The prophecy is more than seeing into the future. For the prophecy sees without the element of time. For the prophecy sees things as they were, as they are, and as they always shall be.
During his campaign for president, Joe Biden criticized President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and promised to reverse it.
Whereas Trump embraced a policy of “maximum pressure” to compel Iran to cease terrorism, covert nuclear and ballistic missile work, and other rogue behavior, Biden and Rob Malley, his special envoy for Iran, took the opposite approach. They sought to entice Iran with incentives such as sanctions relief, unfreezing assets, and the liquidation of restricted-use escrow accounts.
In May 2021, Malley was offering Iran relief equivalent to $7 billion, nearly equal to the budget of Iran’s entire conventional military for 2022. As Iranian negotiators stonewalled — they have not sat down with Malley or his team but instead insist on talking through intermediaries — Malley’s team upped the ante. Today, the Biden administration appears poised to provide Tehran with $12 billion, equivalent to a quarter of Iran’s total budget at the real exchange rate. This does not include, of course, the windfall Tehran seeks to gain from increased oil sales already augmented by lack of sanctions enforcement. This fund does not include off-budget spending, such as the oil revenue directly allocated to the Revolutionary Guards or the additional billions that Iran’s national oil company allocates for national stabilization and development but in actuality flows into Revolutionary Guards’ coffers.
Should Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei accept Malley’s offer, the regime will receive an infusion of over $20 billion over the following year, essentially doubling the Revolutionary Guard’s budget. To put that conservative estimate in perspective , a suicide belt costs just $1,500, and the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria that killed five Americans cost only $50,000.
Nor does the money now offered to Iran account for the billion-dollar ransoms that the Iranians expect for hostage releases. After all, ever since Jimmy Carter’s administration acquiesced to release Iranian funds in exchange for hostages and Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages, the Iranian regime simply seizes new hostages to use as chits in their negotiations.
The logic of Malley’s approach appears to be the belief that he can overcome the Iranian regime’s enmity by acquiescing to nearly all its demands. These need not only be financial — it could also be to acquiesce to Iranian influence in Iraq and Lebanon, support the Syrian regime’s rehabilitation, or to normalize Yemen’s Houthis at a time they increasingly attack Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with Iranian-made drones and missiles.
While Biden has criticized maximum pressure, the fact is such pressure has a track record of success. Maximum pressure and diplomatic isolation ended the Iran-Iraq War and, under President Barack Obama, a decline of 5.4% in Iran’s gross domestic product forced Tehran to the negotiating table.
The problem with Malley’s approach is that it has never worked. Ideology matters. Both Democrats and Republicans understood during the Cold War that the key to success was grinding down the Soviet economy, not subsidizing it. When the Clinton administration sought to provide food and oil to North Korea, Pyongyang diverted that assistance to the military and held on to its nuclear program. Decades of aid and concession to Russia and China did not end their enmity; they simply pocketed the cash and focused on their own military programs. Likewise, Palestinian terrorism has surged in direct proportion to Western and U.N. assistance.
Simply put, there is a reason why the Biden administration does not put Malley in front of Congress. If Congress asked Malley for any precedent of success or evidence that administration logic works, he could not answer the question. Malley is not gambling with the future security of America, its allies, and, for that matter, an Iranian public that increasingly despises the regime. Rather, he is selling out each one for nothing in return other than a future of terrorist bloodshed and nuclear blackmail.
Michael Rubin ( @mrubin1971 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
In the past, it has generated occasional activity that generated a 2.6 magnitude quake in New Jersey’s Peakpack/Gladstone area and 3.0 magnitude quake in Mendham.
“There is occasional seismic activity in New Jersey,” said Robinson. “There have been a few quakes locally that have been felt and done a little bit of damage over the time since colonial settlement — some chimneys knocked down in Manhattan with a quake back in the 18th century, but nothing of a significant magnitude.”
“More recently, in the 1970s and early 1980s, earthquake risk along the Ramapo Fault received attention because of its proximity to Indian Point,” according to the New Jersey Geological Survey website.
Historically, critics of the Indian Point Nuclear facility in Westchester County, New York, did cite its proximity to the Ramapo fault line as a significant risk.
“Subsequent investigations have shown the 1884 Earthquake epicenter was actually located in Brooklyn, New York, at least 25 miles from the Ramapo Fault,” according to the New Jersey Geological Survey website.
Welcome back to The Farda Briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter that tracks the key issues in Iran and explains why they matter.
I’m Mehrdad Mirdamadi, a senior editor and journalist at RFE/RL’s Radio Farda. Here’s what I’ve been following and what I’m watching out for in the days ahead.
The Big Issue
In a break with policy, Iranian officials have started talking publicly about the possibility of the country building a nuclear bomb.
After Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, against nuclear weapons in 2005, officials were adamant that Tehran’s nuclear program was strictly for civilian purposes. But the rhetoric has shifted in recent weeks.
Kamal Kharazi, a senior adviser to Khamenei, suggested on July 17 that the country was capable of making a nuclear weapon but that a decision on whether to do so had not yet been made. A video posted on a Telegram channel affiliated with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on July 29 asked the audience, “When will Iran’s sleeping nuclear bomb wake up?”
The channel claimed that the underground Fordow enrichment facility was able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon. Those claims were echoed on August 1 by Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organization.
Why It Matters: The recent statements are unprecedented. It could be an attempt by Iran to gain leverage and concessions at the negotiating table. Protracted talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers have been deadlocked for months. On the other hand, Iran could simply be revealing its intentions to become a nuclear power.
When discussing the nuclear issue, Iranian officials in recent years have cited the Islamic notion of taqiya, in which believers can conceal their faith in the face of persecution. In other words, you can achieve your original purpose in secret.
What’s Next: It is hard to believe that these statements were made without the consent of Khamenei, who has the final say on all important state matters. The supreme leader’s aim could be to restore public faith and pride in the country’s nuclear program and showcase the Islamic republic’s resolve. In this way, if Iran does agree to recommit to the nuclear deal, Khamenei can save face.
When the original agreement was signed in 2015, he hailed the country’s “heroic flexibility.” Since then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the deal in 2018, the agreement has been on life support. This time, Khamenei has resorted to what some have described as “defiant perversity” in his dealings with the West.
The hardening rhetoric that has emerged in recent weeks is likely to continue. On August 2, lawmaker Mohammadreza Sabaghiyan openly threatened that if “bullying from the enemy continues, we will ask our leader to change his fatwa in favor of making a bomb.”
Stories You Might Have Missed
• Iranian authorities amputated the fingers of a man convicted of theft using a guillotine machine. Amnesty International called it an “unspeakably cruel punishment.” Puya Torabi had fingers cut off on July 27 inside Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
In May, authorities amputated the fingers of another convict, Sayed Barat Hosseini, without giving him anesthetic, Amnesty said, revealing that at least eight other prisoners in Iran were at risk of having fingers amputated. Finger amputation as punishment for theft has reemerged recently amid a rise in petty crime and worsening economic conditions.
• Iranian security agents halted a music concert in Tehran while the musicians were on stage playing, in another sign of the crackdown authorities are waging against events they deem contrary to Islamic values.
According to a video published on social media on July 29, the members of the band Kamakan were performing when a security guard suddenly came on stage and told the band’s singer: “Stop! We were ordered to stop this!”
Following a recent uptick in social protests, dozens of concerts and cultural performances have been abruptly called off.
Iran already a nuclear state with enough uranium to build ‘one, if not two’ bombs: ex US diplomat
By Tom Brown In Tirana and Adam Solomons For Mailonline 04:23 EDT 24 Jul 2022 , updated 04:34 EDT 24 Jul 2022
is already a state with enough uranium to build ‘one, if not two’ bombs, an ex-US diplomat and nuclear weapons expert has warned.
Former Washington official Robert Joseph told MailOnline: ‘The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has documented that Iran has 60% of enriched uranium, enough for at least one if not two bombs.
‘We have been saying for years “they’re approaching this breakout point and we’ve really got to negotiate with them.” They’re there.’
The ex-United States Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security was speaking ahead of the ‘Free Iran’ summit in Albania, which was abruptly cancelled due to a terror threat.
Joseph is pictured at a State Department press conference on Iran during the Bush presidency
The US Department of State issued a security alert ahead of the summit this weekend, urging officials – including Joseph – not to attend.
Fellow Washington officials including former national security adviser John Bolton, senator Joe Lieberman and former NATO General James Jones were set to attend.
‘I am the last person who would suggest the use of force, either there or with North Korea,’ Joseph said in Tirana. ‘But rather to support the opposition in overthrowing this regime.’
Joseph was the chief negotiator to Libya in 2003 and is credited with convincing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons programme.
He has been strongly critical of former president Barack Obama’s regime and in its actions in aiding the overthrow of Gaddafi’s government in 2011, as well as the 2015 nuclear deal, which the administration agreed to prevent Iran from developing weapons of mass destruction.
The Iranian military fires ballistic missiles into the year in the Great Salt Desert last January There are growing fears that Iran has the capacity to build its own nuclear bombs (2010 image)
The conference was being hosted by an exiled Iranian opposition group living in exile in the Ashraf 3 camp in Tirana, with some former US officials backing the campaigners as a potential replacement for the Islamic Republic currently running Iran.
‘The US government is aware of a potential threat targeting the Free Iran World Summit to be held near Durres, Albania on July 23-24, 2022,’ said the US Embassy in Albania one day prior to the event, asking US citizens to avoid the summit and ‘be aware of your surroundings’.
The IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, said in May that Iran’s ‘breakout time’ — the time theoretically required for the regime to produce a nuclear weapons — had shrunk to two weeks.
But the Institute for Science and International Security said a month later the breakout time had hit zero.
Putin hobbles along red carpet with arm limp as he arrives in Iran
‘We hear that they are regularly testing ballistic missiles, and they are seeking to get enough uranium that they are able to produce a weapon,’ said MP Matthew Offord, who had been scheduled to attend the event.
‘The issue with the ballistic missiles is that they would be longer range,’ he added. ‘It wouldn’t be in the immediate area, say as far as Israel, it could go a lot further than that.’
The MP said he has been ‘taking preventative actions’ after the death of his friend David Amess last year, a fellow MP murdered by an Islamist extremist.
Iranian agents have previously targeted events hosted by the members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the exiled opposition that relocated to Tirana after thousands of its members were executed during the 2013-2017 War in Iraq.
John Baird, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada who was also scheduled to attend, said the terror threat was only the second time in his career when a summit was cancelled because of a credible threat to attendees, the first also involving the NCRI.
In 2018, French police arrested an Iranian agent trying to bring explosives and a detonator to a NCRI rally in Paris.
President Biden says clock is ticking on stalled Iran nuclear talks
Assadollah Assadi, 49, who worked at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was given a 20-year jail term by the court in Antwerp in Belgium, the first time an Iranian official had faced such charges in the EU since the 1979 revolution.
But on Thursday the Belgian parliament ratified a treaty to swap the convicted terrorist with a Belgian citizen held hostage in Iran, a move strongly opposed by the Iranian opposition.
The war in Ukraine called into question many of the fundamental pillars of the international order. The European security system that has developed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact has received a shattering blow. A war of aggression by a major power intent to destroy a neighboring state and annex significant territories has broken with major taboos, not to mention international law.
Apart from the obvious tragedy for the people of Ukraine, another potential casualty is the nuclear nonproliferation system which has existed since 1970. Putin’s blatant breach of the Budapest Memorandum, signed in 1994 by Russia, the UK and US relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), has upended security guarantees in Europe.
The memorandum was an assurance of territorial integrity for Ukraine after it agreed to dismantle the large nuclear arsenal that remained on its territory after the break up of the Soviet Union. By signing the memorandum, Russia – along with the US and the UK – agreed not to threaten Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan with military force or economic coercion. This has proved to be worthless.
And there’s the danger. If we now live in a world where major powers are fully prepared to embark on a full-scale war to achieve their territorial ambitions, then the assumptions of the NPT, according to which non-nuclear states can rely on the security assurances from the major powers, may no longer be valid. Many countries may think it prudent to go nuclear to avoid Ukraine’s fate.
Anxiety in Asia
This doesn’t stop in Europe. Allies of the US in Asia are wondering the extent to which the principle of “extended deterrence” (the protection afforded by America’s nuclear umbrella) is still viable. China’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of its foreign policy aims in recent years has been a major concern for Taiwan, where many question Washington’s policy of “strategic ambiguity” about how and to what extent the US would support the country.
China’s activities in the South China Sea, where it pursues its claims on maritime territories not accepted in international law, have also raised major concerns throughout the region. Japan and China have been at loggerheads for some years over a number of disputed territories including the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.
Another concern is obviously North Korea’s nuclear program and its regular testing of ballistic missiles which could carry nuclear warheads and have a range which could easily threaten Japan and South Korea. If and when Pyongyang develops the capacity to hit targets in the continental US, this could well test America’s nuclear guarantee in Asia.
A nuclear South Korea?
There is increasing support within South Korea for the development of its own nuclear deterrent. A survey taken earlier this year found that 71% approved of South Korea going nuclear. This was in line with similar polls over recent years.
While the new South Korean government led by Yoon Suk-yeoul does not endorse such a policy and remains committed to the US-ROK alliance, there have been persistent voices in South Korea supporting a shift towards nuclear self-reliance.President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol gives a speech at the construction site of a nuclear power plant. Image: Twitter
There is also considerable pressure in Japan to abandon the post-war “Peace Constitution” which banned the country from maintaining anything stronger than a self-defense force – and the country recently doubled its military budget.
Japan has the technological capacity to develop nuclear weapons quickly – but the experience of US atomic attacks during the second world war remains a powerful restraint.
In March 2022 the late prime minister, Shinzo Abe, called for US nuclear weapons to be based on Japanese territory, presumably to deter both China and North Korea. This – predictably enough – provoked an angry reaction from Beijing, which asked Japan to “reflect on its history.”
Fragile security
For now, the US nuclear guarantee remains credible in the eyes of its Asian partners and the strategic situation on the Korean peninsula remains stable – despite the wrangling already described. It’s a very different situation from what is happening in Ukraine. The US already has forces on the Korean peninsula and is committed to South Korea’s defense.
North Korea is much more vulnerable than the US under any nuclear war scenario. If Pyongyang ever launched a nuclear strike, it would risk rapid and complete obliteration.
An obvious way to address the extended deterrence problem would be to redeploy US nuclear forces in South Korea, similar to Abe’s suggestion for Japan.
That would considerably enhance the credibility of a US security guarantee and would complicate China’s calculations, even with respect to Taiwan – despite all the noises from Beijing about reunification.
But South Korea faces the European dilemma – which is that the more credible its own capabilities become, the less the US will feel the need to commit its resources. While South Korea’s conventional capabilities are more than a match for the North Korean army and its obsolete equipment, it has no answer to the North’s weapons of mass destruction.
So far South Korea seems to have struck a sensible balance – going nuclear could upend all of that as it may cause Washington to withdraw entirely.People at a railway station in Seoul on September 28 watch a television news broadcast showing file footage of a North Korean missile test. Photo: AFP / Jung Yeon-je
It seems that despite the flagrant violations of the security assurances by Russia and the increasing capabilities of the North Korean nuclear arsenal, the commitment to the NPT remains firm.
But this could change if the security environment in Europe and Asia continues to deteriorate and Russia and China become increasingly perceived as serious and realistic military threats.
If the reliability of the US as a security guarantor is weakened it could result in a fatal erosion of the assumptions of the NPT. This would make the pressure for indigenous nuclear arsenals – both in Asia and the Middle East – irresistible. This is something the “Great Powers” have taken pains to prevent since 1945.
Iranian officials claimed Mossad agents entered the country through the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The Iranian Noor News agency claimed on Sunday that Mossad agents who the Iranian Intelligence Ministry had claimed on Saturday had been caught in the country were trying to blow up a “sensitive site” in Isfahan in central Iran.
The Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced on Saturday that it had caught a network of Mossad agents who were in contact with other agents in a “neighboring country” and had entered Iran from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The ministry claimed that the network was planning to carry out “unprecedented acts of sabotage and terrorist operations by using the most up-to-date operational and communication equipment and the most powerful explosives.”
The ministry added that additional information would be announced later on.
On Sunday, Noor News reported that the network entered Iran a few months ago through Kurdistan and aimed to blow up a “sensitive center” in Isfahan.
The report added that the network had been training for months in Africa in order to carry out the operation. According to Noor News, the Intelligence Ministry was tracking the network before they even entered Iran.
The network was arrested after they placed explosives at the site they were targeting and just hours before they intended to implement the final stage of their operation, according to the report.
The report added that further details would be published at a later point.
In March, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) fired 12 missiles toward a home in Erbil in the Kurdistan Region, saying it was a response to the “recent crimes of the fake Zionist regime.” The IRGC additionally claimed that the targeted structure was called “the Strategic Center of Conspiracy and Evil of the Zionists.” Reports by Iranian and pro-Iranian media indicated that the missile strike was carried out in response to an alleged Israeli drone attack on an IRGC drone base in Mahidasht, Iran.
The Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center
While the report did not state which site was being targeted, the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, located in the area, is one of the country’s largest nuclear facilities, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).
Last month, some of the surveillance cameras used by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were removed from the Isfahan site. Additionally, the IAEA reported last month that 90% of Iran’s uranium enriched to 60% fissile purity had been moved to Isfahan. In January, the IAEA reported that Iran had informed it that it would move the production of centrifuge parts to Isfahan.
Last year, Iran announced that it had begun producing enriched uranium metal, a material that could be used to create the core of a nuclear weapon, at the Isfahan site.
Biden’s Iran Diplomacy Increases Likelihood of Nightmare Scenario – At a speech to the International Student House on July 12, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman demonstrated the Biden administration’s magical thinking toward Iran. State Department Spokesman Ned Price insisted last week there was a deadline for negotiations, but pointedly refused to say whether it was in one day or five years. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now openly mocks such empty brinksmanship.
Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program continues unrestrained. Progressives and the State Department can blame President Donald Trump for walking away from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but this is wrong on three counts:
First, Iran remains subject to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement. The JCPOA did not free Iran from its legal commitments.
Second, the increase in Iranian enrichment occurred not when Trump left the JCPOA, bur rather when the Biden administration ended Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Here, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies timeline is definitive.
Third, the JCPOA did not do what Presidents Obama and Biden said it did.
That Team Biden bases their Iran strategy on fantasy rather than reality may quickly lead to the worst-case scenario: not simply Iranian nuclear weapons acquisition—a moment which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s advisor Kamal Kharrazi says is now a question of when and not if—but also an open-ended conflict that will destabilize the region.
Team Biden may be sanguine about an Iranian nuclear breakout. Biden likely will not be alive to witness its consequences. Special Envoy Robert Malley never considered the Islamic Republic a threat. Through his lens of moral equivalence, he believes Iran has a right to a nuclear arsenal. Sherman, meanwhile, likely privately believes failure in Iran negotiations will be no worse than her failure with North Korea’s diplomacy. After all, she won a promotion and North Korea has not (yet) used its nuclear bombs.
For Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other regional states, however, the danger is not that a nuclear Iran is suicidal but rather that it is terminally ill. Consider events analogous to the last days of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. If the regime collapses under its own weight with only a day or two until popular forces overrun Tehran, ideologically vetted Revolutionary Guards units with custody, command, and control over Iran’s nuclear arsenal may launch an attack to fulfill ideological objectives before their power ends.
This makes the Israelis, in particular, less sanguine than the White House against Iran’s nuclear drive. For Biden, an Iranian nuclear breakout would be one more opportunity to bash Trump and eschew responsibility; for the Jewish state, it poses an existential threat.
Might Israel then attack Iran’s nuclear program? This, after all, is what Israel did against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. The problem is Iran is not Iraq or Syria. Whereas Iraq had only Osirak and Syria just had al-Kibar, Iran’s nuclear program is scattered across the country and would involve more than a dozen targets. On top of this, Iran is both larger and farther away than either Syria or Iraq (though the logistical assistance in the guise of Saudi airstrips might mitigate this problem). Iran is almost four times the size of Iraq and about nine times the size of Syria. Militarily, this has several implications:
First, to strike at numerous targets and enable refueling to allow pilots’ return will require first neutralizing Iran’s airfields, anti-aircraft missile batteries, and its command-and-control centers. Because many of Iran’s nuclear sites are underground, even with the use of cruise missiles to relieve pressure on pilots, it will also mean multiple sorties to ensure the destruction of facilities. Israel might also need to insert some special forces units into Iran to take out key individuals, paint targets, and assess damage. Iran would likely retaliate against Israel via Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal and against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates via Houthi rockets and drones. What this means in short is that a decision to strike at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure militarily will require not a dozen sorties, but rather thousands over the course of several days.
The downside of such a military strike, of course, is that it would justify Iranian rhetoric about Iran’s need for nuclear weapons. Iranians might also rally around the regime. After all, the Islamic Revolution was fraying when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein attacked and allowed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to consolidate power. Finally, the biggest drawback to a military strike that does not oust the regime is that it would delay Iran’s nuclear breakout but not end it.
Israelis talk big and, as their airstrikes on Syria and assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and missile engineers show, they are certainly more capable than others in the Middle East, but the sheer scale of the military problem may be a bridge too far. That said, no matter what Biden hopes, it is unlikely that the Israelis will simply stand down in the face of an existential threat. Rather, they may believe that they should do as much as possible against Iran and southern Lebanon and figure that others will simply have to pick up the pieces.
When a hornet’s nest is close by, the best options are to get rid of it or to leave it alone. The worst option would be to whack it a few times with a stick, stir up the hornets, and hope for the best. Unfortunately, this is the scenario where Biden’s Iran policy now leads.
Iran’s nuclear program is “galloping ahead” and the International Atomic Energy Agency has very limited visibility into what is happening, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told Spain’s El Paisnewspaper in an interview published Friday.
“The bottom line is that for almost five weeks I have had very limited visibility, with a nuclear program that is galloping ahead and, therefore, if there is an agreement, it is going to be very difficult for me to reconstruct the puzzle of this whole period of forced blindness,” Grossi told El Pais.
In June, Grossi said there was a window of just three to four weeks to restore at least some of the monitoring that was being scrapped before the IAEA lost the ability to understand Iran’s most important nuclear activities.
“We have a ready text in front of us and we agree on more than 95 to 96 percent of its content, but there’s still an important flaw in this text: we need to get the full economic benefits of the agreement. We don’t want to be bitten twice,” Iranian media quoted Amirabdollahian as saying.
Grossi said he was concerned and worried about the weeks with no visibility.
“The agency needed to reconstruct a database, without which any agreement will rest on a very fragile basis, because if we don’t know what’s there, how can we determine how much material to export, how many centrifuges to leave unused,” he said.
This image provided by the U.S. Air Force shows U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, incoming Ninth Air Force (Air Forces Central) commander, delivering a commemorative speech during a change of command ceremony at al…Show moreThe Associated Press
Air Force official expects Iran to resume attacks on US
The top U.S. Air Force general in the Middle East has warned that Iran-backed militias could resume attacks in the region against the United States and its allies
ByISABEL DEBRE Associated Press
July 21, 2022, 2:19 PM
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The top U.S. Air Force general in the Middle East warned on Thursday that Iran-backed militias could resume attacks in the region against the United States and its allies as tensions rise — assaults that could lead to a new Mideast escalation.
Speaking to journalists before stepping into his new role at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, with responsibility for military operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and across the region, Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich also expressed fears over Russian and Chinese influence taking hold as superpowers vie for economic and military influence in the Middle East.
For instance, he said, recent U.S. intelligence that Iran is preparing to send Russia armed and unarmed drones to use in its war on Ukraine “is not a surprise … but it’s concerning.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Grynkewich, who had served as director of operations at Central Command in Tampa, Florida, thousands of miles from the baking desert outside of Doha, Qatar’s capital, spoke as regional tensions remain high over Iran’s rapidly expanding nuclear program and talks to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers at a deadlock.
“We’re in this position where we’re not under attack constantly, but we do see planning for attacks ongoing,” Grynkewich said. “Something will occur that unleashes that planning and that preparation against us.”
Iran tested a satellite-carrying rocket last month, prompting the White House to threaten more sanctions on Tehran to prevent it from accelerating its advanced ballistic missile program. And last week, as President Joe Biden toured the region, Iran unveiled armed drones on its warships in the Persian Gulf.
Tehran has rapidly grown its stockpile of near-weapons-grade nuclear fuel in recent months, spreading fears about an escalation. It also has spun more advanced centrifuges prohibited under the landmark atomic accord, which former President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018.
“Everyone in the region is very concerned,” Grynkewich said.
Still in recent weeks, he said, U.S. forces have seen a reduction in targeted attacks across the region, as a tenuous cease-fire between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led military coalition continues in Yemen and as an ongoing government formation process in Baghdad keeps Iran-backed militias in limbo, waiting for the political chaos to settle before they strike.
“We’re in a bit of a period of stasis,” Grynkewich said.
As other threats subside, the U.S. has sharpened its focus on containing and countering Russian and Chinese influence in the region, Grynkewich said, noting that Russia is seeking to maintain the leverage it gained from years of military intervention in the region, such as in Syria where it helped save President Bashar Assad’s government and turned the tide of the war in his favor.
Grynkewich said an apparent reversal of the military relationship between Russia and Iran — with Moscow potentially interested in procuring drones from a traditional buyer of its own military equipment — “shows a bit more of a relationship than we’d like them to have, given the context of everything going on in Ukraine.”
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tehran on a rare trip abroad and won staunch support from Iran for the war that has plunged the Kremlin deeper into confrontation with the West.
Meanwhile, China’s significant economic inroads in the region have raised concerns about the country’s plans “to secure those interests either through arms sales or other means,” Grynkewich said. In China, many Gulf Arab states have found an investor that won’t lecture them about human rights concerns.
The Pentagon this week said it reached important new milestones as it scrambles to catch up with China and Russia in what has become a fraught arms race between the world’s most advanced militaries, conductinga successful hypersonic missile test and securing a $1.3 billion dealto helpdefend against such threats.
Monday’s test of the air-breathing hypersonic missile, a partner venture of defense-tech manufacturersRaytheon and Northrop Grumman, follows separate successful tests announced last week using hardware built by Lockheed Martin. Together, they hint at a potential breakthrough for the Defense Department, which has faced growing scrutiny from lawmakers who fear the United States is losing ground to its adversaries and just last month conceded a full-system test fail.
Yet with China testing advanced-engine hypersonic missiles and Russia promising to use hypersonic cruise missiles in battle by the end of this year, U.S. officials say there is perhaps greater urgency to develop adequate defenses against such weapons. Central to that, they say, is a deal to have L3Harris Technologies and Northrop Grumman design and launch 28 satellites as part of the Pentagon’s new missile defense network.
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“People talk about space as a war-fighting domain,” Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency, told reporters in announcing the contracts. “These satellites are specifically designed to go after that next generation of threats out there.”
Since China successfully tested a hypersonic glide missile a year ago, Beijing’s and Moscow’s recent strides have put Washington on high alert. While these recent successful U.S. tests are seen as encouraging, they have not yet evened the playing field: Russian government news service Tass reported this week that Moscow completed testing its hypersonic cruise missile and intends to put it into use.
The Pentagon has laid out plansfor developing resilient defenses over the next five years — a timeline that has disquieted the lawmakers tasked with funding and overseeing such research and development.
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“I get really nervous when I hear dates like 2028 for something, and we’re pleased that it’s 2027,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) said to Vice Adm. Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency, during a discussion about hypersonics at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing in May. “So how are we going to condense the time period?”
Hypersonic missiles can fly at speeds at or above Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, and can travel at low atmospheric altitudes. Unlike ballistic missiles, they can also change course during flight, enabling them to dodge traditional defense systems.
To date, U.S. missile defense has been focused primarily on identifying ballistic missiles, by detecting the initial heat trail registered bytheir blastoffs and then calculating trajectory. The maneuvering capabilities of hypersonic missiles, however, make their courses — and ultimately, their targets — far less predictable.
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“Historically, we have not flown satellites that were designed to go after and detect hypersonic maneuvering vehicles,” Tournear said.
The Pentagon expects that by positioning a large number of heat-detecting satellites in the atmosphere, orbiting on different planes at low and medium altitudes, the U.S. military will be able to see when and how such missiles change direction. By compiling tracking data from multiple satellites in real time, the military believes it will be able to create an accurate picture of the hypersonic missile’s activity and warn those in its path to anticipate incoming strikes, either so they can attempt an intercept or take cover.
“Right now, today, we have limited capability to do that tracking aspect,” Tournear said. “The satellites we’re going to launch … can do that complete missile warning and missile tracking.”
Two years ago, the Space Development Agency awarded contracts to L3Harris and SpaceX to produce four satellites each. The first two of those satellites are expected to be launched in September, Tournear said, while the other six are set for next March.
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The 28 satellites covered by the contracts announced this week are scheduled to begin launching in April 2025, in four sets of seven, each of which will orbit on a different plane.
The tranche that follows is likely to have 54 satellites, officials say.
“We get resilience by proliferation,” Tournear said.
Bidding for the next round of satellite contracts has not yet opened, and it is unclear how many firms will compete. In the initial round, 10 companies sought to build eight satellites; in the current round, seven firms put in bids. Tournear would not identify which companies were excluded but said that, overall, the quality of submissions improved markedly between rounds.
Still, at a current cost of about $50 million per satellite, which is about half the full budget for launching and operating them, the cost to American taxpayers will only grow as the program becomes a permanent fixture of the federal budget. The projected life span of each satellite tops out at five years, Tournear said, meaning the entire fleet will have to be replaced at regular intervals.
DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran is technically capable of making a nuclear bomb but has not decided whether to build one, a senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Qatar’s al Jazeera TV on Sunday.
Kamal Kharrazi spoke a day after U.S. President Joe Biden ended his four-day trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, vowing to stop Iran from “acquiring a nuclear weapon.”
Kharrazi’s comments were a rare suggestion that Iran might have an interest in nuclear weapons, which it has long denied seeking.
“In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60% and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium … Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb but there has been no decision by Iran to build one,” Kharrazi said.
Iran is already enriching to up to 60%, far above a cap of 3.67% under Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Uranium enriched to 90% is suitable for a nuclear bomb.
In 2018, former U.S. President Donald Trump ditched the nuclear pact, under which Iran curbed its uranium enrichment work, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
In reaction to Washington’s withdrawal and its reimposition of harsh sanctions, Tehran started violating the pact’s nuclear restrictions.
Last year, Iran’s intelligence minister said Western pressure could push Tehran to seek nuclear weapons, the development of which Khamenei banned in a fatwa, or religious decree, in the early 2000s.
Iran says it is refining uranium only for civilian energy uses, and has said its breaches of the international deal are reversible if the United States lifts sanctions and rejoins the agreement.
But talks then broke down over obstacles including Tehran’s demand that Washington should give guarantees that no U.S. president will abandon the deal, the same way Trump did.
Biden cannot promise this because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally-binding treaty.
“The United States has not provided guarantees on preserving the nuclear deal and this ruins the possibility of any agreement,” Kharrazi said.
Israel, which Iran does not recognise, has threatened to attack Iranian nuclear sites if diplomacy fails to contain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Iran claims “technical ability to build a nuclear bomb”
July 18, 2022 / 7:20 AM
Tehran — Iran has the technical capacity to build a nuclear weapon but has not taken a decision to do so, an official told the Al Jazeera broadcaster on Sunday. Iran “has the technical ability to build a nuclear bomb” said Kamal Kharrazi, who heads an advisory board linked to Iran’s leadership.
But Tehran has “not made a decision to build an atomic bomb,” he added.
The comments come after U.S. President Joe Biden visited the Middle East this week and signed a security pact with Israel vowing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It also comes as efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers remain stalled.
Kharrazi, a former foreign minister, also told Al Jazeera that Tehran had carried out extensive drills to be able to strike deep inside Israel “if sensitive (Iranian) installations are targeted.”
He did not specify when the drills took place.
The 2015 nuclear deal offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for imposing limits on its nuclear program and sought to guarantee Tehran could not develop a nuclear weapon, something it has always denied wanting to do.
The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump and reimposed biting sanctions, prompting Tehran to step away from many of its own commitments under the deal.
Iran has held direct talks with remaining parties to the accord — and indirect talks with the United States — in a bid to restore the deal, but negotiations have been at an impasse since March.
The new security pact signed this week by Israel and the United States commits Washington to “never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” stating that the U.S. “is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.”
Asked on Thursday how long the U.S. was prepared to give efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, Mr. Biden said, “we’re not going to wait forever.”
Tehran earlier Sunday accused Washington of provoking tensions in the Middle East, after Biden vowed that the United States would not “tolerate efforts by any country to dominate another in the region through military buildups, incursions, and/or threats”, in a transparent reference to Iran.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said earlier this month that Tehran had started “feeding… a cascade of… centrifuges” at a fuel enrichment plant.
The techniques facilitate the process and would make it easier for Iran to switch to a different level of enriching uranium.
In January 2021, Iran said it was enriching uranium to 20% at that facility, a level well beyond the 3.67 percent agreed under the 2015 deal, before later saying it had enriched to 60% at another facility, still short of the 90% required for military grade uranium, but a short technological step away from that level of enrichment.
“It’s no secret that we have become a quasi-nuclear state. This is a fact. And it’s no secret that we have the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb, but we don’t want that, and there has been no decision to do that,” Kharrazi told Al Jazeera. “In the past, and within just a few days, we were able to enrich uranium up to 60%, and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium. But what we want is a Middle East without any nuclear weapons.”
As New York City and the federal government strain to supply enough vaccines, patients face a private battle to find treatment and relief from serious symptoms.
July 18, 2022Updated 9:53 a.m. ET
Although he was covered with lesions, it took four hours of phone calls, and then five hours in a Harlem emergency room, for Gabriel Morales to be tested for the monkeypox virus earlier this month. And that was just the beginning of his wait.
He spent the next eight days alone in his apartment in what he described as excruciating pain, trying to find someone to prescribe him pain medication and a hard-to-access antiviral drug.
As time passed, the disorganization in the public health response disturbed him more and more: the city’s vaccine website glitches; a vaccine rollout that seemed designed to reach the privileged and that turned him away; an opaque process to access medicine that he believed could help, but that he couldn’t find.
When he received a $720 bill for his emergency room visit, it felt like more than incompetence. It felt like a lack of compassion.
“Iunderstand that this is new — but it is urgent,” said Mr. Morales, 27, who was eventually prescribed the antiviral drug to help with his symptoms. His test, he found out after 10 days, had never been picked up from the hospital. “It was just the worst pain I’ve experienced in my life.”
Beyond the very public shortcomings in the government’s vaccination efforts are the private struggles of the men infected with the disease who have found care hard to come by. Internal lesions in the anus, genitals and mouth can be particularly painful, and there is growing concern that they may cause debilitating scarring.
What’s also striking, she said, about this outbreak, is “how many of these patients have had difficulty getting the care they need to treat these symptoms.”
What to Know About the Monkeypox Virus
What is monkeypox? Monkeypox is a virus endemic in parts of Central and West Africa. It is similar to smallpox, but less severe. It was discovered in 1958, after outbreaks occurred in monkeys kept for research, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What to Know About the Monkeypox Virus
What are the symptoms? Monkeypox creates a rash that starts with flat red marks that become raised and filled with pus. Infected people may also have a fever and body aches. Symptoms typically appear in six to 13 days but can take as long as three weeks after exposure to show, and can last for two to four weeks. Health officials say smallpox vaccines and other treatments can be used to control an outbreak.
Should I be worried? The likelihood of the virus being spread during sexual contact is high, but the risk of transmission in other ways is low. Most people have mild symptoms and recover within weeks, but the virus can be fatal in a small percentage of cases. Experts say that monkeypox is unlikely to create a pandemic scenario similar to that of the coronavirus.
What to Know About the Monkeypox Virus
What’s the situation in the United States?Experts say that the rapid spread of monkeypox across the country and the government’s sluggish response raise questions about the nation’s preparedness for pandemic threats. Tests will not be readily available until later this month and vaccines will be in short supply for months. Official case counts, now in the hundreds, are likely a gross underestimate.
Monkeypox, endemic in parts of Africa for decades, has been spreading globally since early May through networks of men who have sex with men, probably sparked by transmission at one or more raves in Europe, researchers believe. The disease, which mostly transmits though intimate, skin-to-skin contact, has resulted in fatalities in Africa, but no one has yet died of the disease in the United States.
In New York City, cases have nearly tripled over the past week to 461 total cases on July 15, up from 160 on July 8. While some of that increase stems from expanded testing capacity and awareness, the spread of the disease in the city is “exponential,” said Dr. Foote, and is likely to continue for a while.
The unexpected severity of symptoms is making patients’ encounters with an overburdened health care system that was not prepared for this outbreak even more difficult. Interviews with six recent and current monkeypox patients in New York City, and three in other cities across the country, suggest that the public health response has been slow and underresourced at every level, from testing to treatment to vaccination.
Another of those patients, Sebastian Kohn, 39, felt exhausted and feverish through much of the July 4 weekend and had painful, swollen lymph nodes. Then the rash started.
Mr. Kohn, who lives in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, has private health insurance, so he went to a local urgent care to get tested while dizzy with a 103-degree fever. But he was not prescribed anything stronger than Tylenol for the pain. “The most painful thing are the anal rectal lesions,” he said. “They are just excruciating.”
Ultimately, he said, lidocaine helped, but for a week, no one prescribed it to him.
Both Mr. Morales and Mr. Kohn are sexually active gay men, as are most patients so far in the outbreak in New York and beyond. Within that group, privilege and know-how has helped some people find care faster than others.
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A lawyer who asked to be identified by his initial, M., to protect his medical privacy, said he went into full litigator mode after a sexual partner called him on June 15 to tell him he had monkeypox.
M. was able to get a first vaccine dose at Bellevue, the city’s main public hospital and a hub of its monkeypox response, by showing up and insisting. After he tested positive despite the dose, he was able to get the sought-after antiviral drug, TPOXX, which relieves symptoms but requires special approval for each patient, because one medical practice helped.
“It was still horrible but I was lucky,” he said. “I’m just worried about everybody else.”
Mr. Kohn also eventually received TPOXX, but only after an exhausting process.
The urgent care center where he had been tested told him to call the Department of Health. The Department of Health told him he had to be referred by his primary care doctor. His doctor’s office told him to speak to the health department.
Eventually, he received a call back from a sexual health clinic affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, which said someone at the health department had referred him. “It’s just no coordination at all,” he said. “It’s just not fair to have patients who are severely ill run in circles to organize their own care.”
Providers and local health officials are pushing the federal government to open up access to the drug.
“This is not a mild disease, for a percentage of people it is much more worse than I would have anticipated,” said Dr. Jason Zucker, an infectious disease specialist at the NewYork-Presbyterian clinic.
His clinic has given the antiviral to 26 patients so far,he said. Citywide, 70 prescriptions have been written, Dr. Foote said.
“As a city and a system, we are still really struggling to meet the demand,” she said.
Sergio Rodriguez, 39, is a queer trans man who lives on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Because he was already a patient at Callen-Lorde, a well-known sexual health clinic, he was able to quickly get an appointment to be swabbed there for lesions on July 5. But his results never came back, either.
A week after his test, he did receive a call from the Health Department — but it was a contact tracer telling him he had been exposed to someone else with the virus. Mr. Rodriguez told the tracer he was living with his immunocompromised, 76-year-old father, and that he desperately needed him vaccinated.
Finally, on July 15, the department called his father to arrange for his vaccination.
Mr. Rodriguez was frustrated with the response. “In my experience, especially as a trans Latino person in New York City, my health and my concerns are not going to be emphasized,” he said. “Things are going to go to people that have more access and that have more strings to pull and also who are of a different socioeconomic class.”
Dr. Foote said the Health Department is well aware of the difficulties people are having in accessing care. City health officials are trying to push the federal government for more vaccines and access to TPOXX and are concerned about equity in distributing it. Mayor Eric Adams recently wrote a letter to President Biden asking for more vaccines.
In recent weeks, aspects of the response have improved. Testing capacity has grown after LabCorp, a commercial lab, began offering tests. Vaccines have begun to flow into the city in greater numbers, though demand still far outstrips supply. On Friday, 9,200 vaccine appointments were booked in seven minutes, the city said.
The city has also been working to improve its vaccine rollout system, reserving some doses for distribution through community providers and developing a mass vaccination plan. And education among health care providers, though still uneven, has been growing: L.G.B.T.Q. health organizations have held webinars, and the city has issued treatment guidance to providers.
Eli,28, a Chelsea resident who works in nightlife and asked to be identified by his nickname to protect his medical privacy, was among the first in New York to test positive for monkeypox. He came down with a fever on June 22 and began noticing anal pain the next day, as did three friends he had been sexually active with on Fire Island.
The next day, he went to the Chelsea Sexual Health Clinic, where he was told by two providers that he most likely had a different sexually transmitted disease, not monkeypox.
By Sunday night, the pain had increased so much that he and his friends went to an urgent care clinic in Union Square. The doctor at first refused to test him for monkeypox, he said, but eventually agreed to submit photos of his lesions to the Department of Health.
He said the Health Department called five days later with his results, and that, after he pushed, the contact tracer gave him the cellphone number for the Department of Health’s head of bioterrorism. That connection helped him obtain shots for 26 close contacts — friends and people he works with in nightlife who he knew were at high risk.
Though his own case was relatively mild, Eli said he has found it very upsetting to watch the government flub its virus response. He has known from the beginning, he said, that it probably wasn’t going to go well.
“‘Y’all are being dumb about this,’” he recalled yelling at the Health Department tracer. “‘This is going to be bad.’”
