Iran: Nukes: Iran spurred by Israeli crisis, scours Europe to start Nuke work Monday

Iran, under theo-hawk Prez Mohammed Ahmadinejad, has announced it will resume nuclear work on Monday. It will be breaking the official seals that had signified its important nuke facilities were temporarily in disuse. (It is known that Iran has been building further faclities deep underground, but whether any of these have been functional already seems quite unknown to the media and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the IAEA won't be meeting again until March.)

Rookmaker Club geostrategic analysis

These most recent developments also raise a question mark about Russia, because of its proposed Russia-Iran joint plan to enrich uranium for Iran's nuclear-energy purposes in Russian facilties.

This brings Iran into conflict with leading EU countries and the USA:

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi confirmed Iran will press ahead with the research work.

"We will remove the seals and we have announced that we are ready to start research from tomorrow," he told a news conference.

Mr Asefi said the resumption of nuclear research was Iran's right and would be done under the supervision of international inspectors.< My bolds - Politicarp

He refused to say what kind of research was planned or which sites were involved.

Austria, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, said the bloc regretted Iran's move.

"It finds it surprising and unreasonable that Iran proposes to do this at a moment when... Britain, France and Germany with the EU were exploring with Iran the possibility of a return to negotiations," a statement said.

The US has warned Iran it might seek to refer the country to the UN if nuclear research resumes.

Ominously, information now has come to public attention regarding Iran's aggressive activities to find atom-bomb resources thru-out Europe, including the newly-democratic states of the Old Communist East Europe.

Iran has been combing Europe and former Soviet states for materials and expertise for potential use in making atomic bombs, according to a leaked intelligence report likely to heighten tensions over Tehran's nuclear drive.

British, French, German and Belgian agencies pooled findings in a 55-page report used to brief governments of the European Union, three of which are conducting talks with Iran in an effort to rein in its nuclear-fuel development program.

The intelligence document, dated July 1, said a large and sophisticated web of Iranian straw companies, academic institutes and middlemen were focusing on Europe and ex-Soviet republics to acquire nuclear technology and know-how.

Asked about the report, which was leaked to Britain's Guardian newspaper, diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cautioned that it offered no evidence that Iran was obtaining products of exclusive use in building nuclear weapons.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the Guardian story was designed to "negatively affect Iran's transparent measures and its cooperation with the IAEA."

.The January 4, 2006 story by Ian Traynor and Ian Cobain in London's Guardian story is worth looking at in itself, since it mentions some important details, including the nuclear blackmarket operation run by competitors like Pakistan (tho pysicist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan is under house arrest there, his laboratories and factories continue to function "and several of his collaborators in Europe have been arrested in Germany, Switzerland and South Africa") and North Korea (the main supplier of various weapons to Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and Iran). It turns out that much of the North Korean operation is carried out by corporations, some state-run, in Communist China. And, in passing, I note that Egypt must be purchasing this North Korean weaponry with US dollars, since it would have no ability to finance the project without the huge annual subsidy the US provides this most populous of Arab countries.

Recently, in Abu Dhabi, the Gulf Cooperation Council again took Israel to task for its nuclear weapons, and demanded that its nuclear facilities be open to inspections (presumably by the IEAE), at the same time declaring that Iran didn't worry the member states of the Council, rather they were looking forward to having Iran participate in a treaty arrangement to render the Gulf area a nuclear-weapons-free region. The Council insisted on taking Iran's nuclearization at face value as not intended to produce atom bombs, while complaining of the US double standard toward Israel, where no international inspections take place (but Israel has never signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Iran had done so some time ago).


Daily news from Iran

Leaving Israel out of the equation, there's yet another concern regarding the double standard that US Foreign Policy is now erecting in its relation to India's nuclear armament. Unable to wrestle North Korea to the ground on nukes, due to China's involvement in its colony's strategems; the US, forgetting its ally Pakistan, will help India by financing the sub-continent's other facilities planned for peaceful use of nuclear power. The double standard again. Why? Because Communist China itself is a nuclear power and increasingly so, with a Korean colony it uses thru Chinese state-run corporations as a weapons supplier to half a dozen weapons-hungry nations. To boot, now erstwhile US ally Pakistan has signed a nuclear cooperation treaty with China, all this to hold off a nuclear-armed India backed-up by the USA.

I wish Israel would take out the Iranian nuclear facilities now; but Sharon's passing out of power; and his replacement may not be as iron-willed as he. At this point, the take-out of Iranian nuke facilties could be accomplished with non-nuclear pin-pointed bombs, and hopefully with little loss of civilian lives. - Politicarp

Asia: India & Nuke Proliferation:Upsetting Asia's Atomic Applecart. Scroll to blog entry for July23,2k5.

Iran: Nuclear Proliferation: Outgoing and incoming Presidents of Iran seem to be one on nuke empowerment. Scroll to blog entry for July22,2k5 (several items down).