomb-making potential. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

“This deal, as it appears to be emerging, bears out all of our fears, and even more than that,” Netanyahu told his cabinet in Jerusalem as the United States, five other world powers and Iran worked toward a March 31 deadline in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Noting advances made by Iranian-allied forces in Yemen and other Arab countries, Netanyahu accused the Islamic republic of trying to “conquer the entire Middle East” while moving toward nuclearization.

“The Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis is very dangerous to humanity, and must be stopped,” he said.

Netanyahu’s campaigning against the nuclear negotiations crested on March 3 with his speech to the US Congress at the invitation of its Republican speaker, John Boehner, that angered President Barack Obama and many fellow Democrats.

The right-wing prime minister, who won a fourth term in a March 17 election, said on Sunday he had spoken to senior US lawmakers from both parties “and heard from them about the steadfast, strong and continuous bipartisan support for Israel”.

Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli official who has been spearheading efforts to lobby world powers against the Iran deal, voiced cautious hope that the negotiations would collapse as they have in the past.

“We may still have a chance. We are not alone. There are still great doubts in the United States as well as in France, even in England,” Steinitz told Israel Radio, referring to disputes with Iran over the scope of nuclear projects it might be allowed to retain.

But Steinitz said Israel, which is not a party to the talks and whose hardline demands have not been welcomed in Western capitals, was in an “uphill battle”.

The Canadian Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7:7)

Modi’s Canada visit may clinch uranium deal

ANIRBAN BHAUMIK , NEW DELHI: MARCH 30, 2015, DHNS

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Ottawa next month may see a much awaited commercial agreement being signed paving way for Canada to supply uranium to India. 

“We look forward to resuming our civil nuclear energy cooperation with Canada, especially for sourcing uranium fuel for our nuclear power plants,” Modi posted on Facebook on Saturday. Sources told Deccan Herald that New Delhi and Ottawa might also announce joint research and development in the field of nuclear energy, focusing on augmenting capacity of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors of India.

The prime minister will visit Canada from April 14 to 16 after touring France and Germany. He will meet his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper in Ottawa and will address business leaders in Toronto. Modi on Saturday noted that Canada was also the first country to have completed the requirements for civil nuclear cooperation with India after New Delhi secured the waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2008.

India and Canada signed the civil nuclear cooperation agreement in 2010 and followed it up by inking the administrative arrangement in 2012. Though India and United States clinched a nuclear deal in 2008, the protracted negotiations over administrative arrangement concluded only recently.

Cameco Corporation of Canada has since long been engaged in commercial negotiation for supplying uranium from its mines in the North American country to nuclear power plants in India.

Sources said that a breakthrough in the complex negotiation was expected soon and a deal might be clinched after Modi-Harper meeting in Ottawa. A senior government official said that New Delhi and Ottawa might also announce a joint research and development programme, primarily focusing on augmenting capacity of the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors in India to 750 MW.

Ottawa had snapped its nuke ties with New Delhi after accusing the Indian government of using plutonium produced in reactor provided by Canada and installed in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay for its first nuclear test in Pokhran in 1974.

Canada had supplied the nuclear reactor CIRUS to India in mid-1950s under the Atom for Peace Programme for civilian use of nuclear energy. The “Smiling Buddha”, as the first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, was codenamed, had triggered international uproar and Canada had immediately cut off supply of nuclear materials and technology to India.

Modi on Saturday also referred to France-India nuclear agreement. “France is one of our most important strategic partners, which has stood with us at difficult moments. We remember the understanding and support extended by France in 1998 after the Pokhran Tests,” he posted on Facebook.

“France has been a consistent supporter of India’s Membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” he added. – See more at: http://m.deccanherald.com/content/468669/modis-canada-visit-may-clinch.html/#sthash.WBclN8ST.dpuf

Babylon Pounds The Ram (Daniel 8:5)

The military has released videos of the US pounding ISIS targets around Tikrit

• JEREMY BENDER

• MAR. 27, 2015, 5:38 PM

 Shi’ite fighters from Saraya al-Salam, who are loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, gather in the holy city of Najaf before heading to the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit to continue the offensive against Islamic State militants March 20, 2015.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) has released twelve videos of US airstrikes against various ISIS targets around the Iraqi city of Tikrit.

CENTCOM conducted a total of 17 strikes against ISIS targets over the night of March 25 using a combination of fighter, bomber, and remotely piloted aircraft.

“In Tikrit, 17 airstrikes struck an ISIL building, two ISIL bridges, three ISIL checkpoints, two ISIL staging areas, two ISIL berms, an ISIL roadblock and an ISIL controlled command and control facility,” CENTCOM stated in a press release.

The strikes were conducted after the Iraqi Ministry of Defense asked for US assistance in dislodging ISIS from the area. The strikes have been greeted with skepticism as Iranian-led Shiite militias have taken the lead in the Tikrit campaign. The militias have been implicated in human rights violations targeting Sunnis. Some fear that the US-led coalition’s mission against ISIS could be complicated if it’s viewed by Sunni Iraqis as providing air cover for sectarian abuses.

As of March 12, the US has spent a total of $1.83 billion in the war against ISIS. This amounts to approximately $8.5 million a day.

 

Explosion of Middle East Violence Regardless of Nuke Talks

  

CBS News

Hanging over the nuclear negotiations is a Middle East in disarray, where an extraordinary dymanic is unfolding. The U.S. and Iran are working both alongside and against each other in several conflicts.

The U.S. is on the opposite side of Iran in Yemen, on the same side in Iraq and against the Iranian-backed Assad regime in Syria.

“It’s really about what would make countries in the region safer,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

Harf said preventing Iran from building a bomb will contain at least part of the threat they pose.

“It’s precisely because Iran is destabilizing in so many places that we don’t want them to get nuclear weapons,” Harf said. “If you imagine the kinds of influence they have today, they would have even more influence in the region if they were able to do that backed up by nuclear weapons.”

But many U.S. allies in the region distrust Iran and worry their interests are being sacrificed as the administration pushes for a potentially historic deal.

Saudi Arabia, in particular, feels immediately threatened by its longtime foe. Iranian-backed militias in neighboring Yemen, Iraq and Syria are only growing in strength.

Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez thinks allies should be concerned — a deal with Iran would only limit, not scrap, its nuclear capability and could embolden it.

“What we will have done is bought time but not stopped Iran’s march towards nuclear weapons, and a future president and the world will face a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, and that is not in the national interests or security of the United States or our allies,” Menendez said.

There’s also the possibility that the talks in Switzerland could fail altogether. U.S. negotiators said if that happens President Obama will have to make a tough decision about whether he’s willing to confront Iran and force it to stop its nuclear program.

Iran Is The First Nuclear Horn (Daniel 8:3)

Iran’s Nuclear Program

Don’t ignore threat Iran poses to global security

By Jacob Goldberg

5 p.m.March 28, 2015

 

For months, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have repeated a mantra about nuclear negotiations with Iran: “no deal is better then a bad deal.” But when Obama is asking rhetorically “what’s the alternative,” he contradicts the mantra, indicating that the U.S. seeks an agreement at any cost.

An examination of Iran’s nuclear record shows that the ayatollahs changed their conduct only on two occasions. In 2003, they suspended the military nuclear project because of U.S. invasion of Iraq and the fear of an American strike; and in 2013, they agreed to negotiate because of stringent sanctions imposed by Congress and European powers.

Asking “what’s the alternative,” Obama practically gives up the two leverages over Iran — a credible military deterrent and debilitating sanctions. He leads the ayatollahs to conclude that Washington is more eager than Tehran to reach an agreement.

The emerging deal creates a 12-month “breakout” period, should Iran race to the bomb, enough time for the U.S to respond. But, this assumption is predicated on U.S. intelligence being able to detect such “breakout,” an ability challenged by a Pentagon study. Stating that “U.S. intelligence is neither organized nor equipped to detect development of nuclear weapons,” it concludes that “the detection abilities in cases like Iran are inadequate or nonexistent.” This conclusion removes the rug from under the basis of the agreement. Indeed, the woeful U.S. record in detecting development of nuclear weapons by Pakistan, North Korea and Syria clearly refutes the assumption.

In addition, a “sunset clause” in the agreement would allow Iran, “legally,” to develop nuclear weapons. The administration’s claim that an Iranian violation would result in reimposition of sanctions is unrealistic. Having spent billions of dollars in Iran, are big corporations likely to sacrifice their investments?

The emerging deal is flawed not only due to its contents, but also because of its omissions. No reference is made to Iran’s “nuclear weaponization” program, as well as to its development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which only serve nuclear weapons.

The Iranians cite India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as reasons for their decision to go nuclear. But this analogy is deceptive: neither India nor Pakistan developed ICBMs; both use nuclear weapons only as a means of mutual deterrence.

Also, the agreement does not require Iran to desist from threatening its Arab neighbors, to stop financial support of and involvement in worldwide terrorism, to avoid calling for Israel’s annihilation, and to remove the battle cry of the Islamic regime — “Death to America.”

The net result of the agreement would be to institutionalize Iran’s status as a nuclear threshold state. It would not lead the Ayatollahs to tone down their revolutionary zeal; just the opposite: a nuclear umbrella would embolden their aggressiveness.

This will adversely affect U.S. national security. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are determined to acquire or develop their own nuclear deterrent. This would destroy a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy: preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

A nuclear threshold Iran would also be able to prevent a future decline in oil prices. While Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies ignored Iranian demands to lower production and keep prices high, they are unlikely to dare ignore similar threats by a nuclear Iran.

Bad Blood Between The Antichrist and Babylon (Eze 17)

The Antichrist Moqtada al-Sadr

A history of bad blood between Iraq’s Shiite militias, US troops

By Robert H. Reid

Stars and Stripes

Published: March 27, 2015

WASHINGTON — A long, bloody history of conflict, double-crosses and American blood lies behind the U.S. military’s refusal to cooperate with Iraq’s Shiite militias — even if both sides now face a common enemy in the Islamic State.

Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of the U.S. Central Command, bluntly laid out the reasons why the military was loathe to launch airstrikes to help the stalled Iraqi government offensive against Islamic State fighters in Tikrit until Iranian-backed Shiite militias pulled back from the frontlines.

“Once those conditions were met, which included Shiite militias not being involved, then we were able to proceed,” Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. “[After] three tours in Iraq commanding [U.S.] troops who were brutalized by some of these Shiite militias, I will not, and I hope we never will, coordinate or cooperate with Shiite militias.”

Until the U.S. launched airstrikes late Wednesday, critics had accused the Obama administration of sitting on the sidelines, allowing the Iranians and their Shiite militia clients to exploit the campaign against Tikrit to expand their influence in Iraq, where nearly 4,500 American servicemembers died.
Others, including former Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus, had warned that as long as militias made up the bulk of the pro-government forces besieging Tikrit, a Sunni city, the U.S. ran the risk of being seen by Sunnis as the “Shiite air force.”

Aside from the political risks, cooperation with the Shiite militias would be a bitter pill for Americans who fought many of those same militiamen only a few years ago. Some of those militia leaders rose in stature in the Shiite-dominated Iraq that the U.S. left behind when the last American troops left in December 2011.

[After] three tours in Iraq commanding [U.S.] troops who were brutalized by some of these Shiite militias, I will not, and I hope we never will, coordinate or cooperate with Shiite militias.
— Gen. Llyod Austin

For Americans who never served in Iraq, the image of the war promoted in such Hollywood productions as “American Sniper” has focused on the fight against Sunni insurgents from al-Qaida in Iraq, the forerunner of the Islamic State.

But much of the fighting, especially in the Baghdad area, was waged against Iranian-backed Shiite groups, some which are now part of the “popular mobilization units.” Since the Iraqi army collapsed last summer, the government has sent those militiamen to the front lines against the Islamic State, not only in Tikrit but in the old battlefields of Diyala, Salaheddin and Babil provinces where they once fought the Americans.

Those Shiite groups include the “Peace Brigades,” the rebranded Mahdi army of Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers battled U.S. troops in Sadr City, Najaf, Basra and elsewhere, as well as two other groups — Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, which were largely seen as proxies for Iran.

During the war, Kataib Hezbollah and the League were often described by the U.S. military as the “Special Groups” — shadowy militants responsible for rocket attacks on the Green Zone, kidnappings and ambushes in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad and elsewhere.

The “Special Groups’” signature weapon was the notorious EFP, or explosively formed penetrator, a lethal IED that could fire an explosive charge through all but the most heavily armored vehicles. In the last years of the war, EFPs were believed to have accounted for as many as 80 percent of the U.S. casualties.

The EFPs were so well-made that U.S. intelligence was convinced they were manufactured in Iran and smuggled into Iraq by a network controlled by the League.

The League claimed more than 6,000 attacks against U.S. troops, including EFP and rocket attacks. After the U.S. routed al-Qaida in Iraq in 2008, the U.S. military identified the League as the biggest single threat to American forces in the final three years of the war.

Those Special Groups were also was believed responsible for the Jan. 20, 2007, raid on the Joint Security Station in Karbala, which left five American soldiers dead and three wounded. The raid was among the boldest and most sophisticated attacks against American troops during the war.

It was carried out by up to a dozen Shiite militants, dressed in American uniforms and carrying American weapons, who drove to the station in vehicles similar to those used by U.S. civilian convoys. They bluffed their way through Iraqi checkpoints and stormed a building used by the Americans, killing one U.S. soldier and capturing four others before fleeing with their prisoners.

Three of the Americans were found shot to death near the compound. A fourth was found alive but died soon afterward of his wounds.

Two months after the raid, American troops captured the leader of League, Qais al-Khazali. He was released in 2010 under an Iraqi-negotiated deal in exchange for a British computer contractor who had been kidnapped by Shiite militants.

Al-Khazali ended up rehabilitated and elevated to hero status by the government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who needed political support from his fellow Shiites as the Americans were preparing to leave the country. Al-Khazali’s followers are among Shiite militias now fighting the Islamic State.

He wasn’t the only Special Groups leader to escape punishment thanks to Iraq’s murky sectarian politics.

Ali Mussa Daqduq, a Lebanese citizen who was sent by Hezbollah and the Iranians to train Shiite militias, was also captured by the U.S. in March 2007 and accused of a role in the Karbala raid.

With al-Khazali having escaped punishment, the U.S. was determined to see Daqduq held accountable for the five American deaths in Karbala. As with al-Khazali, however, the Iraqi government didn’t want to take the political risk of punishing a popular figure.

To add to the problem, Daqduq became the center of an internal political battle in Washington. The Obama administration wanted to extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial. Republicans in Congress demanded that he be sent to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. But the White House wanted to close the Guantanamo prison and refused.

Instead, the administration decided to hand him over to the Iraqis and formally ask them for his extradition. The Iraqis refused the request and put him on trial. But the courts threw out the charges.
After months of high-level wrangling and U.S. pressure, in July 2012 — five months after the last American troops left Iraq — the Iraqi central criminal court ordered his release, signaling that as far as Baghdad was concerned, the case was closed. Daqduq was free.

Robert H. Reid reported from Iraq as a journalist from 2003 until 2009.

reid.robert@stripes.com
Twitter: @rhreid

Why Iran Will Go Nuclear (Daniel 8)

Why Iran Has All The Leverage Over Obama

Mar. 27, 2015

Sometime next week, perhaps as early as Tuesday, President Obama will most likely announce that his administration has reached a political agreement with Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime on nuclear weapons.

The deal may not be signed, it may not have any real specifics, but Obama will hail it as the only way to stop a war with Iran and delay them from getting a bomb. 

Whatever the contours of the “agreement” Obama announces next week, it will look far weaker than it was supposed to look just months ago. Over the past week alone, U.S. negotiators reportedly have conceded to Iran: 1) the need for a written agreement; 2) the ability of Iran to use nuclear centrifuges underground; and 3) the need for Iran to disclose the full range of its current nuclear capabilities.

Why, as Lando Calrissian might ask, is this deal getting worse all the time?

The simple answer is that Obama’s broader Middle East strategy leaves him with zero leverage over Iran. The New York Times Thomas Friedman explains:

The Obama team’s best argument for doing this deal with Iran is that, in time, it could be “transformational.” That is, the ending of sanctions could open Iran to the world and bring in enough fresh air — Iran has been deliberately isolated since 1979 by its ayatollahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps — to gradually move Iran from being a revolutionary state to a normal one, and one less inclined to threaten Israel.

If one assumes that Iran already has the know-how and tools to build a nuclear weapon, changing the character of its regime is the only way it becomes less threatening.

The only reason Khamenei’s regime is negotiating with Obama at all is because they want the world’s economic sanctions on Iran lifted. In return for lifting those sanctions, Iran is supposed to give up its ambitions for a nuclear weapon. That’s the basic outline of the deal: Iran gets the sanctions lifter and Obama gets an end to their nuclear weapons program.

But read the above Friedman paragraphs again. Obama’s Middle East strategy is premised on “transforming” the current Iranian government by ending sanctions on Iran. This means that Obama wants the sanctions on Iran lifted just as badly as Ayatollah Khamenei.

Now, granted, Obama and Khamenei have very different ideas about what the outcome of the end of sanctions will be. Obama believes an Iran without economic sanctions will lead to if not Kamanei’s demise, than it least the marginalization of him and his followers. Khamenei, on the other hand, believes an Iran without sanctions will allow his regime to strengthen their control over not just Iran, but also the entire Middle East.

Who has a better understanding of Iran, its politics, its people, and the impact of ending economic sanctions? Is it Khamenei, who has ruled his country for over two decades? Or is it Obama, who honestly thought the power of his own celebrity could save Democrats from crushing defeat in 2010? We’ll see.

The answer to that question is ultimately irrelevant though when judging who currently has more leverage in the nuclear weapons talks. Since both Obama and Iran want sanctions on Iran to be lifted, Obama has no way to force any real concessions from Iran on nuclear issues. His threat to continue the current sanctions, or enact new ones, are hollow. Everyone knows he wants the sanctions lifted anyway. Why should Iran concede anything?

That’s why they are not.

Pakistan Will Become A Nuclear Terror (Daniel 8)

Pakistan’s Nuclear Terrorism

Pakistan’s Promises Will Remain Unfulfilled

Aparna Pande

Posted: 03/27/15 04:52 PM ET Updated: 03/27/15 04:59 PM ET

Pakistan remains unwilling to change the substance of its policy on terrorism even as it tries to reassure the international community that it is ready for a drastic transformation. Several recent developments affirm the Pakistani military’s belief that cosmetic changes or words alone will suffice to convince others, especially the U.S., that Pakistan is serious about giving up its decades old sponsorship of terrorism.

In some ways, Pakistan’s generals are offering Americans a rehashed version of General Pervez Musharraf’s promises in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Now, as then, it is being argued that Pakistan is concerned about the blowback from its policy of sponsoring Jihadis. Musharraf admitted recently that his government continued to support Afghan Taliban even after ostensibly abandoning them at Washington’s behest, to ‘counter India’s influence’ in Afghanistan. 

This time too, the Pakistan military’s efforts are focused narrowly on out of control Jihadis attacking inside Pakistan. Terrorism directed at Afghanistan and India remains unaffected by Pakistan’s new stated policy of rooting out terrorism. Pakistan raised the terrorist militias to compete with India. There is no evidence that goal has been reviewed. 

There has been no introspection over the Pakistani national narrative that allows the country to violate all international norms as long as Pakistan can be seen by the world as India’s equal. Pakistan’s military intelligence establishment still believes it can still play the games of yesteryears and be a critical player in its region and beyond. 

That the fundamentals of Pakistani policy have not changed was recently demonstrated when an official from Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, the key administrative organ within Pakistan’ Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) made light of Jihadists having penetrated Pakistan’s nuclear program. “We filtered out people having negative tendencies that could have affected national security,” said the NCA official, as if that was sufficient to assuage international concerns.

This attempt to reassure the international community that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are in safe hands and will not fall into the hands of the Jihadis differs little from Pakistan’s response to the troubling sale of nuclear weapons technology by Dr. A.Q. Khan and his criminal network. 

Dr. Khan was removed from his position but there was no accounting for his actions. An official Pakistani pronouncement to the effect that the problem had been addressed was deemed enough.

Pakistan’s latest reassurance about the security of its nuclear program ignores the possibility of a military officer with Islamist sympathies rising up the ranks. In that event, an Islamist would have his fingers on the nuclear trigger and could act independent of his institution, just as Dr. Khan single-handedly sold nuclear material and plans to Iran, Libya and North Korea. 

In November 2014 Pakistan’s army chief General Raheel Sharif visited the United States to declare that Pakistan no longer differentiated between good and bad Jihadis. But soon after his proclamation, Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz questioned the rationale of the military commander’s promise in a BBC interview in Urdu.

“Why should Pakistan target those who do not pose any threat to its security,” Aziz said, adding that not all terrorists are bad for Pakistan. In his words, “Some of them are a threat to Pakistan, while others pose no threat to Pakistan’s security. Why should we antagonize them all?” 

This attitude is not different from that Musharraf who maintained a similar ambivalence after 2002 when he differentiated between Jihadis (foreign militant groups like Al Qaeda) and freedom fighters (Afghan Taliban, Lashkar e Taiba.)

Like Musharraf, current Pakistani leaders also are concerned only about ensuring the flow of economic and military aid through promises of eliminating terrorist safe havens. Their promises are unlikely to remain unfulfilled just as Musharraf’s did.

Immediately after the December 2014 attack by the Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on a school in Peshawar, Pakistani leaders launched a public relations offensive to convince skeptics that this time they had changed, for real. General Sharif went to the United Kingdom before his U.S. visit and over the last few months several Pakistani officials have visited Washington. 

The U.S. could fall for Pakistan’s narrative, as it did with Musharraf, or accept the fact that Pakistan became its ally only to advance its rivalry with India. Pakistan’s military sees India as the main threat, as always, while seeking American arms on the pretext of fighting communism or terrorism. 

Pakistan’s support of Jihadis in Afghanistan and India is tied to its belief that these proxies will further Pakistan’s foreign and security policy of securing parity with India and preventing Indian influence over Afghanistan. The U.S. ignored Pakistan’s support of insurgent and terror groups in India during the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad, only to recognize the problem since the 1990s. 

It is time for Washington to recognize that Pakistan will continue to use terrorism as an instrument of state policy to counter India’s rise as a global power. Pakistani leaders believe they know how to play the Americans and to create a façade of compliance with American requests. 

The gullibility of U.S. officials, such as those in the Obama administration, enables Pakistan to seek U.S. military and economic largesse even as Pakistan harbors terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. Pakistan has never had to pay a price for its actions. Only serious reprisals for Pakistan’s repeated flouting of American requests, misuse of American arms and equipment and support of Jihadi groups would change Pakistani policy, not accepting fresh promises after broken ones.