RUSSIA SIGNS S-300 MISSILE CONTRACT

"Russia has signed a contract to supply Iran with sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missiles... the first batch could be delivered 18 months after Iran has specified the S-300 type that it wants... The $800m (£545m) contract, signed in 2007, was frozen by Russia in 2010 because of the international sanctions. President Vladimir Putin unfroze it in April... The S-300 can be used against multiple targets including jets, or to shoot down other missiles. The S-300B4 variant - delivered to the Russian armed forces last year - can shoot down any medium-range missile in the world today, flies at five times the speed of sound and has a range of 400km (248 miles)... the missiles could be used to protect Iranian nuclear sites from air strikes... a defensive weapon."
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34767012

ISRAEL ALMOST ATTACKED IRAN THREE TIMES

"... former Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, revealed new details to his biographers about how close Israel came to striking Iran’s military facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012... in 2010, the military chief of staff said Israel lacked the “operational capability”; in 2011, two key ministers waffled at the last minute; and in 2012, the timing did not work out because of a joint United States-Israel military exercise..."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/world/middleeast/israel-came-close-to-attacking-iran-ex-defense-minister-says.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=1

RUSSIA LIFTS BAN ON SENDING S-300 ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM

"... Putin signed a decree lifting Russia's own ban on the delivery of S-300 anti-missile rocket system to Iran... after Moscow canceled a corresponding contract in 2010 under pressure from the West... "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/13/russia-iran-missiles_n_7053940.html

2007 BACKGROUND:  S-300 MISSILES ADDED TO NUCLEAR SITE DEFENSES

"... (Iran) just signed a contract for the supply of another Russian anti-air weapon, the highly sophisticated S-300, rated the most effective killer of ballistic missiles on the market... Moscow has designed the multi-layer air defense system to make Iran proof against Israel’s Air Force and the ballistic missiles in its armory...  the S-300 system uniquely zaps high-flying, medium-range ballistic missiles of the type which is the backbone of Israel’s surface missile units at a distance of 1-40 km. Together, they lend Iran air superiority over any missiles and aircraft. Another of S-300’s significant features is its advanced guidance method which relies on a single phased array radar to trace missiles in the air. This reduces its deployment time to five minutes; secondly, the missiles are sealed rounds and require no maintenance over their lifetime..."

--DEBKAfile (Israel), December 26, 2007

http://www.debka.com/index.php

URANIUM STOCKPILE NOW INADEQUATE TO MAKE BOMB

"... the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that... Iran’s most sensitive nuclear stockpile – uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent . . . had declined significantly for the first time in four years and was now well below the amount needed for one bomb... Since halting this enrichment under last year’s deal, Iran has diluted some of the material to lower-level uranium and converted some into a less proliferation-sensitive oxide form… Iran lacks the capacity to take the 19.25% enriched uranium up to bomb grade, and there is no evidence that it has solved the many thorny technical problems involved in bomb-making..." 

http://www.juancole.com/2014/02/breakthrough-ignoring-stockpile.html

JEWISH HOSPITAL IN TEHRAN

"Dr. Morsadegh, the director of Tehran's only Jewish hospital,… has never thought about leaving the Islamic Republic, for the simple reason that Iran is his home. "I speak English, I pray in Hebrew, but I think in Persian," said Dr. Morsadegh, a surgeon who is also a member of Parliament. "I am Iranian. Iranian-Jewish."… last week the government of President Hassan Rouhani donated $400,000 to the Dr. Sapir Hospital... For more than 50 years it has been a meeting point for Iranian Jews and Muslims and the most prominent Jewish charity in the capital… About 96 percent of patients are Muslim, like most of the hospital's employees… Though the Jewish population of Iran is dwindling — now at about 9,000, according to an official census by the Statistical Center of Iran, though other estimates range to 20,000 — the country has the largest number of Jews in the Middle East after Israel…."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/world/middleeast/jewish-hospital-at-home-in-iran.html

IF U.S. ATTACKS IRAN

"... it now is clear that a US attack on Iranian nuclear installations would be met with little support in the Muslim world. It would also be met by a military response that would collapse the last vestiges of America's political power in the region...  it is likely that America's friends will fall by the wayside, the Gulf Arab states will tremble in fear, the 138,000 US soldiers in Iraq will be held hostage by an angered Shi'ite population, and Iran will respond by an attack on Israel. We would now dare say the obvious - if and when such an attack comes, the United States will be defeated..." 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ14Ak01.html

THE U.S. TURN TO IRAN WILL INVOLVE IT IN MUSLIM CONFLICT

“It is rare that a great power in world politics, after decades of hostility with another country, turns around and suddenly seeks to embrace that country as a friend, if not an ally. Yet this is what the recent United States demarche towards Iran represents… The term of art for such a turn of events in diplomatic and military history is renversement des alliances (reversal or overturning of alliances), and it is so rare that one can find only a few examples in the last three centuries. ..

[Presently] The transnational civil war between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims has been under way, and not only in the Middle East, for some time already. All historical reasoning points to the prospect that the American renversement des alliances towards Iran will only accelerate that conflict… Further: this transnational civil war, still intensifying, has been and remains, and will inescapably continue to be, one in which casualties also to non-Muslims, on nearly every continent, are collateral, and indeed very often not-so-collateral, damage.”

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-04-231213.html

IRAN TALKS: WHAT'S AT STAKE

"... The deal the Obama administration is pursuing with Iran over its nuclear program is a good deal. It will leave Iran with neither a nuclear weapon nor an undetectable breakout capability. And by ensuring that the deal also is a win for Iran, Tehran won't have incentives to cheat and violate the agreement... 
the flip side: The alternative to this deal -- the continuation of the sanctions path -- will see Iran continue to inch toward a nuclear weapons option while the U.S. and Iran gravitate toward a disastrous military confrontation.

It's either a deal or another war in the Middle East. Those are the stakes... a war [with Iran] would be far more devastating than Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan combined..."

http://www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9984&security=1&news_iv_ctrl=-1

IRANIAN ARAB SPRING?

"... When popular uprisings began erupting through the Middle East a couple of years ago, some commentators wondered when Iranians would rebel. That was never a possibility. The reason is simple. Iran will not have a revolution because it has already had one -- and learned a terrible lesson from it. Iranians know that no matter how bad a Middle Eastern regime may be, overthrowing it violently may well lead to something worse. Arabs launched their jubilant uprisings without understanding this painful truth. They were utopians. Iranians are not. They have built the Middle East's first post-utopian society... 
"Iran's message to the Arab world is profoundly stabilizing: Often it is better to bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. Seeking incremental change within an essentially corrupt political system is preferable to confrontation, even if it brings meager results..."
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/25/iran-rouhani-obamaarabspring.html>http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/25/iran-rouhani-obamaarabspring.html

IRAN: NO PLAN OR INTENT TO BUILD NUCLEAR WEAPON

"Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, in a television interview with NBC News on Wednesday night, said firmly that his country has no plans to build a nuclear weapon, no desire to do so, and hopes that tensions with the U.S. over its atomic program can soon be put to rest..."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/09/19>http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/09/19

IRAN ACQUIRES ITS OWN SUPERTANKER FLEET


"Some of Iran’s [oil sanction] problems came from the unwillingness of tanker companies to risk US retaliation by carrying Iranian oil. Iran therefore has bought from China 12 huge oil tankers, each of which can carry 2 million barrels of petroleum. Iran just took delivery of 4 more of these tankers. It will therefore be in a position over coming years to export to China and India with its own tankers, holding itself harmless from Congressional sanctions."
http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/china-congress-iranian.html

"The National Iranian Tanker Co. has acquired four new supertankers in mid-2013... from China as part of a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2009. In all, 12 supertankers were ordered. The supertankers were said to have a capacity of two million barrels each... The latest acquisitions boost NITC’s supertanker fleet to 37 vessels with a maximum carrying capacity of 64 million barrels of oil... The company also has 14 small crude oil tankers with another 12.5 million barrels in capacity.”
http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/08/09/china-helping-keep-iran-oil-industry-afloat-with-four-new-supertankers/

NEW PRESIDENT ROUHANI WANTS NEGOTIATIONS

"Iran's incoming President Hassan Rouhani... offered an olive branch to the United States in talks on Tehran's disputed nuclear program... that he was "seriously determined" to resolve the dispute and was ready to enter "serious and substantive" negotiations... Rouhani said Iran would not abandon its nuclear program, which it would uphold "on the basis of international law... However, we are for negotiations and interaction. We are prepared, seriously and without wasting time, to enter negotiations which are serious and substantive..."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-iran-nuclear-idUSBRE9750Q020130807

SANCTIONS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

"In a report issued by the Iran Project... former diplomats and experts suggested that the sanctions policy, rather than bolstering diplomacy, may be backfiring. As the pressure has increased, the group concluded, sanctions have “contributed to an increase in repression and corruption within Iran” and “may be sowing the seeds of long-term alienation between the Iranian people and the United States.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/world/middleeast/report-on-iran-urges-obama-to-rethink-sanctions.html?_r=3&

CENTRIFUGE MAGNETS REALLY NOT

"On February 13 Joby Warrick reported for the Washington Post that "Iran recently sought to acquire tens of thousands of highly specialized magnets used in centrifuge machines, according to experts and diplomats, a sign that the country may be planning a major expansion of its nuclear program that could shorten the path to an atomic weapons capability..." 
(But) The apparent manufacturer or supplier of the magnets in question, Ferrito Plastronics, is evidently a "tiny firm (in India) in a dark alley in Chennai's electronic spare parts hub on Meeran Sahib Street." According to the Times of India, "the Chennai firm does supply magnets. But these, avers company proprietor Bala Subramanian, are the ones used in loudspeakers, coils, and medical equipment. Besides these, there are decorative magnets for fridges."

http://www.fpif.org/blog/latest_smoking_gun_on_irans_nuclear_program_just_another_misfire>http://www.fpif.org/blog/latest_smoking_gun_on_irans_nuclear_program_just_another_misfire
and
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/iran-centrifuge-magnet-story-technically-questionable>http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/iran-centrifuge-magnet-story-technically-questionable

DON'T REPEAT IRAQ IN IRAN

"... In the case of Iraq, there was an attempt made by some states to eradicate weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, and today there is talk of going on Iran to eradicate intentions that may not exist... So far Iran has not violated NPT (the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and there is no evidence right now that suggests that Iran is producing nuclear weapons..."
--Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/06-9>http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/06-9

PANETTA: IRAN NOT DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPONS

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that Iran is enriching uranium in a peaceful nuclear program but that Tehran has not decided to develop an atomic bomb... Top U.S. military and intelligence officials gave separate testimonies in congressional hearings on Thursday regarding Iran, and...  they all reiterated the consensus that Iran’s nuclear program is purely civilian in nature..."

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/02/16/panetta-iran-is-not-developing-nuclear-weapons/

IRAN'S NUCLEAR POLICY: LATENCY

"... An Iranian nuclear bomb is neither imminent nor a foregone conclusion. The 16 U.S. intelligence agencies judge with high confidence that Iran has conducted no nuclear weapons-related experiments since 2003, that it currently has no nuclear weapons program, and that is has not made the political decision to pursue nuclear weapons. In theory, this provides ample political space for Obama to pursue a sustained process of diplomacy dedicated to ensuring that Iran's nuclear program remains verifiably peaceful.

In practice, however, we often see the opposite from Washington -- self-imposed time limits on diplomacy, unprecedented coercive measures, and sensationalistic journalism about an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon. Why the disconnect? Because at present, Iran is pursuing a strategic middle ground called nuclear latency: It aims to build a nuclear energy program that would allow for the production of a nuclear weapon on short notice if an existential threat came to the fore...."

http://www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8827&security=1&news_iv_ctrl=-1