Pressure Holding Iran Back from Bomb Decision: Israel

Pressure Holding Iran Back from Bomb Decision: Israel

Wednesday, 6 June 201  International pressure is forcing Iran to hold off on a decision about whether to make the dash to develop nuclear weapons, Israel's military chief of staff said on Tuesday. "Iran is striving for nuclear military ability, but has not yet reached the decision to cross the threshold, for its own strategic considerations," Lieutenant General Benny Gantz told MPs at the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defence. "The international isolation, pressure, sanctions, a reliable military threat -- and for that you have to be super-ready -- all of that can cause the Iranians to decide to say 'not now' as far as crossing the threshold," he said in remarks relayed by the committee spokesman. Iran has already developed the capacity to enrich uranium to 20 percent, which is used to create medical isotopes, but going "the extra mile" would mean working to enrich to 90 percent -- the level needed to make nuclear weapons. Tehran is under huge pressure from a raft of international sanctions imposed on its oil and banking sectors over its disputed nuclear programme. And Israel, which sees a nuclear Iran as an existential threat, has refused to rule out a pre-emptive military strike on its nuclear facilities. Tehran denies its intentions are anything but peaceful. In April, Gantz told Israel's Haaretz newspaper that he did not believe Iran would take the decision to build a nuclear bomb. "It still hasn't decided yet whether to go the extra mile," he told the paper. World powers have held two rounds of talks with Iran aimed at convincing the Islamic Republic to roll back its nuclear programme, which Israel and much of the West believes is a front for developing atomic weapons. So far, the negotiations have not produced any tangible results although a third round is due to take place in Moscow later this month. "The only people who can decide to relinquish the nukes are the Iranians themselves, and as an army we should be ready for that too," Gantz said, without elaborating.

Israel accuses Iran of nuclear deception

GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press

Updated 08:14 a.m., Wednesday, June 6, 2012

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  Iran's Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh waits for the start of the IAEA board of governors meeting at the International Center, in Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday, June 6, 2012. Photo: Ronald Zak / AP

Iran dismisses IAEA and international suspicions that it may have worked covertly on nuclear weapons and insists it has no interest in possessing such arms, saying its disputed uranium enrichment program is geared only toward generating nuclear fuel.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's chief IAEA delegate, said as much again Wednesday without responding directly to Israeli delegate Ehud Azoulay, telling the agency's 35-nation board that all allegations to the contrary "are forged and baseless and our nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes."
But critics note that it has blocked the restart of an IAEA probe into its alleged secret weapons work for nearly five years, as well as refusing foreign offers of reactor fuel. It has instead expanded enrichment, and because the process can make both such fuel and the fissile material used to arm nuclear weapons, international concerns have grown about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Israel is particularly critical, noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the eradication of Israel. It and the United States have not ruled out military strikes against the Islamic Republic if diplomacy fails to curb a nuclear program they see as a cover for making weapons. While Wednesday's comments from Israel were not new, they mirrored the high tensions that could result in such an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities
Accusing Iran of "proceeding in (an) accelerated path towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability," Azoulay told the IAEA meeting that the Islamic Republic was employing a strategy of "deception, defiance and concealment," to gain time for developing such weapons.
In separate comments to The Associated Press he alluded to the military option, warning that "time is running out ... for a political solution."
Azoulay spoke ahead of two separate efforts to persuade Iran to reduce concerns about its nuclear ambitions.
Later this month in Moscow, six world powers will attempt to convince Tehran to stop enriching to higher levels that could be quickly turned into weapons-grade uranium at its Fordo facility, which is dug into a mountain and fortified against aerial attack. But Soltanieh warned against high expectations.
"Iran will never ever suspend its enrichment activities," he told reporters outside the IAEA meeting.
Before the Moscow talks, IAEA officials plan to meet with Soltanieh in Vienna on Friday in attempts to prod Iran into agreeing to reopen the agency's probe into the alleged secret weapons work.
That IAEA probe remains stalled three weeks after agency chief Yukiya Amano came back from Tehran saying that Iranian permission to relaunch it was near. Focusing on the continued stalemate, Azoluay said it shows that "all efforts to engage Iran were fruitless."
He specifically cited Tehran's refusal to give IAEA experts access to a site the agency believes was used to test high explosives suited for setting off a nuclear charge, saying the Islamic Republic is doing "its utmost to ... obstruct any investigation."
The IAEA recently showed board members satellite photos of that site, part of the Parchin military base southeast of Tehran, and diplomats at that closed meeting said the images showed evidence of a cleanup, including water pouring from a building, earth being moved and the demolition of several buildings.
Amano, the IAEA chief, confirmed the photos showed such activities Monday. Soltanieh, the Iranian delegate to the IAEA, suggested the agency was overstepping its mandate, telling reporters that his country "will not permit the agency to be turned into an international intelligence services organization."

6 June 2012 Last updated at 13:34 GMT

Iran mobile operator Irancell 'secures US technology'

 

 Irancell is one of the fastest growing mobile phone operators in the country

Iran's second-largest mobile phone operator Irancell might have secured access to US technology - despite US sanctions.

Irancell obtained equipment from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems, Reuters news agency reported.
All three companies said they were not aware that Irancell had acquired their equipment.
US firms are not allowed to sell goods or services to Iran unless they obtain special permission.
Irancell, a joint venture between MTN Group based in South Africa and an Iranian government-controlled consortium, is reported to have expressed specific interest in acquiring embargoed products.
According to an internal Irancell document from 2008, seen by Reuters, the mobile phone operator was looking for network equipment, including Cisco routers, Sun servers and products from HP.
Technology companies based in the Middle East and Iran might have facilitated the supply.
International law Oracle, which owns Sun Microsystems, and Cisco said they were investigating the matter.
"Cisco complies with all US export laws and requires our business partners to do the same. Any violation of US export controls is a very serious matter," the company's spokesman said.

ANALYSIS

Amir Paivar Business reporter, BBC Persian

This is another example of how easily trade and banking sanctions could be circumvented using middle-men. The US computer components have allegedly passed through many hands before landing in Iran. Unless a tracking device was used, it would be difficult to know which ports and customs officials they visited.
Iran, a nation of merchants, has been using shell companies to bypass sanctions for many years. Front shipping companies have conducted transactions on behalf of blacklisted Iranian ones. By the time the middle companies are spotted, new ones mushroom. Blacklisting the new ones requires legal procedures and takes time.

A spokeswoman for HP said its distribution contract terms prohibit sales into Iran.

"Compliance with US and international trade law is a high priority for HP," she said.
Chris Kilowan, who was MTN's top executive in Iran from 2004 to 2007, alleged to Reuters that MTN Group was directly involved in procuring US parts for Irancell, which launched in 2006.
According to Mr Kilowan, MTN Group agreed to allow its Iranian partners and Irancell to set up a local Iranian company with the "basic" purpose of evading sanctions on Iran.
In a response to the Reuters report, MTN Group said the company was committed to compliance with US sanctions.
"To the best of our knowledge, MTN personnel, directly or indirectly, did not acquire or seek to acquire equipment for use in Irancell's operations in a manner that was intended to avoid or circumvent US sanctions," the firm said.
But Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor of political science at the University of Tehran, told the BBC the allegations did not come as a surprise.
"During the past decade Iran has come up with various ways of getting around international sanctions," he told the BBC.
Prof Zibakalam said Iranian companies had been able to source many American and European goods through international markets, especially companies based in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.
He added that international companies have been eager to assist Iran with equipment it needs.
In May, the US Senate tightened sanctions against Iran and made it mandatory for US-listed firms to disclose any Iran-related business.

Obama 'gave full backing to Stuxnet attack on Iran'

13:40 1 June 2012

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent
(Image: News Pictures/MCP/Rex Features)
When George W Bush handed over the presidential reins to Barack Obama in 2008, he asked that the incoming man continue running what he regarded as two of his administration's most promising security programs: the remotely-piloted drone war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan - and the development of a cyberweapon nicknamed 'the bug', aimed at destroying Iran's nascent nuclear capability.
Obama agreed - but we have now come to know that bug by another name: Stuxnet.
This revelation is at the heart of an apparently impeccably-sourced book due to be published in the US on 5 June. In Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, author David Sanger alleges that Stuxnet, which eventually wrecked hundreds of uranium centrifuges in Iran in 2010, was created by cyberweapons experts at the US National Security Agency in collaboration with 'Unit 8200', a cyber operation of Israeli intelligence.
The worm worked by issuing commands that suddenly slowed the fast-spinning centrifuges - smashing them to pieces in the process. While motives alone have always suggested US and Israeli involvement in Stuxnet - they are after all the most vocal opponents of Iran's nuclear power and weapons capability - the book is the first account to provide evidence to back that theory. No forensic analysis has yet come close to identifying the authors of the worm.
Sanger says the Stuxnet program - then codenamed "Olympic Games" - began under the Bush administration  with a low level spyware campaign that gradually mapped the network configuration of the computer and embedded control systems in Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant. Once the spyware reported back, coders were able to construct software that would use that map to invade the plant's control systems to issue overspeed and sudden braking commands - while reporting that all was fine to operators. The plant's management fired some operators as a result, thinking them incompetent.
Some of Sanger's anonymous sources - who he says are "American, European and Israeli" - are extraordinarily close to the White House and publication of an excerpt in the New York Times (where Sanger is a journalist) today will doubtless have kicked off a hunt for moles in Washington, DC. For instance, Sanger describes in detail one such Bush administration meeting in the White House Situation Room in which the wrecked "rubble" of a test centrifuge from the Oak Ridge Lab in Tennessee was revealed to demonstrate how well an early version of Stuxnet worked in tests.
Under Obama, all was not sweetness and light between the US and Israeli coding teams: Stuxnet was meant to stay within the Natanz network only - but Sanger quotes a US source saying a coding error by the Israelis led to the bug copying itself in the outside world. As a result Obama is said to have come close to shutting the program down - but decided its continuing nuclear havoc was worth the risk. However, Stuxnet's subsequent discovery by antivirus firms, who undertook widely-publicised analyses of its code, tipped off the Iranians to its presence.