Russia Simulates Nuclear Attack on Poland

The armed forces are said to have carried out “war games” in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country’s coast.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

The manoeuvrings are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the “potential aggressor”.

The documents state the exercises, code-named “West”, were officially classified as “defensive” but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a “Polish” beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Karol Karski, an MP from Poland’s Law and Justice, is to table parliamentary questions on Russia’s war games and has protested to the European Commission.

via Russia ’simulates’ nuclear attack on Poland – Telegraph.

If Israel Strikes Iran, U.S. Will Likely Join

The United States would find it difficult not to join an Israeli air strike in the event that Jerusalem decides to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, a former top-ranking U.S. Air Force officer told participants at a conference this weekend organized by a Washington think tank.

Charles F. Wald, former deputy commander of United States European Command, said a military strike on Iran could set back the Islamic Republic’s alleged nuclear weapons program by several years, but cautioned, “I don’t think Israel can do it alone.”

The former commander’s remarks were made at an annual gathering of financial backers of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who were joined by diplomats, journalists and analysts.

“They have a fantastic military, but not big enough for weeks or months of attacks – hundreds of sorties per day,” he said.

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Iran Has 7,000 Centrifuges

Iran is now running 7,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges,a senior official said on Thursday, an announcement likely to increase Western concerns about the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear plans.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, also said it had obtained the technology to produce more “accurate” centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.

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Iran Nuclear Threat

A top Israeli general says Iran is capable of producing a nuclear bomb.

Israel’s military intelligence chief told the country’s Cabinet that Iran has crossed the “technological threshold” of nuclear capability. Major-General Amos Yadlin said this does not mean that Iran actually has an atomic bomb, but that it has the expertise and materials needed to build one.

So how long would it take Iran to acquire the bomb? Israeli analyst Barry Rubin says time is running out.

“There is a big gap between material and bomb,” said Barry Rubin. “But basically, people who are well-informed estimate that Iran will need between 15 months to over three years.”

Rubin says that is a significant timetable considering there is a new administration in Washington, and in a few weeks, there is due to be a new government in Israel.

“We are entering a period in which we can assume that during the administration of this president of the United States and during the term of this prime minister of Israel, Iran will obtain nuclear weapons and those governments will have to make major decisions,” he said.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But Israel has grown increasingly alarmed about Iran’s intentions since 2005, when the Iranian president threatened to wipe the Jewish state “off the map.”

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EMP Attack: Overlooked Catastrophe

When Iran successfully launched its first domestically made satellite into orbit on Feb. 1, U.S. State Department official Robert Wood said Iran’s activities could “possibly lead to the development of ballistic missiles” and were of “great concern.”

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said France was “very concerned” about the launch.

UK Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said the launch underlined the UK’s “serious concerns about Iran’s intentions.” Then they resumed their focus on their various economic implosions where “concerned” had been elevated to “alarmed.”

What continues to astonish me is how little Western nations seem to grasp the tremendous danger that Iran is signaling in plain view. I have produced at least two television shows and as many articles in which I sought to warn of Iran’s intention to use its rapidly developing nuclear warheads in an EMP attack against Israel, the EU and the U.S.

In an article I wrote for WorldNetDaily in July 2007, I noted a 1998 Iranian missile test that “failed, detonating some 40 seconds after launch after reaching an altitude of 180 miles. This is the approximate ideal altitude to detonate a nuclear warhead for an EMP attack on a country.”

I was astonished at how little attention Western military planners gave Iran’s successful satellite launch. What little attention it did get focused on the probability that Iran could use the satellite launch technology to build an ICBM.

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Uranium For Iranian Nuke Within 2009

Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) predicts.

The think tank’s Mark Fitzpatrick made the announcement at today’s launch of its annual global review of military powers.

“But being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having a nuclear weapon.”

However, the survey reports doubts over US Intelligence estimates that Iran halted its work on nuclear weapons six years ago.

This points to Tehran’s continued development of long-range ballistic missiles able to reach targets in Israel and beyond.

The IISS recommends a mixture of carrot and stick as the best international response.

It concluded a dual policy of engagement and sanctions, testing possibilities for Iranian cooperation while adopting targeted containment strategies, is the best way to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme.

Foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said: “Several think-tanks have come to the same conclusion.

“The intelligence agencies are more reluctant to put a time frame on it, and the report itself says having enough enriched Uranium to build the warhead is not the same as building the warhead itself.”

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Israel Ready to Strike Iran

Informed sources in Washington tell Newsmax that Israel indeed will launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities soon – possibly in just days as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office.

The reason: The time clock has begun to run out. Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear device under the control of its radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in June that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in as little as six months.

That six-month period has passed.

Reports of Israel’s decision to imminently launch strikes, although unconfirmed, would seem to contradict the Bush stance outlined in a front-page New York Times story last week, which asserted that Bush rejected a plea from Israel last year to help it raid Iran’s main nuclear complex.

The Times said Israel was rebuffed after it requested from the U.S. specialized bunker-busting bombs that it needs to attack Iran’s nuclear complex at Natanz. The U.S. also reportedly nixed permission to the Israeli warplanes to fly over Iraqi territory to reach Iran.

Israel’s requests to the U.S. for military assistance came as the Jewish state was reportedly angry over a U.S. intelligence assessment in late 2007 that concluded Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons.

But an investigative report circulated by IAEA chief ElBaradei late last year disclosed that Iran was continuing to carry out uranium enrichment and had already established 6,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium, of which 3,800 were then in operation.

American intelligence officials now estimate that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000 centrifuges, enough to produce about one weapon’s worth of uranium every eight months or so, according to the Times.

The IAEA report estimated that Iran has obtained two tons of enriched uranium since its enrichment program was restarted at Natanz two years ago.

Last year 100 Israeli jets took part in an exercise over the eastern Mediterranean that was interpreted as a dress rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran.

And on Sept. 6 Israel launched an air attack against a site in Syria believed to be a nuclear-related facility containing material delivered by North Korea.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicted that Israel would stage a raid against Iran’s nuclear facilities if Barack Obama won the presidential election.

via Source – Newsmax.com
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Iran Now Capable of One Nuclear Bomb – Israel Readies Military

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make a single nuclear bomb, according to atomic experts analyzing the latest report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

To date, Iran had enriched about 1,400 pounds of low-enriched uranium suitable for nuclear fuel, according to two confidential reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Several experts told The Times the milestone was enough for a bomb, but Iran would have to further purify the uranium fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that experts in the West are unsure Iran has been able to achieve.

“They clearly have enough material for a bomb,” Richard L. Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and has advised Washington for decades, told the newspaper. “They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that’s another matter.”

The report found the Islamic Republic was installing, or preparing to install, thousands more of the machines that spin uranium gas to enrich it — with the target of 9,000 centrifuges by next year.

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The Israeli Air Force is ready to attack Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons project if diplomacy fails to persuade the Islamic Republic to halt uranium enrichment, said Commander Ido Nehushtan in an interview published Tuesday.

“We are prepared and ready to do whatever Israel needs us to do and if this is the mission we’re given then we are ready,” Nehushtan told German magazine Der Spiegel.

A strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities “is a political decision,” the IAF commander said, “but if I understand it correctly, all options are on the table … The Air Force is a very robust and flexible force. We are ready to do whatever is demanded of us.”

Asked if the Israeli military would be able to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are spread around the country, with some built underground, Nehushtan said, “Please understand that I do not want to get into details. I can only say this: It is not a technical or logistical question.”

While Israel has fought all its immediate Arab neighbors, its pilots have had limited capabilities to carry out missions as far away as Iran. A strike on Iraq’s sole nuclear reactor in 1981 was an extraordinary exception at the time but analysts say the F-16I has made long-distance strikes more possible.
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