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POPSNow Bush Is Appeasing Iran joined envoys from France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany in talks with Saeed Jalili -- Iran's nuclear negotiator and an Ahmadinejad confidant -- about incentives to give to Tehran. ven with record oil prices, mismanagement has driven the Iranian economy into the ground. On July 14, the Ministry of Housing reported an "historical" 125% rise in housing prices. The same day, Tabnak, a news Web site run by a former head of the IRGC, admitted foodstuff inflation had reached 50% annually. On July 8, 2008, a National Iranian Oil Company executive acknowledged in the Iranian press that, without significant investment in infrastructure, Iranian oil production would decline each year by 300,000 barrels a day. In the past month alone, Iranian workers have struck for unpaid wages at the Khodro automotive plant (which assembles Peugeots), the Alburz Tire Company, and the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane factory.
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POPSWill Washington Betray Anti-Regime Iranians? and I believe that that should lead to a review of whether they are still a terrorist organization or not." Since then, an interagency group of the U.S. government, led by the FBI, has exonerated the Iranians at Ashraf of terrorism. After a British court ruled that the group was not "concerned in terrorism," the U.K. government in June removed the group from its terrorist list. The Iranian regime is determined to destroy its main opponent and, with some success, has pressured the Iraqi government to disband Camp Ashraf and turn MEK members over to Iran. Then, on July 9, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said that the Iraqi government had decided to expel members of the MEK. The Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kezemi-Qomi, specified that the Iraqi cabinet had agreed quickly to expel the MEK from Iraq. Iranian television reported on July 6 that "American military forces have announced their readiness to hand over" Camp Ashraf to Baghdad.
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POPSVienna-Based Investigators Getting Tough On Iran Now Why the emphasis now on sins Iran may have committed in the past? Wasn’t the finding that warhead design stopped in 2003 reassuring enough? No, say nuclear experts inside and outside the international agency. Candor about Iran’s progress in designing a weapon matters because Tehran’s scientists continue to move forward on a related front. They are learning how to make uranium fuel. And if they already have a good warhead design in hand, the lack of fuel may be the one thing standing between them and the ability to make a bomb. The American finding last December that Iran suspended its weapon-design work in 2003 created a classic case of a glass that could be seen as either half full or half empty. That does not mean they have a workable design for the most frightening kind of bomb in today’s world — one miniaturized to about one ton so it can sit atop a missile, which is much faster and harder to stop than any plane
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POPSMahmoud The Fauxtographer Update: This image, part of a framegrab from an Al Alam television broadcast of the launch (apparently taken at approximately the same time from a slightly higher elevation) makes it pretty clear which missile was conjured from borrowed pixels.
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POPSAn Iranian "Embassy" In Boston [mullahs lobby machine] Two year ago when Maleki came to Harvard, Sadegh Kharrazi, a close friend and collaborator of his, told Shargh newspaper in Tehran (May 28, 2006): "There is actually an Iranian lobby in US which illustrates itself occasionally…. should remain non-governmental, but the government could support it, promote it and rely on it". Maleki's goal has been to turn this "occasional" lobby to a full time and large scale machine of influence and misinformation. It is now apparent that the policy of United States on Iran over the past has been packed with confusion and shortsightedness. It is certainly not a mere security oversight to allow so many former officials enter the United States. Almost certainly, the United States’ goal is to create a back door channel to the mullahs in Iran, a de facto Iranian embassy. Nevertheless, this “embassy” is acting more like a Trojan horse than an ambassadorial channel.
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POPSSufism, Sophistry And Politics
from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Would the Pakistanis or the Moroccans burn their homeland by joining "the ball of fire" because Khomeinism is denied the bomb? The "ball of fire" is a poetic expression, and I wondered where it came from. Would Turks and Algerians jump on the "ball of fire" to show solidarity with a regime that has helped terror groups against them for decades? Even the Syrian rulers are unlikely to risk their survival by trying to jump on El-Baradaei's "ball of fire" to please the mullahs. They like the mullahs' money, not the mullahs themselves. Despite Tehran's massive handouts in recent years, one doubts even Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in general would take risks to show solidarity with a regime that, while generous, has been trying to impose ideological control. That leaves the branches of the Hezbollah, especially the largest and best-financed Lebanese one. But then, as always what Hezbollah does will be decided in Tehran not Beir
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POPS Suicidal Mystics With Nukes After more UN sanctions were threatened, Ahmadinejad stated: As God promised, the oppressors will have their noses rubbed in the dirt. Now they are fulfilling this promise by themselves... Let it be known that in whatever we do, I see the hand of God and the hidden imam at every moment. The expansion is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge -- possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran -- to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years.
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POPSIran Supplying Equipment To Taliban To Fight British Evidence found by UK special forces is understood to concern the supply of the same bomb-making equipment Iran provides to insurgents in Iraq, namely components for explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs. It is not clear whether the bomb that last week killed four British SAS reservists in Helmand province was such a device, although British military commanders fear that increasing Iranian involvement in Afghanistan may render irrelevant attempts to increase the number of armoured vehicles in the conflict. Yesterday four coalition soldiers were killed by a bomb in the province of Kandahar. Meanwhile, as investigations continue into the use of Snatch Land Rovers in southern Afghanistan in which the four UK troops died last week, new figures obtained by The Observer reveal that more than 700 armoured vehicles that could be deployed to protect British personnel in Helmand are out of action.
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POPSUS Diplomacy On Iran Amid Reported Israeli Attack Exercise "I can certainly understand that, given the fact that the president of Iran has talked about wiping Israel off the map," he said. "So Israel does see Iran as an existential threat. But again, I am going to have to kick any questions about what was intended by this exercise, what its purpose was, what they hoped to accomplish, to the Israeli government. They're the competent officials to talk about those issues." Israel staged a long-range air strike to destroy an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1980, and last September it bombed a facility in northern Syria said by some analysts to have been a reactor being built with North Korean help. Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, but Israel and key Bush administration officials, among others, believe it is seeking a weapons capability.
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POPSObama The Humble Savior Only last week, another of his pals bit the dust, convicted by a Chicago jury of 16 counts of this and that. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew," said the senator, in what's becoming a standard formulation. Likewise, this wasn't the Jeremiah Wright he knew. And these are guys he's known for 20 years. "I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we........ It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility," isn't it? Because otherwise who knows what he'd be saying. But mark it in your calendars: June 3, 2008 – the long-awaited day, after 232 years, that America began to provide care for the sick.
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POPSWas He Lying Then Or Now? I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator—when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. I have been proud to be a part of a strong, bipartisan consensus that has stood by Israel in the face of all threats... I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself in the United Nations and around the world. Lie: In January 2008, a Palestinian activist named Ali Abunimah described Barack Obama’s overnight switch from Pro-Palestinian activist to supporter of Israel.
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POPS"Cap and Trade" NO GOOD In these turbulent economic times, Democrats are proposing to increase the price of gas, outsource millions of jobs to overseas providers, and create a massive new bureaucracy funded by your (additional) tax dollars. The World Resources Institute reports that, "air pollution in some Chinese cities is among the highest ever recorded, averaging more than ten times the standard proposed by the World Health Organization... In Beijing, 40 percent of autos surveyed and 70 percent of taxis failed to meet the most basic emission standards." USA Today reports that, " ecades of... pollution have allowed industrial poisons to leach into groundwater, contaminating drinking supplies and leading to a rash of cancers, residents say. In this village, where the air has a distinctive sour odor, the rate of cancer is more than 18 times the national average. Meanwhile, the world's worst polluters continue choking the atmosphere with toxic fumes and poisons.
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POPSU.N. Chief Meets With Ahmadinejad particularly the demand that it suspend its uranium enrichment. "We expect to hear that the secretary-general told the Iranian president that he was in violation of three Security Council resolutions, that he should comply with international demands to stop enriching uranium, and to stop the crazy talk," a spokesman for the American mission to the United Nations, Richard Grenell, said. Iranian officials increasingly are emphasizing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's prophecy that Israel will be erased from the map of the region, but the Western response has been muted. The U.N.-affiliated Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the three-day food conference in Rome, where yesterday Mr. Ahmadinejad blamed the "bullying powers" for creating a food crisis and called for the formation of "an independent and powerful body" that would "justly regulate" food distribution. Mr. Mugabe, who critics say has single-handedly transformed his country from a food exporter into a starving n
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POPSConference On Islamic Wakefullness: Delegates Fall Asleep A preliminary investigation by the Iranian government into the glaring lack of Muslim wakefulness has uncovered a possible Zionist plot to inject sleepy juice into the attendees' water bottles. Press photos show that next to each sleeping delegate there was a bottle of water. "Coincidence? I don't think so," said Mustafa Zadeh, secretary of the Islamic Republic's Guiding Council. "A Jewish conspiracy is always more plausible than any other theory. Thank Allah for that, otherwise we might erroneously conclude that Muslim lethargy was caused by our failure to generate ideas, stimulate thought, and provoke intellectual curiosity."
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POPSAhmadinejad: Israel Is Doomed Ahmadinejad used an Arabic word, ismihlal, that can also be translated as destruction, death and collapse. "Nations of the region hate this criminal fabricated regime (Israel) and will uproot this fabricated regime if the smallest and shortest opportunity is given to them," Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in an address broadcast live on state television. He spoke hours after President Bush arrived in Israel for the anniversary celebrations.
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POPSEurope's New Pro-American Direction Europe’s new political configuration has already partially manifested itself in NATO’s decision in Bucharest to support deployment of U.S. missile defense assets in Poland and the Czech Republic. Even the Bucharest Summit, however, reveals continuing problems, such as Europe’s reluctance to start Ukraine and Georgia on the path toward ultimate NATO membership. For both America and Europe’s leading nations, therefore, the diplomatic chances of preventing Iran from achieving its objectives are rapidly diminishing. Although tough sanctions are at this point almost certainly too late, they would at least demonstrate that Italy and other Europeans are preparing for the even more difficult step that may be required, namely changing the regime in Tehran, or, as a last resort, the targeted use of military force against Iran’s nuclear program.
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POPSManufactured Martyrdom - Iran "Kills" Aide to Muqtada al-Sadr It is significant Washington is being blamed and not the administration of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad as Tehran is using this to inspire more hatred (attacks) against the foreign led occupation. It is also significant this took place in the religious center of Najaf which will inspire even more hatred. This comes right after Thursday's statement by the Sadr movement saying they were "under siege" and warned they will end the ceasefire they imposed last August. Tehran is setting the stage for more attacks against the remaining British-U. S. troops in the country, an offensive Iran will be entering at least by launching missiles from Iran at UK/US bases.
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POPSChina Has Provided IAEA With Intel On Iran's Nuke Program VIENNA, Austria — China, an opponent of harsh U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran, has nonetheless recently provided the International Atomic Energy Agency with intelligence linked to Tehran's alleged attempts to make nuclear arms, diplomats have told The Associated Press. In a summary recently forwarded to the AP, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group that claims to have informants inside the Iranian government, identified three others as Revolutionary Guard commander Fereydoon Abbasi, Seyed Jaber Safdari and Mohammed Mehdi Nejad-Nouri. It said the three and others are involved in clandestine nuclear weapons-related research at three Iranian universities: Beheshti; Malek Ahstar and Imam Hossein. Asked for verification, a senior diplomat of an IAEA member state said that a fact check run by his country's relevant agency showed the claims to be generally accurate. Another senior diplomat also said the information appeared to be fairly reliabl
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POPS Q&A: Who is Moqtada al-Sadr? (continued)>>>Shi'ite guerrillas, who continued the insurgency. Where is he now? Sadr is believed to have moved to Tehran last year and is studying to become an ayatollah in the holy city of Qom. He is said to have married an Iranian woman. It is not clear how much control he exercises over the Mahdi army. A substantial part of the army still takes its orders from the Qods Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The ceasefire has been repeatedly tested by the "special groups", but Sadr's call for a civil revolt appears to have been prompted by the necessity of surviving the most aggressive bid by Iraq's security forces to assert the state's authority in Basra. What happens next? The Iraqi army, despite its British and American training, does not have the organisation or discipline to drive his followers out of towns and cities. The best that can be hoped for is that Sadr supporters will acquiesce to a stronger security force and establish their support in provincial
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POPS ElBaradei's Real Agenda<>Middle East Forum Website On his watch, but undetected by his agency, Iran constructed its covert enrichment facilities and, according to the 2007 U.S. National nieIntelligence Estimate, engaged in covert nuclear-weapons design. India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear godfather, exported nuclear technology around the world IAEA technical experts have complained anonymously to the press that the latest report on Iran was revamped to suit the director's political goals. In 2004, Mr. ElBaradei sought to purge mention of Iranian attempts to purchase beryllium metal, an important component in a nuclear charge, from IAEA documents. He also left unmentioned Tehran's refusal to grant IAEA inspectors access to the Parchin military complex, where satellite imagery showed a facility seemingly designed to test and produce nuclear weapon The IAEA director seems intent on undercutting Security Council diplomacy
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POPSGroup Claims Iran Speeding Up Nuke Plans The NCRI has at least twice given detailed information to the IAEA that IAEA inspectors later verified, including the original information that exposed Iran's uranium-enrichment program and the location of those facilities in 2002. On at least one other occasion, however, the IAEA was unable to verify information the NCRI provided. NCRI leaders said their latest effort to locate the alleged nuclear-warhead facility was triggered by the Dec. 3 release of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran halted its nuclear-weaponization efforts in 2003. The NCRI is eager to refute that finding. The report effectively ended speculation in Washington about a potential U.S. military strike against Iran to cripple its nuclear program. It also undercut U.S.-led efforts to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
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POPS BBC:Syria 'To Name Mughniyeh Killer' 'Secret investigation' Damascus has already solved the crime and will present 'irrefutable proof'; "As a state, we will irrefutably prove the party involved in this crime and who stands behind it. An investigation is ongoing." That's some speedy 'secret investigating', and yet, the parties behind the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri after three years of NO secret investigations, remains unsolved. Three years ago today, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was brutally assassinated in a massive bombing in downtown Beirut. One month later, on March 14, 2005, the Lebanese people took to the streets to demand Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. Tehran is bent on avenging the death of its top terror tactician Imad Mughniyeh who was struck down in Damascur. Even before the high-ranking Iranian military investigation team, chief of the IRGC’s al Qods Brigades, began a rush job the next day, Israel was singled out as the target for punishment by Iran, Hizballah an
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POPSWho Hijacked The Primaries And What We MUST Do! This is our party, not John McCain’s or Mel Martinez's, or Lindsay Graham’s. The Republican Party is THE conservative party dammit. Let’s admit it and take it back. RINOS and Liberals have taken the GOP plane hostage, and its time for us passengers to revolt…and do what has to be done -- "Let’s Roll" Sadly these 4 states have done more than set the tone for the other 46 -- they’ve dictated terms. Frankly I could extend the analogy to include Nevada, which is down to about 13% native -- but why beat a dead horse. What we have is the sick and twisted dreams of Pinch Sulzberger, Don Imus, Maureen Dowd, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews come true: the GOP has been forced to choose a nominee designed to cause the base to retch, and thereby not vote. Guaranteeing 4 years of Clinton score settling or Obama socializing entire corporate sectors
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POPSBush Insists Iran Biggest Terror Sponsor Abu Dhabi Bush said Iran funds militant groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and sends arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Shiite extremists in Iraq. "The other major cause of instability is the extremists embodied by al-Qaida and its affiliates," His words brought a stern response from Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, to end what he called U.S. meddling. "Mr. Bush has tried unsuccessfully to undermine our relations with the countries of the region. We believe his mission has totally failed. We have making strides in building ties with the region, politically, economically and even in security," Mottaki told Al-Jazeera television. "It is much better if the Americans had stopped intervening in the region's affair." Cosgriff told Bush that he took it "deadly seriously" when an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near Iranian waters. The American ship commanders were preparing to open fire
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POPS Ahmadinejad.......U.S. Declaration Of Surrender Iran regularly calls for a change in behavior from the United States, which cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 1980 after radical students seized the U.S. embassy and took diplomats hostage during the 1979 Islamic revolution.
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POPS NIE "Clean Bill Of Health" Delights Tehran The CIA has been in semi-open revolt against the Bush administration for years now. I may be an old-fashioned sort of a fellow but it has always seemed to me that an American citizen had two alternatives in life. Either he could campaign publicly against the president, or he could be a secret intelligence officer. The CIA has apparently decided you can do both, simultaneously. Imagine the outcry if there were a liberal Democrat president and right-wing elements of the intelligence community were constantly leaking and briefing against the administration. Bush has been personally humiliated, exactly at a time when he has been regathering his international authority. France's Nicolas Sarkozy and British and German leaders, who had worked to build international diplomatic pressure on Iran, are also humiliated. Russia and China, just about convinced of the need for sanctions on Iran to stop uranium enrichment, are now dancing away, entirely off the hook of responsibility.
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POPS Tehran Calls Iranian Kurds "Terrorists" In an exclusive interview with Newsmax recently in Berlin, Ahmadi says that Iran was now working hand-in-glove with Turkey to get PJAK labeled as a terrorist organization. “Iran knows they can’t make trouble for us directly because they have such bad relations with Europe. That’s why they are going through Turkey.” The Iranian regime has been telling journalists and diplomats that PJAK and the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) are the same. “But we are an Iranian party, and have nothing to do with Turkey,” he says. PJAK has become a serious threat to the regime in Tehran because it is fighting to overthrow the clerical regime in favor of a secular republic and because it favors equality between men and women, Ahmadi asserts. The group has around 2,500 armed guerilla fighters, 40 percent of whom are women.
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POPS "Ahmadi-Pinochet, Iran Will Not Become Chile!" A new demonstration at Tehran University on Sunday, damaging the main gate to allow outsiders into the campus and denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, news agencies reported. The protesters chanted slogans against the president and carried banners calling for the release of three fellow students who have been held since May in a high-profile case, the Fars news agency state-run IRNA reported. Arabshahi said the protest lasted for more than two hours after starting at 12:00 pm (0830 GMT) and that it was peaceful. "We are gathered here to say students are alive and are critical of wrong polices," IRNA quoted another unnamed student as saying. The demonstration came a day after the intelligence ministry said it had arrested an unspecified number of people using "fake student cards to hold an illegal demonstration" at Tehran University. The timing of those arrests was not given, but it is likely that they took place before Friday which was annual students' day in Iran
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POPS 300,000 Iraqi's Sign Petition Condemning Iran "The most poisonous dagger stabbed in us, the Iraqi Shi'ites, is the (Iranian) regime shamefully exploiting the Shi'ite sect to implement its evil goals," the statement said. The statement said that besides 600 Shi'ite tribal leaders, the petition was signed by a number of lawyers, engineers, doctors and university professors. "They have targeted our national interests and began planning to divide Iraq and to separate the southern provinces from Iraq." Iran routinely pledges its support for a stable Iraq, and political leaders from Baghdad regularly visit Tehran.
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POPS Iran’s Secret Nuclear Arms Activities The White House hopes thereby to compel Tehran to level on its military nuclear program, whose existence it has so far denied, and demonstrate the failure of the international nuclear watchdog’s director, Mohammed ElBaradei and his vast inspection organization, to uncover the underhand nuclear activities in progress in Iran and Syria. Washington hopes that once the real facts are in the open, Russia and China, which back ElBaradei, will endorse a third round of UN Security Council sanctions, tough enough to progressively place Iran under economic siege. European companies, especially in Germany, fear that their economic boycott of trade with Iran will create a gap into which Russia and China will eagerly step. The failure of the Russian president’s talks in Tehran last month left him more amenable to an accommodation with Bush than before. His cooperation in the Bush strategy would leave China as the only standout DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
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POPS Warhead Built Within A Year UN's Nuclear Watchdog Russian officials yesterday called for patience, insisting Iran could still clinch a deal with the international community in the next few weeks. They pointed to other parts of the IAEA report showing Tehran had been cooperating with the agency's inspectors on other nuclear issues. "We are most concerned to prevent Iran being cornered so that they walk out of the Non Proliferation Treaty, and break relations with the IAEA," one Russian source said. He said Chinese officials were stepping up diplomatic pressure on Iran, with Moscow, to avert a collision. "They are on high alert that something has to be done quickly," the source said
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POPS Iran's Blueprints For Nuclear Warheads Governors of the IAEA meet in Vienna next week to discuss the latest report on Iran by the agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei. While the inspectors had been allowed to examine them in the country, Teheran had up to now refused to let the IAEA have a copy for closer perusal. Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency said the apparent concession was intended to head off the threat of new UN sanctions.
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POPS President Putin:: Found Iran's Leaders 'Bizarre' "This was the first time that Putin was talking to senior Islamic Republic leaders in a substantive and focused way," says a senior Russian official familiar with what happened. "The president found his Iranian interlocutor weird, to say the least. The Iranians mouthed a lot of eschatological nonsense and came close to urging Putin to convert to Islam. It was clear they lived in a world of their own." Ahmadinejad gave the impression he sought neither advice nor support from the Russians. All he wanted was to project the Islamic Republic as the regional superpower and invite Putin to acknowledge its new status. "It was as if Russia needed Iran, not the other way round," says the Russian source. "Putin was taken aback. He had not expected what he heard." "The Iranians think they have already won," reports one Russian source who witnessed the visit. "So intoxicated they appeared with hubris that they did not even ask Putin to help them ward off further United Nations sanctions."
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POPSChina's Betrayal Of Israel:Fighter Jets Sale To Iran At a time when U.S. and Israeli officials are increasingly considering the heavy burden of having to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons related facilities, China’s sale of the J-10 to Iran may signal the beginning of a deeper Chinese effort to protect Iran’s nuclear aspirations, much as it has ensured North Korea’s nuclear weapons development. The J-10’s defensive capabilities would be formidable, as would its ability to perform all-weather strikes with new precision guided weapons against Israeli or U.S. targets. For Israel a J-10 sale to Iran would mark a sobering betrayal of Israel’s considerable efforts to help China’s military modernization, to include its substantial help with the J-10 program, and one of its air-to-air missiles, both of which may apparently arm Iran.
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POPS Bahrain's Crown Prince Accuses Iran “While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it,” he said – the first time one of Iran’s Gulf neighbours effectively has accused it of lying about its nuclear programme. It is not a position from which to mince words. In an interview with The Times the Crown Prince has become the first Arab leader to jettison the language of diplomacy and directly accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons. The US Fifth Fleet is based here, its main carrier battle group tasked with securing the Strait of Hormuz. The King Fahd causeway to Khobar makes Bahrain a gateway to the richest oil reserves on Earth in eastern Saudi Arabia. There is no suggestion – yet – of an Iranian invasion of Bahrain. But even as the kingdom throws up skyscrapers to compete with Dubai and Abu Dhabi for regional financial dominance, its security forces are on high alert for evidence of Iranian-backed “sleeper cells” that could bring them all tumbling down.
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POPSIranians Study Nuclear Physics In U.K. Universities Last week America intensified its economic sanctions against Tehran because of the refusal of President Mahmoud Ahmadine-jad to comply with international demands to open the country’s nuclear programme to inspection. Iran insists its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes. In the Commons last week Gordon Brown indicated that tougher sanctions by Britain were a possibility. European Union leaders are due to meet within two weeks to discuss whether to strengthen sanctions against Iran. Currently, vetting is done only when a university voluntarily informs the government that a candidate from outside the EU has been offered a place to study a sensitive subject. This creates a potential loophole. Under the new online system overseen by the security services, universities will be obliged to inform the government if any nonEuropean intends to take a course in such subjects. They will also be required to give details about what is included in the course.
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POPS Ahmadinejad Pushing Iran Into Future Trouble It could be a risky bet. Ahmadinejad's main vulnerability is domestic: rising criticism from a public angry over the country's poor economy and from politicians disillusioned by what they call his mismanagement. Even some conservatives have expressed fears Ahmadinejad is pushing Iran into future trouble over the nuclear issue Further sanctions, even unilateral ones from the U.S., could hurt the economy more by further isolating it from international finance—and Iranians were already expressing worries over the new measures. Ahmadinejad, who faces elections in 2009, knows "jobless and poor people will not vote for him if his policies bring them more difficulties," said Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a political science professor at Tehran's Azad University. But he believes "unilateral economic sanctions by Washington are not strong enough (to hurt Iran) due to Iran's widespread economic relations with the world."
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POPS Syria And Iran Manipulating Turkey On Iraq? Instead of playing charms with Tehran and Damascus, the Kurdestan city of Soleimaniye must reinforce its own deterring force and maintain stability and peace on its northern border with Turkey. Knowing all too well that the new Islamist Government in Ankara is shifting the grounds inside the modernist Kemalist Republic, Iraq’s Kurdish leadership mustn’t offer any reason for a Turkish adventure in their areas. Hence, it is recommended that the Kurdish leaders of Iraq be the ones to reign in the PKK to avoid having the Turkish Army crossing the borders. The US can – and should - broker arrangements between the Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish military to avoid the rise of an anti-Kurdish Triangle in the region.
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POPS United Nations Gallery Of Despots And Dictators Why are we funding the U.N.'s "human rights" nonsense? When President Bush told the United Nations General Assembly this week "the American people are disappointed by the failures of the Human Rights Council," his words could not have been more timely or deserved. He pointed out "This body has been silent on repression by regimes from Havana to Caracas to Pyongyang and Tehran - while focusing its criticism excessively on Israel." On Friday, the Council piled the dung heap higher. It wrapped up another session in Geneva by adopting two more resolutions against Israel and no resolutions critical of the human-rights record of any of the other 191 U.N. member states.
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