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kalel — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:14:34 +0000

Iran’s nuclear program presents a threat to international stability. Yet successive American administrations-Republican and Democratic alike-have misread the intentions and actions of the Iranian regime.

How dangerous is a nuclear Iran, even if it never detonates a weapon? What are the guiding principles of the Iranian leadership? To what lengths would the regime go to carry out its agenda? How far have Iran’s leaders already gone to fund the world’s most powerful terrorist organizations? And why have American leaders failed to gain the upper hand in relations with Iran during the past 30 years?

In approximately 60 minutes, Iranium powerfully reports on the many aspects of the threat America and the world now faces using rarely-before seen footage of Iranian leaders, and interviews with 25 leading politicians, Iranian dissidents, and experts on: Middle East policy, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation.

Iranium documents the development of Iran’s nuclear threat, beginning with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the ideology installed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
Iranium tracks Iran’s use of terror as a tool of policy, beginning with the 444 day seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, through Iran’s insurgent actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iranium details the brutal nature of the Iranian regime to its own citizens, and the Iranian people’s desire to rejoin the international community.
Iranium outlines the various scenarios the greater Middle East and the Western world may face should Iran cross the nuclear threshold.

In order for Iranium’s important message to have maximum impact, we need YOUR help. Click here to find out more about how you can take action.

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Iran: We’re ‘Insured’ on Nuclear Development

kalel — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 04:08:57 +0000

Iran said Thursday that it would be able to continue its uranium enrichment even in the event of an attack on its nuclear facilities. Speaking in Moscow, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said that Tehran realized that it was “faced with a very serious threat and so we have had to take measures to protect our facilities. We have provided for another facility in Fardo near Qom.” That site, he said, should be considered a “a reserve facility, so that if a site is attacked, we can continue the enrichment process.”

Map of Iranian nuclear sites

The comment came as the British Guardian newspaper on Thursday published a cable released by Wikileaks from 2009, which quotes a U.S. official as saying that Iran had by that time achieved the “technical ability” to produce highly enriched uranium, a necessary step in producing nuclear weapons. The cable quotes a U.S. diplomatic official as saying that “Iran had now demonstrated centrifuge operations such that it had the technical ability to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) if it so chose.”

Talks are set to begin Friday between Iran, the U.S., and its allies, on renewing a deal that would enable Iran to achieve nuclear power, but prevent Tehran from continuing its enrichment program. The last round of talks between the U.S. and the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council, along with Germany made little progress, officials said.

A deal that had been worked out in October 2009 to send some 1,200 kilos of Iranian uranium to Russia and France to be manufactured into fuel rods fell apart over disputes in the Iranian government. The deal would have provided Iran with enriched uranium suitable for energy production, while preventing Tehran from having enough low-enriched uranium needed to develop an atomic bomb. Efforts to revive that deal or a similar one last May fell apart as well, and U.S. officials said Thursday night that they were “pessimistic” about the prospects of hammering out a deal in the new round of talks.

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Netanyahu: Iran Has Been Unmasked

kalel — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:57:24 +0000

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu conducted on Tuesday his annual meeting with the international press.

During his address, Netanyahu reviewed some of the main events which have taken place over the last year.

He began by discussing Iran, describing 2009 as a year in which Iran was unmasked and adding that the unmasking continued in 2010.

“People witnessed the brutal nature of this regime in the wake of its elections and Iran was caught red-handed building a nuclear facility, a secret nuclear facility in Qom,” said Netanyahu. “And of course I think that in the parting year, people also understood the danger that such a regime would pose if it possessed nuclear weapons. I think that’s become part of the international understanding of very broad segments of the world community.”

Netanyahu Speaks with Foreign Press

Netanyahu praised the sanctions that were imposed on Iran in 2010 by the UN Security Council led by the United States. “I think President Obama and Secretary Clinton should be congratulated for pushing this as well as advancing sanctions outside the United Nations – tougher sanctions – by the US, by the Europeans and by others.”

Netanyahu added, however, that despite these sanctions having put significant pressure on Iran and having caused it hardship, they are not enough. “They have not in any way altered Iran’s determination to pursue its nuclear program,” emphasized Netanyahu. “They’re determined to move ahead despite every difficulty, every obstacle, every setback to create nuclear weapons. And since the purpose of the sanctions is to change that determination, those sanctions have not yet achieved their objective. So I think they should be strictly enforced and I think they should be materially strengthened.”

The Prime Minister also said that he believes that the military option against Iran should remain on the table. “I said two months ago that the only chance that these sanctions would achieve their objectives would be to couple them with an understanding from Iran that no matter what, they’ll be followed – that is if they don’t achieve their goal, they’ll be followed by a credible military option. I said that because in the many years that I’ve been talking about this and that Iran has been pursuing its nuclear weapons program, there was only one respite, there was a momentary pause, in 2003 when Iran thought that there was a credible military option from the United States, it temporarily suspended its nuclear weapons program. I believe that today the same is true.”

Netanyahu also mentioned Iran in the context of WikiLeaks and said that WikiLeaks “exposed the three main concerns of most, if not all, of the governments in this region. The first concern is Iran; the second concern is Iran; and the third concern is Iran. That’s not to say that they don’t want to see the advance in the peace process – they do; that they’re not concerned about the Arab-Israeli peace – they are. But they’re very much concerned that all of this would come to naught, and in fact their own interests (I’m speaking diplomatically now) would be tremendously jeopardized unless the Iranian nuclear program is stopped. Peace would be stopped and vital interests of just about every government in the region would be threatened.”

Referring to the peace process, Netanyahu predicted that 2011 will expose the truth about who is seriously interested in peace in the region. He quoted the “conventional wisdom” by which the Palestinian Authority wants peace and Israel does not, and added: “You have 60,000 rockets pointed on your cities, on your house. You have a lot of chutzpah to say to people that the Israeli people don’t want peace. I don’t think there’s any people in the world that want peace more, pray for peace, yearn for peace, hope for peace more than the Israeli people.”

Netanyahu presented five things his government has done in order to show Israel wants peace: Calling for direct peace negotiations, removing roadblocks and checkpoints, his Bar Ilan Speech that called for two states for two peoples, the ten month freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, and finally, the willingness to extend another the freeze for another three months

“While we did these five things, this is what the Palestinians did: they refused to negotiate for the first time since the Oslo process began 18 years ago,” said Netanyahu. “They placed a settlement freeze as a precondition for negotiations. They wasted nine months before coming to the talks and then they left the talks after three weeks and all of six hours of direct negotiations. These are the facts. Some may distort them; some may ignore them, but they still remain the facts.”

He added that “no coalition considerations will prevent me from pursuing a peace that I believe in. I’ll tell you something else. I think that if I bring a peace agreement, which means that I believe in the agreement that I will sign, I think that I will bring the support of the Israeli public. I don’t think, I know that. So I think the Palestinians are missing out on something very important.”

Netanyahu emphasized that elements of security alongside the elements of recognition are “absolutely essential to the achievement of peace. This is what I hope to discuss with Abu Mazen, with President Abbas. I want to sit down with him. These are our concerns. I know he has his concerns. I’m prepared to discuss this, directly. We don’t have to go to another place. We can sit down right here. This is what people do if they actually want to make peace.”

He added that he has “no preconditions for negotiations. The only precondition for negotiation is negotiation. It’s the only one.”

“In any case, I’ll tell you that in 2011, everyone, I believe, will come out of that year knowing who really wants peace. We’ll meet here in a year and I think you’ll see that I’m right,” concluded Netanyahu.

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Blair’s Sister-in-Law Now a Muslim

kalel — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:08:43 +0000

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, Lauren Booth, has converted to Islam after a trip to Iran.

The 43-year-old broadcast journalist, who works for Iran’s English-language Press TV, said she had a “holy experience” while visiting the Fatima al-Masumeh shrine in the city of Qom, a “shot of spiritual morphine.”

Upon her return to Britain, she told British publication The Mail in an interview published Sunday that she decided to immediately convert to Islam.

“Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60,” she told the publication. “I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years.”

Booth added that she now wears the hijab (hair covering) when she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits the local mosque “when I can.”

Booth spent several months in Gaza two years ago after traveling there illegally on a “Free Gaza” ship that symbolically broke Israel’s blockade of the region.

After Israel allowed the vessel to dock in Gaza port, Booth was unable to leave, since she had no visa or other legal transport papers with which to enter Israel from the region. Nor was she able to leave via the Rafiah Crossing, since the group had no legitimate exit visa, since Gaza is not a sovereign nation – nor a visa for entry into Egypt.

‘Snickers’ in a concentration camp?
Despite her claims of the “concentration camp” conditions in the region that are “worse than Darfur” Booth was photographed buying Snickers candy bars and soft drinks in a well-stocked food store in Gaza.

She and her brother-in-law, who currently serves as the Middle East envoy for the Quartet of peace-keeping nations (the U.S., Russia, European Union and United Nations), are reportedly barely on speaking terms.

Booth, who is a half-sister to Blair’s wife, Cherie, said she hopes her conversion to Islam will help change her brother-in-law’s presumptions about the Muslim faith.

via israelnn.com

The interview on the Daily Mail’s website included the following snippet:

Her conversion was welcomed on Muslim internet forums. One post read: ‘Now a war criminal has an innocent sister in law! God bless her!’

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Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites

alpineski — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:04:27 +0000

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defenses to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defense sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defense systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defenses will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defense source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.

Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defense circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.

The four main targets for any raid on Iran would be the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the gas storage development at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak. Secondary targets include the lightwater reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.

The targets lie as far as 1,400 miles (2,250km) from Israel; the outer limits of their bombers’ range, even with aerial refueling. An open corridor across northern Saudi Arabia would significantly shorten the distance. An air-strike would involve multiple waves of bombers, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest.

Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit agreement to the raid from Washington. So far, the Obama Administration has refused to give its approval as it pursues a diplomatic solution to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Military analysts say Israel has held back only because of this failure to secure consensus from America and Arab states. Military analysts doubt that an airstrike alone would be sufficient to knock out the key nuclear facilities, which are heavily fortified and deep underground or within mountains. However, if the latest sanctions prove ineffective the pressure from the Israelis on Washington to approve military action will intensify. Iran vowed to continue enriching uranium after the UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions yet in an effort to halt the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme, which Tehran claims is intended for civil energy purposes only. President Ahmadinejad has described the UN resolution as “a used handkerchief, which should be thrown in the dustbin”.

Israeli officials refused to comment yesterday on details for a raid on Iran, which the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has refused to rule out. Questioned on the option of a Saudi flight path for Israeli bombers, Aharaon Zeevi Farkash, who headed military intelligence until 2006 and has been involved in war games simulating a strike on Iran, said: “I know that Saudi Arabia is even more afraid than Israel of an Iranian nuclear capacity.”

In 2007 Israel was reported to have used Turkish air space to attack a suspected nuclear reactor being built by Iran’s main regional ally, Syria. Although Turkey publicly protested against the “violation” of its air space, it is thought to have turned a blind eye in what many saw as a dry run for a strike on Iran’s far more substantial — and better-defended — nuclear sites.

Israeli intelligence experts say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are at least as worried as themselves and the West about an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Israel has sent missile-class warships and at least one submarine capable of launching a nuclear warhead through the Suez Canal for deployment in the Red Sea within the past year, as both a warning to Iran and in anticipation of a possible strike. Israeli newspapers reported last year that high-ranking officials, including the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have met their Saudi Arabian counterparts to discuss the Iranian issue. It was also reported that Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, met Saudi intelligence officials last year to gain assurances that Riyadh would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets violating Saudi airspace during the bombing run. Both governments have denied the reports.
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Iranian Nuclear Scientist Defected to US

kalel — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:23:12 +0000

U.S. officials have confirmed that a top Iranian nuclear scientist has defected to the United States.

The nuclear physicist, Shahram Amirit, disappeared last summer three days after he arrived in Saudi Arabia on a religious pilgrimage. Officials confirmed Wednesday that he defected to the United States in a covert CIA operation, leaving behind his wife and children. The CIA refused to comment on the report.

Nearly two months later, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had accused the United States of abducting the scientist, and added that Saudi Arabia “must [also] be held accountable in this regard.”

Information Confirmed What was Already Known
Amiri apparently worked at or near Fordow, a nuclear facility outside the Iranian holy city of Qom, according to officials briefed on the operation by intelligence personnel. Amiri, a man “in his 30s,” was resettled in the U.S. and is working for the CIA, reported ABC News, which added that the information he provided helped confirm what the CIA “already knew” about the Qom facility.

The award-winning nuclear physicist was described as a scientist at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, which the United Nations identifies as one of several nuclear research facilities in the country overseen by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Two additional nuclear sites in which uranium is being enriched have also recently come to light, as it becomes increasingly clear that Iran maintains a tightly-compartmentalized system of managing its nuclear development program in order to minimize security leaks.

ABC News added that the CIA has been sending agents for more than a decade to Iranian-American communities in the United States hoping to recruit relatives from Tehran.

Israel has repeatedly urged the international community to increase economic sanctions against Iran in an effort to force the Islamic Republic to halt its nuclear development activities. It is believed by many intelligence agencies, including Israel’s Mossad, that Iran is building an atomic weapon. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also repeatedly threatened to wipe the State of Israel “off the map of the world.”

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Iran Has Several Hidden Nuclear Facilities

kalel — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:32:43 +0000

Four International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were due in Tehran Sunday, Oct. 25 for their prearranged visit to the newly-discovered uranium enrichment facility near Qom. Aside from that inspection, not much else is left of the Obama administration’s pursuit of engagement on Iran’s nuclear program. Saturday, Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani threw out IAEA Director Mohamad ElBaradei’s overseas enrichment plan the day after it was hailed by the big powers.

Soon after Larijani’s rejection, President Obama put in hurried calls to the Russian and French presidents on the new crisis.

DEBKAfile’s military sources point out that even the UN watchdog visits may lead nowhere, depending on how much access they are allowed to the facilities tunneled deep in a mountain near Qom and how much incriminating evidence was removed in the two weeks since Tehran approved the visit. Some sources in Washington take the existence of this hidden plant as evidence that Iran has got several more secret facilities running – and not just for enrichment but possibly even for covertly constructing nuclear bombs and warheads. Reporting from US sources on Iran’s nuclear program tends to be conflicting, fashioned to fit the policy of the moment. For instance, the Qom tunnel hiding place which the US president “first revealed” in Pittsburgh on Sept. 26 was in fact known to intelligence services, including the CIA, as far back as 2004.

In December 2005, the National Council of Resistance of Iran called a news conference to expose details of “an installation under construction in deep tunnels near Qom.”

Yet in 2007, a US National Intelligence Estimate stated that Iran had halted its military nuclear program in 2003! DEBKAfile’s intelligence and Washington sources believe that story was fabricated at the time by US undercover agencies to hold George W. Bush and Israel back from a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

A similar mechanism was at work Friday, Oct. 23. After Moscow, Paris and Washington approved the ElBaradei plan proposing that Iran send its partially enriched uranium to Russia and France for further enrichment – there was a thunderous silence from Tehran. Despite initial negative signals, sources in the Washington and Vienna quoted Iranian officials as favoring the plan but seeking only a few days until the middle of next week for its final answer.

It was Larijani’s task to dispel this piece of wishful thinking. He said the West insists on pursuing “chicanery” or “imposing some of its demands” on Iran. “They say we will provide you with 20 pc enriched nuclear fuel when you hand over to us your enriched material, whereas we see no relation between these two issues.”

His deputy Alaeddin Boroujerdi repeated an earlier Iranian state television report asserting that Tehran wanted to buy enriched uranium not send it overseas.

The IAEA inspectors’ visit to Qom goes well, it may establish four key facts:

1. Iran’s nuclear program is military – not just peaceful as Teheran insists;

2. The hidden plant, built to house 3,000 fast centrifuges of the new IR-4 mark, is designed to produce 90 pc (weapons-grade) enriched uranium in an amount sufficient for two to three bombs a year.

3. The US 2007 NSI was made of whole cloth.

4. The most intriguing question which the nuclear watchdog inspectors need to go after now is the provenance of the uranium hexafluoride (UF6) destined for further enrichment at Qom. The Natanz enrichment facility is too closely monitored by the IAEA to be able to able to ship this material out undetected. This means that one or more secret enrichment facilities, still unknown to Western intelligence, are turning out enriched uranium somewhere in Iran in the service of its covert weapons program and remain to be discovered.

Diplomatic engagement with Tehran has not even begun to plumb the depths of Iran’s deceptions.

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IRAN: WE WILL ENRICH URANIUM REGARDLESS OF ANY DEAL

kalel — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:50:14 +0000

A bipartisan slate of fifty House members urged President Obama on Tuesday to implement existing sanctions laws on Iran as a way of exerting further pressure on the regime to halt its illicit nuclear work, Agence France Presse reported. “Given Iran’s continued violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions ordering a halt to uranium enrichment activities – and the recent breach of the two-week deadline to inspect Iran’s underground facility at Qom – we urge you to consider full implementation of the ISA,” the letter, spearheaded by Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Ron Klein (D-FL) stated, referring to the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) of 1995. That bill authorizes the president to sanction entities investing more than $20 million in Iran’s energy sector. The previous two administrations did not impose sanctions under the law.

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Geneva: Big, Ominous Win for Iran

kalel — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:11:30 +0000

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

Thursday’s meeting in Geneva between the great powers and Iran delivered a big win for Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could go to bed that night once again truly believing “America can do nothing” — a phrase his mentor, Islamic revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, loved to repeat.

The buildup on our side of these talks was tremendous. Expectations ran high that Iran’s representative would simply grandstand and use the talks to sermonize the United States, that we would walk out, and “crippling sanctions” would begin.

But the Iranians played us masterfully. Instead of repeating Mr. Ahmadinejad’s mantra that the nuclear issue was “off the table” and Iran would be happy to discuss the terms of our surrender, his representative, Saeed Jalali, bought precious time for Iran to continue its clandestine nuclear activities.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, set the standard for what the talks should have produced in remarks to a conference on Capitol Hill at the very moment our negotiating team was getting snookered by the Iranians.

“If our engagement with Iran is to have credibility, the parties need to emerge from the meeting in Geneva today with a set of clear and credible benchmarks for mutual steps forward and a timetable for meeting them,” Mr. Lieberman said. “These benchmarks must include verifiable suspension of all enrichment activities, as repeatedly demanded by the U.N. Security Council, and full cooperation with the [International Atomic Energy Agency] to resolve all outstanding questions about Iran’s nuclear-related activities.”

None of that came out of Thursday’s meeting with the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany (P5+1). Instead, the Iranians changed the subject.

Iran remains in utter defiance of multiple Security Council resolutions that demand total suspension of uranium-enrichment activities.

Rather than discuss that issue — the core issue — the P5+1 allowed Mr. Jalali to sidetrack the discussions to make complex arrangements so Iran could gain access to enriched uranium. That’s right. Rather than talk about stopping Iran’s enrichment activities, the meeting enhanced Iran’s access to enriched uranium. No amount of White House spin can call that a “win” for the United States.

The last-minute “deal” with Iran about sending its declared supplies of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for further enrichment is a cute negotiating ploy that Mr. Ahmadinejad floated a few days ahead of the meeting. It is a side issue of no relevance to the core problem of Iran’s continued defiance of the Security Council and its refusal to come clean on its nuclear weapons research, which very well could include additional, undeclared supplies of LEU.

Mr. Ahmadinejad only needed one thing from the Geneva talks: to keep us talking. The longer he can delay hard deadlines and hard demands from the world powers, the more time he has to complete his nuclear designs and put in place new sources of refined petroleum should the U.S. Congress move forward legislation — stalled at White House request — to impose a ban on gasoline sales to Iran.

Mr. Obama was right to respond cautiously to the news from Geneva, saying that “talk is no substitute for action.” Yet, on the action side of the talks, Iran won hands-down.

Iran has been demanding that its case be handed back to the IAEA, not the Security Council. Why? Because it knows it can slow-roll the Vienna-based inspectors, as it has been doing for the past 17 years. (That’s right: since 1992, when the IAEA under blind Hans Blix first attempted to conduct something akin to a surprise inspection and failed miserably even to find the sites it wanted to inspect). The great powers granted Iran’s request and announced that IAEA inspectors would leave in two weeks for Iran to ask permission to visit the formerly secret uranium enrichment facility in Qom.

That inspection could stretch out a long time. Meanwhile, we have no confidence that Iran has not built additional underground enrichment plants or a warhead-design facility. We don’t even know for certain that Iran has not actually tested a low-yield nuclear device, as Assistant Secretary of State for Verification Paula A. DeSutter revealed in 2007 in written responses to questions from Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican. By digging a test cavity into the massive salt domes of its eastern desert and using venting and decoupling techniques, Iran could reduce the seismic signature of a nuclear test by 70 percent to 100 percent and thus escape detection, Ms. DeSutter said.

Brookings Institution scholar Kenneth M. Pollack, a self-styled “cheerleader” of Mr. Obama’s engagement policy, now says engagement is a “pipe dream” and that the administration must consider new policies for the long-term “containment” of Iran.

In clear terms, that means learning to live with a nuclear-armed Iran. Not only is this a dangerous admission of U.S. failure and U.S. weakness, but it also essentially shifts the entire burden of preventing a nuclear Iran onto Israel.

As Winston Churchill said after Neville Chamberlain returned from negotiating with Adolf Hitler in Munich, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”Popular Posts:

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Hoekstra: Obama Missed Chance to Confront Iran at U.N.

kalel — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:07:47 +0000

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

As Undersecretary of State William Burns prepares to sit down with Iranian officials in Europe, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee expect no breakthroughs to come out of this latest round of talks with Iran.

“The president thought he was going to change a lot of things simply by the power of his personality,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R, Mich., told Newsmax in an interview. “But the bottom line is, he is not learning the lessons from history.”

Hoekstra believes President Obama missed a golden opportunity to focus on Iran’s nuclear weapons program when he chaired the United Nations Security Council last Thursday. “It was the opportune time to confront Iran, put together a unified front, and he passed on that,” he said.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy apparently agreed with that assessment.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown were “seething” over Obama’s lackluster approach toward Iran when the three met at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh last Friday and revealed the existence of a previously clandestine Iranian nuclear site near Qom.

Senior Obama administration officials have given off-the-record briefings in recent weeks to Jewish groups and others who are concerned with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, during which they have blasted the Bush administration for not “engaging” the Iranian regime.

But the irony is the same official who will meet with the Iranians on Thursday as President Obama’s representative met with the Iranians in 2008 as President Bush’s representative — without results.

“The problem is not necessarily the approach the Americans take,” Hoekstra said. “It’s in not recognizing that the Iranians are the problem.”

Iran’s leaders have stated repeated in recent weeks that they have no intention of making any concessions on their nuclear programs in talks with the United States.

President Ahmadinejad has insisted in public that Iran won’t even discuss its nuclear ambitions with the United States or anyone. “We will never negotiate on the Iranian nation’s obvious rights,” he told reporters in Tehran on Sept. 7.

On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad unveiled his latest ploy to buy time in the talks, asking the United States and Europe to sign off on a plan to supply Iran with enriched uranium for a small research reactor in Tehran.

He said that Iran will provide enriched uranium to a foreign supplier so it can be further enriched and returned to Iran for use in an aging research plant supplied by the United States in the 1960s.

Despite the offer, Ahmadinejad’s offer does not address Iran’s violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty as chronicled by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which include secret uranium conversion and enrichment plants and nuclear weaponization studies.

Iran’s Qom site is burrowed deep into a mountain next to a heavily guarded Revolutionary Guards base around 60 miles south of Tehran. The existence of the Qom facility was briefed to the congressional intelligence committees but not leaked to the press.

But it remains unclear when the U.S. government learned that the Qom facility was built as an uranium enrichment plant, and when they shared that analysis with Congress.

“Congress was in the loop and was briefed” about the site, Hoekstra said laconically.

Congress was not briefed, however, on the administration’s plans to cancel long-standing U.S. plans to install long-range missile defense interceptors in Poland and a strategic missile defense radar in the Czech Republic, Hoekstra said.

National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones told Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz earlier this month that the administration decided to abandon the long-range missile sites in Eastern Europe because of new intelligence on Iranian missile programs.

The Washington Times report cited two unidentified administration officials as saying that the new information was contained in a May 2009 National Intelligence Assessment (NIE) that concluded Iran wouldn’t have a long-range missile before 2020, instead of 2015.

Hoekstra told Newsmax that the administration didn’t present any new information on Iran’s missile programs, but “re-interpreted an old NIE” and came to different conclusions.

“I don’t believe there was an inflow of information we didn’t have access to before,” he said. “These are honest professionals looking at this data coming to a different conclusion that leads to a different policy that I have major questions with.”

Intelligence community sources told Newsmax that NIEs are routinely updated, and that the May 2009 update contained “nothing new — no new data,” even though the Obama administration used it as the justification for a dramatic shift in U.S. strategic defense policy.

The only recent development in Iran’s missile programs was the successful Feb. 3, 2009 launch of a small satellite into orbit, using the multistage “Safir” rocket.

An earlier test-launch of the Safir in August 2008 was considered a failure.

The successful February 2009 test showed that Iran had mastered “staging,” according Arms Control Association author Peter Crall. “Staging allows multiple rocket engines to be stacked on top of one another to increase the range and carrying capacity of the rocket system. It is one of the critical technologies needed for long-range missiles.”

Iran’s test of a multi-staged rocket was precisely the type of development that demonstrated progress in building an ICBM capable of reaching the United States, said Paula DeSutter, who served as assistant secretary of state for verification during the Bush administration.

The fact that the updated National Intelligence Estimate would conclude three months later that Iran’s long-range missile programs had suffered a five-year setback was mystifying, she told Newsmax.

An intelligence community analyst told Newsmax, “They tailored the intelligence to fit their political conclusions.”

Hoekstra said both the Clinton and Bush administrations tried to reach out to Iran’s leaders without success. “Presidents have been disappointed. I don’t expect anything different to happen with this president . . . The Iranians have not changed their ways, and I don’t expect them to change their ways.”Popular Posts:

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