Papers stolen in a daring Israeli raid on Tehran archive reveal the extent of Iran's past weapons...
Source: The Washington Post
Papers stolen in a daring Israeli raid on Tehran archive reveal the extent of Irans past weapons research
By Joby Warrick
July 15 at 12:00 PM
TEL AVIV New details from a trove of Iranian nuclear documents stolen by Israeli spies early this year show that Tehran obtained explicit weapons-design information from a foreign source and was on the cusp of mastering key bombmaking technologies when the research was ordered halted 15 years ago.
Irans ambitious, highly secretive effort to build nuclear weapons included previously unknown details of experimental work with uranium metal as well as advanced testing of equipment used to generate neutrons to start a nuclear chain reaction, the documents show.
While Iranian officials halted much of the work in 2003, internal memos show senior scientists making extensive plans to continue several projects in secret, hidden within existing military research programs.
The work would be divided in two: covert (secret structure and goals) and overt, an Iranian scientist writes in one memo, part of a 100,000-document archive seized in a daring raid on a storage facility in Tehran by Israels Mossad intelligence agency in January.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/papers-stolen-in-a-daring-israeli-raid-on-tehran-archive-reveal-the-extent-of-irans-past-weapons-research/2018/07/15/0f7911c8-877c-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html
Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)<snip>
"Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican Party grandee and President Trump's newly appointed lawyer, made a telling remark over the weekend. At a gathering organized by a group of activists opposed to Iran's government, the former New York mayor seemed to suggest that the nuclear deal with Iran was doomed and that the Trump administration anticipated yet more havoc in the Middle East.
"We have a president who is tough," Giuliani said on Saturday. "We have a president who is as committed to regime change as we are." Confronting Iran, he added, is "more important than an Israeli-Palestinian deal."
Since coming to power, Trump has blasted the agreement forged in 2015 between Iran and world powers. He repeatedly lambastes the Obama-era pact as a shameful concession to a rogue state and looks poised to violate its terms by reimposing certain sanctions on Iran later this week. He also apes the views of Washington's neoconservatives and right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, casting the Islamic Republic as the greatest menace facing the Middle East."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/05/07/is-regime-change-in-iran-part-of-trumps-agenda/?utm_term=.5a6b821643bb
ewagner
(18,964 posts)Isn't Iran a Russian client-state?
Soooo...who thinks Russia would sit by quietly while we and anybody stupid enough to join us invade Iran?
Igel
(35,191 posts)It's a state that's sometimes a client of Russia, but neither is very misty eyed when it comes to identifying when it can advance its self-interest, hobble the other, or merely collaborate because the activity is either in both of their self-interests or is adverse to neither.
In other words, there's no moralizing and handwringing. "Sell S-400 missiles to Iran, it helps us and we're not attacking Iran any time soon ... Plus we have the backdoor security codes ... So sure." "Iran's getting too important in this area? Fine, we'll take steps to make sure that they're cut out. Ooh ... Israel wants to bomb them and disable their equipment and maybe kill some of the Guard, no prob, Yisra'el, mazel tov!"
Their reaction to an invasion of Iran would take into account their short- and long-term interests, without regard to, "Oh, noes, one of our BFFs is under attack." Nado dumat' ne tol'ko po-Putinski, no po-russki. You have to think not just a la Poutine, but also a la russe.
mitch96
(13,817 posts)So do nuclear weapons have a fingerprint? I mean can you tell from the plans if it's a Russian nuke? Chinese nuke? North Korean nuke??? I suspect that NK would be wetting them selfs trying to get cash for the plans for a nuke...
m
BlueIdaho
(13,582 posts)Not from the plans of the bomb but from the fissial material inside. Each nuclear plant creates a slightly different mix of Plutonium 239 and Plutonium 240. Detonated or not they have a fingerprint.
sandensea
(21,526 posts)An illegal nuclear weapons procurement program dating from at least the 1970s, for one. And at U.S. taxpayer expense.
Iran shouldn't have them (they don't), and nor should Isreal (but they do).
ancianita
(35,812 posts)The goals and struggles of each group of believers have been historically different toward The West, as is well known.
If you want mutual deterrence, just say so.
Mike Rows His Boat
(389 posts)I would assume that death to America would be a popular theme if that happened anywhere.
Just a guess.
ancianita
(35,812 posts)please proceed to explain our future foreign policy decisions from that basis.
Either we're Israel's allies for reasons of history that existed before we were born, or we're both enemy countries' ally, for reasons not spelled out beyond "empathy" here.
al bupp
(2,164 posts)Can you please elaborate?
ancianita
(35,812 posts)I saw the comments as leading toward a view that sees Iran as equally deserving of nuclear capability no matter the source or fingerprint.
Israel's got ours all over theirs, as do our European allies.
Igel
(35,191 posts)2003. That the research was ordered stopped then is inconvenient for many a narrative. (If it, indeed, was stopped then.)
It undercuts the urgency of the 2015 halo-awarding agreement. And the idiocy of how things were done back then under the Evil Emperor.
However, it also doesn't say whether or not the research was renewed. Which is the problem with any such order, whether under external pressure in 2003 or under external pressure in 2015, not just this particular one.
(And again with the "The invasion plans for attacking Iran are already drawn up and the bombing will begin this Monday under we raise a stink." Then, on Tuesday, "Whoa, they didn't attack, we succeeded! ... No, wait, they just postponed it until *next* Monday." It's like the "Jeebus'll return on this hilltop this coming Sunday, praise the lard and pass the pie" sort of bleating. If you doubt, you're evil; if you believe and are wrong, it's just been postponed, stay tuned for the update. Yeah, I'm suffering from an onslaught of cynicism today. Take it as you will.)
karynnj
(59,474 posts)otherwise. Note that Netanyahu himself was a key proponent that Iran's bomb was months from happening. I 100% believe John Kerry when he has spoken of various MiddleEastern countries asking that we bomb Iran. I also believe the stories that Netanyahu himself was in favor of Israel attacking, but their military was against it.
That agreement took an attack "to insure that Iran did not get the bomb" off the table -- and even now makes it less likely because none of the NATO countries agree wth us. It is entirely possible that that agreement prevented a war. I read enough of Haaretz to have read of Netanyahu's goal to unite the Sunnis, the US and Israel against Iran. He clearly sees Iran as an existencial thread to Israel, but it is not at all clear - given Iraq, Syria Libya etc - that attacking Iran will result in a safer Middle East.
Your last paragraph sounds like reading articles in the Jewish media - even Haaretz.
elmac
(4,642 posts)it is widely known that Iran was attempting to make or acquire a nuke. That is why so much energy has gone into reigning them in. But, if Israel and tRump get their way these safeguards will be removed and Iran will fill threatened, not trusting us ever again. Israel is no help here.
IthinkThereforeIAM
(3,072 posts)... and as I recall, the GOP/Bushco was a central figure with Iran making the, "connections":
"It all started, he claims, in 1989 with Iran, before the two countries fell out over which side to back in the civil war in Afghanistan. Indeed, the trail of evidence that led Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to Mr Khan's door, and has had one of his close colleagues, Mohammed Farooq, in detention since November, begins with names of suppliers given under diplomatic duress to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, by Iran last October.
Caught cheating itself last year, Iran put the blame for traces of bomb-usable highly enriched uranium found by IAEA inspectors on its secretly imported centrifuge machines on to its suppliers. Names were handed on to Pakistan, which is still investigating financial links, some through the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International, that could reveal more of what its nuclear freelancers (about a dozen scientists and military folk have been questioned so far) were up to."
[link:https://www.economist.com/news/asia/2412976-net-closes-abdul-qadeer-khan-top-nuclear-proliferator-sold?zid=316&ah=2f6fb672faf113fdd3b11cd1b1bf8a77|
That is just the basics of it. In a time, long, long ago...
still_one
(91,945 posts)Agreement.
What makes it truly deceptive is that the information taken by itself is not incorrect, but without the full context, it is misleading at best, and dishonest at worst.
What the trump administration has effectively done is unilaterally exist the agreement, which allows Iran to continue with its nuclear program without international inspections.
Whether that happens or not depends on what the other co-signers of the agreement, agree to with Iran.
Either way, the U.S. no longer has any say in the agreement, because they are no longer part of it, so if Iran and the Europeans continue to abide by its terms, and the Europeans refuse to join in the sanctions, the U.S. has made themselves irrelevent
BumRushDaShow
(127,289 posts)Sara Netanyahu trial to start July 19
The rapid start of the trial, which was expected to be delayed until after the High Holidays, defied expectations.
By Yonah Jeremy Bob
June 26, 2018 14:42
Avital Chen, president of the Jerusalem Magistrates Court, has set Sara Netanyahus fraud trial for July 19 in a decision issued on Tuesday. The rapid start of the trial defied many expectations that it might be pushed off until after the Jewish holidays, in light of the upcoming July through August court recess.
Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit filed an indictment last Thursday against the prime ministers wife for fraud with aggravated circumstances and breach of public trust in an explosive development.
Even though former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin resigned from office in 1977 when his wife, Leah, was about to be indicted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not considering such a move. Nevertheless, the indictment damages him politically in the current atmosphere in which he himself is likely to face an indictment announcement in the coming months, or in early 2019.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Sara-Netanyahu-trial-to-start-July-19-560897
The way the headline had been worded was almost hinting that this was something actively going on during the 6-party agreement, not something that happened 15 years ago.
Xolodno
(6,330 posts)...however, the details actually work counter to the argument to strike Iran.
And lets drop the other shoe that everyone ignores. Iran's only foe isn't just Israel, as much of the popular crowd would like you to believe. In reality, Israel is just a convenient recruitment tool. At the end of the day, Israel has no strategic value. However, Iran's direct foe, is Saudi Arabia. Economically, regionally and religiously.