To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran

[superbeets]

[h=1]Tom Cotton: Military Action Against Iran Would Take Only 'Several Days'[/h]

Sen. Tom Cotton, who orchestrated a letter to Iran's leaders disapproving of any potential deal with their country, called the president's underlying assumptions in making a deal "wishful thinking."

Carolyn Kaster/AP


Sen. Tom Cotton accused President Obama of holding up a "false choice" between his framework deal on Iran's nuclear program and war. He also seemed to diminish what military action against Iran would entail.
"Even if military action were required," the freshman Arkansas Republican senator said on a radio show Tuesday hosted by the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins. In the comments first picked up by BuzzFeed, Cotton also said: "the president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That's simply not the case."
"It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. Several days of air and naval bombing against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior. For interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions. All we're asking is that the president simply be as tough in the protection of America's national security interest as Bill Clinton was."
That bombing operation lasted four days and hit nearly 100 Iraqi targets after U.N. inspectors said Iraq had not fully cooperated with inspections.
Of course, military analysts point out that Iran is a larger country than Iraq with a more sophisticated military.
"The only thing worse than an Iran with nuclear weapons would be an Iran with nuclear weapons that one or more countries attempted to prevent them from obtaining by military strikes — and failed," said Ryan Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2013.
Added Jim Walsh, a researcher at MIT, who has studied Iran's nuclear program, "I fear that a military strike will produce the very thing you are trying to avoid, which is the Iranian government would meet the day after the attack and say: 'Oh yeah, we'll show you — we are going to build a nuclear weapon.' I think we will get a weapon's decision following an attack, which is the last thing we want to produce right now."




Cotton — who orchestrated a letter to Iran's leaders, which 46 other GOP senators signed, disapproving of any potential deal with their country — also called the president's underlying assumptions in making a deal "wishful thinking."
"It's thinking that's characterized by a child's wish for a pony," he said.

 

[superbeets]

[h=1]Carter: Bunker busting bomb against Iran ready to go[/h]By Deena Zaru
Updated 2345 GMT (0645 HKT) April 10, 2015












Carter: Bunker busting bomb against Iran 'ready to go' 01:11




(CNN)Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday that any deal that the United States would make with Iran would include inspections of Iran's facilities.

In an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, Carter said a deal would not be based on "trust" but on "verification."
These comments come after Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged negotiators on Thursday not to accept a deal with the United States that includes "unconventional inspections,"tweeting that he is "neither for nor against" the deal.
Read: Iran: No signing final nuclear deal unless economic sanctions are lifted
The Obama administration faces an uphill battle in securing a deal with Iran amid mounting criticism in Congress and strong push back from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed that Israel would take military action, if needed, to stop Iran from developing its nuclear capabilities.
Here are other highlights from the interview:

Is the military option still on the table?
Carter said that the current framework for a deal with Iran does not take the military option off the table but added that it will currently not be used.
"We have the capability to shut down, set back and destroy the Iranian nuclear program and I believe the Iranians know that and understand that," he said, referencing the military's most powerful ground-penetrating bomb, the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP).
The MOP -- which can explode 200 feet underground and is designed to destroy deeply buried and fortified targets -- is ready for use, Carter said.
Read: Tom Cotton: Bombing Iran would take 'several days'
Carter added that the administration's objective is to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon through negotiations, "rather than through military action because military action is reversible overtime."
Is Iran working with North Korea?
Carter said that North Korea and Iran could be working together and have worked together in the past.
"In fact, North Korea worked with Syria, helped it build a reactor... North Korea is a welcome all-comers kind of proliferator," Carter said.
Asked whether the United States is concerned that Iran and North Korea are working together, Carter said "well, it does concern us."
But Carter added that Iranians "don't need North Korea to teach them nuclear physics. They know plenty of it in Iran."
Will the U.S. put boots on the ground to defeat ISIS?
Carter is President Barack Obama's fourth Secretary of Defense and others who have held this position before him, have had foreign policy disagreements, particularity when it comes to the use of military force.
Carter said that he is ready to make the recommendation of putting boots on the ground to defeat ISIS, if he sees fit.
"We are not at that point yet" said Carter but added that he "would not hesitate to give that advice."
Carter said that Obama "is very open to advice and very open to analysis" but that doesn't mean that when "any of us makes a recommendation, he will accept."
Carter said that both al-Qaeda and ISIS remain viable threats to the United States.
"If al-Qaeda was the Internet terrorists, these guys are the social media terrorists," said Carter of ISIS.
Carter said that while Al-Qaeda's power has been "reduced," after over a decade of "pounding" by the United States, "they still have a serious preoccupation with direct attacks on the United States," specifically citing recent victories in Yemen by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

 

[superbeets]

Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP)

So as the world awaits the outcome of next Iran "deadline"- the June 30 conclusion of the finalization of the Iran deal - the US is already hedging its bets. According to the WSJ, the Pentagon has "upgraded and tested the largest bunker-buster bomb in the U.S. arsenal, senior U.S. officials said, readying a weapon that could destroy or disable Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facilities should a nuclear deal fall apart and the White House decide to take military action."
It turns out as the Nobel peace prize winner and his henchmen were talking peace, the Pentagon is actively preparing for war:

Even while the Obama administration was pursuing a diplomatic agreement with Iran to rein in its nuclear program, the Pentagon was readying the improvements to one of its most destructive conventional weapons, including electronic countermeasures to prevent an adversary from jamming its guidance systems.

“The Pentagon continues to be focused on being able to provide military options for Iran if needed,” a senior U.S. official said. “We have not taken our eyes off the ball.”


​

 

[superbeets]

 

[SheriffJoe]

Egypt Tells Israel to 'Trust in God' and Bomb Iran

"Put your trust in God and bomb it. We are with you and if you need fuel for the jets, we will give it to you”

http://www.christianheadlines.com/b...fessor-laid-off-from-nazarene-university.html

 

[Dave007inVegas]

The bunker busting bomb is swell but I don’t see the need.

Beside Obama would never authorize it’s use.

As far as know the only fortified nuclear facility that Iran has is Fordo. Yes it’s in a mountain and supposedly impenetrable however there have to be entrances. It would seem to me that missiles could seal those entrances and turn the facility into a virtual tomb.

Yes, Iran could unseal it but it could sealed again. Sooner or later Iran would get the hint.

 

[ScottL]

Killing Americans and their Allies: Iran's Continuing War against the U.S. and the West Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp and Maj. (ret.) Chris Driver-Williams

Iranian military action, often working through proxies using terrorist tactics, has led to the deaths of well over a thousand American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade and a half.

Throughout the course of the Iraq campaign, a variety of weapons flowed into the country through direct purchases by the government of Iran. These included Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs), a shaped charge designed to penetrate armor. These weapons - often camouflaged as rocks - were identical to those employed by Hizbullah against Israeli forces. In 2006, the British Telegraph revealed that three Iranian factories were "mass producing" the roadside EFP bombs used to kill soldiers in Iraq.

In 2007, American troops discovered over 100 Austrian-made Steyr HS50 .50 caliber sniper rifles in Iraq. These high-powered rifles, which fire Iranian bullets, can pierce all in-service body armor from up to a mile and penetrate U.S. armored Humvee troop carriers. The rifles were part of a larger shipment legally purchased from the Austrian manufacturer under the justification that they would be used by Iranian police to combat drug smugglers.

Iran paid Taliban fighters $1,000 for each U.S. soldier they killed in Afghanistan. The Sunday Times reported that a Taliban operative received $18,000 from an Iranian firm in Kabul as reward for an attack in 2010 that killed several Afghan government troops and destroyed an American armored vehicle.

Iranian President Rouhani's so-called "moderation" was displayed when he appointed Brig.-Gen. Hossein Dehghan to be minister of defense. Dehghan played a key role in the October 1983 suicide bomb attacks in Beirut in which 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers were killed. Meanwhile, inside Iran, Rouhani has presided over a rise in repression, including executions, torture of political prisoners, and persecution of minorities.

Col. Richard Kemp served as Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan. Maj. Chris Driver-Williams served as a bomb disposal operator in specialist counter-terrorism units.

 

[ScottL]

Iran's $300 Billion Shakedown - David Rothkopf

It is one thing to relieve sanctions on Iran in exchange for the country giving up its nuclear weapons program. That was the purpose of imposing the sanctions in the first place. But the Obama administration and the other parties to the interim nuclear deal with Iran now seem to be saying they are willing to release to Iran between a third and a half a trillion dollars over the next 15 years in order for Iran not to give up the program, but to freeze it. In other words, Iran is not permanently and irreversibly accepting international standards; we are just renting its restraint.

The Iran deal sets a new standard. The major powers will only impose sanctions on countries that get very, very close to having nuclear weapons, but so long as those countries' nuclear weapons programs remain in the state at which we are willing to freeze Iran's, then those countries are still free to go about their business. Leaving Iran one year away from a weapon sends a message to every potential adversary without such a weapon that this is precisely where they must be.

In other words, this deal is not an antidote to proliferation; it is a road map and an impetus to the spread of near proliferation. Consequently, this deal could actually enhance the risk of proliferation. Moreover, it is extremely risky to prize the nuclear deal so highly that we do not take appropriate steps to blunt the greater regional threats posed by Tehran's leaders - who seize every opportunity to remind us that neither their ideology nor their regional ambitions are showing any signs of changing.

 

[ScottL]

Legitimizing Iran's Exterminationist Anti-Semitism - Lee Smith

For 36 years now, Iranian officials have threatened to annihilate Israel. There may be different centers of power throughout the regime, but everyone agrees with the Supreme Leader that Israel - the "Zionist cancer" - has got to go.

President Obama called American Jewish leaders to a meeting at the White House on Monday. "It was one of the tensest meetings I can ever remember," said one participant who has been invited to many White House sit-downs over the years. "Lots of people challenged him very strongly, like about taking the threats of dictators seriously when Khamenei says death to America, death to Israel, death to the Jews. The president said he knows what the regime is, which is why he is trying to take away their weapons. He didn't dismiss what the Iranians say, he just didn't really address it."

Who knows if the Iranians actually mean to make good on their threats against Israel? After all, say the experts, Iran is not irrational. Of course Iran is irrational. It is irrational in its very essence, for anti-Semitism is the form that unreason takes in modern political life. Disregarding the regime's anti-Semitism is to willfully ignore the nature of the regime. To strike a deal with such a regime is willfully perverse and doomed to failure.

 

[ScottL]

The Nuclear Deal with Iran Needs Work - Lots of It - James A. Baker III (Wall Street Journal)

• 
  [*]There are substantial misunderstandings about the tentative agreement to curb Iran's nuclear-weapons program, a deal the administration has hailed as "an historic understanding." Iranian leaders quickly disputed key points about the White House's description of the terms of the agreement.
  
  [*]There remain serious questions about more than the phasing out of sanctions. These include verification mechanisms, the "snapback" provisions for reapplying sanctions, and Iran's refusal so far to provide historical information about its nuclear-enrichment program so that there is a baseline against which to measure any future enrichment.
  [*]Experience shows Iran cannot be trusted, and so those weaknesses need to be addressed and fixed.
  [*]Iran backed away from its pledge to send a large portion of its uranium stockpile to Russia. If we can't trust Iran to stick to its promises during negotiations, we cannot trust that it won't resume its nuclear-weapons program after a final deal is reached.
  [*]Let Iran and the world know that we have reasonable specific demands they must meet. If Iran balks at such an arrangement, then it will be that country's fault that the talks broke down.

 

[SheriffJoe]

APNEWSBREAK: US WARSHIP SENT TO BLOCK IRAN WEAPONS OFF YEMEN BY LOLITA C. BALDOR ASSOCIATED PRESS

AP Photo/Steve Helber WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. Navy officials say the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is steaming toward the waters off Yemen and will join other American ships prepared to intercept any Iranian vessels carrying weapons to the Houthi (HOO'-thee) rebels fighting in Yemen.The U.S. Navy has been beefing up its presence in the Gulf of Aden and the southern Arabian Sea amid reports that a convoy of Iranian ships may be headed toward Yemen to arm the Houthis. The Houthis are battling government-backed fighters in an effort to take control of the country. There are about nine U.S. ships in the region, including cruisers and destroyers carrying teams that can board and search other vessels. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ship movement on the record. © 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy andTerms of Use.

 

[superbeets]

Saudi Arabia Promises to Match Iran in Nuclear Capability


WASHINGTON — When President Obama began making the case for a deal with Iran that would delay its ability to assemble an atomic weapon, his first argument was that a nuclear-armed Iran would set off a “free-for-all” of proliferation in the Arab world. “It is almost certain that other players in the region would feel it necessary to get their own nuclear weapons,” he said in 2012.
Now, as he gathered Arab leaders over dinner at the White House on Wednesday and prepared to meet with them at Camp David on Thursday, he faced a perverse consequence: Saudi Arabia and many of the smaller Arab states are now vowing to match whatever nuclear enrichment capability Iran is permitted to retain.


“We can’t sit back and be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability and amass its research,” one of the Arab leaders preparing to meet Mr. Obama said on Monday, declining to be named until he made his case directly to the president. Prince Turki bin Faisal, the 70-year-old former Saudi intelligence chief, has been touring the world with the same message.


“Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” he said at a recent conference in Seoul, South Korea.
For a president who came to office vowing to move toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, the Iran deal has presented a new dilemma. If the agreement is sealed successfully next month — still far from guaranteed — Mr. Obama will be able to claim to have bought another decade, maybe longer, before Iran can credibly threaten to have a nuclear weapon.


But by leaving 5,000 centrifuges and a growing research and development program in place — the features of the proposed deal that Israel and the Arab states oppose virulently — Mr. Obama is essentially recognizing Iran’s right to continue enrichment of uranium, one of the two pathways to a nuclear weapon. Leaders of the Sunni Arab states are arguing that if Iran goes down that road, Washington cannot credibly argue they should not follow down the same one, even if their technological abilities are years behind Iran’s.
“With or without a deal, there will be pressure for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser during the first term and now the executive director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. “The question is one of capabilities. How would the Saudis do this without help from the outside?”


In fact, the Arab states may find it is not as easy as it sounds. The members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a loose affiliation of nations that make the crucial components for nuclear energy and, by extension, weapons projects, have a long list of components they will not ship to the Middle East. For the Saudis, and other Arab states, that leaves only North Korea and Pakistan, two countries that appear to have mastered nuclear enrichment, as possible sources.
It is doubtful that any of the American allies being hosted by Mr. Obama this week would turn to North Korea, although it supplied Syria with the components of a nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in 2007.
Pakistan is another story. The Saudis have a natural if unacknowledged claim on the technology: They financed much of the work done by A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who ended up peddling his nuclear wares abroad. It is widely presumed that Pakistan would provide Saudi Arabia with the technology, if not a weapon itself.



The Arab leader interviewed on Monday said that countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, all to be represented at the Camp David meeting, had discussed a collective program of their own — couched, as Iran’s is, as a peaceful effort to develop nuclear energy. The United Arab Emirates signed a deal with the United States several years ago to build nuclear power plants, but it is prohibited under that plan from enriching its own uranium.


Over the last decade, the Saudi government has financed nuclear research projects but there is no evidence that it has ever tried to build or buy facilities of the kind Iran has assembled to master the fuel cycle, the independent production of the makings of a weapon.
Still, the Saudis have given the subject of nuclear armament more than passing thought. In the 1980s they bought a type of Chinese missile, called a DF-3, that could be used effectively only to deliver a nuclear weapon because the missiles were too large and inaccurate for any other purpose. American officials, led by Robert M. Gates, then the director of the C.I.A., protested. There is no evidence the Saudis ever obtained warheads to fit atop the missiles.


Mr. Obama met with Saudi princes in the Oval Office on Wednesday — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who will most likely moderate their criticisms of his administration while talking directly to the president. Mr. Obama is expected to offer them and the other Arab states some security assurances, although not as explicit or legally binding as the kind that protect American treaty allies, from NATO to Japan to South Korea.


But Mr. Obama will have a difficult time overcoming the deep suspicions that the Saudis, and other Arab leaders, harbor about the Iran deal. Several of them have said that the critical problem with the tentative agreements, as described by the White House and Secretary of State John Kerry, is that they assure nothing on a permanent basis.

Prince Turki, while in Seoul, went further. “He did go behind the backs of the traditional allies of the U.S. to strike the deal,” he said of Mr. Obama during a presentation to the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a South Korean research organization.
Although “the small print of the deal is still unknown,” he added, it “opens the door to nuclear proliferation, not closes it, as was the initial intention.”

Prince Turki argued that the United States was making a “pivot to Iran” that was ill advised, and that the United States failed to learn from North Korea’s violations of its nuclear deals. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” he said, using the past tense.

 

[superbeets]

Exclusive: Czechs stopped potential nuclear tech purchase by Iran: sources



The Czech Republic blocked an attempted purchase by Iran this year of a large shipment of sensitive technology useable for nuclear enrichment after false documentation raised suspicions, U.N. experts and Western sources said.


The incident could add to Western concerns about whether Tehran can be trusted to adhere to a nuclear deal being negotiated with world powers under which it would curb sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief.


The negotiators are trying to reach a deal by the end of June after hammering out a preliminary agreement on April 2, with Iran committing to reduce the number of centrifuges it operates and agreeing to other long-term nuclear limitations.


Some details of the attempted purchase were described in the latest annual report of an expert panel for the United Nations Security Council's Iran sanctions committee, which has been seen by Reuters.


The panel said that in January Iran attempted to buy compressors - which have nuclear and non-nuclear applications - made by the U.S.-owned company Howden CKD Compressors.

A Czech state official and a Western diplomat familiar with the case confirmed to Reuters that Iran had attempted to buy the shipment from Howden CKD in the Czech Republic, and that Czech authorities had acted to block the deal.

It was not clear if any intermediaries were involved in the attempt to acquire the machinery.

There was no suggestion that Howden CKD itself was involved in any wrongdoing. Officials at Prague-based Howden declined to comment on the attempted purchase.

The U.N. panel, which monitors compliance with the U.N. sanctions regime, said there had been a "false end user" stated for the order.

"The procurer and transport company involved in the deal had provided false documentation in order to hide the origins, movement and destination of the consignment with the intention of bypassing export controls and sanctions," it added.

The report offered no further details about the attempted transaction. Iran's U.N. mission did not respond to a query about the report.

CONTRACT WORTH $61 million

The Czech state official said the party seeking the compressors had claimed the machinery was needed for a compressor station, such as the kind used to transport natural gas from one relay station to another.

The official declined to say exactly how the transaction was stopped, provide specifications of the compressors or confirm the intended purchaser. However, he made clear it was the Czech authorities who halted the deal

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the total value of the contract would have been about 1.5 billion Czech koruna ($61 million).

This was a huge amount for the company concerned, the previously named CKD Kompresory, a leading supplier of multi-stage centrifugal compressors to the oil and gas, petrochemical and other industries.

The firm was acquired by Colfax Corp. of the United States in 2013 for $69.4 million. A spokesman for Colfax declined to comment.

The United States and its Western allies say Iran continues to try to skirt international sanctions on its atomic and missile programs even while negotiating the nuclear deal.

The U.N. panel of experts also noted in its report that Britain informed it of an active Iranian nuclear procurement network linked to blacklisted firms.

While compressors have non-nuclear applications in the oil and gas industry, they also have nuclear uses, including in centrifuge cascades. Centrifuges purify uranium gas fed into them for use as fuel in nuclear reactors or weapons, if purified to levels of around 90 percent of the fissile isotope uranium-235, in weapons.

"Such compressors can be used to extract enriched uranium directly from the cascades," Olli Heinonen, former deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a nuclear expert currently at Harvard University, told Reuters.

"In particular, they are useful when working with higher enrichment such as 20 percent enriched uranium," he said, adding that precise specifications of the compressors in question would be necessary to make a definitive assessment.
Iran has frozen production of 20 percent enriched uranium, a move that Western officials cite as one of the most important curbs on Iranian nuclear activities under an interim agreement in 2013.

Tehran rejects allegations by Western powers and their allies that it is seeking the capability to produce atomic weapons and says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The IAEA and the United States have said repeatedly that Tehran has adhered to the terms of the 2013 interim deal.
(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by David Storey and Stuart Grudgings)