US to have 'vigorous' Iran talks

The new US envoy to the United Nations says Barack Obama's administration will make Iran's nuclear plans a diplomatic priority and pursue direct talks.

Susan Rice told reporters she looked forward to "vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran".

Under George W Bush, there were no direct US nuclear talks with Iran.

The UN has urged Tehran to halt uranium enrichment, amid fears it could be used for military purposes. Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

In the run-up to his inauguration last week, Mr Obama promised a "new approach" in the dispute.

Last month he called for "tough but direct diplomacy", offering Iran economic incentives to end its nuclear programme or face tougher sanctions.

Iran dismissed the move as "unacceptable".

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Iran calls UN to take legal action against Israel

Iran calls on the UN to take legal action against Israel after its soldiers admitted to the illegal use of white phosphorous in Gaza.

Israel’s policies against the Palestinians are tantamount to a “crime against humanity”, the United Nations’ human rights rapporteur has said.
Iran calls on the UN to take legal action against Israel after its soldiers admitted to the illegal use of white phosphorous in Gaza.
The Iranian ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, called on the United Nations on Sunday to address international concern over possible war crimes committed by Tel Aviv in its recent military operations in Gaza.
“Israel’s extreme measures against Gazans constitute a breach of humanitarian law,” Khazaee affirmed in a meeting with Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ambassadors in New York.
Iranian leaders demads “they would urge the United Nations to bring Israeli leaders before an international court over the latest attacks in the Gaza Strip.”
After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the densely-populated Gaza Strip, the Israeli military finally admitted Friday that it had pounded the Palestinian coast with at least twenty white phosphorus bombs.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for immediate legal action against Israeli leaders for the humanitarian crisis and death of innocent civilians in the Palestinian territory, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said.

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The Nuclear Vault: The Iranian Nuclear Program, 1974-1978

Newly Declassified Documents Reveal Remarkable Continuity with Today's U.S.-Iran Nuclear Controversy

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 268

Edited by William Burr
For more information contact:
William Burr - 202/994-7032

President Gerald R. Ford and the Shah of Iran confer over a map during the Shah's May 1975 visit to Washington, D.C. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sits in the background. (Photo courtesy of Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library)

Washington, D.C., January 13, 2009 - During the 1970s the Shah of Iran argued, like current Iranian leaders today, for a nuclear energy capability on the basis of national "rights," while the Ford and Carter administrations worried about nuclear weapons possibilities, according to newly declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive for the first time.  Uranium enrichment capability is now the major point of controversy between Tehran and the world community, while during the 1970s Washington's greatest concern was that Iran sought a capability to produce plutonium, but in both instances the implication was that a nuclear weapons option might not be far away.

 

The documents, obtained by the Archive through a mandatory review request, show that two U.S. presidents dealing with the Shah of Iran, Ford and Carter, put concerns over proliferation and the Shah's possible desire to build a nuclear bomb front and center when they approved negotiating positions for a deal to sell nuclear reactors to Iran.  While Iranian officials argued then, as they do today, that Iran had "rights" under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to develop nuclear technology, the U.S. government successfully sought an agreement that put nonproliferation controls over U.S.-supplied nuclear material.

 

The 1979 Iranian Revolution derailed the agreement, but the approach that the Ford and Carter administrations took shows significant continuity with contemporary U.S. and world policy, which holds that Iran must not use its technological capabilities to produce nuclear weapons. The documents contradict the 2005 claim by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that non-proliferation was not an issue in the 1970s negotiations; this was a "commercial transaction," Kissinger told The Washington Post.

 

The 1970s nuclear negotiations have other parallels with the current situation.  The Bush administration has raised questions about Iranian claims that its interest in a nuclear energy program are peaceful, while the declassified record indicates that U.S. policy-makers during the 1970s were also skeptical of, but ultimately willing to accept, the Shah's similar claims, as long as a nuclear agreement with Iran restricted its freedom of action in the nuclear field.  Significantly, the Bush administration also disparages Iran's assertion that it needs to develop alternative fuels in anticipation of the eventual decline in the country's extensive oil reserves.  But the Shah and his government made the exact same statements in the 1970s. 

 

The record also shows that the Shah's regime and the current Iranian government have made the same claims that their pursuit of nuclear technology was an inherent national entitlement.  No country "has a right to dictate nuclear policy to another," said the Shah's chief atomic energy official in 1977.

 

Among the disclosures in the new documents:

• In 1974 Department of State officials wrote that if the Shah's dictatorship collapsed and Iran became unstable, "domestic dissidents or foreign terrorists might easily be able to seize any special nuclear material stored in Iran for use in bombs."  Moreover, "an aggressive successor to the Shah might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran's complete military dominance of the region."

• According to national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the Ford administration hoped that the Shah would commit himself to a "major act of nuclear statesmanship: namely, to set a world example by foregoing national reprocessing."

• When officials from Oak Ridge National Laboratory received briefings on the planned Esfehan Nuclear Technology Center (ENTEC), they concluded that the "bears watching" because "unusually large" size of the facility "makes it theoretically possible to produce weapons-grade material (plutonium)" and the ENTEC plans include a "large hot lab," the first step toward reprocessing.

• Questioning U.S. efforts to restrict Tehran's freedom of action, Iranian officials argued that "Iran should have full right to decide whether to reprocess" and the "right to effective control of the management and operation of … reprocessing facilities."

• By the summer of 1978, Tehran and Washington had overcome differences and agreed to a nuclear pact that met U.S. concerns and the Shah's interest in buying reactors, but the agreement closely restricted Iran's ability to produce plutonium or any other nuclear weapons fuel using U.S. supplied material without Washington's "agreement." 

Drawing on the new documents, National Security Archive senior analyst William Burr has written an article to give perspective to the nuclear talks: "A Brief History of U.S.-Iranian Nuclear Negotiations," now appearing on-line in the January-February 2009 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  While the documents available so far illuminate the negotiations, more needs to be learned from U.S. government files.  To a great extent the intelligence side of the story remains an unknown. So far, the Central Intelligence Agency has denied all documents gleaned from the Archive's mandatory review request, although they are presently under appeal.

The Nuclear Vault: The Iranian Nuclear Program, 1974-1978

Technorati Tags: nuclear weapons,the Iranian nuclear program,Iran,US government,history,Shah of Iran,President Gerald Ford,classified documents

U.S. spurned Israel plan for Iran reactor attack: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President George W. Bush deflected Israel's secret request last year for bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex, saying he had authorized covert action to sabotage Tehran's suspected atomic weapons development, The New York Times said.

Citing U.S. and foreign officials, the Times reported on Saturday the White House was unable to determine whether Israel had decided to carry out the strike before Washington objected or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was trying to get Bush to act more decisively before he leaves office this month.

Israeli government officials declined comment on the report.

A U.S. official told Reuters in September that the Pentagon had refused an Israeli request for unspecified "offensive" items that could be used on Iran. To reassure the Israelis, Washington instead gave them advanced radars for spotting missile launches.

Details of the expanded U.S. covert program and the Bush administration's efforts to talk Israel out of attacking Iran emerged from 15 months of interviews with current and former U.S. officials, international nuclear inspectors, outside experts and European and Israeli officials, the Times said.

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Iran orders Muslims to defend Palestinians

Supreme leader issues religious decree in support of Palestinians; parliamentarian likens Israel's actions in Gaza to those of Hitler
Dudi Cohen

Israel News

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a religious decree to Muslims around the world on Sunday, ordering them to defend Palestinians against Israel's attacks on Gaza, state television said. "All Palestinian combatants and all the Islamic world's pious people are obliged to defend the defenseless women, children and people in Gaza in any way possible. Whoever is killed in this legitimate defense is considered a martyr," state television quoted Khamenei as saying in a statement outlining the fatwa.

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Iranian nuclear workers arrested for spying

Several Iranians working directly for the country's nuclear research program were among those arrested recently for funneling information about the program to foreign nations, according to an Iranian media report.

The Tabnak report which was released on Tuesday did not say which countries were connected to the alleged spying ring or how many Iranians were arrested in the past few months.

Tabnak is a semi-official Iranian news agency that is linked to a former commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The report said the arrests were made after media reports which claimed the United States and other Western intelligence agencies were trying to spy on Iran's nuclear program.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is for energy purposes only, despite accusations from the U.S. and other Western nations that Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Two weeks ago, Iran arrested three alleged spies accused of working for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari told Fars that those arrested included members of an Israeli spy network who collected and transferred information about Iran's nuclear and military centers.

The network included members who had allegedly been trained in Israeli cities to carry out bombing attacks and assassination plots in Iran, Tehran's prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, told Fars.

In November, Iran executed Ali Ashtari, 45, who was convicted by Tehran's Revolutionary Court in June of spying for the Mossad in exchange for money, according to Iranian media reports.

According to Ashtari's "confession," published by Fars, he was a salesman who obtained high-end but security-compromised pieces of electronic equipment from the Mossad and sold them to military and defense centers in Iran. Iran and Israel have been engaged in an escalating war of words.

Iran accuses Israel of trying to destabilize the republic. Israel has not ruled out military action to halt Iran's nuclear aspirations.

Several other Iranians are currently in custody, awaiting trial on charges of spying for foreign countries and planning terrorist activities inside Iran

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Beyond Iraq:A New US Strategy for the Middle East.

R.Haass ( Council on Foreign Relations) & M.Indyk(Brookings Institution) summarized their essay:" To be successful in the Middle East, the Obama administration will need to move beyond Iraq, find ways to deal constructively with Iran, and forge a final-status Israeli-Palestinian agreement".
On taking office, U.S. President Barack Obama will face a series of critical, complex, and interrelated challenges in the Middle East demanding urgent attention: an Iraq experiencing a fragile lull in violence that is nonetheless straining the U.S. military, an Iran approaching the nuclear threshold, a faltering Israeli-Palestinian peace process, weak governments in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories challenged by strong militant Islamist groups, and a U.S. position weakened by years of failure and drift. He will also discover that time is working against him.
For six years, U.S. policy in the Middle East has been dominated by Iraq. This need not, and should not, continue. The Obama administration will be able to gradually reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, limit their combat role, and increasingly shift responsibility to Iraqi forces. The drawdown will have to be executed carefully and deliberately, however, so as not to risk undoing recent progress

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LAT: Nuclear chief calls efforts against Iran a 'failure'

By Borzou Daragahi

December 6, 2008

Reporting from Vienna -- The chief of the world's nuclear weapons watchdog organization considers five years of U.S. and international efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions a failure, as Tehran moves ever closer to obtaining the means to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The United Nations Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions to try to get Iran to halt uranium enrichment and other activities, while the United States and Europe have offered economic and security incentives. Yet Iran continues acquiring nuclear technology and stockpiling sensitive material.

"We haven't really moved one inch toward addressing the issues," said Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. "I think so far the policy has been a failure."

The 66-year-old Egyptian diplomat and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize laureate also urged world leaders to address broader unease about security, poverty and perceived injustice rather than zero in on narrow security concerns, such as nuclear weapons.

"Now, I am talking more and more about poverty, HIV/AIDS" and other matters, he told The Times this week during a rare one-on-one interview at the agency's headquarters in Vienna. The nuclear issue "is the tip of the iceberg."

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Are Obama Advisors in Tune w/ Neocons Who Want to Attack Iran?

By Robert Dreyfuss, Tomdispatch.com - Think an attack is unlikely now? Ask key Obama cabinet figures why they're still palling around with neocon hardliners on Iran.
A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail -- and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of U.S. strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.

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Obama, Ask the Kremlin about Gates

Nearly 16 years ago, during the last transition from a President Bush to a Democrat, Moscow made an extraordinary gesture to Washington: The Kremlin supplied a summary of its intelligence information about secret U.S.-Iranian contacts in the 1980s.In Moscow’s files as part of a task force investigation into whether the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 had interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s bid to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

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Iran Said to Have Nuclear Fuel for One Weapon

Experts said that the milestone was mostly symbolic, and that Iran was not likely to risk a “nuclear breakout” yet.
Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors. The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country’s main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.

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Ahmadinejad Offers Obama Landmark Congratulations

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday congratulated Barack Obama on his election win -- the first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes to a U.S. president-elect since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

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U.S. policies may have contributed to Iran revolution

A report based on declassified documents suggests that the Nixon and Ford administrations, angry with the shah for his support for raising oil prices, worked to curb his ambitions.

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Ahmadinejad: 'American empire' nearing its end

In a blistering speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed "a few bullying powers" for creating the world's problems and said the "American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road."

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Olbermann on KBR, Firing of CIA analyst, and Gitmo

Bushed from Olbermann:1. 22 Year CIA Analyst Fired for Refusing to Falsify Iran Intelligence;2. More Unchecked Incompetence from KBR, faulty wiring leading to electrocution; 3. Holding Gitmo detainees without evidence.



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Just Foreign Policy - It's a Slippery Slope to War

Ask Your Representative to Oppose H. Con. Res. 362

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1. The resolution is H. Con. Res. 362, introduced by Representative Gary Ackerman. The most allowing provision "demands that the President"initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program.
You can find the full text of the resolution and list of co-sponsors here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.CON.RES.362:

The Latest of McCain & Bush’s Lies to Justify War with Iran

Not only is there NO EVIDENCE that Iran supports terror in Iraq or against US troops in the region, but simply threatening Iran with military action is against international law. The UN Charter, which is a treaty of the United States, only permits the use of force in self-defense or when the UN Security Council has authorized force to restore peace

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Support Real Diplomacy with Iran, Instead of Military Threats

Now that the U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, there is a real chance to avoid another costly war if the U.S. government engages in serious diplomacy with Iran. And there is a bill in Congress that would encourage direct and comprehensive talks with Iran without preconditions.

I just asked my Senators and Representative to support this effort to avoid another military confrontation. This web tool makes it easy:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iran/act.html

Also, in February and March 2008, a nationwide tour is happening called, "The Folly of Attacking Iran: Time for Real Diplomacy." There will be big events in 20 cities. See if the tour is stopping near you:

http://www.FollyofAttackingIran.org

THE FOLLY OF ATTACKING IRAN

Help this video gain momentum on YouTube and be seen by more people. We've set up a page that makes it easy to tell your friends.

Also, please write a letter to Congress in support of real diplomatic engagement with Iran.

Thanks for taking an active interest in reforming U.S. foreign policy!

THE FOLLY OF ATTACKING IRAN

Technorati tags: Iran, US, war, history, Congress, activism, videos, U.S. foriegn policy

Ahmadinejad invited to Iraq [VIDEO]

Will US allow Iranian President to visit Baghdad on official visit?

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