Posts Tagged ‘Iran’
Not-so-secret report says Iran tested nuclear warhead design
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
The UN’s nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design.
The very existence of the technology, known as a “two-point implosion” device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as “breathtaking” and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.
If you have all the components including weaponized uranium.
Iran nukes? Is there any nation that’s NOT lying?
This is what a secret looks like – right?
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given a cautious welcome to Iran’s announcement that it will open a newly revealed nuclear plant to inspection…
The US, France and UK accused Tehran of deception after it admitted to the existence of the facility on Monday.
“Deception?” What? Did they pull a camouflage net over a couple hundred acres every time a Western spy satellite was due to pass overhead?
These eye-in-the-sky snoops are accurate enough to read the brand name of the condom if you’re having sex in the woods. So, “admitting to the existence” of the facility – is a political farce that may suit our TV talking Heads and Congress; but, has nothing to do with reality.
Iran says the uranium enrichment plant, near the city of Qom, is in line with UN regulations. It maintains it wants atomic power only for the production of electricity. But the revelations have raised tension ahead of next Thursday’s talks in Geneva between Iran and six global powers negotiating over Tehran’s atomic programme.
Which is what such “revelations” are intended to do.
Iranians freak out over jeans with name of God on the butt
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
A Chinese clothing manufacturer probably thought it was on to a winner by exporting jeans bearing the Islamic expression “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful” to Iran. But an otherwise sound marketing ploy was undone by one embarrassing flaw: the phrase (Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim in Arabic), which graces each of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters, was prominently displayed on the pockets of the jeans’ backsides, something likely to be seen as disrespectful by devout Muslims.
The perceived slight, first reported in the Iranian media, prompted a firm response from the police who announced they had seized the garments and arrested three businessmen said to have imported them.
Asriran website said the jeans, tailored for women, had sold for around $10-$12 in Tehran’s southern and eastern districts and bore labels reading Made in the PRC (People’s Republic of China).
The country of origin is embarrassing for Iranian authorities, given the close political and economic relationship between Iran and China. Beijing is Tehran’s biggest trading partner and has used its veto on the UN security council to protect Iran from further sanctions over its nuclear programme…
However, Asriran accused China of “attacking Iranian Muslim sacred symbols in the most offensive manner: In Islam, Allah is a respected word that you need to have ablutions before saying. Now it is embroidered on the sitting place of these jeans. Worse, they are sold in Tehran, which many would like to call the heart of the Islamic world.”
Since the manufacturer now has excess stock of these jeans, where might they show up next?
Voter turnout in Iran is unprecedented – UPDATED
I’ll have a roundup later in the day. Just wanted to put up a couple of photos of voter turnout.
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Uncle Sugar kept his oil-stained fingers out of the pot this time. Maybe the people of Iran will have a chance at change.
UPDATE: Polling places in many districts staying open 4 hours after scheduled closing time to allow everyone in line a chance to vote.
UPDATE: It appears that Ahmadinejad has won a stunning victory. Poll predictors in Iran had better learn to travel outside the student districts.
Unlike American reactionaries, the Iranian sectarians have learned to provide their base something more than ideology and war. Butter has triumphed – over the guns of progressive ideology in rural and poor districts of Iran. Like Hezbollah and Hamas, Ahmadinejad’s supporters understand the value of providing material benefits for their ideological base.
Iran reformers face Ahmadinejad and sectarian intolerance
Daylife/Getty Images
Two leading reformist challengers to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have registered to run against him in 12 June presidential election.
Former PM Mir-Hossein Mousavi, backed by former President Mohammad Khatami, is seen as the leading challenger. Former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi has also put down his name – a day before the deadline expires.
They join President Ahmadinejad and the former Revolutionary Guards chief, Mohsen Rezai, in the race so far…
“I have come to establish better ties between Iran and the world by removing tension and through constructive interaction,” said Mr Mousavi after submitting his bid to the interior ministry…
Mr Karroubi, the other reformist challenger, is one of the few Iranian politicians who has criticised Mr Ahmadinejad over his dismissal of the Holocaust as a “myth”.
Mr Karroubi – who lost to Mr Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election – also demanded that the Revolutionary Guards “not interfere” in this year’s election. He had blamed his previous defeat on “illegal interference” by the Revolutionary Guards and their Basij militia.
Both the Left and Right run the risk of splitting their natural bases. Hopefully, more so, the Right.
Just as the United States badly needed someone to lead this nation out of the wilderness of sectarian politics, Iran has double the challenges – both electoral and religious.
Six powers invite Iran to join nuclear talks
The United States and five other powers invited Iran on Wednesday to a meeting on its nuclear program after Washington dropped its opposition to direct talks with Tehran in a major change of policy.
The United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain said in a statement they would ask European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana to invite Tehran to the talks to find “a diplomatic solution to this critical issue.”
Breaking with past U.S. policy of shunning direct talks with Iran, President Barack Obama’s administration said the United States would join in nuclear discussions with Iran from now on.
“We strongly urge Iran to take advantage of this opportunity to engage seriously with all of us in a spirit of mutual respect,” the six powers said after a meeting of senior diplomats in London.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would be a “full participant” in major power talks with Iran.
“Obviously we believe that pursuing very careful engagement on a range of issues that affect our interests and the interests of the world with Iran makes sense. There is nothing more important than trying to convince Iran to cease its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon,” Clinton told reporters in Washington.
Truly, most of the article is Big Power agitprop. I imagine that will remain as a continuous drone until [and if] Obama manages to make qualitative changes to U.S. foreign policy. As most Third World and developing nations well know, there generally is no essential difference between conservative and liberal governments in the White House once you cross that border outside the United States.
President Obama has figured out how to dazzle the TV talking heads with centrist verbiage and politics that function left of whatever is center in the U.S., this week. Who knows? Maybe he’ll change the State Department/CIA/NSA endless loop into something productive?
Live TV in Iran: Ask a little kid for the name of their toy monkey?
Live television is hardly the most convenient setting in which to be reminded of the age-old proverb that only children and fools speak the truth.
So the father who nicknamed his child’s toy monkey after Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, must have been mortified to have his private joke cruelly exposed when the youngster took part in one of the country’s most popular TV phone-ins.
The embarrassing disclosure was made on Amoo Pourang (Uncle Pourang), a programme watched by millions of Iranian children three times a week on state TV. It came when the unsuspecting presenter, Dariush Farziayi, asked the name of the toy animal his young caller had been given as a reward for good behaviour.
“Well, my father calls him Ahmadinejad,” the child replied.
Now the father’s discomfort has spread to the programme-makers after the state broadcaster, IRIB, responded by withdrawing it from viewing schedules.
The final episode will be screened next week after a successful seven-year run.
Har!
Will Obama close the divide in U.S. military leadership?
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense – and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen – appeared on separate TV shows, Sunday, and said the same thing two completely opposite ways.
The United States believes Iran has stockpiled enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said on Sunday.
“We think they do, quite frankly,” Mullen said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program when asked whether Iran has enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
“And Iran having nuclear weapons, I’ve believed for a long time, is a very very bad outcome — for the region and for the world,” Mullen said.
Sure sounds like imminent danger – to any ignorant American voter who hasn’t a clue of the differences between low-grade fissile material and weapons grade – and what it takes to grow from one to the other.
Military contractor lets staff load P2P. Files leak. Surprise!
Daylife/Getty Images
Employees of Tiversa, a security company that specializes in peer-to-peer technology, reportedly found engineering and communications information about Marine One at an IP address in Tehran, Iran.
Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, told WPXI-TV: “We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president’s helicopter.”
The company was able to trace the file back to its original source.
“What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One,” Boback said. Tiversa also found sensitive financial information about the cost of the helicopter on that same computer,
Someone from the company most likely downloaded a file-sharing program, typically used to exchange music, not realizing the potential problems, Boback said.
A minor number of Web-ignorant ideologues have announced this was Iran’s government “hacking” into U.S. secrets. No doubt the “enemy” source in Iran was another file-sharing geek as ignorant of security requirements as the unnamed Pentagon contractor’s IT department.
There is no patch for stupidity.
Iran to pre-commission Bushehr nuclear power plant
Iran plans to carry out computer tests on its Bushehr nuclear power plant this week in preparation for its launch.
The head of Russia’s state nuclear company, Sergei Kiriyenko, will attend “pre-commissioning” of Iran’s first such power plant, located on the Gulf coast in south-western Iran…
Mohammad Saeedi described the tests as a “preliminary phase” for starting the plant and told Reuters this would be followed by its commissioning and launch. He did not give a timetable…
The launch of the Bushehr plant’s nuclear reactor has been delayed frequently. Russia last year completed delivery of nuclear fuel to the station under a contract estimated to be worth about $1 billion.
They say Russia has used Bushehr as a lever in relations with Tehran, which is suspected by the United States and some European countries of seeking to build nuclear weapons.
“Suspected” is a pot-and-kettle word when it comes to Western “diplomacy” in the Middle East. I’ve “suspected” my government in Washington DC of supporting Israel over any common sense, actively engaging in criminal wars on behalf of corporate thugs – for fifty years – and I’ve been right just about every time.
