Iran continues towards confrontation

It seems that the EU don't have much faith in the proposed deal between Iran and Russia. I think they, like most, consider it pure stalling by the Iranians.

REUTERS: Negotiations between Iran and Russia on the Iranian nuclear programme have made no significant progress despite talk of an outline agreement by both sides, the German and French foreign ministers said on Monday.

"It appears that no decisive progress has been achieved," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters, citing reports from Moscow, after EU ministers discussed the negotiations at their monthly meeting in Brussels.

He said Iran appeared to be using the talks to try to divide the international community, but "this will not be successful".

To add to the concerns, it seems Iran has now started to ramp up its enrichment program in recent weeks: news.bbc.co.uk...

and is still not co-operating with the IAEA. Looks like the UNSC won't have any excuse not to hit them with sanctions. Expect Iran to start twisting and turning big time now - they'll be out to divide the EU/UN. I suspect their next move will be to "agree" to the Russian plan, in the hope of holding off sanctions and buying themselves more time. Should be an interesting few weeks.

It is kinda sad but yet reassuring it is going down this path, Sad because of the potential loss of life it will entail, reassuring as a Nuclear Capable Iran is not something the world needs right now, if Iran becomes completely transparent with its program then maybe, but with old billy no mates at the helm I do not see a way out.

Also with the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse kicking off in 3 weeks, it will be interesting to see the developments as they unfold. I personally stay online on googlenews and get updates from around the world as they come in getting a wide perspective of all the news, none of it is good however and none of the news stories offer a way out of this crisis, this is indeed a very scary time we live in. The situation is a lot more complex and dangerous than Iraq, but thankfully we now have a springboard for operations on 2 fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The world will be very different by the end of 2006, just maybe not for the better.

Iran started cascade enrichment today inside its borders. was on the midnight news here in the UK on BBC 1. the Russians expressed deep concern about the about face shown by the Iranians. The nuclear watch dog urged them to be reported to the united nations council now for censure.

This is bad sh##. Just what Bush wants for a pre-emptive strike.

ThreatsWatch.org

They may experience much less soon (in the form of sanctions) if the UN Security Council does the unexpected and resists its traditional urge to flounder, delay and prolong the process to the point that it’s eventual resolutions are nearly ineffectual. With Russia’s nuclear construction contracts and China’s recent massive oil and gas agreements with Tehran, effectiveness may have an outside chance at best, regardless of proven Iranian deception.

The world needs a united front but with Russia and China having both hands in the pie, trying to get a united front is going to be difficult at best.

Plus I was thinking about it, "if I wanted a nuclear option for energy only what would I do??

1) Arrange a meeting with my secretary of energy (discuss options)
2) Go to IAEA and explain situation, (need nuke energy to cope with large demand forecast in next 5 years say)
3) Be completely transparent with IAEA, do exactly what they say.
4) Do not say I am going to destroy another country nor sponsor terrorism


Wouldnt these be anyones thoughts if it was indeed peaceful??

Originally posted by Oilbourse2006
ThreatsWatch.org

They may experience much less soon (in the form of sanctions) if the UN Security Council does the unexpected and resists its traditional urge to flounder, delay and prolong the process to the point that it’s eventual resolutions are nearly ineffectual. With Russia’s nuclear construction contracts and China’s recent massive oil and gas agreements with Tehran, effectiveness may have an outside chance at best, regardless of proven Iranian deception.

The world needs a united front but with Russia and China having both hands in the pie, trying to get a united front is going to be difficult at best.

Plus I was thinking about it, "if I wanted a nuclear option for energy only what would I do??

1) Arrange a meeting with my secretary of energy (discuss options)
2) Go to IAEA and explain situation, (need nuke energy to cope with large demand forecast in next 5 years say)
3) Be completely transparent with IAEA, do exactly what they say.
4) Do not say I am going to destroy another country nor sponsor terrorism


Wouldnt these be anyones thoughts if it was indeed peaceful??

Dead on mate!!! (you are correct)

should have added a 5th, you dont sign the NPT and have an undercover/underground (you pick which) Nuclear program, where you also develop MRV technology and the technology to pack uranium into spheres!!

18 years they hid that! the US created a nuclear bomb in under 2 years with the manhatten project!! without any technical drawings or materials from pakistan!

In 1939, the Nazis were rumored to be developing an atomic bomb. The United States initiated its own program under the Army Corps of Engineers in June 1942. America needed to build an atomic weapon before Germany or Japan did.

On Monday, July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the first atomic device detonated at the Trinity Test Site

So what do you do for 18 years!!!

I suppose how you view current events depends upon who you listen to -

The agreement in principle with Russia for uranium enrichment is a positive step Iran took to remove the standoff on national nuclear program, a Western diplomat at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday.

IRNA reporter in Vienna asked the diplomat whether he was aware of the report IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei is expected to present to the Board of Governors on March 6, he replied 'no', adding that if ElBaradei's report was positive, there will be no reason for the UN Security Council to study the report.

He said that Iran is far away from economic sanctions thanks to satisfactory Iranian cooperation with the UN nuclear agency.

Taken from IRNA.

But if you actually check up to date news....

Taken from BBC News and also

APNEWS (on SanJose News)

Iran is forging ahead with nuclear enrichment by feeding uranium gas into centrifuge "cascades", a report by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog says.

and...

But the next day Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said any deal depended on Iran ending its own enrichment activities.

Iranian officials had warned they would restart small-scale uranium enrichment by early March but they did not specify a date.

The head of the world's nuclear watchdog declared last night that he could not give Iran's nuclear programme a clean bill of health, blaming Tehran for frustrating almost three years of inspections and detective work by experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

and further still...

And just a few months down the road, "commencement of the installation of the first 3,000 ... (centrifuges) is planned for the fourth quarter of 2006," said the report.

Experts estimate that Iran already has enough black-market components in storage to build the 1,500 operating centrifuges it would need to make the 45 pounds of highly enriched uranium needed for one crude weapon.

Enjoy the news

[edit on 27-2-2006 by Oilbourse2006]

As I say, it depends who you listen to!

Well I guess the only people that we should listen to are the IAEA...

We will see which "side" was right next monday!

also on a side note, I could read a Famous Five book and think the world was peachy and all bad guys could be thwarted by 5 kids!

or... I could watch Scooby Doo and the gang solve quasi paranormal activities where everything is revealed at the end!

know where I am going with this??

I am inclined to believe the head of the IAEA over the preemptive comments of someone who lives in one of the above worlds mentioned when he thinks that Iran has been co-operative !!

hmm... newsflash!!

Iran stops spot checks
Iran removes seals
Iran begins enrichment
Iran says full scale enrichment will begin in March
Iran says Israel should be wiped off the map
Iran admits that comment wont help in the SC and so says it was a misunderstanding
Iran denies any "Green Salt project"
Iran magically comes semi clean with a program that doesnt exist oh wait that pesky "Green Salt Project"!!

hmm indeed it does depend on your perspective (and your facts)

There will be no sanctions worth mentioning. China will see to that with their veto.

IMO Iran will continue to drag the scenario long enough to confound the international community. And well done to them, they have the rest of the world dancing a merry jig to their tune.

I see Iran getting what they want, regardless as to international approval.

ive come up with a full-proof solution: just let Iran have nukes, no war

Originally posted by KhieuSamphanAs I say, it depends who you listen to!

The 'report' has been out, the following is from a lengthy AP article. (And does not flatter Iran)

---[snip]---
The report also repeated appeals for Iran to cooperate that have been a staple of the more than a dozen documents produced by ElBaradei on the status of the probe into Tehran's nuclear program.

Detailing some of Iran's foot dragging over the past month, as well as new findings of concern, the report said:

- "Iran again declined to provide" a copy of a document located earlier by IAEA inspectors showing how to cast fissile uranium into the shape to fit a warhead.

- There were "inconsistencies" in tests of plutonium isotopes provided to the agency to help it look into plutonium separation experiments in the mid-1990s, suggesting that not all plutonium had been accounted for.
---[snip]---

"Without full transparency ... the agency's ability to reconstruct the history of Iran's past program and verify the correctness and completeness of statements made by Iran ... will be limited and questions about the past and current direction of Iran's nuclear program will continue to be raised."……….

Associated Press Link

mg

Not going to happen....

Iran cannot at this present time (not never) be trusted with nuclear weapons, it would destabilise the region and cause anarchy, Israel and Iraq would both be targets. I think the problem is is that if Iran had/has nuclear weapons it will not hesitate to use them, something no other country wants, plus as a state sponsor of terror, the risk of terrorists getting there hands on nuclear weapons is far greater then even the russian black market.

Plus combined with the fact that Iran is about to declare economic war with the US and the western world (that doesnt support the euro ie the UK) The whole situation is inevitabally going to escalate to war.

The risk the US faces in light of the Iranian Oil Bourse is a far greater risk politically than attacking, sad to say but war will be the easy way out.

I fully admit however that launching any strikes against Iran will cause the Iranian mentality to fully shift to one of nuclear weapons which I feel is fair.

But just because Iran may have nuclear weapons now or at a point in the future based on the current situation is of grave concern for the entire world.

China may play again the Taiwan card, we will not veto if you stay out of affairs with Taiwan especially after "Chen" dismantled the unification council.

I think that even if sanctions dont go through the whole of europe and the US will support joint strikes against Iran, China or Russia I fear will be told to go to hell or offered continuing supply from Iran even in the case of war.

One can selectively quote all one likes but those doing all the pushing for a new ME war should bear in mind that no matter how many times it is repeated a lie does not transform into the truth -

Gas centrifuges are one way of enriching uranium.

Iran already has 164 centrifuge machines installed at its pilot centrifuge plant at Natanz, but that is only a fifth of the total it needs before it is fully operational.

The commercial-scale facility could ultimately house as many as 50,000 centrifuges, according to some estimates.

Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the IISS, says Iran has another 1,000 centrifuges dating to before it temporarily suspended enrichment in 2003. But these have not been tested to ensure they still work.

Tehran might possibly have parts for a further 1,000 centrifuges, Mr Fitzpatrick told the BBC News website.

Frank Barnaby, consultant for the UK security think tank the Oxford Research Group, agrees that Iran does not yet have a critical number of centrifuges in place.

"They don't currently have enough centrifuges working - so far as we know - to produce significant amounts of highly-enriched uranium or even enriched uranium. They would need a lot more," he told the BBC News website.

Even if the plant is made fully operational, it is currently configured to produce low enriched uranium (LEU) rather than the weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium (HEU).

So given these limitations, the IISS believes it would take Iran at least a decade to produce enough HEU for a single nuclear weapon.

Dr Barnaby agrees.

"The CIA says 10 years to a bomb using highly enriched uranium and that is a reasonable and realistic figure in my opinion," he said.....

......Iran could alternatively use plutonium to produce nuclear weapons, but this route is also problematic for Tehran, analysts say.

Plutonium can be produced as a by-product of fission carried out by Iran's Russian-built nuclear power reactor at Bushehr.

The IISS says Iran would need to build a reprocessing plant suited to the fuel used in Bushehr and this would be very technically challenging.

But according to Dr Barnaby, useful reprocessing could be carried out over a short period using a suitably equipped chemical laboratory.

Iran is also constructing a heavy-water research reactor at Arak, which Dr Barnaby says would "very efficiently produce plutonium of the sort that is good for nuclear weapons."

But this will not be ready until at least 2014, and probably later, the IISS has said.

news.bbc.co.uk...

Even the term 'enrichment' alone does not tell us anything either, indeed it is patently obvious that the term is being abused and there is, IMO, a deliberate reliance on people's ignorance that 'enrichment' for power production is entirely different to 'enrichment' for weapons production -

To be used in a reactor, uranium must contain 2-3% U-235
Weapons grade or highly enriched uranium (HEU) has a concentration of at least 90% U-235

news.bbc.co.uk...

......of course if people really wanted to drop the hypocrisy they might be talking about moving to an entirely nuclear free ME where there were spot inspections, 24/7 monitoring and everybody with nuclear weapons in the ME signed up to all the various anti-proliferation and arms control treaties, right?

When it comes right down to it you might be prepared to support a new illegal, disastrous and murderous ME war on the mere spectre of imagined nuclear weapons, but I am certain I am far from alone in wanting a hell of a lot more actual evidence and proof than any of the utterly empty speculation so far offered -

Iran call for nuclear-free region

Ahmadinejad is the first Iranian leader to go to Kuwait since 1979

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Middle East to be free of nuclear weapons.
Speaking after talks with Kuwaiti leaders, Mr Ahmadinejad said nuclear weapons were a threat to stability.

He said Iran was a good neighbour, and reiterated that its nuclear programme was for peaceful, civilian purposes.

Gulf Arab states, including Kuwait, have said they want an agreement with Iran to keep the Gulf region free of nuclear weapons.

news.bbc.co.uk...

- So, anybody expecting to see the usual (ever so peace-loving and 'just wanting a stable peaceful ME') suspects launch a couple of dozen threads supporting this call.......

......or is it just drooling over the prospect of more death and destruction that gets some folks so worked up around here, hmmmmm?

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
......or is it just drooling over the prospect of more death and destruction that gets some folks so worked up around here, hmmmmm?

It does seem that way sometimes doesn't it!

Originally posted by kojac
There will be no sanctions worth mentioning. China will see to that with their veto.

IMO Iran will continue to drag the scenario long enough to confound the international community. And well done to them, they have the rest of the world dancing a merry jig to their tune.

I see Iran getting what they want, regardless as to international approval.

If you are correct regarding the stance of Chinese members of the Security Council, that should tell you a bit about alliances that may exist behind the scenes, thus, it may not neccesarily be Iran calling the tune: they may actually be doing somenoe else's bidding!!

Those who are telling us that Iran has nukes (or will soon) are the same people who told us that Iraq had WMDs and that it was an imminent threat to the US. They are the same people who used forged documents to fake an Iraqi yellow cake purchase attempt and "fixed the facts around the policy" to invade Iraq. Why are so many falling for it again?

From the original source:

Iran says its plans are peaceful, but Mr ElBaradei said he could not be sure.
…
Mr ElBaradei said it was regrettable that questions over Iran's nuclear programme remained unanswered "after three years of intensive agency verification".
…
The report said that although inspectors had not seen any diversion of nuclear materials, they were not in a position to conclude that there were "no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran".

Emphasis added.

That last sentence appears to expect the IAEA to prove a negative. So apparently, if we can’t prove a negative, that's good enough reason to attack?

"There's no deal, frankly, that I'm aware of," said deputy state department spokesman Adam Ereli.

Here, Adam Ereli's willing to imply that there’s no deal with Russia because he’s not aware of it, but Washington's not aware of nuclear weapons either, yet they're willing to bet on that. Check out the spin of the whole article. They have nothing! But they sure know what they want to pass off as truth.

It’s clear that the US government is setting up for another war, without regard of the facts. They assume ‘facts’ based on their own agenda. In other words, “Facts are being fixed around the policy” once again.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey......or is it just drooling over the prospect of more death and destruction that gets some folks so worked up around here, hmmmmm?

The bottom line is that you don't know if Iran are trying to build a bomb. By the same token, I don't know either. Nobody knows - even the IAEA who's job it is don't know. So it all comes down to trust. Iran started to keep things from the IAEA long before this current crisis came about - in fact that's what started this. So, leaving them to their own devices and expecting them to follow international laws doesn't seem to work. So why should we trust them? They need to be bought into line.

Does that mean we should attack them? Of course not - but they have a lot of work to do in order to regain the trust of the international community, but instead they're still not cooperating. So we need to get tough with sanctions and, if all else fails, military action.

Or would you rather they were allowed to selectively ignore the rules of the NPT? Nobody is salivating over the prospect of more wars (OK, some people are...) but sometimes force is necessary if needed. Otherwise what's the point in having any international laws?

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey


......or is it just drooling over the prospect of more death and destruction that gets some folks so worked up around here, hmmmmm?

People trying to warn Europe about Hitler while he was rearming heard the same thing. So many believed that all Hitler wanted to do was unite German speaking people

N Korea played this same nuclear game. Oh we are just using nuclear technology to make energy we dont have a nuclear weapons program. People defended N Korea program as well. Then all of a sudden N Korea shocks the world and admitted to secretly having a nuclear weapon.


BTW Benevolent Heretic if the US is fixing facts then why is the EU, and even Russia very concerned about Iran's nuclear program? France Germany and Russia were so quick to get behind a Iraq Invasion.

Does Iran even need Nuclear power?

Iran has vast oil and gas reserves for its energy needs 9% of the world's proven oil reserves, and almost 16 percent of the world's gas reserve (gas is clean buring and cheaper then nuclear power) Irans supply is estimated to be enough to last for 200 years!. Iran also has considerable quantities of coal. Their energy consumption is about the same as that of Saudi Arabia, and far less per capita. There are neither nuclear power plants nor plans for their development in Saudi Arabia. Most countries that generate nuclear power import the fuel they need. Iran wants to make its own fuel.

Then we have the simple fact that Iran has publicly called for the destruction of other countries on numerous occasions

Im not advocating any violence but people that arent concerned in the least live in a blissful fantasy world I wish I could join.

Im with you on this one shadow