Trump envoy accuses Germany of undermining NATO's nuclear deterrent

Source: Reuters

May 14 2020

BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador in Berlin has accused Germany of undermining NATO’s nuclear deterrent, taking aim at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partners after some of their leaders called for nuclear disarmament.

Rolf Muetzenich, parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), called earlier this month for the withdrawal of all U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany - a view that divides his left-leaning party and is not shared by Merkel’s conservatives.

In an opinion piece for German newspaper Die Welt, Ambassador Richard Grenell wrote: “Instead of undermining the solidarity that forms the basis of NATO’s nuclear deterrence, it is now time for Germany to meet its commitments to its allies and to continuously invest in NATO’s nuclear participation.”

“Germany’s political leadership, especially that of the SPD, must now make it clear the federal republic is honouring these commitments and standing by its allies,” added Grenell, who is also U.S. President Donald Trump’s acting national intelligence chief.

The remarks are the latest twist in relations between Berlin and Washington that have often been strained during Trump’s presidency. The president has pressed Germany to raise its defence spending and accused Berlin of being a “captive” of Russia due to its energy reliance.

But Grenell’s comments also come a day after Merkel cited “hard evidence” that Russia was behind a 2015 hacker attack on her Bundestag office — an assault that she said “pains me”.

“The dangers threatening peace in Europe are not an ‘anachronism’, as some would have us believe,” Grenell said.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the deployment of new nuclear-weapon-capable missiles by Russia on the periphery of Europe and new capabilities of China, North Korea and other countries make it clear that the threat is all too present.”

The coalition agreement between Merkel’s conservatives and the SPD cites successful disarmament talks as a prerequisite for the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons stationed in Germany and Europe.

However, the debate over nuclear weapons was sparked by news last month that the Defence Ministry wanted to purchase 45 F-18 fighter jets from Boeing to replace ageing Tornado aircraft and take over the German military’s task of so-called nuclear sharing - under which the planes would carry U.S. nuclear bombs to target in a crisis.

If Germany does not buy new jets, the nuclear sharing would end with the planned retirement of the Tornadoes from service in 2030.

With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran

Source: The Grayzone
April 29 2020
By Gareth Porter

An investigation of supposed Iranian nuclear documents presented in a dramatically staged Netanyahu press conference indicates they were an Israeli fabrication designed to trigger US military conflict with Iran.

President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.”

In early April 2018, Netanyahu briefed Trump privately on the supposed Iranian nuclear archive and secured his promise to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That April 30, Netanyahu took the briefing to the public in a characteristically dramatic live performance in which he claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence services had stolen Iran’s entire nuclear archive from Tehran. “You may well know that Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons…” Netanyahu declared. “Well, tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time.”

However, an investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction and that the documents were fabricated by the Mossad itself.

According to the official Israeli version of events, the Iranians had gathered the nuclear documents from various locations and moved them to what Netanyahu himself described as “a dilapidated warehouse” in southern Tehran. Even assuming that Iran had secret documents demonstrating the development of nuclear weapons, the claim that top secret documents would be held in a nondescript and unguarded warehouse in Central Tehran is so unlikely that it should have raised immediate alarm bells about the story’s legitimacy.

Even more problematic was the claim by a Mossad official to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman that Mossad knew not only in what warehouse its commandos would find the documents but precisely which safes to break into with a blowtorch. The official told Bergman the Mossad team had been guided by an intelligence asset to the few safes in the warehouse contained the binders with the most important documents. Netanyahu bragged publicly that “very few” Iranians knew the location of the archive; the Mossad official told Bergman “only a handful of people” knew.

But two former senior CIA official, both of whom had served as the agency’s top Middle East analyst, dismissed Netanyahu’s claims as lacking credibility in responses to a query from The Grayzone.

According to Paul Pillar, who was National Intelligence Officer for the region from 2001 to 2005, “Any source on the inside of the Iranian national security apparatus would be extremely valuable in Israeli eyes, and Israeli deliberations about the handling of that source’s information presumably would be biased in favor long-term protection of the source.” The Israeli story of how its spies located the documents “does seem fishy,” Pillar said, especially considering Israel’s obvious effort to derive maximum “political-diplomatic mileage” out of the “supposed revelation” of such a well-placed source.

Graham Fuller, a 27-year veteran of the CIA who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia as well as Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, offered a similar assessment of the Israeli claim. “If the Israelis had such a sensitive source in Tehran,” Fuller commented, “they would not want to risk him.” Fuller concluded that the Israelis’ claim that they had accurate knowledge of which safes to crack is “dubious, and the whole thing may be somewhat fabricated.”

No proof of authenticity

Netanyahu’s April 30 slide show presented a series of purported Iranian documents containing sensational revelations that he pointed to as proof of his insistence that Iran had lied about its interest in manufacturing nuclear weapons. The visual aides included a file supposedly dating back to early 2000 or before that detailed various ways to achieve a plan to build five nuclear weapons by mid-2003.

Another document that generated widespread media interest was an alleged report on a discussion among leading Iranian scientists of a purported mid-2003 decision by Iran’s Defense Minister to separate an existing secret nuclear weapons program into overt and covert parts.

Left out of the media coverage of these “nuclear archive” documents was a simple fact that was highly inconvenient to Netanyahu: nothing about them offered a scintilla of evidence that they were genuine. For example, not one contained the official markings of the relevant Iranian agency.

Tariq Rauf, who was head of the Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2001 to 2011, told The Grayzone that these markings were practically ubiquitous on official Iranian files.

“Iran is a highly bureaucratized system,” Rauf explained. “Hence, one would expect a proper book-keeping system that would record incoming correspondence, with date received, action officer, department, circulation to additional relevant officials, proper letterhead, etc.”

But as Rauf noted, the “nuclear archive” documents that were published by the Washington Post bore no such evidence of Iranian government origin. Nor did they contain other markings to indicate their creation under the auspices of an Iranian government agency.

What those documents do have in common is the mark of a rubber stamp for a filing system showing numbers for a “record”, a “file” and a “ledger binder” — like the black binders that Netanyahu flashed to the cameras during his slideshow. But these could have easily been created by the Mossad and stamped on to the documents along with the appropriate Persian numbers.

Forensic confirmation of the documents’ authenticity would have required access to the original documents. But as Netanyahu noted in his April 30, 2018 slide show, the “original Iranian materials” were kept “in a very safe place” – implying that no one would be allowed to have any such access. 

 

Withholding access to outside experts

In fact, even the most pro-Israeli visitors to Tel Aviv have been denied access to the original documents. David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security and Olli Heinonen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies – both stalwart defenders of the official Israeli line on Iranian nuclear policy – reported in October 2018 that they had been given only a “slide deck” showing reproductions or excerpts of the documents.

When a team of six specialists from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs visited Israel in January 2019 for briefings on the archive, they too were offered only a cursory browse of the supposedly original documents. Harvard Professor Matthew Bunn recalled in an interview with this writer that the team had been shown one of the binders containing what were said to be original documents relating to Iran’s relations with the IAEA and had “paged through a bit of it.”

But they were shown no documents on Iran nuclear weapons work. As Bunn admitted, “We weren’t attempting to do any forensic analysis of these documents.”

Typically, it would be the job of the U.S. government and the IAEA to authenticate the documents. Oddly, the Belfer Center delegation reported that the U.S. government and the IAEA had each received only copies of the entire archive, not the original files. And the Israelis were in no hurry to provide the genuine articles: the IAEA did not receive a complete set of documents until November 2019, according to Bunn.

By then, Netanyahu had not only already accomplished the demolition of the Iran nuclear deal; he and Trump’s ferociously hawkish CIA-director Mike Pompeo had maneuvered the president into a policy of imminent confrontation with Tehran. 

The second coming of fake missile drawings

Among the documents Netanyahu flashed on the screen in his April 30, 2018 slide show was a schematic drawing of the missile reentry vehicle of an Iranian Shahab-3 missile, showing what was obviously supposed to represent a nuclear weapon inside.

  

Technical drawing from page 11 of David Albright, Olli Heinonen, and Andrea Stricker’s “Breaking Up and Reorienting Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” published by the Institute for Science and International Security on October 28, 2018.

This drawing was part of a set of eighteen technical drawings of the Shahab-3 reentry vehicle. These were found in a collection of documents secured over the course of several years between the Bush II and Obama administrations by an Iranian spy working for Germany’s BND intelligence service. Or so the Israeli official story went.

In 2013, however, a former senior German Foreign Office official named Karsten Voigt revealed to this writer that the documents had been initially provided to German intelligence by a member of the Mujaheddin E-Khalq (MEK).

The MEK is an exiled Iranian armed opposition organization that had operated under Saddam Hussein’s regime as a proxy against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. It went on to cooperate with the Israeli Mossad beginning in the 1990s, and enjoys a close relationship with Saudi Arabia as well. Today, numerous former US officials are on the MEK’s payroll, acting as de facto lobbyists for regime change in Iran.

Voigt recalled how senior BND officials warned him they did not consider the MEK source or the materials he provided to be credible. They were worried that the Bush administration intended to use the dodgy documents to justify an attack on Iran, just as it exploited the tall tales collected from Iraqi defector codenamed “Curveball” to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

As this writer first reported in 2010, the appearance of the “dunce-cap” shape of the Shahab-3 reentry vehicle in the drawings was a tell-tale sign that the documents were fabricated. Whoever drew those schematic images in 2003 was clearly under the false impression that Iran was relying on the Shahab-3 as its main deterrent force. After all, Iran had announced publicly in 2001 that the Shahab-3 was going into “serial production” and in 2003 that it was “operational.”

But those official claims by Iran were a ruse aimed primarily at deceiving Israel, which had threatened air attacks on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. In fact, Iran’s Defense Ministry was aware that the Shahab-3 did not have sufficient range to reach Israel.

According to Michael Elleman, the author of the most definitive account of the Iranian missile program, as early as 2000, Iran’s Defense Ministry had begun developing an improved version of the Shahab-3 with a reentry vehicle boasting a far more aerodynamic “triconic baby bottle” shape – not the “dunce-cap” of the original.

As Elleman told this writer, however, foreign intelligence agencies remained unaware of the new and improved Shahab missile with a very different shape until it took its first flight test in August 2004. Among the agencies kept in the dark about the new design was Israel’s Mossad. That explains why the false documents on redesigning the Shahab-3 – the earliest dates of which were in 2002, according to an unpublished internal IAEA document – showed a reentry vehicle design that Iran had already discarded.

The role of the MEK in passing the massive tranche of supposed secret Iranian nuclear documents to the BND and its hand-in-glove relationship with the Mossad leaves little room for doubt that the documents introduced to Western intelligence 2004 were, in fact, created by the Mossad.

For the Mossad, the MEK was a convenient unit for outsourcing negative press about Iran which it did not want attributed directly to Israeli intelligence. To enhance the MEK’S credibility in the eyes foreign media and intelligence agencies, Mossad passed the coordinates of Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility to the MEK in 2002. Later, it provided to the MEK personal information such as the passport number and home telephone number of Iranian physics professor Mohsen Fakhrizadh, whose name appeared in the nuclear documents, according to the co-authors of a best-selling Israeli book on the Mossad’s covert operations.

By trotting out the same discredited technical drawing depicting the wrong Iranian missile reentry vehicle – a trick he had previously deployed to create the original case for accusing Iran of covert nuclear weapons development – the Israeli prime minister showed how confident he was in his ability to hoodwink Washington and the Western corporate media.

Netanyahu’s multiple levels of deception have been remarkably successful, despite having relied on crude stunts that any diligent news organization should have seen through. Through his manipulation of foreign governments and media, he has been able to maneuver Donald Trump and the United States into a dangerous process of confrontation that has brought the US to the precipice of military conflict with Iran.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

Putin on new US nuclear stance: If attacked, Russia will use nukes

https://www.rt.com/news/420171-nukes-us-russia-attack/

Unprecedented Nuclear Strikes of the Invincible Army: A Realistic Assessment of North Korea’s Operational Nuclear Capability

Πηγή: Nautilus Institute
By Peter Hayes and Scott Bruce
September 22, 2011


This report was adapted from “Unprecedented Nuclear Strikes: Translating North Korea’s Nuclear Threats into Constrained Operational Reality,” in Gregory Moore, ed, North Korean Nuclear Operationality: Implications for Regional Security and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).



Nautilus invites your contributions to this forum, including any responses to this report.

--------------------

CONTENTS

I. Introduction

II. Report by Peter Hayes and Scott Bruce

III. References

IV. Nautilus invites your responses


I. Introduction

Peter Hayes, Professor, RMIT University and Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute and Scott Bruce, Director of the Nautilus Institute, San Francisco assess that North Korea's options for a nuclear strike are severely constrained—so much so that the only credible use of the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal is to detonate a bomb within North Korea itself to slow down or to stop an invasion in the context of an all-out war with the United States and South Korea. They conclude that, "At this stage, North Korea’s outrageous nuclear threats against targets outside its borders are not backed up by actual capabilities. Countering the North’s rhetorical threat with more nuclear extended deterrence raises tensions instead of addressing the underlying problem of nuclear insecurity. Ultimately, the only way forward is to re-engage the North, and identify pathways that create confidence and reduce the mutual perception of the threat of massive destruction, whether by conventional or nuclear weapons."

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Nautilus Institute. Readers should note that Nautilus seeks a diversity of views and opinions on significant topics in order to identify common ground.

II. Report by Peter Hayes and Scott Bruce

- “Unprecedented Nuclear Strikes of the Invincible Army: A Realistic Assessment of North Korea’s Operational Nuclear Capability”

By Peter Hayes and Scott Bruce

North Korea’s KCNA news often threatens to launch “unprecedented nuclear strikes.” In reality, the North Korean nuclear program has limited offensive capability. [1] Just how limited is a matter of dispute between well informed observers and analysts. South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, for example noted recently that it was “possible” that North Korea had miniaturized a nuclear warhead as there had been, in his opinion, “enough time for them to have succeeded in miniaturization.” [2] He based his statement on how long it took other states to miniaturize a nuclear warhead, not on an assessment of North Korea’s actual nuclear capability. Thus, in the absence of data, North Korea is attributed with capacities that it may—or may not—have. Additionally, even if North Korea has miniaturized a nuclear warhead from a big, heavy and crude nuclear explosive device, the DPRK lacks an effective delivery mechanism and therefore has a limited ability to offensively use nuclear weapons.

We assess that the North is capable of operationally using nuclear weapons, but its options for a nuclear strike are severely constrained. We conclude that the only credible use of the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal is to detonate a bomb within North Korea itself to slow down or to stop an invasion in the context of an all-out war.[3] Aside from this nuclear-use scenario, conventional weapons predominate in realistic evaluations of deterrence and war-fighting in the Korean Peninsula.

North Korean Declaratory Nuclear Posture

The stated purpose of the North Korean nuclear program has changed over the last decade. [4] North Korean statements that once described the nuclear program as a tool to secure the state against outside aggression, now describe it as a stabilizing force in the region.

During and after the collapse of the Agreed Framework in 2002, KCNA statements described the nuclear program as a substitute for a security guarantee from the United States. If North Korea’s security concerns were addressed, they argued, there would be no need for the nuclear program. An October 2002 statement is particularly telling:
“The settlement of all problems with the DPRK, a small country, should be based on removing any threat to its sovereignty and right to existence. There may be negotiations or the use of deterrent force to be consistent with this basis, but the DPRK wants the former, as far as possible.”
By 2005 this language had changed. North Korea declared itself to be in possession of nuclear weapons and began to depict its nuclear program as a regional stabilizer which prevented war by countering the US nuclear threat to the region. [6] KCNA statements even suggested that North Korea’s nuclear program benefitted South Korea by raising a nuclear umbrella over the entire Korean Peninsula! [7]

By 2010 North Korea had not only openly threatened to use it nuclear weapons for the first time, [8] but made the first real declaratory statement of its nuclear posture in response to the US nuclear posture review:
“The mission of the nuclear forces of the DPRK is to deter and repel aggression and attack against the country and the nation until the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the world is realized. The DPRK is invariably maintaining the policy not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states or threaten them with nuclear weapons as long as they do not join the act of invading or attacking us in conspiracy with nuclear weapons states.” [9]
Although these statements should be taken very seriously, particularly by South Korea and Japan who are implicated in both via their alliance with the United States, we should not assume that North Korea has the operational military capability to back up this declaratory posture and the stated nuclear threats.

North Korean Technical Nuclear Capacity

When it comes to nuclear threats against the United States, South Korea, and Japan, North Korea vastly overstates its ability to strike. North Korea is estimated to have enough fissile material to produce between five and ten nuclear weapons, depending on the size of the bombs, and the state’s efficiency in creating and reprocessing plutonium, and the amount used in its two tests to date. [10] This means that the use of a single nuclear weapon would exhaust 10-20 percent of the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal. At this time, the DPRK has not resumed operations of the Yongbyon nuclear facility and is not producing additional plutonium. North Korea’s uranium enrichment program, revealed late last year, could be used to enrich uranium for a bomb, but is currently producing low enriched uranium to fuel its under-construction pilot light water reactor—assuming that its declared intention to complete and operate such a reactor is implemented as announced. [11] The limited supply of fissile material means that North must deploy its nuclear weapons in a highly strategic manner and only for the most valuable, most certain returns.

Delivery by Air

North Korea lacks a credible delivery option for its nuclear weapons. North Korean attempts to launch satellites on booster rockets in 1998, 2006, and 2009 used much the same technology needed to launch long-range missiles. All three tests failed. [12] It takes the United States scores of tests to ensure that a new missile design works, and may be deployed with sufficient confidence that it is operationally effective. [13]North Korea needs many more tests of all the systems, independently and together, at a much higher rate than one every few years, to be confident that its missiles would not fail on the ground or in the boost phase, let alone even approach a target with sufficient accuracy to destroy it. [14] In short, the North Korea’s long range missile program is not a credible threat to the United States or anyone else for that matter, and is unlikely to be one for some time.

Short and medium-range missiles have been tested but are not accurate enough to effectively target enemy forces in a combat scenario. The DPRK’s medium-range No-dong missiles cannot be counted on to hit a set target. [15] Similarly the DPRK’s short range SCUD missiles are highly inaccurate, particularly the mobile SCUD C models with an unreliable guidance system. [16] The SCUD B missiles have only a 50 percent chance of landing within 1 km of their intended target, making them unsuitable for attacking military units. [17]The unreliability of North Korea’s missile systems, the limited amount of fissile material, the lack of testing of the components of an integrated nuclear warhead and missile system, and the severity of any response to nuclear next-use by North Korea means that a DPRK leader is highly unlikely to rely on missiles to deliver a nuclear attack with a combined very small probability of success.

North Korea has only a few bombers capable of delivering a large, crude nuclear weapon to a target. The only nuclear-capable bombers in North Korea’s arsenal are the Ilyushin Il- 28 “Beagle” and the Chinese H-5 variants. [18] The Beagle was retired by the Soviets in the 1980s, but still is in active use in North Korea. Although the Beagle is technically capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, it is hard to imagine a North Korean bomber not being shot down before it reached its intended target. In a war, a North Korea bomber flying toward the DMZ would be targeted and shot down rapidly by ROK anti-aircraft weapons. Even a bolt-out-of-the-blue surprise attack is not a credible scenario due to the Il-28’s slow speed and low maximum altitude. [19] North Korea is highly unlikely to risk its limited stock of fissile material by putting it in a plane with almost no chance of actually delivering the bomb to the target.

How to Save a Quarter of a Trillion Dollars

Πηγή: International News Magazine
By Lawrence Wittner

Tuesday, 06 September 2011

BASEL (IDN) - In the midst of the current stampede to slash federal spending, Congress might want to take a look at two unnecessary (and dangerous) “national security” programs that, if cut, would save the United States over a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade.

The first of these is the Obama administration’s plan to spend at least $185 billion in the next ten years to “modernize” the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons arsenal. At present, the U.S. government possesses approximately 8,500 nuclear warheads, and it is hard to imagine that this country would be safer from attack if it built more nuclear weapons or “improved” those it already possesses. 

Indeed, President Barack Obama has declared — both on the 2008 campaign trail and as President – that he is committed to building a world without nuclear weapons. This seems like a perfectly sensible position — one favored by most nations and, as polls show, most people (including most people in the United States). Therefore, the administration should be working on securing further disarmament agreements — not on upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal in preparation for future nuclear confrontations and nuclear wars.

In late June of this year (2011), Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wrote: “It is deeply troubling that the U.S. has allocated $185 billion to augment its nuclear stockpile over the next decade, on top of the ordinary annual nuclear-weapons budget of more than $50 billion.”

Not only has the International Court of Justice affirmed that nations “are legally obliged to negotiate in good faith for the complete elimination of their nuclear forces,” but “every dollar invested in bolstering a country’s nuclear arsenal is a diversion of resources from its schools, hospitals, and other social services, and a theft from the millions around the globe who go hungry or are denied access to basic medicines.” He concluded: “Instead of investing in weapons of mass annihilation, governments must allocate resources towards meeting human needs.”

Another project worth eliminating is the national missile defense program. Thanks to recent Congressional generosity, this Reagan era carryover, once derided by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy as “Star Wars,” is currently slated for an increase in federal spending, which will provide it with $8.6 billion in fiscal 2012.

The vast and expensive missile defense program — costing about $150 billion since its inception — has thus far produced remarkably meager results. Indeed, no one knows whether it will work. As an investigative article in Bloomberg News recently reported: “It has never been tested under conditions simulating a real attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile deploying sophisticated decoys and countermeasures. The system has flunked 7 of 15 more limited trials, yet remains exempted from normal Pentagon oversight.”

Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, reported that his committee was “deeply concerned” about the test failures of the nation’s missile defense program. He also implied that, given the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the United States might not need such a system to deter its potential enemies, which have a far inferior missile capability. “The threat we have now is either a distant threat or is not a realistic threat,” he remarked.

Why, then, do other nations — for example, Russia — fiercely object to the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system near their borders? Perhaps they fear that, somehow, U.S. scientists and engineers will finally figure out how to build a system, often likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet, that makes the United States invulnerable while they are left vulnerable. Or perhaps they think that, one day, some U.S. government officials might believe that the United States actually is invulnerable and launch a first strike against their own nations. In any case, their favorite solution to the problem posed by U.S. national missile defense — building more nuclear-armed missiles of their own — significantly undermines the security of the United States.

Projecting the current annual cost of this program over the next decade, the United States would save $86 billion by eliminating it.

Thus, by scrapping plans for nuclear weapons “modernization” and for national missile defense — programs that are both useless and provocative — the United States would save $271 billion (well over a quarter of a trillion dollars) in the next ten years. Whether used to balance the budget or to fund programs for jobs, healthcare, education, and the environment, this money would go a long way toward resolving some of the nation’s current problems.

*Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. This article first appeared on http://peaceandhealthblog.com. It is based on his talk about the impact of civil society on nuclear policy at IPPNW's World Congress in Basel in August. 2011 His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

Iran's "nuclear partner" Russia seeks to revive global talks

Πηγή: Reuters
By Robin Pomeroy

Mon Aug 15, 2011 3:35am EDT

Russia will look to revive nuclear talks between Iran and the world's biggest economic and military powers this week, hoping its special relationship with Tehran can help jolt back to life negotiations that some analysts consider "dead in the water."

Presidential Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev is due to meet his Iranian counterpart and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Monday and is expected to raise a Russian plan to restart the talks that collapsed in January.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. President Barack Obama in July of Moscow's "step-by-step" approach under which Iran could address questions about its nuclear program and be rewarded with a gradual easing of sanctions imposed by countries that fear Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons, a charge it denies.

With Israel and Washington both keeping open the possibility of launching pre-emptive strikes on Iran to stop it getting nuclear weapons, the negotiations are a possible way of avoiding what analysts say would be highly risky military action.

But after the failure of the last talks, between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, plus Germany (known as the EU3+3 or P5+1), in Istanbul in January, few analysts expect a breakthrough.

Russia backed a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Tehran in June 2010 but has criticized tighter measures imposed unilaterally by the United States and the European Union and emphasized its opposition to military action.

So Tehran might be more receptive to an approach from Moscow than one from the West -- the E3+3's delegation is led by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

"It's certainly easier for Iran to respond to a Russian gambit than to Western pressure. The E3+3 negotiating efforts with Iran are stuck dead in the water," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"If Russia's plan can get Iran to the negotiating table, then great. Talks have to start somehow."

PARTNER

Not only is Moscow not part of the Western alliance Iran sees as its greatest enemy, it is also involved in developing part of the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, as builder of its first atomic power plant at Bushehr on the Gulf coast.

"Russia has maintained a long-standing relationship with Iran, effectively it is a partner in Iran's nuclear program through its construction of the Bushehr nuclear plant, and has never shown the slightest ambition of changing the government of Iran," said Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii.

But, Farhi said, the "step-by-step" approach mentioned by Lavrov did not appear to be substantively new, and it looked less, not more, likely to work that it had before.

"Tying Iran's step-by-step moves to reduction of sanctions is something that has not worked and it works even less now that so many sanctions against Iran are unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. Congress and cannot be negotiated by representatives of executive branches in both countries."

While Ahmadinejad maintains the sanctions are having no impact, other officials have started admitting some of the measures -- particularly ones that restrict Iran's access to foreign banks -- are hurting the economy.

Any new talks are likely to focus on concerns about Iran's nuclear enrichment which a U.N. Security Council resolution requires it to stop but which Tehran says it is entitled to do as a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and says it is enriching uranium for electricity production and medical applications.

But its decision last year to raise the level of enrichment from the 3.5 percent purity needed for normal power plant fuel to 20 percent worried countries that saw it as a significant step toward the 90 percent needed for bombs.

Far from reducing its uranium enrichment program, Tehran has stepped it up, announcing in June it would triple its production capacity of higher grade fuel and shift that work to an underground bunker that would be less vulnerable to a military strike.

"Iran will try to persuade Russia and China to accept its precondition of accepting its right to enrichment before sitting down at the table," said Fitzpatrick. "Russia and China don't see eye-to-eye with the U.S. and the Europeans, and ... Iran will seek to exploit the differences."

While Tehran has welcomed Russian know-how in developing nuclear power, it has become increasingly frustrated by successive delays in the project which was initially started by Germany's Siemens in 1975, but has yet to start working.

Some Iranians suspect the latest delays might be a deliberate attempt by Russia to gain leverage over Tehran, a view shared by Russian analyst Fyodor Lukyanov.

"I can imagine that there are some real technical problems, but also since this is the only means now at Russia's disposal to influence Iran maybe Russia is trying to push Iran toward a more constructive position by finding new 'technical problems'," said Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs.

Russia has also declined to deliver an S-300 air defense system Iran had ordered, winning applause from Israel which said the arms could help fend off any future strike but infuriating Tehran. Medvedev banned export in September, saying it would violate the expanded U.N. sanctions.

Analysis: Al-Qaida’s ‘Doomsday’ revenge?

Πηγή: The Jerusalem Post
By YONAH ALEXANDER AND MILTON HOENIG
08/12/2011 00:55


It is a truism that the vice of revenge has motivated humans since the dawn of history. The August 6 downing of a NATO helicopter in Afghanistan killing 30 American troops is perhaps the latest demonstration of a Taliban proxy retaliation to avenge the spectacular loss of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida’s legendary founder. The casualties included 22 Navy SEALs from Team Six, the secretive unit behind the daring raid that killed the leader on May 2 in Pakistan.

While it is premature to reach any definitive conclusion on the rationale for the Taliban’s deadliest attack, the frightening prospect is the new al-Qaida will seek to retaliate directly against the US in a big way with weapons of mass destruction. During the Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington, DC in April 2010, US President Barack Obama expressed his concerns about a “doomsday” scenario. He warned that al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations “are in the process of trying to secure nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, and would have no compunction at using them.”

Now, four months after the Abbottabad operation and the death of the notorious mastermind of 9/11, the lingering question that still remains is al-Qaida’s worst revenge yet to come? Two reasons account for this likely eventuality. First is the persistent motivation of deep hatred towards the US and its friends and allies. For instance, in February 1998, bin Laden pronounced a fatwah (religious ruling) that Muslims should kill Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world they could be found, and in the following May, he stated in a declaration titled “The Nuclear Bomb of Islam,” that it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to attack the “enemies of God.”

Second is the network’s unending effort to obtain an unconventional capability. Bin Laden’s operatives have relentlessly searched for such weapons and the materials to build them. The lure of engaging in a successful WMD operation as a worthy follow-up to 9/11 still persists as a “divine force.” The sights are definitely on something big. For example, in 2003, New York officials were alerted to a possible hydrogen cyanide gas attack by al-Qaida operatives on the New York subway system.

It didn’t materialize, supposedly called off by Ayman Zawahiri, at the time al-Qaida’s second in command, for “something better.”

Now, once again, the threat of terrorist attack on nuclear power plants is in the spotlight after the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission asked nuclear reactor operators for additional proof of their ability to withstand acts of terrorism from the outside or perpetrated by insiders that may have unforeseen consequences.

Additionally, al-Qaida’s most likely option for a “nuclear” attack is setting off a radiological dirty bomb in a Western city that would contaminate only a small area with limited casualties but would cause widespread fear and panic, especially in the financial markets.

In the face of al-Qaida’s looming potential for unconventional revenge over the death of bin Laden, it is critical for the US and its allies to immediately strengthen their intelligence mechanisms and strategic partnerships. In the longer term, they must also employ “soft” elements in the restless Arab and Muslim worlds, including support of economic and social developments, assistance in creating job opportunities, help in reducing religious radicalism and promotion of tolerance, democratic values and civil society engagement.

Turkey, NATO & and Nuclear Sharing:Prospects after NATO's Lisbon Summit

April, 2011

Conclusion

Against this background, there is a good argument that Turkey should request that the United States drawdown nuclear weapons that are deployed on its territory.
However, Turkish governments have so far been cool to this idea and have taken no concrete steps that would suggest otherwise.
The U.S. nuclear weapons may in any case be sent back sooner than most people might expect, and a proactive decision by Turkey could prove beneficial by setting a very valuable and meaningful precedent for the countries in its neighborhood. Turkey’s profile, which is increasing in the Middle Eastern public domain as well as among the political and military authorities, may help enhance its image in the region. Now is the time to make bold decisions.

Turkey Nato

Why China and Russia Balk at Sanctions against North Korea and Iran?

By Ted Galen Carpenter

"So why have Beijing and Moscow been so reluctant to see strong sanctions imposed on the two proliferators? The reasons are most apparent regarding China’s position toward North Korea. Although maintaining the nonnuclear status quo on the Korean Peninsula may be a significant Chinese objective, it is not the most important one. Beijing’s top priority is to preserve the North Korean state as a buffer between China and the U.S. sphere of influence in Northeast Asia. As North Korea’s economy has languished in recent years, China has worried that the North Korean regime might implode, much as the East German system did in 1989. Such a development would lead to the sudden emergence on China’s border of a unified Korea allied to the United States, probably with the continued presence of U.S. military bases. A North Korean implosion would also likely create a massive flow of refugees into China."

npu_march2010

US tried to stop Pakistan nuclear drive: documents

Pakistan Hatf IV (Shaheen 1) medium-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile being launched © AFP/ISPR/File

Πηγή: Onepakistan
AFP 27 July 2011 Wednesday | 02:04:00

WASHINGTON - The United States waged a secret diplomatic campaign in the 1970s to prevent Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons by pressing countries to control exports, declassified documents said.

In remarks with striking parallels to current US debates, officials in President Jimmy Carter's administration voiced fear about Pakistan's trajectory and tried both pressure and aid incentives to seek a change in its behavior.

In a secret November 1978 memo, then secretary of state Cyrus Vance instructed US diplomats in Western Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan to warn governments that Pakistan or its covert agents were seeking nuclear material.

Vance acknowledged that Pakistan was motivated by concerns over historic rival India. But he voiced alarm that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, before being deposed as prime minister in a coup, said that Pakistan would share nuclear weapons around the Islamic world.

"We believe it is critical to stability in the region and to our non-proliferation objectives to inhibit Pakistan from moving closer to the threshold of nuclear explosive capability," Vance wrote, the year before the overthrow of Iran's pro-Western shah and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Britain was waging a parallel campaign, Vance said. Britain banned the export of inverters -- which can be used in centrifuges that produce highly enriched uranium -- and urged other countries to follow suit, Vance said.

Most countries sounded sympathetic, though West Germany -- a major industrial exporter -- insisted it already had adequate safeguards, memos said.

Pakistan nonetheless pursued nuclear weapons and detonated a bomb in 1998 in response to a test by India. The Pakistani scientist who built the bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had access to sensitive technology in the Netherlands.

Khan admitted in 2004 that he ran a nuclear black-market selling secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Khan, who is considered a hero by many Pakistanis, later retracted his remarks and in 2009 was freed from house arrest.

The declassified documents were released after requests by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

William Burr, a scholar at the National Security Archive, said that a US report from 1978 that could shed light on Khan's activities was missing and that he feared it had been destroyed.

The released documents said Pakistan wanted to maintain work on a reprocessing plant. France initially supported the project but backed out in 1978 due to fears that it would be used to produce weapons.

Then deputy secretary of state Warren Christopher in a secret memo urged a "low profile" on France's decision, saying it would "severely embarrass" France's then president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and impede future cooperation if it appeared he was responding to US pressure.

Christopher also said he was urging the US Congress to consider economic assistance and military sales to Pakistan, which was considered a US ally in the Cold War when India tilted toward the Soviet Union.

Assistance to Pakistan can "perhaps relieve some of the tension and sense of isolation which give Pakistan greater incentive to move covertly in the nuclear field," wrote Christopher, who later served as secretary of state.

The United States eventually pursued a major assistance package for Pakistan as part of a partnership against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The United States later cut aid due to nuclear concerns -- only to resume it again as it sought Pakistan's cooperation in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

President Barack Obama's administration recently suspended about one-third of its $2.7 billion annual defense aid to Pakistan to put pressure for more action against Islamic militants.

Gaddafi ‘regrets he stopped developing nuclear weapons’

 "If we had a nuclear bomb no one would have attacked us."

Πηγή: BLACK AND WHITE CAT

Thursday, March 31, 2011


When the United States and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003, a number of people pointed out what a terrible message this sent to the world about nuclear weapons. Iraq had dismantled its WMD programmes and it was invaded. North Korea had developed a rudimentary nuclear device and got negotiations. So, if you don’t want to be invaded, build a bomb.

The champions of Bush and Blair’s policy, however, claimed they were vindicated when Libya quickly offered to dismantle its WMD programmes. Gaddafi was welcomed with open arms, by western governments and by many of the same pundits who now want his blood.

So, once again, the message is: get hold of a nuclear weapon, or one day they’ll be coming for you too. According to an interview in the Russian magazine Arguments and Facts, that’s precisely what Gaddafi is saying now. I’ve translated the interview below, but we’ll come to that in a minute.

First, for anyone who still believes the United States and Britain didn’t know Iraq had no WMD, here’s what the British diplomat Carne Ross told John Pilger in the documentary The War You Don’t See:

I remember before I was sent to New York in late ‘97 I did the round of departments in London, saying to them, “OK, I’m going to New York, I’m going to be doing Iraq, what do I need to know?”

And I went to see non-proliferation department in the Foreign Office and I was expecting a briefing on the vast piles of weapons that we still thought Iraq possessed. And the desk officer sort of looked at me slightly sheepishly and said, “Well actually we don’t think there’s anything. We don’t think there’s anything in Iraq.”

I said, “That’s extraordinary. I mean, I thought we had sanctions because we thought Iraq had large amounts of weapons.”

He said, “No, no. The justification for sanctions is basically that we have unanswered questions about how those stocks were destroyed in the past.”

They knew in 1997 that Iraq had destroyed its WMD, but they kept the sanctions in place anyway. Then they invaded anyway. It was a convenient excuse. So could we stop now with the claims that Saddam “fooled us”?

Anyway, here’s a rough translation of the interview which Arguments and Facts (AIF) says it conducted by telephone with a man they say is close to Gaddafi and demanded anonymity. (The original Russian is here; and there’s a Chinese translation here if you prefer.)


AIF: - Does Gaddafi understand the position he’s in?

- Of course. We’re all realists here and no one is expecting a miracle. Our main goal right now is to hang on in Tripoli for a few months, despite the bombing. Another important thing is that Gaddafi should have everything he needs for long-term defence.

AIF: - Weapons?

- No. Money. Soldiers fight better when they’re paid.

AIF: - And then what?

- We’ll see.

AIF: - Is it true that Libya’s aircraft have all been destroyed?

- We can’t compete with NATO’s military power. That’s our fault - after the West lifted sanctions we should have immediately bought the latest Russian weapons. We signed the contract, but we delayed its execution for a long time. But it’s not a complete disaster. Every day CNN says Libya no longer has any air defences and then shows us firing at enemy aircraft. Where’s the logic in that?

AIF: - Yugoslavia resisted NATO for three months, but it had to surrender in the end.

- Gaddafi won’t give up. He saw that Milosevic died in prison and Saddam was hanged. He’s got nothing to lose - so Muammar will fight to the end.

AIF: - How long for? This week the rebels have occupied three cities.

- They haven’t taken the capital. Everyone who is now fighting for Gaddafi knows that if we lose we will be hanged from lamp posts. We have no choice but to fight back. Remember - when the riots started in February, they kept saying: “Gaddafi’s finished. He’s fled to Venezuela.” But Muammar crushed the rebels for two weeks. If it wasn’t for the Americans, we would have already taken Benghazi. Who knows how things will turn out? But Libya can’t hold out against a ground invasion.

AIF: - Do you think NATO has achieved success in the war against Libya?

- It’s funny - the best air forces of the most powerful countries in the world can’t deal with the army of a country with a population of six million in a week. This isn’t war. It’s a farce. Once again the West has shown its contempt for all decency. Protecting “freedom fighters”? Nonsense. In 2008, a small country started brutally killing insurgents. A big country stood up against that. Everyone condemned this country for its “aggression”. You don’t know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about the war between Russia and Georgia. But when a similar situation in appears in Libya, the Americans immediately take the side of the rebels. Why didn’t they bomb Tbilisi? It’s all lies. Gaddafi is accused of killing 8,000 people, but nobody has shown even twenty corpses on television, let alone mass graves. Not a single Libyan fled to Europe because of “Gaddafi’s atrocities” but now thousands are fleeing NATO’s bombing.

AIF: - Does Gaddafi regret anything now?

- Only that he stopped developing nuclear weapons. Everyone’s afraid to touch North Korea now. If we had a nuclear bomb no one would have attacked us.