SANCTIONS ARE DOOMED TO FAILURE
EVEN AFTER THEY PASS THE VOTE IN THE UN!
ONLY AN ATTACK ON FACILITIES WILL SLOW IRAN
AND IT’S 50/50 AS TO WHETHER AN ATTACK WILL OCCUR!
February 23, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin Jerusalem Post Article
‘New sanctions on Iran are imminent’
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST
February 22, 2008
The latest UN report on Iran’s nuclear program should pave the way for passage next week of a new UN Security Council resolution tightening sanctions on Teheran, the US ambassador to the UN said Friday.
The report released Friday by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium in defiance of repeated UN Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend the uranium centrifuge program, which could produce both civilian nuclear fuel and the material for a nuclear bomb.
“They’re increasing their capabilities,” US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad noted.
“Not only have the number of centrifuges increased, but they’re working on a second-generation, if you like, a more capable centrifuge.
“Things are getting worse in terms of the enrichment part.”
Britain and France introduced a council resolution on Thursday – with support from the United States, Russia, China and Germany – to expand and toughen travel bans and the freezing of assets for more Iranian officials linked to the nuclear effort.
For the first time it would also ban trade with Iran in so-called dual-use items, those with both nuclear and other applications, and authorize inspections of shipments to and from Iran that are suspected of carrying prohibited goods.
Meeting with reporters over lunch at a Manhattan hotel, Khalilzad said the major Security Council powers planned early next week to discuss the resolution with four council members that have expressed reservations about further Iran sanctions – Libya, Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia.
Sounding confident of approval, he said a vote would be scheduled for next Friday.
He said he believed “some were hoping the IAEA report would eliminate the need for the next resolution” – by assessing Iranian cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog more positively.
“The IAEA report does give us very important points to make,” Khalilzad said. “They (Iran) did not come clean.”
He was referring to Teheran’s dismissal of information supplied by the US and its allies said to show Iranian work on a missile re-entry vehicle, high explosives testing and conversion of uranium compounds, all of which might indicate nuclear weapons development.
The Iranians rejected the purported evidence as fabrications.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Iran failed to cooperate fully with UN investigators and left key questions about its nuclear past unanswered.
Burns said he will meet Monday with diplomats from world powers that have twice punished the oil-rich nation over its nuclear drive, and wants the UN Security Council to approve new penalties soon afterward.
“We find Iranian performance to be lacking,” Burns told reporters at the State Department. “As a result of this it’s our firm belief that there is all the more reason now for the Security Council to pass a third sanctions resolution.”
The US wants the Security Council to begin debate next week. Burns would not predict how long debate would last, and would not rule out that the current package of proposed punishments could change.
The proposed package slightly expands and strengthens previous penalties, but is weaker than the United States had wanted.
Begin DEBKAfile Report
Iran’s “covert efforts to weaponize nuclear work” cited in new IAEA report
February 22, 2008, 6:56 PM (GMT+02:00)
Iran was avoiding meaningful responses to intelligence pointing to covert efforts to “weaponize” nuclear work by linking uranium processing, high explosives tests and design work on a missile warhead, the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog said Friday, Feb. 22, in a report on which a decision on a third round of UN Security Council sanctions depends.
According to Reuters, the agency said the (weaponization) studies are a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program. “Iran had shown new openness” about earlier nuclear advances, said the report, “but not enough to prove its program is not geared to making bombs.”
The report also confirmed Iran was testing technology that “could give it the means to enrich uranium much faster – in further defiance of demands to halt all sensitive nuclear activity or be hit with wider U.N. sanctions.
Without some clarity on the nature of the alleged (weaponization) studies, and without implementation of the Additional Protocol (wide-ranging, snap inspections)…” there could be “no confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the program, the agency concludes.
Wednesday, Feb. 20, Mohammad Mohaddessin, of the exiled Iranian National Council of Resistance, warned that the Iranian regime had accelerated its nuclear weapons program, including the production of nuclear warheads.
He told a news conference in Brussels that Tehran had established its first command and control center to work on a nuclear bomb and was setting up a center to produce warheads southeast of the capital.
DEBKAfile: The council’s previous allegations of Iran’s covert nuclear activities, including the Natanz site, have been borne out.
Begin Excerpts from Jerusalem Center for Public Information – Daily Alert
February 22, 2008
Excerpt 1 – New York Times
Security Council Weighs New Sanctions on Iran – Warren Hoge
The UN Security Council on Thursday began formal consideration of a new resolution introduced by Britain and France on Iran’s nuclear program that imposes restrictions on cargo to and from Iran, travel bans, the freezing of assets for people involved in the program, and tightened monitoring of Iranian financial institutions.
The Council has twice voted unanimously to impose sanctions
to stop Iran from enriching uranium, in December 2006 and March 2007.
This third measure tightens and extends earlier ones but does not significantly broaden them.
The text has the backing of the five permanent members of the Council. Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador, said, “The assessment is that this is the best you can get, given the present composition of the Security Council.” (New York Times)
Excerpt 2 – Der Spiegel – Germany
Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for a Bomb by Year’s End
Markus Becker
New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year. When the U.S. released a new National Intelligence Estimate last year, it seemed as though the danger of a mullah-bomb had passed.
The report claimed that Tehran mothballed its nuclear weapons program in autumn 2003.
As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC) in Ispra, Italy, set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the U.S. intelligence community. For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating at 100% efficiency. Were that the case, Iran could already have the 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium necessary for an atomic device by the end of this year.
Another scenario assumed a much lower efficiency – just 25%. But even then, Iran would have produced enough uranium by the end of 2010. (Der Spiegel-Germany)
Excerpt 3 – Associated Press
Iran Says God Protects Nuclear Program
Nasser Karimi
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday that God would punish Iranians if they do not support the country’s nuclear program, state radio reported. (AP)
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