'Israel may attack Iran after December'

By JPOST.COM STAFF, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 15, 2009

Israel is making preparations to carry out military attacks in Iran after December, a French magazine reported overnight Wednesday.

According to a report in Le Canard Enchainé quoted by Israel Radio, Jerusalem has already ordered high-quality combat rations from a French food manufacturer for soldiers serving in elite units and has also asked reservists of these units staying abroad to return to Israel.

The magazine further reported that in a recent visit to France, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told his French counterpart Jean-Louis Georgelin that Israel is not planning to bomb Iran, but may send elite troops to conduct activities on the ground there.

These, according to the magazine, could involve sabotage of nuclear facilities as well as assassinations of top Iranian nuclear scientists.

Israel has recently toned down rhetoric against Iran so as not to hinder US diplomatic efforts at bringing Teheran to become transparent regarding its nuclear program, but neither Jerusalem nor Washington have so far made any unequivocal statements to the effect that the military option against Iran was no longer being considered.

Israel has maintained that it has the military capability to tackle Iran on its own if sanctions against the Islamic Republic prove ineffective.

Israel accuses Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Teheran maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful.

The Jerusalem Post could not confirm Le Canard Enchainé's report.

Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country

By DAN FROSCH, NYTimes.com, July 26, 2009

TEEC NOS POS, Ariz. — It was one year ago that the environmental scientist showed up at Fred Slowman’s door, deep in the heart of Navajo country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there.

The Slowman home, the same one-level cinderblock structure his family had lived in for nearly a half-century, was contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his wife and their two sons to move out until their home could be rebuilt.

“I was angry,” Mr. Slowman said. “I guess it was here all this time, and we never knew.”

The legacy wrought from decades of uranium mining is long and painful here on the expansive reservation. Over the years, Navajo miners extracted some four million tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of it used by the United States government to make weapons.

Many miners died from radiation-related illnesses; some, unaware of harmful health effects, hauled contaminated rocks and tailings from local mines and mills to build homes for their families.

Now, those homes are being demolished and rebuilt under a new government program that seeks to identify what are very likely dozens of uranium-contaminated structures still standing on Navajo land and to temporarily relocate people living in them until the homes can be torn down and rebuilt.

Stephen B. Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, and other tribal officials have been grappling for years with the environmental fallout from uranium mining.

“There were a lot of things people weren’t told about the plight of Navajos and uranium mining,” Mr. Etsitty said. “These legacy issues are impacting generations. At some point people are saying, ‘It’s got to end.’ ”

After a Congressional hearing in 2007, a cross-section of federal agencies committed to addressing the environmental and health impacts of uranium mining on the reservation. As part of that commitment, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Navajo Nation began working together to assess uranium levels in 500 structures through a five-year plan set to end in 2012.

Using old lists of potentially contaminated structures, federal and Navajo scientists have fanned out to rural reaches of the 27,000 square mile reservation — which includes swaths of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — to measure levels of radium, a decay product of uranium that can cause lung cancer. Of 113 structures assessed so far, 27 contained radiation levels that were above normal.

“In these situations, you have contamination in somebody’s yard or in their house,” said Harry Allen, the E.P.A.’s section chief for emergency response in San Francisco who is helping lead the government’s efforts. “To us, that is somewhat urgent.”

Many structures that showed high levels of radiation were vacant; some families had already moved out after hearing stories of contamination in their homes. But eight homes still had people living in them, and the E.P.A. and Navajo officials have worked to convince residents that it would be unsafe to stay.

“People had been told they were living in contaminated structures, but nobody ever did anything about it,” said Will Duncan, an environmental scientist who has been the E.P.A.’s main representative on the reservation. “They would tell us, ‘We don’t believe you are going to follow through.’ ”

But with a budget of nearly $8 million, the E.P.A. has demolished all 27 contaminated structures and has begun building ones to replace those that had been occupied. Typically, the agency pays a Navajo contracting company to construct a log cabin or a traditional hogan in the structure’s stead, depending on the wishes of the occupants. Mr. Allen said the cost, including temporarily relocating residents, ran approximately $260,000 per dwelling and took about eight months.

The agency also offers $50,000 to those who choose not to have an old home rebuilt.

Lillie Lane, a public information officer with the Navajo Nation E.P.A. who has acted as a liaison between the federal government and tribal members, said the program held practical and symbolic importance given the history of uranium mining here.

Ms. Lane described the difficulty of watching families, particularly elders, leaving homes they had lived in for years. She told of coming upon two old miners who died before their contaminated homes could be rebuilt. “In Navajo, a home is considered sacred,” she said. “But if the foundation or the rocks are not safe, we have to do this work.”

Some families, Ms. Lane said, complained that their children were suffering from health problems and had wondered if radiation were to blame.

The E.P.A. has started sifting through records and interviewing family members to figure out whether mining companies that once operated on the reservation are liable for any damages, Mr. Allen said.

On a recent summer day, Fred and Clara Slowman proudly surveyed their new home, a one-level log cabin that sits in the quiet shadows of Black Rock Point, miles away from the bustle of Farmington, N.M., where the family has been living in a hotel.

Mr. Slowman said he suspected that waste materials from a nearby abandoned mine seeped into his house. The family plans on having a traditional Navajo medicine man bless their dwelling before they move in.

“In our traditional way, a house is like your mom,” he said. “It’s where you eat, sleep, where you’re taken care of. And when you come back from the city, you come back to your mom. It makes you feel real good.”

Israeli Nuclear Waste ‘Leads to Palestinian Cancer'

By Rachelle Kliger, The Media Line, July 21, 2009

Radiation from Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona is being buried in Palestinian territory and causing an increase in cancer cases among West Bank Palestinians, a Palestinian doctor and anti-nuclear activist says.

“The waste from Dimona is buried west of Dahriyya and the radiation from this buried waste reaches the people and causes cancer,” said Dr. Mahmoud Sa’ada, a Palestinian general practitioner and head of the Middle East division at International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, referring to a small West Bank Palestinian village just north of Hebron and just over 12 miles from the Dimona nuclear reactor.

“What’s new over the past two months is that the radiation has reached Tul Karem,” he told The Media Line, referring to a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank over 100 miles from the Dimona site.

Allegations that Israel’s nuclear facility is causing health hazards are not new, but researchers say the scope of the damage is expanding and putting an increasing number of both Israelis and Palestinians in danger.

Sa’ada, a Dahariyya resident, claimed that in May the Jordanian government sent back a truck of marjoram, a popular Middle Eastern herb, to its point of departure in the West Bank, complaining that the herbs were polluted with radiation.

“When it was studied, it turned out that the soil and the marjoram in Tul Karem was indeed polluted,” Sa’ada said.

He added that there was still no confirmation as to whether this radiation came from the facility in Dimona. The matter is still being investigated by Palestinian researchers.

“This isn’t just affecting Arabs, it’s also affecting Israelis,” he said. “There are 2,000 [Israeli] settlers in the area near Dahriyya and they are also suffering from cancer.”

“They’re not trying to target the Palestinians specifically,” he said. “The facility was originally built as a defensive measure and it’s supposed to defend the State of Israel, but it can only be self destructive.”

Sa’ada claims that international studies carried out in the area have noted that since 1986 the West Bank has seen an increase of disease, including a recurrence of miscarriages, fertility problems, congenital deformations and a number of different types cancer.

In the area south of Hebron, he said, many species of flora and fauna in the area have vanished, but scorpions and beetles, which survived the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima – have remained.

“This has been going on for more than 10 years,” he said, explaining that the Dimona nuclear facility was built in the 1960s and has not undergone an overhaul as required after 1993.

Israel admits to having a nuclear facility in Dimona, a city in the south of Israel, but will not confirm or deny allegations that the facility is being used to build nuclear weapons.

Israel maintains a policy of ambiguity regarding its alleged nuclear program whereas it will not confirm or deny the existence of nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

Non-Israeli sources have claimed Israel has more than 200 nuclear warheads in its possession.

The facility in Dimona and much of its surroundings are encompassed by a long fence. Security personnel regularly patrolling the area do not allow visitors in the region to take photographs.

Israeli warships make rare Suez crossing

AFP, Google News, July 14, 2009

SUEZ, Egypt (AFP) — Two Israeli navy ships made a rare crossing of Egypt's Suez Canal on Tuesday, headed from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, a port source told AFP.

One of the ships, the Hanit, already crossed the canal both ways in June, in what the source said was the first case of a large Israeli warship using the strategic waterway, although this was not possible to confirm officially.

After fighting several wars since Israel's foundation in 1948, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979.

The other ship to cross on Tuesday, the Eilat, was named after a destroyer sunk by Egypt with the loss of 47 lives shortly after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the source said.

It is thought that Israeli navy vessels did not previously use the canal for intelligence reasons, as they might be equipped with nuclear warheads that could be visible to the Egyptian authorities.

Israel is considered to be the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power.

Israel's Yediot Aharonot daily reported earlier this month that an Israeli submarine also used the Suez Canal for the first time in June, to reach military exercises in the Red Sea.

It said the Dolphin submarine's crossing, escorted by Egyptian navy vessels, was intended as a message to arch-foe Iran.

Previously, Israeli submarines took weeks to round the whole of Africa to get to the Red Sea, with the paper saying "Egypt and Israel wanted to show their coordination in the face of Iran pursuing its nuclear programme."

Israel suspects Iran of trying to build atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, a charge Tehran has vehemently denied.

The Jewish state sees the Islamic republic as its top enemy following repeated assertions by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel is doomed to be "wiped off the map."

Wary of naked force, Israelis eye cyberwar on Iran

By Dan Williams, Reuters, July 7, 2009

RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (Reuters) - In the late 1990s, a computer specialist from Israel's Shin Bet internal security service hacked into the mainframe of the Pi Glilot fuel depot north of Tel Aviv.

It was meant to be a routine test of safeguards at the strategic site. But it also tipped off the Israelis to the potential such hi-tech infiltrations offered for real sabotage.

"Once inside the Pi Glilot system, we suddenly realized that, aside from accessing secret data, we could also set off deliberate explosions, just by programing a re-route of the pipelines," said a veteran of the Shin Bet drill.

So began a cyberwarfare project which, a decade on, is seen by independent experts as the likely new vanguard of Israel's efforts to foil the nuclear ambitions of its arch-foe Iran.

The appeal of cyber attacks was boosted, Israeli sources say, by the limited feasibility of conventional air strikes on the distant and fortified Iranian atomic facilities, and by U.S. reluctance to countenance another open war in the Middle East.

"We came to the conclusion that, for our purposes, a key Iranian vulnerability is in its on-line information," said one recently retired Israeli security cabinet member, using a generic term for digital networks. "We have acted accordingly."

Cyberwarfare teams nestle deep within Israel's spy agencies, which have rich experience in traditional sabotage techniques and are cloaked in official secrecy and censorship.

They can draw on the know-how of Israeli commercial firms that are among the world's hi-tech leaders and whose staff are often veterans of elite military intelligence computer units.

"To judge by my interaction with Israeli experts in various international forums, Israel can definitely be assumed to have advanced cyber-attack capabilities," said Scott Borg, director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, which advises various Washington agencies on cyber security.

Technolytics Institute, an American consultancy, last year rated Israel the sixth-biggest "cyber warfare threat," after China, Russia, Iran, France and "extremist/terrorist groups."

The United States is in the process of setting up a "Cyber Command" to oversee Pentagon operations, though officials have described its mandate as protective, rather than offensive.

CORRUPT, CRASH

Asked to speculate about how Israel might target Iran, Borg said malware -- a commonly used abbreviation for "malicious software" -- could be inserted to corrupt, commandeer or crash the controls of sensitive sites like uranium enrichment plants.

Such attacks could be immediate, he said. Or they might be latent, with the malware loitering unseen and awaiting an external trigger, or pre-set to strike automatically when the infected facility reaches a more critical level of activity.

As Iran's nuclear assets would probably be isolated from outside computers, hackers would be unable to access them directly, Borg said. Israeli agents would have to conceal the malware in software used by the Iranians or discreetly plant it on portable hardware brought in, unknowingly, by technicians.

"A contaminated USB stick would be enough," Borg said.

Ali Ashtari, an Iranian businessman executed as an Israeli spy last year, was convicted of supplying tainted communications equipment for one of Iran's secret military projects.

Iranian media quoted a security official as saying that Ashtari's actions "led to the defeat of the project with irreversible damage." Israel declined all comment on the case.

"Cyberwar has the advantage of being clandestine and deniable," Borg said, noting Israel's considerations in the face of an Iranian nuclear program that Tehran insists is peaceful.

"But its effectiveness is hard to gauge, because the targeted network can often conceal the extent of damage or even fake the symptoms of damage. Military strikes, by contrast, have an instantly quantifiable physical effect."

Israel may be open to a more overt strain of cyberwarfare.

Tony Skinner of Jane's Defense Weekly cited Israeli sources as saying that Israel's 2007 bombing of an alleged atomic reactor in Syria was preceded by a cyber attack which neutralized ground radars and anti-aircraft batteries.

"State of War," a 2006 book by New York Times reporter James Risen, recounted a short-lived plan by the CIA and its Israeli counterpart Mossad to fry the power lines of an Iranian nuclear facility using a smuggled electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) device.

A massive, nation-wide EMP attack on Iran could be effected by detonating a nuclear device at atmospheric height. But while Israel is assumed to have the region's only atomic arms, most experts believe they would be used only in a war of last resort. (Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Trevelyan)

Stateless 'State' of Palestine

By Mumia Abu-Jamal, Prison Radio, Written 6/15/09, Recorded 6/21/09

Click here to listen to audio column (short version)
Click here to listen to audio column (full version)

The presidential election of Barack Obama has so electrified the world, that expectations have swept past reality into the realm of the silly.

Some of this is surely driven by the corporate media, which no longer covers the news, but engages in what might be called 'pre-news', as it tends to predict what will (or may) happen, the better to not be scooped by competitors. And as news makes its hard turn to opinion, it sometimes builds up Obama as a world leader, in ways that are simply unreasonable.

This was seen in the run-up to the Iranian presidential elections, where news coverage all but predicted the election of opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Moussavi, and the fall of the irascible Mahoud Ahmadinejad. The result predicted, talking heads opined about the global influence of Obama over the elections. (As for stolen elections, did millions of Americans take to the streets to protest the stolen elections here -- in 2000?)

Similarly, much news coverage centered on Obama's hard-line on the Israelis, as in his Cairo address when he called for a freeze in settlements.

So slanted is U.S. policy towards Israel that a halt in construction in illegal settlements is seen as somehow 'hard-line.'

For their part, Israeli right-wingers, many supporters of newly-elected president Binyamin Netanyahu, has postered Tel Aviv with images of Obama wearing an Arab headdress (known as a kaffiyeh), emblazoned with the words "Jew Hater", and "Anti-Semite" in English and Hebrew (an allusion to his Muslim name and family background)

To "freeze" a situation that is fundamentally unjust, is to preserve the status quo--a state of affairs that leaves the Palestinian people in an unjust and untenable situation.

On top of that, Netanyahu recently announced an essential rejection of Obama's 'freeze', and an alleged support of the establishment of a Palestinian state -albeit a demilitarized one, with foreign affairs to be overseen by Israel.

This is a state only in the sense that the old South African Bantustans were independent territories (that is to say, not at all).

The Palestinians have had their best lands seized and Swiss-cheesed by settlements, their parliament has been cast into prison, their water is rationed, and their homes have been bulldozed, all while western leaders crow about a 'peace process' that is, ultimately, a freeze in oppression.

Meanwhile, Israel, not only the most powerful military in the region, but an undeclared nuclear-armed state, accepts the idea of a Palestinian state, but only if demilitarized -- and this is seen as progress!

--(c) '09 maj

********************
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$2.775 billion in US aid supports Israeli nuclear weapons program

By Grant F. Smith, Online Journal, June 29, 2009

President Barak Obama’s fiscal year 2010 budget request for $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel is proceeding smoothly through the Congress.

On June 17, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs held a “mark-up” session on the budget. The subcommittee came under pressure from an antiwar group that sought to suspend or condition foreign aid over Israel’s use of US weapons which left 3000 Palestinians dead during the Bush administration. The subcommittee held its session in a tiny Capitol room denying activists and members of the press access. The budget quickly passed and is now before the full House Appropriations Committee.

Israel enjoys “unusually wide latitude in spending the [military assistance] funds,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Unlike other recipients that must go through the Pentagon, Israel deals directly with US military contractors for almost all of its purchases. This gives the US based Israel lobby, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an influence multiplier on Capitol Hill. Large contractors proactively segment military contracts across key congressional districts to make them harder to oppose. As contactors and local business interests fight for Israel’s favor, AIPAC can turn away from shepherding the massive aid package to dedicate considerable resources toward Iran sanctions.

Representative Mark Steven Kirk (R-Illinois) sponsored an amendment to the foreign operations bill that would prevent the Export-Import Bank of the United States from providing loan guarantees to companies selling refined petroleum to Iran. According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Kirk is the top 2008 recipient of Israel political action committee (PAC) contributions (PDF). Kirk received $91,200 in the 2008 election cycle and more than $221,000 over his career.

Kirk’s AIPAC sponsored sanctions legislation passed the House Appropriations Committee on June 23. While tactically positioned as a rebuke to the crackdown on Iranian election protesters, the measure is only the most recent of strategic long-term AIPAC sponsored sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel contends Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons under the auspices of a civilian program, though no hard evidence has emerged. However, an illicit nuclear arsenal in the region has been positively identified.

The US Army (PDF), former President Jimmy Carter, and Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller have all recently confirmed that the only country in the Middle East that has deployed nuclear weapons is Israel. The Symington and Glenn amendments to foreign aid law specifically prohibit US aid to nuclear states outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran has signed. Israel hasn’t.

Congress can’t have it both ways on taxpayer funded sanctions and rewards. If gasoline imports indirectly support Iran’s nuclear ambitions, then $2.775 billion in cash for conventional US weapons and military technology clearly allows Israel to spend other resources on the development and deployment of its illicit nuclear arsenal.

Recently released CIA files long ago forecast that such an arsenal would not only make Israel more “assertive” but also reluctant to engage in bona fide peace initiatives. Cutting the massive and indirect US subsidization of nukes and forcing Israel to sign the NPT would go further in averting a nuclear arms race and conflicts in the region than targeting Iranian consumers at the gas pump. It would also demonstrate to the American public that the president and Congress, even under the pressure of AIPAC, won’t blatantly violate US foreign aid laws by publicly pretending Iran -- rather than Israel -- is the region’s nuclear hegemon.

Copyright © 2009 IRmep

Grant F. Smith is director of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy and author of the book “Foreign Agents: The American Israel Foreign Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal.”

Korea’s defense & U.S. belligerence

Editorial, Workers World, June 4, 2009 issue

Anyone in the United States who pays attention to the corporate news media must think that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea just violated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Right?

Except that no such treaty exists.

Some 180 countries have signed it, but only 148 have ratified it. According to the Web site of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, “All 44 States specifically listed in the Treaty—those with nuclear technology capabilities at the time of the final Treaty negotiations in 1996—must sign and ratify before the CTBT can enter into force.” (ctbto.org)

Nine out of those 44 nuclear states have not ratified the treaty, despite having signed it some 13 years ago. Therefore, the treaty is not and has never been in force.

The government that seems to protest the most when a country like the DPRK conducts tests sits in Washington. But guess what? The U.S. Senate has not ratified the treaty. In fact, it is Washington’s refusal that is the main obstacle to the CTBT treaty taking effect.

The U.S. tested the world’s first atomic bombs in 1945 and almost immediately dropped two of them on Japanese cities, killing 220,000 people on the spot and leaving another 200,000 so poisoned by radiation that they died soon after. From that time until it signed the treaty in 1996, the U.S. had tested 1,032 nuclear weapons.

That is more nuke tests than have been carried out by all the rest of the countries in the world combined, right up to the present.

So how can the world have any confidence in a nuclear test ban treaty if the country that has tested such a hugely disproportionate number of weapons won’t ratify it?

The DPRK has successfully conducted two underground tests of nuclear devices, one in 2006 and another on May 25. It has not dropped any bombs on anyone. In fact, its troops have never fought anywhere except in Korea, and then it was to expel foreign invaders.

The DPRK’s determination to devote substantial resources to building a nuclear deterrent reflects Korea’s tragic history. First invaded and annexed by colonial Japan, then occupied by U.S. troops at the end of World War II, Korea suffered enormously from the rise of imperialism in the 20th century.

The U.S. created a puppet military dictatorship in the south, which in 1948 declared itself the Republic of Korea. It was only then that the revolutionary forces, who had liberated the northern part of Korea from Japan’s iron grip, responded by declaring the establishment of the DPRK, not as a permanent state that would ratify the division of Korea, but as a recognition of reality. The goal of the DPRK, and of the Korean people as a whole, has always been to reunite the country. Within two years, however, the DPRK was fighting a new war against imperialist invaders—this time hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops.

Several million Koreans, civilians and soldiers, were killed in the 1950-53 war. Some 53,000 U.S. soldiers died. Though the war ended in a ceasefire with the two sides roughly where they had been at the start, the U.S. occupiers of southern Korea refused to sign a peace treaty with the DPRK. And that’s where things have stood ever since, with between 30,000 and 40,000 U.S. troops occupying the south at any one time.

Many countries—first among them the United States—have declared they had to have nuclear weapons for self-defense. None has a stronger claim to a nuclear deterrent than the DPRK, which for more than half a century has faced the constant threat of new aggression from the world’s most heavily armed imperialist superpower.

If Washington were sincere about wanting to move toward a nuclear-free world, it would start by signing a peace treaty with the DPRK, ratifying the CTBT and removing its occupation troops from Korea.

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Don’t discount Israel pre-emptive strike, Hillary Clinton warns Iran

Tim Reid, Times Online, June 8, 2009

Washington - Hillary Clinton refused yesterday to rule out a pre-emptive Israeli military strike on Iran. It was the first time that a senior member of the Obama Administration had openly discussed such a possibility.

The US Secretary Of State, speaking a few days before elections in Iran that will determine the fate of President Ahmadinejad, also warned that the country would face retaliation if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel.

As President Obama extends “an open hand”, seeking direct talks with Tehran in his attempt to halt its nuclear programme, Mrs Clinton appeared ready to unnerve the Iranian leadership with talk of a pre-emptive strike “the way that we did attack Iraq”. She said that she was trying to put herself in the shoes of the Iranian leadership, but added that Tehran “might have some other enemies that would do that [deliver a pre-emptive strike] to them”. It was a clear reference to Israel, where Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, has talked about the possibility of military action to halt Iran’s nuclear programme — something he views as a threat to the Jewish state.

Mrs Clinton, interviewed on the ABC programme This Week a year after she conceded to Mr Obama in the Democratic primary race, said that it was US policy that a nuclear attack by Iran on Israel would be seen as an attack on the US.

“I don’t think there is any doubt in anyone’s mind that were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation,” she said, though she did not spell out who would retaliate. She was responding to a question about her statement as a presidential candidate last year, when she said Iran would “incur massive retaliation from the United States” if it attacked Israel.

Yesterday she said: “Part of what we have to make clear to the Iranians is that their pursuit of nuclear weapons will actually trigger greater insecurity.” She noted that Israel and Arab states were “deeply concerned about Iran having nuclear weapons”.

She added: “So, does Iran want to face a battery of nuclear countries?”

U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites Accidentally

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, The New York Times, June 2, 2009

The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an online newsletter devoted to issues of federal secrecy. That set off a debate among nuclear experts about what dangers, if any, the disclosures posed. It also prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document had been made public.

On Tuesday evening, after inquiries from The New York Times, the document was withdrawn from a Government Printing Office Web site.

Several nuclear experts argued that any dangers from the disclosure were minimal, given that the general outlines of the most sensitive information were already known publicly.

“These screw-ups happen,” said John M. Deutch, a former director of central intelligence and deputy secretary of defense who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s going further than I would have gone but doesn’t look like a serious breach.”

But David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said information that shows where nuclear fuels are stored “can provide thieves or terrorists inside information that can help them seize the material, which is why that kind of data is not given out.”

The information, considered confidential but not classified, was assembled for transmission later this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency as part of a process by which the United States is opening itself up to stricter inspections in hopes that foreign countries, especially Iran and others believed to be clandestinely developing nuclear arms, will do likewise.

President Obama sent the document to Congress on May 5 for Congressional review and possible revision, and the Government Printing Office subsequently posted the draft declaration on its Web site.

As of Tuesday evening, the reasons for that action remained a mystery. On its cover, the document attributes its publication to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. But Lynne Weil, the committee spokeswoman, said the committee had “neither published it nor had control over its publication.”

Gary Somerset, a spokesman for the printing office, said it had “produced” the document “under normal operating procedures” but had now removed it from its Web site pending further review.

The document contains no military information about the nation’s stockpile of nuclear arms, or about the facilities and programs that guard such weapons. Rather, it presents what appears to be an exhaustive listing of the sites that make up the nation’s civilian nuclear complex, which stretches coast to coast and includes nuclear reactors and highly confidential sites at weapon laboratories.

Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, revealed the existence of the document on Monday in Secrecy News, an electronic newsletter he publishes on the Web.

Mr. Aftergood expressed bafflement at its disclosure, calling it “a one-stop shop for information on U.S. nuclear programs.”

In his letter of transmittal to Congress, Mr. Obama characterized the information as “sensitive but unclassified” and said all the information that the United States gathered to comply with the advanced protocol “shall be exempt from disclosure” under the Freedom of Information Act.

The report details the locations of hundreds of nuclear sites and activities. Each page is marked across the top “Highly Confidential Safeguards Sensitive” in capital letters, with the exception of pages that detailed additional information like site maps. In his transmittal letter, Mr. Obama said the cautionary language was a classification category of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors.

The agency, in Vienna, is a unit of the United Nations whose mandate is to enforce a global treaty that tries to keep civilian nuclear programs from engaging in secret military work.

In recent years, it has sought to gain wide adherence to a set of strict inspection rules, known formally as the additional protocol. The rules give the agency powerful new rights to poke its nose beyond known nuclear sites into factories, storage areas, laboratories and anywhere else that a nation might be preparing to flex its nuclear muscle. The United States signed the agreement in 1998 but only recently moved forward with carrying it out.

The report lists many particulars about nuclear programs and facilities at the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories — Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia — as well as dozens of other federal and private nuclear sites.

One of the most serious disclosures appears to center on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which houses the Y-12 National Security Complex, a sprawling site ringed by barbed wire and armed guards. It calls itself the nation’s Fort Knox for highly enriched uranium, a main fuel of nuclear arms.

The report lists “Tube Vault 16, East Storage Array,” as a prospective site for nuclear inspection. It said the site, in Building 9720-5, contains highly enriched uranium for “long-term storage.”

An attached map shows the exact location of Tube Vault 16 along a hallway and its orientation in relation to geographic north, although not its location in the Y-12 complex.

Tube vaults are typically cylinders embedded in concrete that prevent the accidental formation of critical masses of highly enriched uranium that could undergo bursts of nuclear fission, known as a criticality incident. According to federal reports, a typical tube vault can hold up to 44 tons of highly enriched uranium in 200 tubes. Motion detectors and television cameras typically monitor each vault.

Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, called the document harmless. “It’s a better listing than anything I’ve seen” of the nation’s civilian nuclear complex, Mr. Cochran said. “But it’s no national-security breach. It confirms what’s already out there and adds a bit more information.”

South Korea and U.S. Raise Alert Level

By CHOE SANG-HUN, The New York Times, May 27, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea — One day after North Korea warned of a possible attack against the South, the United States and South Korea ordered their forces here to their highest alert for three years, increasing surveillance flights and satellite reconnaissance to counter what officials termed a “grave threat.”

The move was the latest sign of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula after North Korea conducted its second nuclear test on Monday, sparking a confrontation with South Korea and the international community that has built into ever more bellicose rhetoric. North Korea reinforced its menacing language by test-firing six short-range missiles earlier in the week.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said allied troops, including, 28,000 U.S. soldiers based in South Korea, raised their Watch Condition, or Watchcon, to the second-highest level from Watchcon 3 to Watchcon 2.

South Korea has put its military on such a high level of alert only five times since hostilities in the three-year Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953, most recently when North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.

The upgraded alert provides for a significant increase in the use of reconnaissance planes and spy satellites, as well as a more vigorous gathering and analysis of electronic signals from the North, ministry officials said.

The Defense Ministry declined to confirm South Korean news reports that its military has moved or planned to move warships and artillery to islands near the western sea border with North Korea. But a South Korean military official said that in recent months, North Korea has increased training exercises among its coastal artillery units opposite the South Korean islands.

The North’s state-controlled media warned on Thursday that “even a minor accidental clash could lead to nuclear war.”

“It’s a matter of time when a fuse for war is triggered,” the North Korean government’s official newspaper, Minju Joseon, said in a commentary carried by the state-run news agency KCNA.

As the South Korean government urged its people to remain calm, there was no sign of anxiety among villagers along the border. In Seoul, with a population of 10.4 million and just 35 miles from the border, preparations continued for the funeral on Friday of former President Roh Moo-hyun who committed suicide last Saturday.

North Korea intensified its threats against South Korea and the United States on Wednesday with warnings of a “powerful military strike” if any North Korean ships were stopped or searched as part of an American-led operation to intercept vessels suspected of carrying unconventional weapons.

South Korea agreed to join the operation after North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday. The North had earlier warned the South not to participate in the operation, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.

In their Wednesday statement, the North Koreans also said that they “no longer feel bound” by the 1953 armistice. Technically, the two Koreas have remained at war for more than 50 years, because the 1953 armistice was never replaced with a final peace treaty. The North Koreans had previously called the armistice a “useless piece of paper” and declared that they no longer felt bound by it. Washington and Seoul consider such North Korean statements a gambit to raise tension and draw the United States to bilateral talks.

In Washington, Secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “North Korea continues to act in a provocative and belligerent manner toward its neighbors.”

“There are consequences to such actions,” she said, adding that discussions were under way at the United Nations “to add to the consequences North Korea will face.”

Diplomats said American and Japanese officials were drafting a Security Council resolution that would concentrate on five or six ways to flesh out existing sanctions against North Korea that had never been enforced. Although China supports the idea of sanctions, it wants to work slowly and to bolster measures first passed in 2006 rather than creating new ones, they said.

The proposals include banning imports and exports of all arms — only heavy weapons are restricted now. “We want to dry out their resources for the military,” said a senior Western diplomat, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Since inter-Korean relations began deteriorating a year ago, analysts at government-run and private policy institutes in South Korea have often warned of a possible naval skirmish. In interviews in recent weeks, they have said that if South Korea joined the global interdiction program, the chances of a North Korean provocation would increase.

The analysts said North Korea might stage a limited armed provocation along the disputed western sea border, where the two navies clashed in skirmishes in June 1999 and June 2002 during the crabbing season. Any clash between the Koreas would probably be on a similarly limited scale, the analysts said.

South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, lauded his people on Wednesday for their “mature response” to the North’s behavior. He noted that the North’s nuclear test and its subsequent missile launchings did not affect stock indexes and foreign exchange markets beyond initial jitters.

Seoul, the South Korean capital, with a population of 10.4 million, is just 35 miles from the North Korean border and well within the range of North Korean missiles and artillery. But most South Koreans and foreign investors here are accustomed to threats from the North.

Meanwhile, analysts said, South Korea’s decision to join the antiproliferation initiative — a global effort that seeks to interrupt air and sea deliveries of nuclear and other unconventional weapons, missile parts and delivery systems — is largely symbolic. Seoul has said that it will stop only suspicious ships in its own territorial waters, a sovereign right it already has. In addition, the chance that the North would send ships carrying such materials into South Korean waters is low.

Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald from Hong Kong, Thom Shanker from Washington, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations. Alan Cowell contributed from Paris.

Clinton: N. Korea to face 'consequences'

AP, USA Today, May 27, 2009

SEOUL (AP) — North Korea threatened military action Wednesday against U.S. and South Korean warships plying the waters near the Koreas' disputed maritime border, raising the specter of a naval clash just days after the regime's underground nuclear test.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that Pyongyang faced unspecified consequences because of its "provocative and belligerent" acts.

Pyongyang, reacting angrily to Seoul's decision to join an international program to intercept ships suspected of aiding nuclear proliferation, called South Korea's decision tantamount to a declaration of war.

"Now that the South Korean puppets were so ridiculous as to join in the said racket and dare declare a war against compatriots," North Korea is "compelled to take a decisive measure," the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement carried by state media.

The North Korean army called it a violation of the armistice the two Koreas signed in 1953 to end their three-year war, and said it would no longer honor the treaty.

South Korea's military said Wednesday it was prepared to "respond sternly" to any North Korean provocation.

Clinton said "there are consequences to such actions," referring to discussions in the United Nations meant to punish North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests.

She also underscored the firmness of the U.S. treaty commitment to defend South Korea and Japan, U.S. allies in easy reach of North Korean missiles.

North Korea's latest belligerence comes as the U.N. Security Council debates how to punish the regime for testing a nuclear bomb Monday in what President Obama called a "blatant violation" of international law.

Ambassadors from the five permanent veto-wielding council members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France— as well as Japan and South Korea were working out the details of a new resolution.

The success of any new sanctions would depend on how aggressively China, one of North Korea's only allies, implements them.

"It's not going too far to say that China holds the keys on sanctions," said Kim Sung-han, an international relations professor at Seoul's Korea University.

South Korea, divided from the North by a heavily fortified border, had responded to the nuclear test by joining the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led network of nations seeking to stop ships from transporting the materials used in nuclear bombs.

Seoul previously resisted joining the PSI in favor of seeking reconciliation with Pyongyang, but pushed those efforts aside Monday after the nuclear test in the northeast.

North Korea warned Wednesday that any attempt to stop, board or inspect its ships would constitute a "grave violation."

The regime also said it could no longer promise the safety of U.S. and South Korean warships and civilian vessels in the waters near the Korea's western maritime border.

"They should bear in mind that the (North) has tremendous military muscle and its own method of strike able to conquer any targets in its vicinity at one stroke or hit the U.S. on the raw, if necessary," the army said in a statement carried by state media.

The maritime border has long been a flashpoint between the two Koreas. North Korea disputes the line unilaterally drawn by the United Nations at the end of the Koreas' three-year war in 1953, and has demanded it be redrawn further south.

The truce signed in 1953 and subsequent military agreements call for both sides to refrain from warfare, but doesn't cover the waters off the west coast.

North Korea has used the maritime border dispute to provoke two deadly naval skirmishes — in 1999 and 2002.

On Wednesday, the regime promised "unimaginable and merciless punishment" for anyone daring to challenge its ships.

Pyongyang also reportedly restarted its weapons-grade nuclear plant, South Korean media said.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper said U.S. spy satellites detected signs of steam at the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex, an indication it may have started reprocessing nuclear fuel. The report, which could not be confirmed, quoted an unidentified government official. South Korea's Yonhap news agency also carried a similar report.

The move would be a major setback for efforts aimed at getting North Korea to disarm.

North Korea had stopped reprocessing fuel rods as part of an international deal. In 2007, it agreed to disable the Yongbyon reactor in exchange for aid and demolished a cooling tower at the complex.

The North has about 8,000 spent fuel rods which, if reprocessed, could allow it to harvest 13 to 18 pounds (six to eight kilograms) of plutonium — enough to make at least one nuclear bomb, experts said. North Korea is believed to have enough plutonium for at least a half dozen atomic bombs.

Further ratcheting up tensions, North Korea test-fired five short-range missiles over the past two days, South Korean officials confirmed.

Russia's foreign minister said world powers must be firm with North Korea but take care to avoid inflaming tensions further.

The world "must not rush to punish North Korea just for punishment's sake," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that Russia wants a Security Council resolution that will help restart stalled six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear programs and will not provoke Pyongyang into even more aggressive activity.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged officials to "remain calm" in the face of North Korean threats, said Lee Dong-kwan, his spokesman.

Pyongyang isn't afraid of any repercussions for its actions, a North Korean newspaper, the Minju Joson, said Wednesday.

"It is a laughable delusion for the United States to think that it can get us to kneel with sanctions," it said in an editorial. "We've been living under U.S. sanctions for decades, but have firmly safeguarded our ideology and system while moving our achievements forward. The U.S. sanctions policy toward North Korea is like striking a rock with a rotten egg."

Korea warns of attack if ships held

Paul Koring, The Globe & Mail, May 27, 2009

Washington - North Korea threatened Wednesday to attack U.S. warships cruising near its coasts in an escalation of tensions after threats by the major powers to slap tougher sanctions on Pyongyang for testing nuclear weapons.

The neo-Stalinist regime also issued an official declaration claiming it was ripping up the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War.

“We’re certainly concerned and take any threat seriously,” President Barack Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs said. But he suggested the unpredictable regime led by the ailing and reclusive Kim Jong-il was “trying to get renewed attention through sabre-rattling and bluster and threats.”

At the United Nations in New York, the Security Council grappled with North Korea’s open defiance and diplomats from the major powers gathered to hammer out a new round of sanctions to impose on Pyongyang.

“We are going to add to the consequences that North Korea will face,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Washington.

North Korea fired off a new salvo of threats Wednesday after South Korea announced its warships would join a U.S.-led naval effort to shadow and – if necessary – seize freighters suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.

Seoul’s government announced it was joining the 95-nation Proliferation Security Initiative (which includes Canada) aimed at interdicting nuclear, chemical and biological weapons shipments.

South Korea’s decision “dragged the Korean peninsula into the state of war,” said an official military statement circulated by North Korea’s state-controlled news agency.

“Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels including search and seizure will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike,” it added.

Even as it said it was taking the threats seriously and vowed to defend its allies – South Korea and Japan – from North Korean attack, the Obama administration suggested Pyongyang was indulging itself in attention-getting.

“Threats won’t get North Korea the attention it craves,” Mr. Gibbs said, adding, “This is the fifth time in 15 years that they’ve sought to nullify the armistice.”

The ceasefire that ended the three-year war was never followed by a peace treaty and the heavily fortified zone dividing the two Koreas remains tense.

North Korea’s blunt rejection of Mr. Obama’s offer to open talks has created the first simmering foreign policy crisis for the new President.

Although Pyongyang often resorts to bellicose rhetoric, it has also backed up its threats on occasion. Twice in the past 10 years, it has sent warships to ambush South Korean vessels. The last naval skirmish left two vessels severely damaged and more than 40 sailors killed or injured.

Although U.S. warships routinely operate in international waters off the Korean Peninsula and the Pentagon has ordered specially equipped surveillance aircraft into the region to attempt to capture traces of fallout from the North Korean nuclear test, the Pentagon said there had been no buildup of forces or increase in the state of alert for the U.S. military in the area.

Washington wants North Korea to return to what were dubbed the “six-party” talks, which include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. Pyongyang, which some analysts believe is in the throes of a succession crisis that could establish one of Kim Jong-il sons as the third-generation of the family to run the impoverished totalitarian state, has long demanded bilateral talks with Washington.

North Korea has repeatedly made and broken non-proliferation pacts and pledged to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in return for massive aid and donated nuclear reactors. However the latest test – three years after an initial, only partially-successful nuclear detonation – has established North Korea as an undisputed nuclear-weapons state. Last month, it test fired a multistage ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead thousands of kilometres.

Most military analysts, however, believe it has not yet managed to make a nuclear warhead small enough and light enough to sit atop a missile.

Still, the efforts of three successive U.S. presidents to keep North Korea out of the nuclear weapons club have failed.

Meanwhile, unconfirmed South Korean media reports say North Korea had restarted its nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, which was supposed to be permanently shut down and dismantled.

Israel threatening Iran with 'nukes'

Press TV, May 27, 2009

As Israel remains adamant on blemishing the prospects of Iran-US dialogue and coaxing the White House into a war, Israel's military Chief of Staff says the regime is ready to use all options against Iran.

Israel, the possessor of the sole nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, has long strived to portray Iran as a regime hell-bent on starting a nuclear war through the pursuit of its nuclear program.

The UN nuclear watchdog says Iran has not opted against international law while conducting the program, which Iran says has civilian purposes.

"It is my job as army chief to prepare all the options, and that is what we're doing," Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel's military Chief of Staff, said.

His remarks come as Iran and the US, which have not had diplomatic ties for nearly three decades, are moving to consider a possible rapprochement.

Such reconciliation, however, has rubbed Tel Aviv the wrong way.

Israel, which claims to see Iran as an "existential threat", considers possible friendly ties between Tehran and Washington a major blow to its interests.

"The dialogue between the US and Iran is unlikely to succeed, but this is the preferred course for us too," said Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi. "Iran continues with its plans. The existence of nuclear weapons in Iran's hands could destabilize the entire Middle East."

The Israeli general added that the army would take "every possible measure" when it has to deal with Iran.

The remarks come amid doubts raised by Western experts that the Israeli Air Force does not possess the necessary power to bomb the Iranian program out of existence.

In return, Israeli defense experts claim that a nuclear strike might get the job done.

According to a report by the Sunday Times, Israeli air force squadrons have trained to blow up Iranian nuclear facilities using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters."

Ashkenazi's warning against Iran came as the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, publicizes that lifting Iran's alleged "nuclear threat" is his government's mission.

In an address to the right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu said if Israel does not remove the Iranian threat, no one will.

Citing Iran as a danger he said, "My job is first and foremost to ensure the future of the state of Israel ... the leadership's job is to eliminate the danger. Who will eliminate it? It is us or no one."

What Obama and Netanyahu really said to each other

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz.com, May 19, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, listen, I first of all want to thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for making this visit. I think we had a extraordinarily productive series of conversations, not only between the two of us but also at the staff and agency levels.

Obviously this reflects the extraordinary relationship, the special relationship between the United States and Israel. It is a stalwart ally of the United States. We have historical ties, emotional ties. As the only true democracy of the Middle East it is a source of admiration and inspiration for the American people. (Also the only state in the region with nuclear weapons-ACFJ)

I have said from the outset that when it comes to my policies towards Israel and the Middle East that Israel's security is paramount, and I repeated that to Prime Minister Netanyahu. It is in U.S. national security interests to assure that Israel's security as an independent Jewish state is maintained. (In other words an exclusionary state for only people of one religion-ACFJ)

One of the areas that we discussed is the deepening concern around the potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon by Iran. It's something the Prime Minister has been very vocal in his concerns about, but is a concern that is shared by his countrymen and women across the political spectrum.

I indicated to him the view of our administration, that Iran is a country of extraordinary history and extraordinary potential, that we want them to be a full-fledged member of the international community and be in a position to provide opportunities and prosperity for their people, but that the way to achieve those goals is not through the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. And I indicated to Prime Minister Netanyahu in private what I have said publicly, which is that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and a threat to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilizing in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that would be extraordinarily dangerous for all concerned, including for Iran.

We are engaged in a process to reach out to Iran and persuade them that it is not in their interest to pursue a nuclear weapon and that they should change course. But I assured the Prime Minister that we are not foreclosing a range of steps, including much stronger international sanctions, in assuring that Iran understands that we are serious. And obviously the Prime Minister emphasized his seriousness around this issue as well - I'll allow him to speak for himself on that subject.

We also had an extensive discussion about the possibilities of restarting serious negotiations on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. I have said before and I will repeat again that it is I believe in the interest not only of the Palestinians, but also the Israelis and the United States and the international community to achieve a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians are living side by side in peace and security.

We have seen progress stalled on this front, and I suggested to the Prime Minister that he has an historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure. That means that all the parties involved have to take seriously obligations that they've previously agreed to. Those obligations were outlined in the road map; they were discussed extensively in Annapolis. And I think that we can - there is no reason why we should not seize this opportunity and this moment for all the parties concerned to take seriously those obligations and to move forward in a way that assures Israel's security, that stops the terrorist attacks that have been such a source of pain and hardship, that we can stop rocket attacks on Israel; but that also allow Palestinians to govern themselves as an independent state, that allows economic development to take place, that allows them to make serious progress in meeting the aspirations of their people.

And I am confident that in the days, weeks and months to come we are going to be able to make progress on that issue.

So let me just summarize by saying that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu has the benefit of having served as Prime Minister previously. He has both youth and wisdom -

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: I'll dispute youth, but - (laughter.)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: - and I think is in a position to achieve the security objectives of Israel, but also bring about historic peace. And I'm confident that he's going to seize this moment. And the United States is going to do everything we can to be constructive, effective partners in this process.

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: President Obama, thank you. Thank you for your friendship to Israel and your friendship to me. You're a great leader - a great leader of the United States, a great leader of the world, a great friend of Israel, and someone who is acutely cognizant of our security concerns. And the entire people of Israel appreciate it, and I speak on their behalf.

We met before, but this is the first time that we're meeting as President and Prime Minister. So I was particularly pleased at your reaffirmation of the special relationship between Israel and the United States. We share the same goals and we face the same threats. The common goal is peace. Everybody in Israel, as in the United States, wants peace. The common threat we face are terrorist regimes and organizations that seek to undermine the peace and endanger both our peoples.

In this context, the worst danger we face is that Iran would develop nuclear military capabilities. Iran openly calls for our destruction, which is unacceptable by any standard. It threatens the moderate Arab regimes in the Middle East. It threatens U.S. interests worldwide. But if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it could give a nuclear umbrella to terrorists, or worse, it could actually give terrorists nuclear weapons. And that would put us all in great peril.

So in that context, I very much appreciate, Mr. President, your firm commitment to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear military capability, and also your statement that you're leaving all options on the table.

I share with you very much the desire to move the peace process forward. And I want to start peace negotiations with the Palestinians immediately. I would like to broaden the circle of peace to include others in the Arab world, if we could, Mr. President, so - this (inaudible) that one shouldn't let go, maybe peace with the entire Arab world.

I want to make it clear that we don't want to govern the Palestinians. We want to live in peace with them. We want them to govern themselves, absent a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel. And for this there has to be a clear goal. The goal has to be an end to conflict. There will have to be compromises by Israelis and Palestinians alike. We're ready to do our share. We hope the Palestinians will do their share, as well. If we resume negotiations, as we plan to do, then I think that the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; will have to also enable Israel to have the means to defend itself. And if those conditions are met, Israel's security conditions are met, and there's recognition of Israel's legitimacy, its permanent legitimacy, then I think we can envision an arrangement where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in dignity, in security, and in peace.

And I look forward, Mr. President, to working with you, a true friend of Israel, to the achievement of our common goals, which are security, prosperity, and above all, peace.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. We're going to take a couple of questions. We're going to start with Steve.

Q Mr. President, you spoke at length, as did the Prime Minister, about Iran's nuclear program. Your program of engagement, policy of engagement, how long is that going to last? Is there a deadline?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, I don't want to set an artificial deadline. I think it's important to recognize that Iran is in the midst of its own elections. As I think all of you, since you're all political reporters, are familiar with, election time is not always the best time to get business done.

Their elections will be completed in June, and we are hopeful that, at that point, there is going to be a serious process of engagement, first through the P5-plus-one process that's already in place, potentially through additional direct talks between the United States and Iran.

I want to reemphasize what I said earlier, that I believe it is not only in the interest of the international community that Iran not develop nuclear weapons, I firmly believe it is in Iran's interest not to develop nuclear weapons, because it would trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and be profoundly destabilizing in all sorts of ways. Iran can achieve its interests of security and international respect and prosperity for its people through other means, and I am prepared to make what I believe will be a persuasive argument, that there should be a different course to be taken.

The one thing we're also aware of is the fact that the history, of least, of negotiation with Iran is that there is a lot of talk but not always action and follow-through. And that's why it is important for us, I think, without having set an artificial deadline, to be mindful of the fact that we're not going to have talks forever. We're not going to create a situation in which talks become an excuse for inaction while Iran proceeds with developing a nuclear - and deploying a nuclear weapon. That's something, obviously, Israel is concerned about, but it's also an issue of concern for the United States and for the international community as a whole.

My expectation would be that if we can begin discussions soon, shortly after the Iranian elections, we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction and whether the parties involved are making progress and that there's a good faith effort to resolve differences. That doesn't mean every issue would be resolved by that point, but it does mean that we'll probably be able to gauge and do a reassessment by the end of the year of this approach.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Aren't you concerned that your outstretched hand has been interpreted by extremists, especially Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, Meshal, as weakness? And since my colleague already asked about the deadline, if engagement fails, what then, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it's not clear to me why my outstretched hand would be interpreted as weakness.

Q Qatar, an example.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'm sorry?

Q The example of Qatar. They would have preferred to be on your side and then moved to the extremists, to Iran.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Oh, I think - yes, I'm not sure about that interpretation. Look, we've been in office a little over a hundred days now - close to four months. We have put forward a clear principle that where we can resolve issues through negotiations and diplomacy, we should. We didn't expect - and I don't think anybody in the international community or anybody in the Middle East, for that matter - would expect that 30 years of antagonism and suspicion between Iran and the United States would be resolved in four months. So we think it's very important for us to give this a chance.

Now, understand that part of the reason that it's so important for us to take a diplomatic approach is that the approach that we've been taking, which is no diplomacy, obviously has not worked. Nobody disagrees with that. Hamas and Hezbollah have gotten stronger. Iran has been pursuing its nuclear capabilities undiminished. And so not talking - that clearly hasn't worked. That's what's been tried. And so what we're going to do is try something new, which is actually engaging and reaching out to the Iranians.

The important thing is to make sure that there is a clear timetable of - at which point we say these talks don't seem to be making any serious progress. It hasn't been tried before so we don't want to prejudge that, but as I said, by the end of the year I think we should have some sense as to whether or not these discussions are starting to yield significant benefits, whether we're starting to see serious movement on the part of the Iranians.

If that hasn't taken place, then I think the international community will see that it's not the United States or Israel or other countries that are seeking to isolate or victimize Iran; rather, it is Iran itself which is isolating itself by willing to - being unwilling to engage in serious discussions about how they can preserve their security without threatening other people's security - which ultimately is what we want to achieve.

We want to achieve a situation where all countries in the region can pursue economic development and commercial ties and trade and do so without the threat that their populations are going to be subject to bombs and destruction.

That's what I think the Prime Minister is interested in, that's what I'm interested in, and I hope that ends up being what the ruling officials in Iran are interested in, as well.

Don Gonyea. Where's Gonyea?

Q Right here. Thank you. Mr. President and Mr. Prime Minister, can you each react to King Abdullah's statement of a week ago that we really are at a critical place in the conflict and that if this moment isn't seized and if a peace isn't achieved now, soon, that in a year, year and a half, we could see renewed major conflict, perhaps war? And do you agree with that assessment?

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: I think we have to seize the moment and I think we're fortunate in having a leader like President Obama and a new government in Israel and perhaps a new understanding in the Arab world that I haven't seen in my lifetime. And you're very kind to be calling me young, but I'm more than half a century old and in my 59 years in the life of the Jewish state, there's never been a time when Arabs and Israelis see a common threat the way we see it today and also see the need to join together in working towards peace while simultaneously defending ourselves against this common threat.

I think we have - we have ways to capitalize on this sense of urgency and we're prepared to move with the President and with others in the Arab world if they're prepared to move, as well. And I think the important thing that we discussed, among other things, is how to buttress the Israeli-Palestinian peace tracks, which we want to resume right away, with participation from others in the Arab world; how we give confidence to each other that would - changes the reality, it changes the reality on the ground, changing political realities top-down, as well, while we work to broaden the circle of peace.

And I think that the sense of urgency that King Abdullah expressed is shared by me and shared by many others and I definitely know it's shared by President Obama.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Look, I think there's an extraordinary opportunity and the Prime Minister said it well. You have Arab states in the region - the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Saudis - who I think are looking for an opportunity to break this long-standing impasse but aren' sure how to do it, and share concerns about Iran's potential development of a nuclear weapon. In order for us to potentially realign interests in the region in a constructive way, bolstering, to use the Prime Minister's word, the Palestinian-Israeli peace track is critical.

It will not be easy. It never has been easy. In discussions, I don't think the Prime Minister would mind me saying to him - or saying publically what I said privately, which is that there is a recognition that the Palestinians are going to have to do a better job providing the kinds of security assurances that Israelis would need to achieve a two-state solution; that, you know, the leadership of the Palestinians will have to gain additional legitimacy and credibility with their own people, and delivering services. And that's something that the United States and Israel can be helpful in seeing them accomplish.

The other Arab states have to be more supportive and be bolder in seeking potential normalization with Israel. And next week I will have the Palestinian Authority President Abbas as well as President Mubarak here and I will deliver that message to them.

Now, Israel is going to have to take some difficult steps as well, and I shared with the Prime Minister the fact that under the roadmap and under Annapolis that there's a clear understanding that we have to make progress on settlements. Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward. That's a difficult issue. I recognize that, but it's an important one and it has to be addressed.

I think the humanitarian situation in Gaza has to be addressed. Now, I was along the border in Sderot and saw the evidence of weapons that had been raining down on the heads of innocents in those Israeli cities, and that's unacceptable. So we've got to work with the Egyptians to deal with the smuggling of weapons and it has to be meaningful because no Prime Minister of any country is going to tolerate missiles raining down on their citizens' heads.

On the other hand, the fact is, is that if the people of Gaza have no hope, if they can't even get clean water at this point, if the border closures are so tight that it is impossible for reconstruction and humanitarian efforts to take place, then that is not going to be a recipe for Israel's long-term security or a constructive peace track to move forward.

So all these things are going to have to come together and it's going to be difficult, but the one thing that I've committed to the Prime Minister is we are going to be engaged, the United States is going to roll up our sleeves. We want to be a strong partner in this process.

I have great confidence in Prime Minister Netanyahu's political skills, but also his historical vision and his recognition that during the years that he is Prime Minister this second go-around, he is probably going to be confronted with as many important decisions about the long-term strategic interests of Israel as any Prime Minister that we've seen in a very long time. And I have great confidence that he's going to rise to the occasion and I actually think that you're going to see movement in - among Arab states that we have not seen before.

But the trick is to try to coordinate all this in a very delicate political environment. And that's why I'm so pleased to have George Mitchell, who is standing behind the scrum there, as our special envoy, because I'm very confident that as somebody who was involved in equally delicate negotiations in Northern Ireland, he is somebody who recognizes that if you apply patience and determination, and you keep your eye on the long-term goal, as the Prime Minister articulated -- which is a wide-ranging peace, not a grudging peace, not a transitory peace, but a wide-ranging, regional peace -- that we can make great progress.

Q Mr. President, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Israeli administration have said on many occasions -- on some occasions that only if the Iranian threat will be solved, they can achieve real progress on the Palestinian threat. Do you agree with that kind of linkage?

And to the Israeli Prime Minister, you were speaking about the political track. Are you willing to get into final status issues/negotiations like borders, like Jerusalem in the near future, based on the two-state solution? And do you still hold this opinion about the linkage between the Iranian threat and your ability to achieve any progress on the Palestinian threat?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, let me say this. There's no doubt that it is difficult for any Israeli government to negotiate in a situation in which they feel under immediate threat. That's not conducive to negotiations. And as I've said before, I recognize Israel's legitimate concerns about the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon when they have a president who has in the past said that Israel should not exist. That would give any leader of any country pause.

Having said that, if there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians - between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with a potential Iranian threat.

Having said that, I think that dealing with Iran's potential nuclear capacity is something that we should be doing even if there already was peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And I think that pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace is something that is in Israeli's security interests and the United States' national security interests, even if Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. They're both important.

And we have to move aggressively on both fronts. And I think that based on my conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, he agrees with me that they're both important. That's not to say that he's not making a calculation, as he should, about what are some of the most immediate threats to Israeli's security, and I understand that.

But, look, imagine how much less mischief a Hezbollah or a Hamas could do if in fact we had moved a Palestinian-Israeli track in a direction that gave the Palestinian people hope. And if Hezbollah and Hamas is weakened, imagine how that impacts Iran's ability to make mischief, and vice versa.

I mean, so obviously these things are related, but they are important separately. And I'm confident that the United States, working with Israel, can make progress on both fronts.

Q Thank you.

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: We've had extraordinarily friendly and constructive talks here today, and I'm very grateful to the President for that. We want to move peace forward, and we want to ward off the great threats.

There isn't a policy linkage, and that's what I hear the President saying, and that's what I'm saying too. And I've always said there's not a policy linkage between pursuing simultaneously peace between Israel and the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, and to trying to deal with removing the threat of a nuclear bomb.

There are causal links. The President talked about one of them. It would help, obviously, unite a broad front against Iran if we had peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And conversely, if Iran went nuclear, it would threaten the progress towards peace and destabilize the entire area, and threaten existing peace agreement.

So it's very clear to us. I think we actually - we don't see closely on it, we see exactly eye to eye on this - that we want to move simultaneously and then parallel on two fronts: the front of peace, and the front of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear capability.

On the front of peace, the important thing for me is to resume negotiations as rapidly as possible, and to - and my view is less one of terminology, but one of substance. And I ask myself, what do we end up with? If we end up with another Gaza - the President has described to you there's rockets falling out of Gaza - that is something we don't want to happen, because a terror base next to our cities that doesn't call - recognize Israel's existence and calls for our destruction and asks for our destruction is not arguing peace.

If, however, the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, if they -- if they fight terror, if they educate their children for peace and to a better future, then I think we can come at a substantive solution that allows the two people to live side by side in security and peace and I add prosperity, because I'm a great believer in this.

So I think the terminology will take care of itself if we have the substantive understanding. And I think we can move forward on this. I have great confidence in your leadership, Mr. President, and in your friendship to my country, and in your championing of peace and security. And the answer is, both come together -- peace and security are intertwined. They're inseparable.

And I look forward, Mr. President, to working with you to achieve both.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you, everybody.

U.S. Has Plan to Secure Pakistan Nukes if Country Falls to Taliban

By Rowan Scarborough, FOXNews.com, May 14, 2009

The United States has a detailed plan for infiltrating Pakistan and securing its mobile arsenal of nuclear warheads if it appears the country is about to fall under the control of the Taliban, Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists.

American intelligence sources say the operation would be conducted by Joint Special Operations Command, the super-secret commando unit headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C.

JSOC is the military's chief terrorists hunting squad and has units now operating in Afghanistan on Pakistan's western border. But a secondary mission is to secure foreign nuclear arsenals -- a role for which JSOC operatives have trained in Nevada.

The mission has taken on added importance in recent months, as Islamic extremists have taken territory close to the capital of Islamabad and could destabilize Pakistan's shaky democracy.

"We have plans to secure them ourselves if things get out of hand," said a U.S. intelligence source who has deployed to Afghanistan. "That is a big secondary mission for JSOC in Afghanistan."

The source said JSOC has been updating its mission plan for the day President Obama gives the order to infiltrate Pakistan.

"Small units could seize them, disable them and then centralize them in a secure location," the source said.

A secret Defense Intelligence Agency document first disclosed in 2004 said Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal of 35 weapons. The document said it plans to more than double the arsenal by 2020.

A Pakistani official said the U.S. and his country have had an understanding that if either Usama bin Laden, or his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, is located, American troops and air strikes may be used inside borders to capture or kill them.

What makes the Pakistan mission especially difficult is that the military has its missiles on Soviet-style mobile launchers and rail lines. U.S. intelligence agencies, using satellite photos and communication intercepts, is constantly monitoring their whereabouts. Other warheads are kept in storage. U.S. technical experts have visited Pakistan to advise the government on how to maintain and protect its arsenal.

Also, there are rogue elements inside Pakistan's military and intelligence service who could quickly side with the extremists and make JSOC's mission all the more difficult.

"It's relatively easy to track rail-mounted ones with satellites," said the intelligence source. "Truck- mounted are more difficult. However, they are all relatively close to the capital in areas that the government firmly controls so we don't have to look too far."

JSOC is made up of three main elements: Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs and a high-tech special intelligence unit known as Task Force Orange. JSOC was instrumental in Iraq in finding and killing Abu Musab Zarqawi, the deadly and most prominent Al Qaeda leader in the Middle East.

There is speculation in the intelligence community that a secondary reason for Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal being named the next commander in Afghanistan is that he headed JSOC in 2006-08 and is read-in on its contingency missions in Pakistan.

Adm. Michael Mullen, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, this month said that based on the information he has seen Pakistan's nuclear warheads are safe.

"I remain comfortable that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure, that the Pakistani leadership and in particular the military is very focused on this," he said. "We the United States have invested fairly significantly over the last three years, to work with them, to improve that security. And we're satisfied, very satisfied with that progress. We will continue to do that. And we all recognize obviously the worst downside of -- with respect to Pakistan is that those nuclear weapons come under the control of terrorists. "

Rowan Scarborough is the author of "Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander;" and "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/14/plan-pakistan-teeters-falling-taliban/