US forces attacked missile sites in southern Iran and boats trying to lay mines on Monday, US Central Command said, as top Iranian negotiators arrived in Doha for talks to end the war.

In the aftermath of the strikes, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei issued a thinly veiled threat, warning that the US would no longer have any safe havens in the region.

“US forces conducted self-defense strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” Tim Hawkins, a US Central Command spokesman, said in a statement.

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Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-attacks-missile-sites-in-iran-despite-ceasefire-says-it-acted-to-defend-troops/?fbclid=IwY2xjawSOlDxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeLps8RQvYdvj5VhTpFW71NI53DewxSXlAsnK_05aGnrLVMHySJQ-3EWEPluM_aem_4F_SL6a1rvOluYjZfE4llw

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Speaking to Reuters after he briefed EU foreign ministers on the subject, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said that while the pace of uranium enrichment had slowed slightly since the end of last year, Iran was still enriching at an elevated rate of around 7 kg of uranium per month to 60% purity.

Enrichment to 60% brings uranium close to weapons grade, and is not necessary for commercial use in nuclear power production. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons but no other state has enriched to that level without producing them.

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Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/iaea-chief-says-irans-nuclear-enrichment-activity-remains-high-2024-02-19/

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The post Exclusive: IAEA chief says Iran’s nuclear enrichment activity remains high first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The move comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S. in the waning days of the administration of President Donald Trump, who withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal in 2018.

Trump called the Iran agreement the “worst deal ever negotiated,” deeming it “a disastrous one-sided deal that failed to end Iran’s nuclear program and the full range of the regime’s malign activity.”

Following that move, Iran continued to fund terror proxies in the Mideast that threaten American allies. In response, the U.S. launched a drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad a year ago, an anniversary coming Sunday that has American officials now preparing possible retaliation by Iran.

Iran’s decision to begin enriching to 20% a decade ago nearly brought an Israeli strike targeting its nuclear facilities. A resumption of 20% enrichment could force Israel’s hand to take action.

According to Ali Akbar Salehi, the U.S.-educated head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, a supposedly “civilian” body, “We are like soldiers and our fingers are on the triggers”

“The commander should command and we shoot. We are ready for this and will produce (20% enriched uranium) as soon as possible,” Salehi told Iranian state television.

The White House had no immediate comment. A spokesman for President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team declined to comment on Iran’s announcement.

Iran’s serves as pressure ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Biden, who has said he is willing to re-enter the nuclear deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged Iran had informed its inspectors of the decision by a letter after news leaked overnight Friday.

“Iran has informed the agency that in order to comply with a legal act recently passed by the country’s parliament, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran intends to produce low-enriched uranium … up to 20 percent at the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant,” the IAEA said in a statement.

The IAEA added Iran did not say when it planned to boost enrichment, though the agency claimed it “has inspectors present in Iran on a 24/7 basis and they have regular access to Fordo.” The parliamentary bill also called on Iran to expel those inspectors.

Salehi said Iran would need to switch out natural uranium in centrifuges at Fordo for material already enriched to 4% to begin the process of going to 20%.

“It should be done under IAEA supervision,” Salehi added.

Since the deal’s collapse, Iran has resumed enrichment at Fordo, near the Shiite holy city of Qom, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Tehran.

Shielded by the mountains, Fordo is ringed by anti-aircraft guns and other fortifications. It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,000 centrifuges, but small and hardened enough to lead U.S. officials to suspect it had a military purpose when they exposed the site publicly in 2009.

The 2015 deal saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. The accord also called for Fordo to be turned into a research-and-development facility.

Under Iran’s former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran began 20% enrichment.

Israel warned Tehran was building a bomb.

After the discovery of Fordo, the U.S. worked on so-called “bunker-buster” bombs designed to strike such facilities. As Israel threatened at one point to bomb Iranian nuclear sites like Fordo, U.S. officials reportedly showed them a video of a bunker-buster bomb destroying a mock-up of Fordo in America’s southwestern desert.

Israel, which under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to expose Iran’s nuclear program, offered no immediate comment Saturday.

As of now, Iran is enriching uranium up to 4.5%, in violation of the accord’s limit of 3.67%. Experts say Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium stockpiled for at least two nuclear weapons, if it chose to pursue them. Iran long has maintained its nuclear program is peaceful.

In 2018, Israel produced a trove evidence spirited out of Tehran by spies that disproved Iranian claims.

Iran separately has begun construction on a new site at Fordo, according to satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press in December.

Iran’s announcement coincides with the anniversary of the U.S. drone striking Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last year. That attack later saw Iran retaliate by launching a ballistic missile strike injuring dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq. Tehran also shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet that night, killing all 176 people on board.

As the anniversary approached, the U.S. has sent B-52 bombers flying over the region and sent a nuclear-powered submarine into the Persian Gulf.

On Thursday, sailors discovered a limpet mine on a tanker in the Persian Gulf off Iraq near the Iranian border as it prepared to transfer fuel to another tanker owned by a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. No one has claimed responsibility for the mine, though it comes after a series of similar attacks in 2019 that the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran.

Tehran denied being involved.

In November, an Iranian scientist who founded the country’s military nuclear program two decades earlier was killed in an attack Tehran blames on Israel.

Source: https://worldisraelnews.com/fingers-on-the-triggers-iran-announces-near-weapons-grade-uranium-enrichment-as-soon-as-possible/

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U.S. President Donald Trump at a White House press briefing, September 18, 2020.Credit: Alex Brandon / AP

The United States on Monday will sanction more than two dozen people and entities involved in Iran’s nuclear, missile and conventional arms programs, a senior U.S. official said, putting teeth behind United Nations sanctions on Tehran that Washington argues have resumed despite the opposition of allies and adversaries.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said Iran could have enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of the year and that Tehran has resumed long-range missile cooperation with nuclear-armed North Korea. He did not provide detailed evidence regarding either assertion.

The new sanctions fit into U.S. President Donald Trump‘s effort to limit Iran’s regional influence and come a week after U.S.-brokered deals for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize ties with Israel, pacts that may coalesce a wider coalition against Iran while appealing to pro-Israel U.S. voters ahead of the November 3 election.

The new sanctions also put European allies, China and Russia on notice that while their inclination may be to ignore the U.S. drive to maintain the UN sanctions on Iran, companies based in their nations would feel the bite for violating them.

A major part of the new U.S. push is an executive order targeting those who buy or sell Iran conventional arms that was previously reported by Reuters and will also be unveiled by the Trump administration on Monday, the official said.

The Trump administration suspects Iran of seeking nuclear weapons – something Tehran denies – and Monday’s punitive steps are the latest in a series seeking to stymie Iran’s atomic program, which U.S. ally Israel views as an existential threat.

“Iran is clearly doing everything it can to keep in existence a virtual turnkey capability to get back into the weaponization business at a moment’s notice should it choose to do so,” the U.S. official told Reuters.

• Iran’s Foreign Minister: World Should Oppose U.S. Sanctions or Expect to Face Them
• Trump Plans Executive Order to Punish Arms Trade With Iran, Sources Say
• Rohani Says U.S. Faces Defeat as UN Chief Says He Can’t Act to Reimpose Sanctions
  

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The official argued Iran wants a nuclear weapons capability and the means to deliver it despite the 2015 deal that sought to prevent this by restraining Iran’s atomic program in return for access to the world market.

In May 2018, Trump abandoned that agreement to the dismay of the other parties – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia – and restored U.S. sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

Iran, in turn, has gradually breached the central limits in that deal, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including on the size of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium as well as the level of purity to which it was allowed to enrich uranium.

A woman, wearing a protective mask amid the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past a mural painted on the outer walls of the former US embassy in the Iranian capital Tehran on September 20, 2020. Credit: ATTA KENARE/AFP

“Because of Iran’s provocative nuclear escalation, it could have sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of this year,” the official said without elaborating except to say this was based on “the totality” of information available to the United States, including from the IAEA.

The Vienna-based agency has said Iran only began significantly breaching the 2015 deal’s limits after the U.S. withdrawal and it is still enriching uranium only up to 4.5 percent, well below the 20 percent it had achieved before that agreement, let alone the roughly 90 percent purity that is considered weapons-grade, suitable for an atomic bomb.

“Iran and North Korea have resumed cooperation on a long-range missile project, including the transfer of critical parts,” he added, declining to say when such joint work first began, stopped, and then started again.

Asked to comment on the impending new U.S. sanctions and the U.S. official’s other statements, a spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed them as propaganda and said they would further isolate the United States.

“The U.S.’ ‘maximum pressure’ show, which includes new propaganda measures almost every week, has clearly failed miserably, and announcing new measures will not change this fact,” the mission’s spokesman, Alireza Miryousefi, told Reuters in an email.

“The entire world understands that these are a part of (the) next U.S. election campaign, and they are ignoring the U.S.’ preposterous claims at the UN today. It will only make (the) U.S. more isolated in world affairs,” he said.

The White House declined comment in advance of Monday’s announcements.

‘Snapback’ of UN sanctions? 

The U.S. official confirmed Trump will issue an executive order that would allow the United States to punish those who buy or sell conventional arms to Iran with secondary sanctions, depriving them of access to the U.S. market.

The proximate cause for this U.S. action is the impending expiration of a UN arms embargo on Iran and to warn foreign actors – U.S. entities are already barred from such trade – that if they buy or sell arms to Iran they will face U.S. sanctions.

Under the 2015 nuclear deal the UN conventional arms embargo is set to expire on October 18.

The United States says it has triggered a “snapback,” or resumption, of virtually all UN sanctions on Iran, including the arms embargo, to come into effect at 8 P.M. on Saturday (0000 GMT) on Sunday.

Other parties to the nuclear deal and most UN Security Council members have said they do not believe the United States has the right to reimpose the UN sanctions and that the U.S. move has no legal effect.

Members of the Security Council vote at United Nations headquarters on the landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, 2015.Credit: Seth Wenig,AP

On Friday, Britain, France and Germany told the Security Council that UN sanctions relief for Iran – agreed under the 2015 nuclear deal – would continue beyond Sunday, despite Washington’s assertion.

In letters to the Security Council on Saturday, China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun and Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia both described the U.S. move as “illegitimate” and said the UN sanctions relief for Iran would continue.

Also on Saturday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council he cannot act on the U.S. declaration that UN sanctions had been reimposed because it was not clear whether they had snapped back.

“It is not for the Secretary-General to proceed as if no such uncertainty exists,” he said.

Targets include Iran’s nuclear, missile, arms groups

The new executive order will define conventional weapons broadly as any item with a potential military use, meaning it could cover such things as speed boats that Iran retrofits to harass vessels in international waters, the U.S. official told Reuters.

It would also apply to conventional circuit boards that can be used in ballistic missile guidance systems, he added.

The more than two dozen targets to be hit with sanctions on Monday include those involved in Iran’s conventional arms, nuclear and missile programs, the official said, saying some of the targets are already sanctioned under other U.S. programs.

That could prompt criticism that the U.S. move is redundant and designed for public relations purposes to look tough on Iran, a charge critics have made about past U.S. sanctions actions.

Among the targets will be Iran’s “most nefarious arms organizations,” about a dozen senior officials, scientists and experts from Iran’s nuclear complex, members of a procurement network that supplies military-grade dual-use goods for Iran’s missile program, and several senior officials involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program, the U.S. official said.

The official declined to name the targets, saying this would be made public on Monday, and stressed that the United States wants to deter foreign companies from dealing with them even if their governments believe this is legally permitted.

“You might have a split in some countries where a foreign government may claim that the UN sanctions don’t snap back but their banks and companies will abide by U.S. sanctions because they want to make sure they are not a future target,” he said.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/u-s-official-iran-to-have-enough-fissile-material-for-nuclear-bomb-by-year-s-end-1.9171345

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