Did Israel Kill Another Islamic Scientist ?

Death of Muslim scientists puts spotlight on Mossad

Middle East | Worldbulletin News

World Bulletin / News Desk

The assassination late last year of a Tunisian aviation engineer with alleged links to Palestinian group Hamas has put the spotlight on Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency suspected of killing Israel’s enemies.

Mohamed al-Zawari was shot dead in December outside his home in Tunisia’s southeastern city of Sfax. Hamas swiftly blamed Israel for the murder, saying the slain engineer had overseen the group’s drone program.

Al-Zawari was the latest in a number of Muslim scientists and activists the self-proclaimed Jewish state is widely believed to have killed in the past.

In 1967, Egyptian nuclear scientist Samir Naguib was killed in a car accident in the U.S. Naguib was reportedly planning to return to Egypt at the height of war with Israel to help launch Egypt’s nuclear program when he was killed.

Another Egyptian nuclear scientist, Yahya al-Mashad, who headed Iraq’s nuclear program, was killed in a Paris hotel room in 1980.

In 1991, Lebanese condensed matter physicist Rammal Hassan Rammal died in mysterious circumstances in France.

In 1993, Egyptian writer Gamal Hemdan died in a fire in his apartment in the Egyptian capital. His relatives, however, claimed he was hit on the head and that the drafts of books he was writing had disappeared, and on top of it was topics about Jews and Zionism.

1997, Mossad agents tried -- and failed -- to kill Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal in Jordan by spraying poison into his ear.

In 2004, Iraqi nuclear scientist Ibrahim al-Dhaheri was shot dead as he was riding a cab in Iraq’s western city of Baquba.

In 2010, Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist Masoud Alimohammadi was shot dead outside his home in Tehran.

Iran accused the U.S. and Israel of killing the scientist, but Washington denied the accusation. Israel, however, did not deny or confirm involvement.

In the same year, Iranian nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari was killed in a car bombing in Tehran.

Mossad is also believed to have been behind the assassination in 2010 of top Hamas commander Mahmud al-Mabhuh in a Dubai hotel.

Israel has never confirmed or denied its involvement in any of these murders.

-Israeli tactic

Analysts believe that the killing of Muslim scientists is an Israeli tactic that aims to prevent Muslim countries from getting the nuclear and technological know-how.

“Israelis view Muslims possessing the tools of technology as a danger,” Turkish political analyst Mustafa Ozcan told Anadolu Agency.

“They don’t want Muslims to make a breakthrough in this field, so they target scientists [from Muslim countries like] Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan,” he said.

The Turkish analyst cited the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Israeli airstrikes as an example of Israeli attempts to prevent Muslim states from possessing the nuclear know-how.

In mid-1981, Israeli warplanes struck a nuclear reactor being built by Iraq southeast of Baghdad.

“Israel, however, declines to comment on the assassination of Muslim scientists in order to avoid raising this issue at international levels,” Ozcan said.

Hatem al-Zoabi, a Swedish writer of Syrian origin, echoed a similar opinion.

“The murder of Muslim scientists by Mossad aims to prevent their countries from developing their researches,” he told Anadolu Agency.

He opined that Israel “targets any efficient Muslim who could help develop his country in any field”.

Far From A Nuclear Deal (Dan 8)

  

Iran nuclear talks still mired by disagreement on all main elements

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has for weeks rebuffed U.S. demands that U.N. nuclear monitors have access to military sites and nuclear scientists.

BY GEORGE JAHNTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS

VIENNA — Iran and six powers are still apart on all main elements of a nuclear deal with less than two weeks to go to their June 30 target date and will likely have to extend their negotiations, two diplomats tell The Associated Press.

Their comments enforce concerns that obstacles to a pact remain beyond the public debate on how far Iran must open its nuclear program to outside purview under any deal.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has for weeks rebuffed U.S. demands that U.N. nuclear monitors have access to military sites and nuclear scientists as they monitor Tehran’s commitments under a deal and probe allegations of past work on atomic arms.

Negotiators are concerned about a lack of headway on all issues. Russian chief delegate Sergey Ryabkov said Friday the “the rate of progress … is progressively slowing down.”

Negotiators have been meeting five days a week in Vienna over the past few weeks. The two diplomats are familiar with the progress of the talks and spoke shortly before a planned five-day round reconvened Wednesday. They demanded anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the confidential negotiations.

Ways of implementing specific parts of the deal are supposed to be contained in four or five annexes to the main text of an agreement.

The diplomats described said the draft of a main document as a patchwork of text and dozens of blank spaces because of stubborn disagreement on up to 10 elements crucial to any deal. Those details are to be included in four or five annexes, which remain incomplete.

Both sides remain publicly committed to June 30. Still, the diplomats said all nations at the table recognize that a delay up to July 8 is not a deal-breaker.

If U.S. Congress receives a deal by July 8, it has 30 days to review it before U.S. President Barack Obama could suspend congressional sanctions. Postponement beyond that would double the congressional review period to 60 days, giving both Iranian and U.S. opponents more time to work on undermining an agreement.

Any deal would cap nearly a decade of international efforts to restrict Iranian nuclear programs that could be turned toward making weapons.

Tehran denies any interest in — or work on — atomic arms, but wants negotiations with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to conclude with an end to sanctions imposed over its nuclear program.

The talks focus on ways to implement commitments by both sides reached in a preliminary deal in April. Iran agreed then to slashing the size of its uranium enrichment program for at least 10 years, as well as re-engineering a nearly built reactor to minimize its output or plutonium — like enriched uranium a potential pathway to nuclear weapons.

It also has agreed to give experts of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency unprecedented monitoring authority to ensure that Tehran is hewing to its commitments, as well as more leverage in following up on the allegations of past nuclear weapons work.

What Iran Deal? (Ezekiel 17)

 

Obama’s Nuclear Dream Fizzles
How a Nobel Peace Prize winner president threw away an ambitious set of nonproliferation goals.
By DOUGLAS BIRCH and R. JEFFREY SMITH June 15, 2015
Even in an administration full of audacious hope, the nuclear arms agenda of President Barack Obama stood out—he came out strong in 2009, declaring America’s commitment “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” His energetic embrace of nuclear disarmament was cited as part of his Nobel Peace Prize that year, and his announcement in Prague of a commitment to lock down vulnerable nuclear explosives all over the world within four years, to keep them away from terrorists, was attention-getting and audacious
Six years into his presidency, though, that ambitious dream has all but disappeared. As President Obama prepares for the last of the global summits he organized to safeguard nuclear explosive materials, his aides are hoping for modest achievements rather than pressing for broad new measures to help protect the world from a nuclear terror attack, according to current and former administration officials.
Obama has instead settled for what a senior White House official publicly described in 2012 as “the incremental nature of success” on nuclear secruity rather than throwing his full weight behind the creation of global standards for nuclear materials that independent experts say could have a more lasting and significant impact.
The administration’s focus on what its officials depict as the art of the possible has provoked grumbling from outsiders that progress achieved so far could be undermined after Obama departs in 2017, unless the government mounts a last-minute push for a more sweeping agreement—even one involving only a few dozen like-minded nations instead of a global pact.
“I completely understand that putting forth ambitious ideas is putting your hand into a buzz saw,” said Kenneth Luongo, senior advisor to the secretary of energy during the Clinton administration and former director of arms control and nonproliferation at the Energy Department, referring to opposition by several nuclear-weapons states and some others to a new system of nuclear material controls.
“But you have to do it, so you can show people the scar,” he said, and demonstrate to the world that the United States is prepared to take political risks to reduce this threat.
The Obama administration since 2009 has hardly slighted nuclear security: According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group in Washington that advocates tighter control of nuclear explosive materials, the administration has invested more than $5 billion in it. That figure includes funds given to Russia and other countries to help secure their nuclear weapons arsenals, to convert research reactors so they burn fuel that cannot be used in weapons, and to improve the physical protection and accounting of nuclear explosive materials such as plutonium and highly-enriched uranium.
The summit meetings Obama led in in 2010, 2012 and 2014 about associated nuclear perils—in Washington, South Korea and the Netherlands—included 53 nations and were attended by 46 sitting presidents, prime ministers or other heads of state. Some of those leaders brought what the administration called “gift baskets” meant to highlight their commitment to nuclear security, including offers to ship nuclear explosive materials to the United States or Russia for destruction.
But Luongo, who now directs a nonprofit group called Partnership for Global Security, said the meetings left “gaps and fissures” in the patchwork of domestic regulations and international agreements designed to protect nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands. And he urged that the United States lead an effort to transform the current system, where it is up to individual countries to decide how seriously to take the protection of their nuclear materials, into one with enforceable international standards.
Laura Holgate, the senior director for WMD Terrorism and Threat Reduction at the National Security Council and a leader of the efforts to prepare for next year’s summit, declined to address planning for the final summit. Shortly after the second summit in March 2012, however, Holgate said the administration had not sought new nuclear security treaties because too many other countries were opposed to such measures.
Instead, she said, the summit process reflected “the incremental nature of success,” adding: “That’s just the way it is in this field. You don’t have giant thunderclaps and then the world is different.”
Asked for further comment last week, a White House spokesman forwarded a copy of a speech last July in which Holgate said the summits had “built up an impressive track record in meaningful progress” and helped make it “harder than ever for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons.” In the speech, she said “we have not yet done all that we can or need to do,” but a “comprehensive” arrangement for controlling both civilian and military stocks of nuclear explosives would be promoted “over time.”
“We also need,” Holgate said then, “to reflect the principle of continuous improvement.”
In advance of the 2014 summit, however, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, in a document labeled “Official Use Only,” said that while U.S. initiatives had made the world safer, there are still “serious threats that require urgent attention.” The May 2013 report, which was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, said that terrorists were still seeking nuclear weapons, and plenty of raw materials to build them are still scattered around the world.
Hundreds of pounds of weapons-usable uranium are being stored at civilian sites, including in South Africa and Belarus, the document said. Scores of research reactors, where security is generally lower than at military sites, still operate with fuel composed of weapons-grade explosives, it said, including more than 60 in Russia alone. Meanwhile, global plutonium stocks are rising, the report said, with more than 100 metric tons produced since 1998, enough it said to build at least 20 thousand nuclear weapons.
The loss of even a small amount of this material from any of the hundreds of sites where they are stored could have catastrophic consequences, the report said. “In today’s global environment, a nuclear … device would not just impact one city or one country; it would gravely damage us all.”
The report’s depiction of the threat as an urgent problem has found resonance in a coalition of more than 80 arms control, academic, and philanthropic organizations known as the Fissile Materials Working Group. It plans to release a 16-page report Tuesday proposing what it calls “bold, new actions” to advance nuclear security at the final summit beyond what the Obama administration is presently considering, including creating a pathway toward “universal, mandatory…standards.”
The group’s membership spans the political spectrum, and includes the Arms Control Association, the Cato Institute, the Federation of American Scientists, the Stimson Center, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as independent groups in Russia, India, Denmark and elsewhere. One of its members, the Stanley Foundation, has financially supported foreign travel by staff at the Center for Public Integrity. The working group has already given copies of its report to diplomats heading for a preparatory conference scheduled to be held in Lithuania the week of June 28.
The Working Group report calls on the nuclear weapons states to share more information about security practices and expenditures, and to support visits by foreign experts who could review the security arrangements for their fissionable materials (not the weapons themselves)—the way U.S. scientists helped their Russian counterparts in the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union left huge stores of such materials poorly guarded.
Douglas Birch is a reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization.
R. Jeffrey Smith is an editor for the Center for Public Integrity. Read more of their investigations into nuclear materials and policy or follow them on Twitter.

Iran deal likely won’t happen (Dan 8)

 

Obama Legacy on Nuclear Arms Under Threat

As Iran talks enter critical stage, arms expansion elsewhere threatens key U.S. policy goal
By JAY SOLOMON

June 14, 2015 7:46 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—As international talks over Iran’s nuclear program enter their critical final stage this month, a key goal of President Barack Obama’s presidency—curtailing the world-wide nuclear threat—hangs in the balance.

Mr. Obama’s campaign to stem the spread of nuclear weapons was cited as core reason for his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, but that signature effort has been bogged down amid a resurgence of Middle East turmoil, tensions between the U.S. and Russia and the growth of North Korea’s arsenal.

Senior U.S. officials cite the impending deal with Iran as a major step toward Mr. Obama’s nonproliferation objective. But many nonproliferation concerns have grown. Chinese scientists warned the U.S. in recent months that North Korea has expanded its arsenal to about 20 atomic bombs. And developing countries negotiating the future of the nuclear

Nonproliferation Treaty at the United Nations last month, meanwhile, sharply criticized the U.S. and Russia for not doing enough to shrink their nuclear-weapons arsenals.

In recent years, aside from the Iran talks, “the administration has lost focus and momentum on the [nonproliferation] issue, especially as the Republicans have seized the majority in the Senate and tensions with Russia have worsened,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington think tank.

Even a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing economic sanctions, a main goal, may lead only to a mixed record on disarmament. Key U.S. allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, are voicing fears the emerging deal won’t go far enough in blocking an Iranian path to a bomb. A number of Arab states have warned they could seek to match whatever nuclear capabilities Iran is allowed to maintain as part of a final deal.

The talks, facing a June 30 deadline, are under way in Vienna. U.S. and European officials involved in the diplomacy said disputes still exist with Iran over the future inspections of its nuclear and military sites and the timing of sanctions relief. These officials said the concerns of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s watchdog, to clarify Iran’s alleged past efforts to develop nuclear weapons technologies are unlikely to be addressed by month-end, but will need to be handled in stages.

“In terms of the actual timelines, the IAEA isn’t going by the 30th of June to be able to resolve its outstanding questions,” a Western diplomat said. “What the deal will have to do is make sure there is a mechanism by which it can do that.”

The Obama administration’s nonproliferation campaign, laid out along the lines of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, has focused on trying to deny atomic weapons to previously non-nuclear countries, reducing the stockpiles already held by the five U.N.-recognized weapons states, and facilitating the use of civilian nuclear technologies for countries that commit to not go down the weapons path.

Administration officials view the diplomacy toward Iran as a linchpin of this overall strategy. The White House believes an agreement with Iran will deny Tehran the capability to break out and build a bomb for at least 10 years, removing pressure on Saudi Arabia and Iran’s other regional rivals to pursue nuclear technologies.

Still, U.S. allies and adversaries alike have voiced suspicion of the Obama administration’s broader nonproliferation campaign. And developing countries—who are signatories to the treaty—criticized the U.S. and other weapons states last month for not moving fast enough to dismantle their nuclear-weapons arsenals.

The U.S. and Russia in 2010 reached an arms-control agreement, called the New Start Treaty, to cut in half the countries’ nuclear-missile launchers. But subsequent U.S. offers to the Kremlin to make additional weapons cuts haven’t been reciprocated, according to the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, nuclear threats have crept back into the international dialogue. Russia’s military publicly has said in recent months it should rewrite its official doctrine to allow for a preemptive nuclear attack on the U.S. European officials were stunned in March when Russia’s ambassador to Denmark threatened the country with nuclear-weapons reprisals if it joined a North Atlantic Treaty Organization missile-defense system.

“This makes for a very difficult environment to rapidly negotiate a reduction in nuclear weapons,” said the senior U.S. official. “We’re trying to make sure our concerns about their policies don’t take on a dynamic of their own.”

Israel’s undeclared nuclear-weapons arsenal is also challenging the Obama administration’s broader nonproliferation agenda.

Mideast countries, led by Egypt, pressed the U.N. last month to quickly convene an international conference aimed at establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in their region. Some nations had been seeking to mandate the meeting be held as soon as this December.

Israel’s government—which neither confirms nor denies that the country possesses nuclear weapons—vehemently opposed the requirement that it attend the proposed conference in the absence of broader steps to address what it sees as threats to the Jewish state’s security.

Israeli officials voiced concern that the Arab states and Iran would seek to use the conference to force their country to disarm.

The Obama administration ultimately blocked the U.N. from holding such a conference due to Israel’s concerns. But Egyptian officials warned the White House the American veto would have long-term implications.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, has acknowledged in recent weeks that Iran will likely to define his international record.

“Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this,” Mr. Obama said in an interview last month with Atlantic Media. “I think it’s fair to say that, in addition to our profound national-security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down.”

Iran Nuclear Deal Causing Global Strife

 
Israeli PM Says Arab Leaders Also Weary of Iran Nuclear Deal

By IAN DEITCH
 Jun 9, 2015, 3:27 PM
The Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister said Tuesday that Arab leaders agree with him that an emerging nuclear deal with Iran won’t stop Tehran from getting atomic weapons.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks come as Tehran and the six world powers negotiating with Iran face a June 30 target date for a comprehensive deal on curbing Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions’ relief.

Netanyahu told the prestigious Herzliya conference, an annual gathering that draws speakers from around the world, that he is not the only voice in the Middle East against the deal.

“I am often portrayed as the nuclear party pooper,” Netanyahu said. “But I speak with quite a few of our neighbors, more than you think, and I want to tell you that nobody in this region believes this deal will block Iran’s path to the bomb.”

Most of the region does not have official ties with Israel and Netanyahu did not name the leaders he spoke with or the circumstances of the discussions. He spoke in Herzliya, in central Israel, just days after a close confidant, Dore Gold, met publicly with a Saudi Arabian general to discuss Iran.

“It’s worth noting that nobody from this region except Iran is at the negotiating table,” Netanyahu added.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes but Israel fears it could still allow Tehran to build nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu also warned the deal would spark a nuclear arms race that will see the region “crisscrossed with nuclear trip wires as other states nuclearize” in fear of Iran. He said lifting the sanctions rewards Iran with “prosperity at home” while allowing it to continue “aggression abroad.”
Israel has long claimed a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten world peace and security, and views a nuclear-armed Tehran as a threat to its very existence, citing Iran’s repeated calls for Israel’s destruction, its long-range missile program and its support for militant groups like Lebanese Hezbollah or the Palestinian Hamas.

There was no immediate comment from Arab states on Netanyahu’s remarks.

Australia States The Obvious (Dan 8:3)

Iran ‘can not be trusted’ in nuclear talks with West, Australian lawmaker warns


NCRI Iran News
Monday, 25 May 2015 15:26

Iran supports Hezbollah terrorists and Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria and the regime cannot be trusted in nuclear talks with the West, a leading Australian lawmaker has warned.

Federal member Michael Danby said concessions from the West in negotiations would not be returned in kind by the rulers in Tehran.

He wrote in The Australia newspaper: “Iran has shown repeatedly that it will pursue its perceived interests regardless of the consequences.

“Iran’s principal aims are to undermine the Middle East’s US-backed Sunni-led status quo and to replace the US as the regional hegemonic power.

“Tehran also persists with the apparently unchanged ideology of its Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to destroy Israel.”

Mr Danby also said ‘no one should doubt’ Iran’s commitment to its client, Hezbollah, and its support for Assad’s brutal regime in Syria.

He added: “Iran’s direct regional aggression continues all the while. Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels captured Yemen’s capital. General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, acts as a Persian viceroy, dominating Iraq’s government and Shi’ite militias.

“So alarmed is America’s chief Middle East ally, Saudi Arabia, that Prince Turki bin Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, said in February, ‘Whatever the Iranians have, we will have too’.”

He went on: “Of course, Iran’s nuclear program is the focus of international concern. Tehran is negotiating only because international sanctions were crippling its economy. UN sanctions were placed on Iran only after several secret uranium enrichment sites were uncovered. (not by inspectors but by a dissident group).”

And he quoted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as saying recently: “We will never yield to pressure. Iran will not give access to its nuclear scientists. We will not allow the privacy of our nuclear scientists or any other important issue to be violated.”

Mr Danby added: “The Saudis, Turks, Qataris and Israelis, like the French socialist government and Democrats in the US Congress, sense increased Iranian power in the Middle East. Direct Saudi intervention in the region is a function of a perceived decrease of US influence in the Middle East. The Saudis traditionally have relied on the US to maintain regional stability.

“But a series of US decisions — such as the prospective nuclear deal, military co-operation between US and Iranian ground forces in Iraq, allowing Assad in Syria to cross chemical weapons ‘red lines’, and distancing itself from Israel and Egypt — has convinced Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even Qatar that the US is lessening its involvement in the region.

“When Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop visited Iran last month, she was the first high-ranking Western minister to visit the Islamic Republic since the initialling of the Lausanne framework. The significance of Bishop’s visit is that it marks Iran’s continuing passage from pariah to accepted member of the international community.

“Western countries are hustling to be at the front of the queue when sanctions are officially dropped. Western diplomats including Bishop are lauding ‘a change in Iranian attitudes’, despite no evidence of that.

“They’re also lauding Iran’s acceptance of nuclear understandings despite revelations to the contrary and responsible actions in the region, despite Iran actively undermining regional governments from Beirut to Baghdad and beyond, as well as prolonging Syria’s civil war.

“This is short termism at its worst and ignores the Khamenei regime’s actual policies and nature.
A nuclear-armed Iran in 10 years, free of sanctions, with $180 billion of reserves now freed up and with unchanged policies of regional hegemony and support for terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah, is not in the interests of world peace, regional stability or even faraway Australia.”

More Stipulations On The Iran Deal (Dan 8)

 Iran’s Khamenei rules out interviews with nuclear scientists
Wed May 20, 2015 8:26pm BST
By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday Tehran would not accept “unreasonable demands” by world powers over its disputed nuclear programme and ruled out letting inspectors interview its atomic scientists.

The comments, broadcast live on state TV, were the latest in a series of forthright statements on inspections in the countdown to a June 30 deadline to resolve a decade-old standoff over Iran’s nuclear work.

“We will never yield to pressure … We will not accept unreasonable demands … Iran will not give access to its (nuclear) scientists,” Khamenei said.

“We will not allow the privacy of our nuclear scientists or any other important issue to be violated.”

Khamenei, who has the final say for Iran on any deal, last month ruled out any “extraordinary supervision measures” over nuclear activities and said military sites could not be inspected.

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been trying to investigate Western allegations that Iran has worked on designing a nuclear warhead. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful and that it is working with the IAEA to clear up any suspicions.

U.N. inspectors regularly monitor Iran’s declared nuclear facilities, but the IAEA has complained for years of a lack of access to sites, equipment, documents and people relevant to its probe.

Western officials say Iran must step up cooperation with the IAEA if it wants to reach a broader diplomatic deal with world powers that would gradually end crippling financial and other sanctions on the oil producer.

“They say we should let them interview our nuclear scientists. This means interrogation,” Khamenei said.

“I will not let foreigners talk to our scientists and to interrogate our dear children … who brought us this extensive (nuclear) knowledge.”

Iran has yet to answer questions about two areas of the investigation into alleged research activities that could be applicable to any attempt to make nuclear bombs – explosives testing and neutron calculations.

Iran reached a tentative deal with the powers on April 2 to allow U.N. inspectors to carry out more intrusive, short-notice inspections under an “Additional Protocol” to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But there have been sharply differing interpretations from both sides on the details of that access.

When asked whether there had been some progress since April, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who has been perceived as the most demanding in the talks, said the negotiations now had to discuss the deal’s annexes, which was not the case yet.

He said Iran also had to offer real transparency in its military activities as part of the deal, including rapid access to IAEA inspectors to all sites.

“What happens if Iran doesn’t comply. How much time will we have to check? In the current text, it’s 24 days, but in 24 days a lot of things can disappear,” Fabius said. 

Negotiators from Iran and the powers met in Vienna on Wednesday to try to iron out remaining differences, including the timing of sanctions relief and the future of Iran’s atomic research and development programme.

“There has to be concrete commitments on the enrichment activities allowed for length of the accord, including a phased reduction in the number of centrifuges at the underground site of Fordow and an efficient mechanism to restore sanctions if Iran does not respect its commitments,” Fabius said.

Talks between EU political director Helga Schmid and Iranian negotiators Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-Ravanchi will run until Friday, with technical experts meeting in parallel, the EU said in a statement. 

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Additional reporting by Adrian Croft in Brussels; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Tom Heneghan)

Iran’s New Generation Of Nuclear Talent (Daniel 8:3)

Iran’s Physicists

Jeremy Bernstein

19 March 2015

The Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran was founded in 1929 as a school of engineering. It became a general technological institute in 1972. It now has more than a dozen departments with thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Few if any American universities have a more complete list of undergraduate physics courses. Looking at the faculty reveals an interesting split. The senior professors all did much of their degree work abroad. One of them for example was an undergraduate at Columbia. The junior faculty, including one woman, all did their degree work in Iran. In another generation, it may be that all of Iran’s physicists will have been educated in Iran. No other country in the Middle East would show a demographic like this. Taken in the large this means that Iran has a serious scientific infrastructure, which must be taken into account in any negotiations over its nuclear programme. The notion that the country can be negotiated into a scientific stone age is nonsense.

I am going to take a quick detour to Libya. In 1968, King Idris made the country a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. When Colonel Gaddafi took over the following year he did not change this treaty status. Indeed Libya began a modest development in peaceful nuclear activities. This did not last long; on a state visit to China in 1970 Gaddafi made an unsuccessful attempt to buy nuclear weapons. He then tried both India and Pakistan and had a go at enriching uranium. What characterised the Libyan programme throughout was the lack of a real scientific infrastructure. In the 1980s, the Pakistani metallurgist A.Q. Khan began selling nuclear secrets. In the late 1990s Gaddafi bought the package which included plans and parts to build centrifuges. When he decided to give the programme up in 2003, even with the aid of foreign scientists the Libyans had succeeded in building only one centrifuge.

On 21 January 2004, a large delegation of British and American intelligence agents as well as representatives of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) assembled to examine what the Libyans had turned over and decide what to do with it. Two of them, one British and one American, were escorted to a small office. Two large bags containing documents were brought in to be inspected. The first one contained detailed plans for constructing a nuclear weapon that the Chinese had successfully tested and flown in a medium range ballistic missile on 27 October 1966. There were notations in Chinese on the diagrams. They are now stored in a classified storage vault somewhere in the US.

Now back to Iran. It is well known that Iran bought Khan’s centrifuge package, and what they did with it is also obvious: 18,000 functioning centrifuges. What is not obvious is whether they bought the rest of the package. They will not allow the IAEA to inspect anything that directly relates to the military aspects of their program. In a 2011 report the IAEA wrote:

In an interview in 2007 with a member of the clandestine nuclear supply network, the Agency was told that Iran had been provided with nuclear explosive design information. From information provided to the Agency during that interview, the Agency is concerned that Iran may have obtained more advanced design information than the information identified in 2004 as having been provided to Libya by the nuclear supply network.

Much discussion has come out of the negotiations concerning matters such as uranium enrichment. Nothing, at least that I have read, has come out on how to put the genie of knowledge back into the bottle. I think it more than likely that Iran has these designs and has probably improved on them. It just takes a small group of talented physicists working in a few offices to do so. That is what happened in Pakistan. This makes it all the more urgent that whatever agreement is reached – if one is ever reached – strictly limits the fissile material available to implement the plans. I am not very optimistic.

Doomsday Clock Draws Nearer, Down To 3 Minutes (Revelation 15:2)

Three minutes to midnight: Climate and nuclear threats see Doomsday Clock wound forward

PUBLISHED : Friday, 23 January, 2015, 11:00am

UPDATED : Friday, 23 January, 2015, 11:00am

Agence France-Presse

• 

Scientists from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists speak during a press conference after updating the “Doomsday Clock” on Thursday in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP

 

Climate change and the danger of nuclear war pose an ever-growing threat to civilisation and are bringing the world closer to its end, a group of prominent scientists and Nobel laureates said as they wound the “Doomsday Clock” forward.

“It is now three minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as the group moved its symbolic clock ahead by two minutes.

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947. It has changed 18 times since then, ranging from two minutes to midnight in 1953 to 17 minutes before midnight in 1991.

The clock has been at five minutes to midnight since 2012 and the last time it was three minutes to midnight was in 1983, during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

“Today, unchecked climate change and a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity,” Benedict said.

“And world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe.”

The scientists called on people to demand action from their leaders to curb fossil fuel pollution and to stop developing ever more modern nuclear weapons that are endangering the planet.

“We are not saying it is too late to take action, but the window for action is closing rapidly. The world needs to be awakened from its lethargy and start making changes,” Benedict said.

Such actions should cap greenhouse gas emissions at levels sufficient to keep average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the group said.

“Efforts at reducing global emissions of heat-trapping gases have so far been entirely insufficient,” said Richard Somerville, a member of the Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego.

“Unless much greater emissions reductions occur very soon, the countries of the world will have emitted enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by the end of this century to profoundly transform the Earth’s climate,” he said, noting that 2014 was the hottest on record and that the tipping point of ice loss in west Antarctica has been reached, meaning the melt is now unstoppable.

The climate changes that human are driving “will harm millions of people and will threaten many key ecological systems on which civilization relies,” he said.

The scientists also called for dramatically reduced spending on nuclear weapons modernisation programs, and a renewed focus on disarmament.

Benedict said that the world has about 16,300 nuclear weapons, which she described as “far too many.”

While the United States and Russia have far fewer weapons today than they did during the Cold War, the disarmament process has “ground to a halt,” said Sharon Squassoni, member, Science and Security Board, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Meanwhile, the United States has invested big money in modernizing its nuclear weapons systems, with some US$355 billion planned for the next decade, and Russia is also upgrading its nuclear weapons, Squassoni said.

The United Kingdom has halved its nuclear arsenal stockpile since 2010 but continues to support its nuclear submarine program.

France is also building a next generation air-to-ground nuclear missile, while China is developing a new class of ballistic missile submarines, she said.

India has plans to expand its nuclear submarine fleet and Pakistan has started a third plutonium reactor and is developing a new short-range nuclear missile.

“Israel reportedly is also modernizing some of its undeclared nuclear forces and North Korea as we all know continues its nuclear program without any of the restraints previously applied under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Squassoni told reporters.

She said that any post-nuclear optimism that arose at the end of Cold War “has essentially evaporated.”

Israel Tries To Knock Off Another Iranian Nuclear Scientist

Iran: We thwarted Mossad attempt to assassinate nuclear scientist

Successful Assassination of Iranian Nuclear Scientist By Mossad November 29, 2010

Jerusalem Post
January 3, 2015

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps thwarted a Mossad assassination attempt against one of its nuclear scientists, a senior Iranian security official said on Saturday.

“In the last two years, the Zionist enemy was trying hard to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist, but the timely presence of the IRGC security forces thwarted the terrorist operation,” Col. Ya’qoub Baqeri, the deputy chief liaison officer of the Flight Guards Corps, told the country’s Fars News Agency.

The Revolutionary Guards is “duty-bound to protect the lives of the country’s nuclear scientists,” said Baqeri.

According to a report by CBS News last year, the Obama administration pressured Israel to stop carrying out assassinations inside Iran against the country’s nuclear scientists.

Israel has never admitted to carrying out such killings. At least five scientists have been killed, mostly by car bombs. Mossad officials concluded that the assassination campaign became too dangerous for its spies, said the report. This came amidst Washington’s attempt to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.

Meanwhile, Baqeri also told Fars that Iranian air marshals from the IRGC have foiled Islamic State plots to hijack Iranian passenger planes in recent years.

“The ISIL [Islamic State] and other Salafi groups sought to hit a blow to our country this way, but fortunately, they couldn’t put their plots into practice,” Baqeri said.

Israel Likely Assasinated Syrian Nuclear Scientists

Hezbollah blames Israel in death of 5 nuclear technicians in Syria

By Mitchell Prothero

McClatchy Washington BureauNovember 10, 2014

IRBIL, Iraq — The deaths of five nuclear scientists Sunday in an ambush outside Damascus has raised anew suspicions about whether Israel is conducting an assassination campaign intended to blunt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

At least one of the men was an Iranian nuclear technician, according to Syrian state television, members of the internal security wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in that country.

Rami Abdurrahman, the observatory’s director, described the dead as “five nuclear engineers” in a Facebook post and said they worked at a scientific research center “near the neighborhood of Barzeh, northern Damascus.” The Britain-based observatory, which works with a network of informants in Syria, has a reputation for accurate reports on events there.

Syrian government officials, speaking to government-friendly television stations, later confirmed that at least one of the men was an Iranian “scientific consultant,” but they released no other details on the nationalities of the other four men killed.

Both Iran and North Korea have provided Syria with technical nuclear expertise in the past, most notably at a secret reactor facility that the Israeli air force destroyed in a surprise attack in northern Syria in 2007. That previously unknown reactor facility was being built with the technical assistance of Iranian and North Korean scientists, according to statements made after the attack by American and Israeli intelligence officials. The facility, which U.S. and Israeli officials said hid a Syrian attempt to start a secret nuclear weapons program, was rendered unusable in the strike and later was dismantled by the Syrians.

“We can confirm that five scientific experts were martyred by terrorists as part of the ongoing plots of the Zionist entity,” a Hezbollah internal security commander said via instant messaging from Beirut. He insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters. “This follows the pattern of the enemy who backs and controls terrorists inside Syria in a program to hurt the resistance axis.”
The commander also cited the assassination in December 2013 of Hassan Laqqis, a high-ranking Hezbollah official who reportedly was tied to the group’s technical programs, including advanced drone and missile technology, according to accounts in Hezbollah-controlled media outlets shortly after his death. He was killed by unknown gunmen outside a suburban Beirut safe house.

An internal Hezbollah and Lebanese army investigation later determined the assassins had infiltrated Lebanon by sea, staked out the parking lot of the apartment complex, shot Laqqis at close range with silenced pistols and departed the country by sea in an operation that took a matter of hours, a hallmark of any of a number of similar assassinations of Islamist and Palestinian figures attributed to Israel over the last four decades.

In Sunday’s attack, the five men were killed by machine-gun fire while riding in a commuter van on the outskirts of Damascus. The Hezbollah official said he believed the attack was carried out by Syrian rebels working for Israel.

“We have long determined that the Zionist entity works closely with a number of the so-called rebel groups for anti-Hezbollah and anti-Syrian regime operations,” he said.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war, Israeli aircraft have launch at least three airstrikes on Syrian military hardware that Israel feared was being transferred to Hezbollah. Those targets have included advanced missile parts. In May 2013, suspected Israeli aircraft bombed a Syrian research center near the border with Lebanon, where advanced missile technology was under development. Iran, Hezbollah and Syria cooperate closely on the development of long-range weapons, which compose the bulk of Hezbollah’s deterrent capability against Israel.

Syria has long denied having any nuclear weapons program, but it is reported to have a small Chinese-made reactor for peaceful research purposes. It is unclear if that reactor is located in Barzeh.

The Barzeh facility itself came under attack in July 2013, when a group described by state television as “jihadists” fired at the facility with rocket-propelled grenades as staff members were departing work, killing at least six and wounding 19, according to Syrian state television at the time.

Israel, which maintains that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability, has recently criticized efforts by President Barack Obama to reach a compromise with the Iranian regime that would allow it to have a peaceful nuclear program and would lift economic sanctions in exchange for Iran renouncing efforts to develop a weapon.

A least five Iranian scientists tied to Iran’s nuclear program have been killed in recent years in incidents in or near Tehran, the Iranian capital. Iran has blamed Israel’s Mossad spy agency for the deaths; the Israeli government has denied involvement.

Prothero is a McClatchy special correspondent. Email: mprothero@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @mitchprothero
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/10/246402_hezbollah-blames-israel-in-death.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Iran Assasinates Their Own Scientist For Refusing To Create Nukes

Iran accused of assassinating its own nuclear scientist

Iranian Nuclear Scientist Killed In Car Bombing

The Times of Israel

Mahboobeh Hosseinpour, the sister of an Iranian nuclear scientist alleged to have been assassinated by Israel, has claimed that her brother was actually killed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) because he would not cooperate with the regime’s demand that he help create nuclear weapons.
Western countries have long held suspicions regarding [Iran's] nuclear weapon ambitions and Mrs. Mahboobeh Hosseinpour’s claims could help support these suspicions,” Dr. Iman Foroutan, chairman of Iranian opposition group The New Iran, said in a statement last week.

Mahboobeh said that her brother, Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, was approached in 2004 by special agents of the IRGC on behalf of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wanted to enlist Hosseinpour’s services for a project aimed at increasing uranium enrichment for developing nuclear weapons. As part of the project, he would also be tasked with teaching and supervising Russian and North Korean scientists.

Deceased Iranian nuclear scientist Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, whose sister has accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guards of assassinating him in 2007.  He was offered a two star rank in the revolutionary guard and ownership of factories,” Mahboobeh told the Middle East news source The Media Line in an interview from her home in Turkey. She said that her brother refused to work in Iranian nuclear projects, believing they would prove harmful to both the country’s economy and the international community. She alleged that his refusals led to Khamenei ordering his assassination by IRGC agents in January 2007.

Following Dr. Hosseinpour’s mysterious death, there were conflicting reports as to the cause, with media sources originally claiming he was “gassed.” Later, US private intelligence reported that he had died of radioactive poisoning and that sources close to Israeli intelligence had confirmed that he was targeted by Mossad.

As a matter of policy, Israel neither confirms nor denies reported assassinations, and Iranian officials vehemently denied that Dr. Hosseinpour had been assassinated. Gholamreza Aghazadeh, then Iranian vice president and head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the semi-official Fars News Agency that Iran’s “nuclear experts, thank God, are sound and safe,” and even went as far as to deny that Hosseinpour had worked for him.

However, Mahboobeh claimed that her brother “was the sole individual with the top credentials required for uranium enrichment in Iran,” according a press release by The New Iran. Iranian journalist Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh supported Mahboobeh’s allegations. He told The Media Line that the assassination was ordered “because of an email communication [Dr. Hosseinpour] had with me about the sensitivities of his work. They were aware of it, even if they did not have the content.”

Mahboobeh further supported her allegations by recounting conversations with her brother’s widow, Sara Araghi, who said that she had seen a DVD with detailed instructions for building, as well as neutralizing, a nuclear weapon “12 times more powerful” than the one dropped on Hiroshima. Araghi, Mahboobeh related, said she removed the DVD from her husband’s office the day of his assassination, but that it was later stolen by a family member.

This is not the first time the Iranian opposition has charged that Iran assassinated its own nuclear scientists. In May 2012, Dubai-based news channel Al-Arabiya, quoting Iranian opposition sources, reported that Tehran had executed a man for being an Israeli spy as cover for having assassinated its own nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi in a car bombing in January 2010. Elhanan Miller contributed to this report.

Iran Ordered To Stop Assassinating Iranian Nuclear Scientists

CBS News reports that Obama administration officials want an end to the targeted killings, believed by many to be the work of Mossad.

Iranian Nuclear Scientist Assassinated

The United States is reportedly pressuring Israel to stop assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, a number of whom have been mysteriously killed in a campaign thought to be carried out by Mossad.
According to CBS News, Obama administration officials have communicated to Israeli intelligence their wish for a cessation of the targeting of scientists in order to allow diplomatic negotiations aimed at rolling back Iran’s nuclear program to take their course.
Related:
Iran protests to UN: Israel killing our scientists
Iran: We arrested 20 for killing nuke scientists
While Israel has never officially acknowledged that it was behind the killings, it is widely believed that Mossad agents carried out the hits in an effort to slow down Iran’s nuclear development as well as to deter the country’s top scientific minds from cooperating with the government’s clandestine weapons program.
The CBS News report was written by Dan Raviv, a journalist who along with The Post intelligence correspondent Yossi Melman wrote a book about the history of Israel’s intelligence services.
Last year, Melman and Raviv co-wrote Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars. The book claims that it was Mossad agents, not foreign mercenaries, who took part in the assassinations of four Iranian nuclear scientists. A new, updated version of the book is due out on Sunday.
According to CBS News, some in the Israeli intelligence community also had second thoughts about continuing the campaign since they did not want to run the risk of the Mossad’s best spies getting caught.
According to Raviv’s chapters in the book, in its pursuit to delay Iran’s military nuclear program, Israeli intelligence services are working with ethnic minorities in or around Iran, such as Kurds and Baluchis, as well as the Iranian Mujihadeen-e Khalq (MEK) organization, which is dedicated to the overthrow of the current Iranian regime.
“There is undoubtedly cooperation,” Melman said. The MEK’s 2002 announcement of an Iranian heavy water reactor at Arak and a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz came directly from Israeli intelligence, he added.
“They work together. But in the most sensitive missions, it has to be Israeli agents,” Melman said based on what Raviv wrote.
Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.http://www.andrewtheprophet.com