World Threats

Just two weeks after the “accidental” explosion at the Iranian Shahb-3 missile site that killed the regime’s top missile engineer (and at least 16 other IRGC members), there’s been another “accidental” explosion in Isfahan, where there is a uranium conversion site. There’s been so many “accidents” and suspicious murders in Iran targeting nuclear scientists, missile bases, centrifuge farms and gas pipelines in recent years, that it’s hard to keep track. But one thing is for sure: The pace of these “accidents” has sharply increased.

According to Haaretz, Iranian officials confirmed that there was an explosion in Isfahan, but then removed the news report after the Israeli press picked it up. They then issued a flurry of denials and conflicting accounts. One news agency said that the explosion happened at a gas station. The official stance of the regime is that no explosion happened and the Pentagon and IAEA say they did not detect one.

As for that November 12 explosion at the Iranian ballistic missile site (where some reports say is related to warhead development), new satellite photos show that the site was “effectively destroyed.” A very convenient accident, don’t you think?

The Institute for Science and International Security says that the explosion happened shortly after Iran made a breakthrough in its missile development, possibly related to its engine. The Israeli website Debkafile, which is very hit-or-miss, reported that the explosion happened as Iran was preparing to screw a warhead onto a missile.

Meanwhile, the director of Israel’s military-intelligence research department, summarized where Iran is at in nuclear weapons creation. He said that Iran has installed 8,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, about 6,000 of which are running. Iran has 50 tons of low-enriched uranium, including about 100 kg of uranium enriched to 20%.

He said that Iran needs 220kg of 20% enriched uranium that must then be further enriched to 90% to become the fuel for a nuclear bomb. So, according to his estimation, we still have some time, but not much. From what I’ve read, Israeli officials believe that Iran could get a nuke by mid-2012. This assumes that aren’t any further delays from “accidents.”

Hundreds of artillery shells filled with mustard agent have been unexpectedly discovered in Houn and Sabha after Qaddafi agreed to fully disarm himself of WMD in 2003 following the capture of Saddam Hussein. And the U.S. suspects Libya got them from Iran, who custom-made them for their customer.

The munitions were provided to Libya over years and were not delivered all at once. They may go back to the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, during which Iran produced 2,500 tons of mustard gas. According to the Telegraph, one of Qaddafi’s commanders said that the only reason his chemical weapons weren’t used is because NATO airpower prevented the military from reaching the stockpiles.

This story is significant because of three reasons.

First, it shows how risky and irresponsible it is to rely upon U.N. inspectors to disarm and prevent WMD programs. We had no clue this stockpile existed and inspectors actually helped destroy the bulk of Libya’s programs. The U.N. gets far less cooperation and access to other countries.

Second, it blows away the argument that Iran would never provide WMD to others. Qaddafi wasn’t even much of a friend to Iran. He was a secular Arab, insane by any measure and the Iranians actively rooted on the rebels that overthrew and eventually killed him. There are credible reports that Hezbollah was dispatched to help them as soon as the revolution began. If Iran was willing to make and sell custom-made chemical weapons to Qaddafi, then what will Iran give to its true allies like Hezbollah, Hamas or other terrorist proxies, especially once the regime feels safer with a nuclear deterrent?

Finally, these weapons were provided over years. That means that the sales cannot be attributed to the wickedness of one madman (Ahmadinejad) that won’t be around forever. Ahmadinejad isn’t the problem. The Iranian regime is.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s incriminating report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program should be the last straw—not just for Iran, but for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The country simply cannot afford to have him in charge of overseeing our entire intelligence community any longer.

In March, Clapper stood by the controversial National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 that concluded that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons work in 2003 and expressed “moderate confidence” that Iran had not restarted it. He admits that his influence was “all over” it. In February, he said that Iran was creating the capacity to build nukes, but had not decided to actually do so. The IAEA discredits the NIE by unequivocally concluding that “some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device continued after 2003.”

This includes work on creating a nuclear warhead, secret uranium enrichment sites, development of the triggers to set off nuclear explosions and even preparations for an underground nuclear test. The temporary halt came because of, in the IAEA’s words, “growing concerns about the international security situation in Iraq and neighbouring countries at the time.” In other words, Iran didn’t want to push its luck after it saw how the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein. The nuclear weapons work then continued under a new organization. It is reasonable to assume that Iran restarted its program after it saw the U.S. in trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan (partially because of Iranian and Syrian support for the enemy) and concluded that it didn’t need to worry anymore.

Click here to read the rest of my FSM article.

Upwards of 30 people have been killed after a massive explosion tore through a military base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It is possible that this was a nuclear research facility. The explosion was heard in Teheran, 25 miles away.

The Iranian military is claiming just 17 killed after reporting a higher fatality rate earlier. However, other sources put the death toll higher.

Two hours after the explosion a fire still raged and there were traffic jams on nearby roads, a local reporter said.

The death toll was revised down from an earlier figure released by the Revolutionary Guards of 27.

Israeli DebkaFile is reporting 32 killed, including a General in the Revolutionary Guard. Hassan Moghadan was at the head of some of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons research.

Debka is claiming that there were two explosions on two bases and that they may have occurred as Iran was fitting a nuclear warhead to a missile:

Our sources report increasing evidence that the first explosion was caused by a failed effort to mount a nuclear warhead on a Shahab-3 intermediate-range missile.

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Speculation that Israel is about to attack Iran is reaching a fever pitch. Israeli President Peres warns that the time when Iran’s nuclear sites must be attacked is coming “closer,” and there are reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu is making the case for an attack to his cabinet. One question must be raised: Is it possible that the Iranian regime actually wants Israel to bomb its nuclear sites?

Iran’s game plan has been to take advantage of the loopholes in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The agreement allows Iran to work on most of what is necessary to build a nuclear weapon. Iran already has enough enriched uranium for four bombs and at least triple the number of facilities than what is necessary for a basic nuclear program. This will allow Iran to rapidly produce a nuclear arsenal once the veil is lifted.

Under Article 10 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a signatory can legally announce its withdrawal from the treaty so it can build nuclear weapons for reasons of national security. All the signatory must do is provide 90 days notice and justify its decision. If Israel strikes the nuclear facilities, Iran can leave the treaty and blame Israel for forcing it to do so. This would also give countries like Russia and China a rationale for not punishing Iran after it goes nuclear. It is quite possible that Iran will offer to abandon its bid for nuclear weapons if Israel disarms its own arsenal in order to portray itself as the victim of Israeli aggression.

Click here to read the rest of my Family Security Matters article.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has just released what is being called “the most damning report ever published” by the U.N. watchdog. The evidence in the report shows that Iran has a secret enrichment program, is simulating nuclear explosions, working on nuclear triggers, and developing a nuclear warhead. The report even says that Iran has made preparations for an underground nuclear test.

The IAEA report focuses on the Parchin military base 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran. The base has hundreds of buildings, tunnels and bunkers and IAEA inspectors are not allowed to visit. It is here that Iran is carrying out tests to simulate nuclear explosions. In 2003, one large test of high-explosives was done to assist with the development of a nuclear warhead that can be fitted onto a Shahab-3 ballistic missile. There is a chamber designed for a test of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives, a suitable amount for a nuclear explosion.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Some pretty distressing news is hitting the airwaves. Tensions have continued to rise due to Iran’s nuclear program. Leaked information has indicated that Israel is considering a strike on Iran, and so is the United States and United Kingdom.

For all of this news, some could be disinformation meant to confuse the Iranian clerics. However, there may be some grains of truth to the idea that Iran is nearing a nuclear weapon.

However, there is even worse information coming from multiple sources. Unfortunately, according to both Israeli and Iranian defection sources, the Islamic Republic may already have nuclear arms. Both rumors surround supposed purchases that Tehran made in the aftermath of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

One source is the Israeli site DebkaFile. Debka file correctly predicted Syria’s second nuclear reactor last week– which was later picked up by American sources.

In waiting for a new United Nations report on Iran’s nuclear activities, it appears that Debka has heard rumors of already existing Iranian arms. These functional weapons are moving the Israeli leadership to prepare a strike on the country.

According to DEBKAfile’s Washington sources, the Obama administration attributes the change of heart by those ministers to a conviction that Iran already has a nuclear weapon.

A separate Debka report stated that the Islamic Republic threatened to target a million Israelis with just four missiles should there be an attack on the country’s nuclear program.

However our sources cite Western intelligence as suspecting that Tehran obtained those warheads from Belarus or from unconventional arms traffickers based in the Muslim Republics which were part of the USSR up until the 1990s. And indeed the Fars report did not specify what warheads the “conventional” missiles would carry.

Separately through the Washington Post (quoted on World Threats), an Iranian defector stated that the country purchased tactical nuclear weapons nearly twenty years ago. These weapons, based in what is today Kazakhstan, were confirmed missing by Russia.

In any case, the reports are not good:

“Last week, Mathew Nasuti, a former U.S. Air Force captain who was at one point hired by the State Department as an adviser to one of its provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq, said that in March 2008, during a briefing on Iran at the State Department, the department’s Middle East expert told the group that it was “common knowledge” that Iran had acquired tactical nuclear weapons from one or more of the former Soviet republics.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, an experienced intelligence officer and recipient of a Bronze Star, told me that his sources say Iran has two workable nuclear warheads.”

These sources could be spurious, but there seems to be a lot of agreement on some fundamental issues. This could be the reason that Israel is so concerned in the last several weeks. Or it could be intentional disinformation.
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Reza Kahlili, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who spied for the CIA, makes the blockbuster claim in an editorial on October 27.

He isn’t the first to make it. In Ken Timmerman’s book on Iran, he reported information from Iranian sources that the regime had nukes. Before him, Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the Congressional Taskforce on Terrorism, said that Iran had obtained nukes from Kazakhstan in the early 1990s. Some of the information also appeared in a FrontPage Magazine interview in 2006 with Regnar Rasmussen, who worked in the immigration section of Denmark’s Central Police Department.

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Israel’s Defense Minister, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, stated that the Jewish state has no plans to attack Iran in the works. He stated that no decision had been made on such a move.

He made these comments after speculation that the Gilad Shalit deal was a precursor to an attack:

“There is great convergence between us and the Americans regarding the diagnosis and the characterization of the situation in Iran,” Barak said. “We know the Iranian leadership’s goals, its determination and how it evades the world. We know what happened in Pakistan, we know what happened in North Korea and we see the immunity they have because of it. One should ask: Would Europe have intervened in Libya if Gadhafi had possessed nuclear weapons? Would the U.S. have toppled Saddam Hussein if he had nuclear weapons?”

Barak said that the Israeli public should not be concerned about the Iranian threat.

“I refuse to be intimidated, as if Iran could destroy Israel, ” Barak said. “Israel is the most powerful country, from Tripoli to Tehran. There is no reason to be afraid of anything.”

Israel must be concerned about rumors– whether or not any attack is actually planned.

The Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear program was a defining moment in the history of war, and now, the “Son of Stuxnet” has been discovered. Cyber security experts say the creator of the original worm, widely believed to be Israel and probably the U.S., also designed this one and “there is nothing out there available to stop it.”

The Stuxnet cyber attack rendered thousands of Iran’s centrifuges, around a fifth of all of them, useless. Over 1,000 damaged units were replaced at the Natanz centrifuge farm, and damaged the steam turbine at the Bushehr nuclear reactor. In 2009, only half of Iran’s centrifuges were being used and some of those operating were only enriching half as much uranium as they should. The Iranians have to replace all of the computers at Natanz, and it may take up to two years. It was later found out that Israel tested Stuxnet on centrifuges identical to those used by Iran at its nuclear site in Dimona.

The Iranians later announced in April 2011 that a second cyber attack was discovered, which they called “Stars.” All that the regime said was that it was found on government computers and caused little damage. Iran soon replaced its centrifuges at Natanz and began manufacturing more sophisticated centrifuges that can significantly speed up the nuclear program. The centrifuges were moved to an underground site in the mountains near Qom. In February, experts determined that Iran had recovered from the damage wrought by Stuxnet. And now, the “Son of Stuxnet” has emerged.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

The Islamic Republic of Iran claims that it has shot down an American drone over one of its nuclear facilities. While this has not been confirmed by the American government, it does warrant notice.

According to the government, an American drone was shot down over the country’s formerly secret Qom facility. These reports have been derived from the state-run media.

“We have experienced similar incidents many times in the past and there have even been drones belonging to the occupying Zionist regime (Israel), the United States and Britain which have been shot down in the Persian Gulf during the past 7 years,” Fars quoted a senior military official as saying at the time.

No way to confirm this at this time, but it certainly does not sound unlikely.

Cross-posted at Pundit Press.

The United Kingdom is accusing Iran of testing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. Resolution 1929. At the same time, North Korea is moving full speed ahead with its weapons programs. It is well-known that the two collaborate on their WMD efforts, and it must be assumed that any progress will be shared. Recent advances by the two members of the Axis of Evil show that the West’s strategy against them is failing to stop their pursuit of the world’s deadliest weapons.

Iran launched its second satellite into orbit this month, which “demonstrated Iranian engineers’ growing skill and contrasted with the repeated failures endured by North Korea in trying to place payloads into orbit.” The New York Times said the rocket did not resemble an intercontinental ballistic missile, but the technology is still related enough to raise concern that the space program has a hidden purpose. Iran has also announced that it is installing new, more advanced centrifuges to triple its production of enriched uranium.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Iran successfully launched a satellite today.

Tal Inbar, head of the Space Research Center at Israel’s Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Studies, raised the possibility that Iran’s space program was a cover to develop military-grade ballistic missiles but said that the satellite itself did not have a real military application. “Rasad 1 is an Iranian observation satellite with resolution of about 150 meters and no real military importance,” Inbar said. “It is however a remote-sensing satellite and for the Iranians this has declarative importance since they can say that they were able to put an imaging satellite in space.”

Please read the entire article for more information.

Analysis. A couple of things are important about this event. First, Mr. Inbar is grossly playing down the importance of this launch to the Iranian ballistic missile program. If you can successfully complete an orbital insertion you can obviously launch missiles with sub-orbital trajectories and get them real close to their intended targets. Second, I suspect that the satellites imaging capability is also understated. One hundred fifty meters resolution ( 517.5 feet) is not even worth putting up. You cannot identify anything much smaller than a good sized city and then it will be pretty much a blur. Contrast this with the resolution of Google Earth. There are a lot of other things that are not specified about this satellite like its orbital parameters. Is its orbit equatorial, polar or stationary? That would tell us a lot about its real intended purpose.

It must be added reports that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) recently took possession of two nuclear capable warheads out of an order of ten. Nuclear weapons are delivered in sub-orbital trajectories. There have been reports on other sites that the North Koreans have succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead. Since the North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs are complementary, if not conjoined, we must now presume that the Iranians have access to nuclear weapons that will fit inside their new warheads. I suspect all that is now required is for the miniaturized weapon to be tested. Since the North Koreans started digging a test tunnel at their facility last February, we may presume that it has been completed. I predict that the North Koreans will stage a nuclear test by the end of the month. Presuming that the test is successful, both North Korea and Iran will become de facto nuclear weapons powers.

Some interesting news for your morning. As if the Middle East wasn’t unstable or violent enough it would not appear that things could get a whole lot worse. There was a report that Iran was just two months away from a functioning nuclear warhead and another stating that it had purchased a nuclear-capable warhead.

Now the head of the Iranian nuclear program has announced that the Islamic Republic will triple its uranium production as well as upgrade their centrifuges.

According to Abbasi, the nuclear chief, the new centrifuges at Fordo would be more advanced than the decades old P-1 type once acquired on the black market and in use at Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz.

“Soon, we will install 164-machine centrifuge cascades of the new generation (at Fordo),” Abbasi was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying after a Cabinet meeting.

He also added that Iran would triple the output of its higher enrichment program this year and would move the entire program to Fordo from Natanz. The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, would monitor the transfer, he said.

Last month, the IAEA said in a report that Iran estimates it has produced a total of about 125 pounds, or 56.7 kilograms, of uranium enriched to 20 percent by May 21st.

Great. Just great.

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Keep in mind that this is not a confirmed report. It also comes as the possibility of Iran having enough highly-enriched uranium for the bomb may still be low. However, when a report this serious comes from a reputable news source, it must be taken seriously. The news comes from an Iranian dissident group and may be part of a multi-national attempt to build nuclear warheads.

This comes from a former CIA spy that could be part of a very, very interesting chapter in Iranian nuclear history. This also comes after Iranian threats of a mystery program.

Other sources in Iran also verified the delivery of the warheads. On February 17th of this year when Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Chief Commander of the Guards, promised the Guards forces that “in the near future we will witness the ‘miraculous project,’ which will shock the world,” he was indeed referring to the fact that the Revolutionary Guards will be armed with nuclear weapons. This has been authorized by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This also comes as Iran is prepping these missiles for deployment:

The same report pointed out that the missiles are directed toward several potential and pre-designated targets, among them: U.S. military bases in the Middle East and in Europe, such as the ones in Hungary and Italy.

It is also stated that the nuclear and military industries in Iran are scheduled to weaponize at least two of the warheads with a nuclear payload no later than March, 2012.

If this report is accurate, there will be a major repercussion in the Middle East. The report places the blame for the acquisition not only on Iran but their partners in the Chinese, Pakistani, North Korean, and Ukrainian governments. Pakistan has already sheltered bin Laden and now could have pushed Iran over the top.