Michael Coren of Canada’s Sun TV interviews a former member of the IRGC, who was also a US agent:
Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Feb 15, 2012
A former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard joins Michael Coren to discuss current events in Iran
Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Feb 16, 2012
John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute joins Michael Coren to compare the military might of Israel vs that of Iran.
Part 1 of the series on Nuclear Iran is here
From Bloomberg:
How Iran Nuclear Standoff Looks From Saudi Arabia: Mustafa Alani
The most likely victims of a nuclear armed Iran are not the U.S. or Israel, but the Gulf states — countries that are engaged in intense competition with the regime in Tehran, but that lack the power to deter any threat or aggression with a nuclear-strike capability of their own.
That, at least, is how it looks from Riyadh and other Gulf capitals. Saudi Arabia has kept a low public profile amid the heated international debate regarding the nature and ultimate objectives of the Iranian nuclear program, and the country isn’t yet ready to back a military strike. But that reticence hides deep and genuine concern, demonstrated by the speed with which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pledged to fill any shortfall in global oil supplies that planned European Union sanctions on Iran’s energy exports may cause.
A complete EU boycott of Iranian oil would result in the disappearance of about 2.5 million barrels per day from the international oil market, driving up prices sharply and damping the global economy as it struggles to escape a slump.
To start with, the Saudis strongly believe that if Iran is able to militarize its nuclear program while it remains a signatory to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, this would render the treaty worthless. The likely Saudi response would be to seek a nuclear capability of its own.
The Nuclear Path
Saudi and other Gulf country officials have made this point clear to Western governments, though not in public. They have told their Western counterparts that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, they would feel themselves under no legal or moral obligation to adhere to the treaty’s principles. In other words, they would be free to go down the nuclear path. From the Saudi point of view, the success or failure of the international community in restraining Iran’s nuclear program will determine whether the global nonproliferation regime survives.
Nor do the Saudis distinguish between Iran acquiring nuclear capability and actually producing the bomb. In their view, an unassembled nuclear weapon on the shelf is no less dangerous and intimidating than a completed one in storage.
The dominant feeling in the Gulf region is that U.S. policy, wittingly or unwittingly, has gifted Iran with painless and costless strategic gains over the past decade. When the U.S. removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and then toppled Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime in Iraq, it lifted what had been for Iran a state of siege and containment, imposed by the two hostile regimes on its long eastern and western borders. U.S. mishandling of the postwar situations in Afghanistan and Iraq handed a further bonus to Iranian policy.
Iran’s release from that vise is worrying to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations because they believe their Persian neighbor represents a hegemonic state that is attempting to implement aggressively interventionist and potentially expansionist policies. So far, these policies have successfully established states-within-a-state in both Lebanon and Iraq. Iran is now vigorously trying to repeat those experiences in other Arab countries that have Shiites among their populations.
Iran’s expansionist goals are exemplified in the occupation of three islands in the Gulf that belong to the UAE. Second-tier Iranian officials in recent years have also begun to revive Iran’s territorial claim to Bahrain. In addition, Iran has threatened repeatedly to “punish” the Gulf states and to close the Strait of Hormuz, an important international waterway for global oil supplies.
Iran as Troublemaker
The perception within this region is that Iran without nuclear capability is a troublemaker and that with a nuclear bomb it would probably become still more aggressive and irresponsible. From the Saudi perspective, Iran doesn’t need nuclear weapons for deterrence because, like other states in the region, it doesn’t face a nuclear threat. Israel, Pakistan and India, of course, all have nuclear weapons, but in the Saudi view these countries do not pose an offensive threat. Israel, for example, has a well-established superiority in conventional weapons and therefore does not depend on nuclear deterrence. Only as a state that has hegemonic aspirations and a misguided superiority complex would Iran need the bomb.
Since 2003, when Iraq ceased to be an effective regional counterweight to Iran, the Gulf states have invested heavily in high-tech conventional-weapons systems in an effort to redress the regional military imbalance. A nuclear Iran would make those acquisitions moot, upsetting the delicate regional equilibrium. That would be a new ballgame that none of the Gulf states feels equipped to handle.
Saudi Arabia and its neighbors have no specific vision for how to deal with the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. At this point, they don’t favor a military option. They want first to see serious and effective non-military pressure on Iran intensified in quality and quantity. Should these measures fail to halt Iran’s progress toward the bomb, the Gulf states would reluctantly support military action, despite all its negative consequences for the region.
If Iran is determined to militarize its nuclear program at any cost, they reason, then the international community must be equally determined to prevent that outcome at any cost. Otherwise, the entire Gulf region would go nuclear.
(Mustafa Alani is the director of the security and defense studies department at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center. This is the second in a series of op-ed articles about Iran, from writers in countries that have a direct interest in the escalating debate over how to rein in its alleged nuclear weapons program. The opinions expressed are his own.)
For your perusal and postulation:
“No Visible Evidence of Explosion at Esfahan Nuclear Site; Adjacent Facility Razed”
The first clear pictures of Iran’s nuclear site near Isfahan have been published and analyzed following an explosion at or near the site on Nov. 28, and they provide another piece of the puzzle. But what happened there remains a mystery.
Iran’s uranium conversion facility sits outside Isfahan. It is there that yellowcake is turned into uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6), which is then fed into centrifuges and turned into enriched uranium. The enriched uranium then can be made into fuel for power stations, or it can be highly enriched for a nuclear bomb.
Fox News obtained satellite pictures of the Isfahan nuclear site between Dec. 3 and 5, less than a week after reports of explosions in the area were heard. Analysts at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which employs some of the most widely respected experts on Iran’s nuclear sites, scrutinized the images and said there is no evidence of an explosion — but there wouldn’t be clear evidence several days after an event.
Click here to view the ISIS report. (DETAILED PHOTOS and report from them are below)
Iranian officials have issued conflicting comments about the blast, which, if it occurred at the uranium conversion facility, could be very damaging to the nation’s nuclear program.
A report of the explosion was first mentioned in the semi-official Fars News website. Then the report was removed. Then it was finally described as an explosion deriving from a military exercise by Isfahan’s governor, Alireza Zaker-Isfahani.
Israeli sources have suggested that the blast occurred at the nuclear facility; Iran, in turn, has denied that any sort of blast happened there.
But others find Iran’s denials suspicious, given that there have been numerous acts of sabotage against its nuclear and military sites and scientists in the last few years. Just last month, an explosion occurred at a sensitive missile site, killing 20 people, including the father of Iran’s Shahab 3 missile. It is not clear what caused that blast, or whether it was accidental, but many believe it was no coincidence.
ISIS analysts who looked at the images from Isfahan said there had been a dramatic change in the landscape around a tunnel leading down to a storage facility on the periphery of the uranium conversion site. Several structures above that storage facility, which had been there for 15 years and stood intact as recently as August, are gone. There now is evidence of bulldozing around the old structures.
It is not clear what is stored in that facility, which used to be a salt mine, or whether the underground storage was damaged. But Iran has been known to store UF6 underground, ISIS says, so it is possible that converted yellowcake was in that facility. According to ISIS, there is no evidence of an explosion, but there wouldn’t be clear evidence several days after an event.
“After five to seven days, that’s what you would be looking at anyway — clean-up,” ISIS senior analyst Paul Brannan told Fox News.
“The pictures we have seen were dramatic insofar as the buildings were there for at least 15 years,” he said. “On Dec. 5, they were gone. Whether or not that is circumstantial is not clear, but it warrants further scrutiny.”
Brannan says much of Iran’s yellowcake has been converted to UF6, but the Iranians still have some stock. Beyond that, however, the nation’s ability to mine and mill yellowcake is limited.
“There is something strange going on,” he said. “It is not clear what it is. There was the recent blast at the missile facility with people killed. There was a report of a blast at Isfahan’s uranium conversion site. A U.S. drone has been downed.
“Something is going on. It’s not clear what it is.”
An explosion reportedly occurred on Monday, November 28, 2011 somewhere in or near the city of Esfahan in Iran. The Times reported that the blast occurred at the Esfahan nuclear site and that it has seen satellite imagery that showed “billowing smoke and destruction.” The Times also cites “Israeli intelligence officials” as claiming that the blast was “no accident.” ISIS has acquired DigitalGlobe satellite imagery of the Esfahan nuclear site taken on December 3, 2011 and December 5, 2011. There does not appear to be any visible evidence of an explosion, such as building damage or debris, on the grounds of the known nuclear facilities or at the tunnel facility directly north of the Uranium Conversion Facility and Zirconium Production Plant at the Esfahan site (see figure 1).
It is still unclear where the reported blast occurred in Esfahan and whether it occurred anywhere near the nuclear facility. ISIS has identified a facility near the Esfahan nuclear site that underwent a significant transformation recently. The facility is approximately 400 meters away from the edge of a perimeter fence that surrounds the Esfahan nuclear site (see figure 2). An August 27, 2011 satellite image shows that the facility consisted of a ramp leading underground with several buildings along the surface (see figure 3). In a December 5, 2011 satellite image, the buildings are gone, heavy equipment can be seen around the site and there is evidence of bulldozing activity (see figure 4). These buildings were present on the site for at least 15 years (see figure 5). It is unclear how and why the buildings are no longer present at the site. It is also unclear whether this transformation is related to the November 28th, 2011 blast reported to have been heard throughout Esfahan.
ISIS has learned that this underground facility was originally a salt mine dating back to at least the 1980s, and that it has more recently been used for storage. It is unclear what Iran stored in this underground facility. The Times article quoted a “military intelligence source” saying the blast “caused damage to the facilities in Isfahan, particularly to the elements we believe were involved in storage of raw materials.”
Figure 1. December 3, 2011 DigitalGlobe satellite image of the Uranium Conversion Facility, Zirconium Production Plant and entrances to a tunnel facility at the Esfahan nuclear site. There does not appear to be any visible evidence of an explosion at these facilities.
Figure 2. Wide-view of the entire Esfahan nuclear site. The facility that underwent significant transformation recently is approximately 400 meters from a perimeter fence that surrounds the Esfahan nuclear site. It is unclear if this facility is related to the Esfahan nuclear site.
Figure 3. August 27, 2011 satellite image showing the facility before a November 28, 2011 explosion reportedly heard throughout Esfahan.
Figure 4. December 5, 2011 satellite image showing the facility after a November 28, 2011 explosion was reportedly heard throughout Esfahan. The buildings on the site are gone. Large equipment and evidence of bulldozers on the site can be seen in the image. It is unclear how and why the buildings are no longer present at the site
Figure 5. Satellite image of the same facility from 1996. All of the buildings seen in the August 27, 2011 image can be seen in this 1996 image as well.
Atlas Shurgs has news on how Iran is closer then you think in getting a nuke, and how to prepare and survive a nuclear attack. Stay safe out there. I just browsed the article on how to survive a nuclear attack. I no longer think it is safe in America. What do you think?
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