Iran is Moving Forward! Will Israel Be Forced to Act?

From a fellow memo reader and Obama supporter. It's all in a day's fun and since experience does not matter who really cares!

Karl Rove hammered Obama pretty good in an op ed piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Obama's New Vulnerability." Rove pointed out, using Obama's own tactics of supporting every financial interest, most specifically the Unions, that his concept of change rings hollow when push comes to shove.

But perhaps the most interesting piece regarding Obama's responsibility was written by Daniel Henninger entitled "Obama and Race" and it also appeared in Thursday's Journal. Henninger pointed out Obama, because of his achievements, high profile must not cop out on his own people in a manner that reinforces the negative pathology of black males caught up in a destructive urban culture. Henninger views Obama through a Bill Cosby prism and asserts the issue is not his plagiarism because in politics that is an oxymoron. The problem is deeper and is about the potency of a media led anti-social, woman hating "gangsta rap" message that has immobilized so much of his own race's chances to escape and become productive members of society.

In essence, Henninger sees Obama not so much as a presidential candidate with human flaws but as a light for leading his people in the path of moving away from the negative aspects of an acquired urban culture which has stifled their mobility.

Meanwhile, I can see it coming. Whomever becomes president they will have a full plate of heaping problems because of mistakes made but also because Bush's hands have been tied by Congress, by our feckless friends, by Russia, China, The State Department, the U.N. and a whole host of dreamy Liberals, frightened Conservatives and most recently the NIE Report which the media turned into a migraine headache.

I will wager, if Obama becomes president and makes mistakes, as all presidents do, they will be blamed on Bush. Hell, liberals are still blaming Newt and he ain't been around for years. But blaming the past presidents is fair because many of the problems we face today were fathered during FDR's time.(See 1 below.)

Everything Iran does is a matter of serious concern to the IAEA but they sit deadpan. Rest assured, once Israel is convinced Iran has delivery capability and the rest of the world refuses to do anything other than talk, Israel will have no choice but to act and act they will.

Now there is talk of U.S. demands for further weak sanctions and the Iranians must be laughing all the way to their missile factories. (See 2 and 3 below.)

Caroline Glick writes Kosovo represents a warning. (See 4 below.)

Der Spiegel generally has accurate information. This reporter suggests the NIE Report has already been discredited by European simulation tests and Iran is much close to having a nuclear weapon than previously assumed. (See 5 below.)

Dick


1)A PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT BY SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-ILL)

My fellow Identity-Americans:

As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for their ...
well, support. Your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of
any legislative achievement or my blatantly leftist voting
record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of
change.

I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal
behavior somehow qualifies me for the Presidency after 8 years of
claiming Bush's youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a
beacon of hope shining over a sea of political posing.

I would also like to thank the Kennedy's for coming out in support of
me. There's a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK
started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wiretapped Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Teddy killed a female employee he was having an
extra marital affair with who was pregnant with his child. And I'm not
going anywhere near the cousins, both literally and figuratively.

And I'd like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support. Her love of
meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the
White House.

Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or
achievement, but because I make people feel good. Voting for me causes
some white folk to feel relieved of their imagined, racist guilt.

I say things that sound meaningful, but don't really mean anything
because Americans are tired of things having meaning. If things have
meaning, then that means you have to think about them. Americans are
tired of thinking. It's time to shut down the brain, and open up the
heart.

So when you go to vote, remember don't think, just do.
And do it for me.

Thank You.

2)Iran’s “covert efforts to weaponize nuclear work" cited in new IAEA report

Iran was avoiding meaningful responses to intelligence pointing to covert efforts to "weaponize" nuclear work by linking uranium processing, high explosives tests and design work on a missile warhead, the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog said Friday, Feb. 22, in a report on which a decision on a third round of UN Security Council sanctions depends.

According to Reuters, the agency said the (weaponization) studies are a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program. “Iran had shown new openness” about earlier nuclear advances, said the report, “but not enough to prove its program is not geared to making bombs.”

The report also confirmed Iran was testing technology that “could give it the means to enrich uranium much faster - in further defiance of demands to halt all sensitive nuclear activity or be hit with wider U.N. sanctions.

Without some clarity on the nature of the alleged (weaponization) studies, and without implementation of the Additional Protocol (wide-ranging, snap inspections)…” there could be “no confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the program, the agency concludes.

Wednesday, Feb. 20, Mohammad Mohaddessin, of the exiled Iranian National Council of Resistance, warned that the Iranian regime had accelerated its nuclear weapons program, including the production of nuclear warheads. He told a news conference in Brussels that Tehran had established its first command and control center to work on a nuclear bomb and was setting up a center to produce warheads southeast of the capital.

The council’s previous allegations of Iran’s covert nuclear activities, including the Natanz site, have been borne out.

3) 'New sanctions on Iran are imminent'

The latest UN report on Iran's nuclear program should pave the way for passage next week of a new UN Security Council resolution tightening sanctions on Teheran, the US ambassador to the UN said Friday.


The report released Friday by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium in defiance of repeated UN Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend the uranium centrifuge program, which could produce both civilian nuclear fuel and the material for a nuclear bomb.

"They're increasing their capabilities," US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad noted. "Not only have the number of centrifuges increased, but they're working on a second-generation, if you like, a more capable centrifuge.

"Things are getting worse in terms of the enrichment part."

Britain and France introduced a council resolution on Thursday - with support from the United States, Russia, China and Germany - to expand and toughen travel bans and the freezing of assets for more Iranian officials linked to the nuclear effort.

For the first time it would also ban trade with Iran in so-called dual-use items, those with both nuclear and other applications, and authorize inspections of shipments to and from Iran that are suspected of carrying prohibited goods.

Meeting with reporters over lunch at a Manhattan hotel, Khalilzad said the major Security Council powers planned early next week to discuss the resolution with four council members that have expressed reservations about further Iran sanctions - Libya, Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia.

Sounding confident of approval, he said a vote would be scheduled for next Friday.

He said he believed "some were hoping the IAEA report would eliminate the need for the next resolution" - by assessing Iranian cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog more positively.

"The IAEA report does give us very important points to make," Khalilzad said. "They (Iran) did not come clean."

He was referring to Teheran's dismissal of information supplied by the US and its allies said to show Iranian work on a missile re-entry vehicle, high explosives testing and conversion of uranium compounds, all of which might indicate nuclear weapons development.

The Iranians rejected the purported evidence as fabrications.

Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Iran failed to cooperate fully with UN investigators and left key questions about its nuclear past unanswered.

Burns said he will meet Monday with diplomats from world powers that have twice punished the oil-rich nation over its nuclear drive, and wants the UN Security Council to approve new penalties soon afterward.

"We find Iranian performance to be lacking," Burns told reporters at the State Department. "As a result of this it's our firm belief that there is all the more reason now for the Security Council to pass a third sanctions resolution."

The US wants the Security Council to begin debate next week. Burns would not predict how long debate would last, and would not rule out that the current package of proposed punishments could change. The proposed package slightly expands and strengthens previous penalties, but is weaker than the United States had wanted.




4) Kosovo's stark warning
By CAROLINE GLICK

Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities, it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system.

States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply concerned by the Kosovo precedent. Even the US has latent sovereignty issues with its increasingly politicized Hispanic minority along its border with Mexico. It may one day experience a domestic backlash from its support for Kosovar independence from Serbia.

Setting aside the global implications, it is hard to see how Kosovo constitutes a viable state. Its 40 percent unemployment is a function of the absence of proper economic and governing infrastructures.

In November, a European Commission report detailed the Kosovo Liberation Army's failure to build functioning governing apparatuses. The report noted that "due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread... Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism." Moreover, "Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient."

The report continued, "The composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings."

Additionally, the prosecution of Albanian war criminals is "hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify" against them. This is in part due to the fact that "there is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place."

The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad. It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as bases for al-Qaida operations; that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida; and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province.

According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al-Qaida began operating actively in Kosovo, and in the rest of the Balkans, in 1992. Osama bin Laden visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the Bosnian Embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden's orders, in 1994 his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans including one in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al-Qaida set up drug trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan and beyond.

In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."

Then, too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on the occupied Muslim territories."

Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48% of the population in 1948 to 92% today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78% of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.

In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo's Serbian Christians, not its Albanian Muslims, who are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999, two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs - some 250,000 people - have fled the area.

The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law, Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal basis for Kosovar sovereignty, explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.

For Israel, Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence should be a source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy. Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they are reenacted in the international community's treatment of Israel and the Palestinians. Today, Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.

By accepting the "Road Map Plan to a Two-State Solution" in 2004, Israel empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international Quartet, to serve as judges of Palestinian and Israeli actions toward one another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."

That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Livni's move was precipitated by growing European and US dissatisfaction with the pace of those negotiations and by reports from the meeting of Quartet members in Berlin on February 11. There all members voiced anger at the slow pace of negotiations and opposition to Israel's military actions in Gaza, which are aimed at protecting the western Negev from rocket and mortar attacks.

The US representative at the Quartet's meeting, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, reportedly told his colleagues, "First, we must not allow the suicide bombing in Dimona and the shooting on Sderot to affect the negotiations."

Welch reportedly added, "It is also important to us that neither the Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israelis in Sderot are hurt. Also, we must continue to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad."

Moreover, Ran Koriel, Israel's ambassador to the EU, reportedly warned Livni that the Russians are pushing for the re-establishment of a Fatah-Hamas government. Several EU states, including France, are reconsidering their refusal to recognize Hamas.

If Israel had not empowered the Quartet generally and the US specifically to determine whether the PA and Israel are behaving properly, a European or Russian decision to recognize Hamas would have little impact. But given their role as arbiters, Quartet members can take punitive action against Israel if it fails to comply with their wishes. The Quartet can replace international law in determining who can assert sovereignty over Gaza, Judea and Samaria and how Israel can exercise its own sovereignty. And so, Livni is reduced to begging them not to recognize Hamas.

Once the US decided in 1999 to commit its own forces to NATO's bombing of Serbia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo, the jig was up for Serbian sovereignty over the area. The fact is, NATO forces in Kosovo were deployed for the express purpose of blocking Serbia from exercising its sovereignty over Kosovo, not to prevent violence between the Kosovars and the Serbs or among the Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. That is, NATO deployed in Kosovo to enable it to gain independence.

And if US or NATO forces are deployed to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, they will not be there to protect Israelis from Palestinian terror or to prevent the areas from acting as global terror bases. They will be there to establish a Palestinian state.

Failing to understand the meaning of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government refuses to understand this point. Indeed, the government is actively lobbying NATO to deploy forces in Gaza. Just as it wrongly hoped that UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon would fight Hizbullah for it, so today, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government insists that NATO forces in Gaza will fight Hamas for it.

If applying the lessons of UNIFIL to Gaza is too abstract for the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Israel has experience with EU monitors in Gaza itself to learn from. Wrongly assuming that the Europeans shared Israel's interest in preventing terrorists and weapons from entering Gaza, Israel requested that EU monitors set up shop at the Rafah terminal linking Gaza to Egypt after Israel withdrew from the border in 2005. Yet whenever confronted by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, rather than fight the EU monitors flee to Israel for protection. And its monitors' experience with Palestinian terrorists taking over the border has never caused the EU to question its support for Palestinian statehood.

Then, too, since the US, EU, UN and Russia all consider Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to be one territorial unit, it is not surprising that Israel's request for NATO forces in Gaza has been greeted by a US plan to deploy NATO forces in Judea and Samaria. If NATO forces in Gaza would do nothing to secure the border with Egypt or to fight terrorists and would scuttle Israeli operations in the area, NATO forces in Judea and Samaria would not simply prevent Israel from protecting its citizens who live there. They would also prevent Israel from taking action to prevent the Palestinians from attacking central Israel and asserting control over the border with Jordan. And yet, as The Jerusalem Post reported this week, Israel is conducting talks with the US regarding just such a NATO deployment.

What the Serbs made NATO fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering NATO on a silver platter.

Not surprisingly, Abbas's adviser and PA propaganda chief Yasser Abd Rabbo reacted to Kosovo's declaration of independence by recommending that the Palestinians follow the example. Abd Rabbo said, "Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."

For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo's declaration of independence with customary confusion. But the lessons of Kosovo are clear. Not only should Israel join Russia, Canada, China, Spain, Romania and many others in refusing to recognize Kosovo. It should also state that as a consequence of Kosovo's independence, Israel rejects the deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem to international arbitration.


5) Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for a Bomb by Year's End
By Markus Becker

New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year.

Iran successfully tested a rocket on Feb. 4.

Could Iran be building an atomic bomb? When the US released a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) late last year, it seemed as though the danger of a mullah-bomb had passed. The report claimed to have information indicating that Tehran mothballed its nuclear weapons program as early as autumn 2003. The paper also said that it was "very unlikely" that Iran would have enough highly enriched uranium -- the primary ingredient in atomic bombs -- by 2009 to produce such a weapon. Rather, the NIE indicated "Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough (highly enriched uranium) for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 timeframe."

It didn't take long for experts to question the report's conclusion that Tehran was no longer interested in building the bomb. And now, a new computer simulation undertaken by European Union experts indicates that the NIE's time estimates might be dangerously inaccurate as well -- and that Iran might have enough fuel for a bomb much earlier than was previously thought.

As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the US intelligence community.

For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating at 100 percent efficiency. Were that the case, Iran could already have the 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium necessary for an atomic device by the end of this year. Another scenario assumed a much lower efficiency -- just 25 percent. But even then, Iran would have produced enough uranium by the end of 2010.

For the purposes of the simulation, the JRC modelled each of the centrifuges individually and then hooked them together to form the kind of cascade necessary to enrich uranium. A number of variables were taken into account, including the assumption by most experts that Iran isn't even close to operating its centrifuges at 100 percent efficiency. What is known, however, is that the Iranians are operating 18 cascades, each made up of 164 centrifuges. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself said last April that the country had 3,000 centrifuges in operation. At the time, most Western observers discounted the claim as mere propaganda. But the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Ahmadinejad's assertion in November.

Centrifuges from Pakistan

Another variable is the type of centrifuge Iran is using. For its simulations, the JRC assumed cascades using 2,952 P1 centrifuges -- the P stands for Pakistan, where the centrifuges were manufactured. But recent reports indicate that Iran might be in the process of installing so-called "IR2" centrifuges. These centrifuges -- the IR stands for Iran -- are made out of carbon-fiber instead of aluminium and are an estimated 2.5 times as powerful as the P1 devices.

It remains unclear, however, if the new centrifuges can be used in the same way as the old ones. Independent experts doubt whether Iran is able to produce the old-style aluminium centrifuges themselves. Given the strict embargo currently in place against Iran, it is possible that the centrifuges currently in use are still from the stock delivered to Iran by Pakistan. The Pakistani government admitted in March, 2005 that Abdul Qadir Khan, the scientist responsible for the Pakistani bomb, sold centrifuges to Iran.

Despite the uncertainties, however, the scientists at the Joint Research Centre are confident that their simulations are realistic. But, the group is quick to point out, they are theoretical. They don't make any claim to know whether Tehran is currently working toward the production of an atomic bomb.

Just why the new simulations came to such a different result than the National Intelligence Estimate issued by Washington is "a good question," a JRC expert told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The American government, he points out, wasn't clear about the technical details upon which its report was based.

Thin Line between Military and Civilian

Another possible reason for the differences could be the fact that the US intelligence report focused solely on uranium enrichment done in secret and on possible steps taken toward the production of a bomb -- but not on Tehran's claimed civilian nuclear power program. But the line between civilian and military nuclear programs is a thin one, as a number of states have demonstrated. The atomic weapons programs in Israel, South Africa, Pakistan and China all grew out of civilian nuclear programs.


There are a number of indications that Iran isn't just interested in civilian nuclear technology. Just on Wednesday, an exiled Iranian opposition group published satellite images it claims shows an Iranian atomic bomb-making facility. In January, physicist Richard Garwin, who is also a US government adviser, calculated that the Natanz facility -- even were it to reach its maximum capacity of 54,000 centrifuges -- could not produce enough low-enriched uranium for a nuclear power facility. But, he said, the 3,000 centrifuges currently in operation could be sufficient to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon.

Iran's successful launch of a ballistic "research rocket" into space at the beginning of the month is likely doing little to reduce concerns. A rocket that can carry a satellite into space, after all, could be modified to carry a nuclear warhead.

Roland Schenkel, the director-general of the JRC, says it is time for European politicians to re-evaluate. It is time, he said in Boston during a weekend meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for the world's atomic powers to allow inspections of their nuclear facilities and to take steps toward disarmament instead of modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Both the US and Great Britain have recently invested large amounts of money in their nuclear weapons caches.

Industrial Capacity

Schenkel would also like to see more competencies for the International Atomic Energy Agency. "The IAEA needs a real weapons control program," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. As it stands now, the IAEA must focus solely on fissile material and on nuclear facilities. "The goal should be checks in the service of non-proliferation," Schenkel says. "The checks need to have more bite."

Many experts likewise believe that more checks need to be carried out in Iran itself -- a position that was not changed at all by the US intelligence report. "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," the report reads. But it is not this conclusion that is the most decisive one in the report. Rather, it was the final sentence: "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."