Building a bomb now easier for us than putting in a contact lens, claims Iran official - http://www.timesofisrael.com/building-a-bomb-now-easier-for-us-than-making-contact-lenses-claims-iran-official/
Quds Force adviser says regime 'closer than ever' to nuclear device, and could easily complete project if religious ban were lifted
Iran is "closer than ever" to the bomb, and completing it would be "easier than putting in a contact lens," a senior Iranian official was quoted saying on Thursday.
The claim by Hassan Karimpour, an adviser to Iran's Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, was reported Thursday in Iranian media, and quoted on the BBC's Persian language website and Israel's Hebrew-language Channel 2 TV.
Finishing a nuclear bomb would be "easy to do, as soon as the spiritual ban on nuclear weapons were lifted," Channel 2 quoted Karimpour as saying.
The Iranian regime has repeatedly vowed that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon, and spiritual leader Ali Khamenei has issued fatwas forbidding nuclear weapons.
According to Fars news, Karimpour also said Iran has 14 missile depots, buried between 30 and 500 meters underground, equipped with automatic launchers, and that any country that dared to attack Iran would be riddled with large numbers of missiles fired from these depots.
Israel and others in the West believe Iran has been pursuing a rogue nuclear weapons program, however, and the US-led P5+1 world powers signed a deal with Iran in July intended to curb the program, in exchange for sanctions relief. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the deal as a "historic mistake" that would pave Iran's path to the bomb, and challenged US President Barack Obama's handling of the issue in a speech to Congress in March.
A former Iranian president reportedly admitted last month that the country's nuclear program was started with the intent of building a nuclear weapon. The reported comments by Hashemi Rafsanjani to the state-run IRNA news agency marked the first time a top Iranian official - current or former - had said the country sought a nuclear weapon.
Earlier on Thursday, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog said he could not guarantee that everything Iran is doing is peaceful, even as Tehran takes steps to reduce its nuclear activities under the July deal. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano spoke Thursday to the IAEA's 35-nation board.
Amano said he is "not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," and thus cannot conclude that "all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."
First Iranian fighter jets over Syria alongside Russian bombers - http://www.debka.com/article/25034/First-Iranian-fighter-jets-over-Syria-alongside-Russian-bombers
A series of videos apparently leaked by the Russian Defense Ministry reveal the presence of Iranian F-14 and MiG -29 fighters in Syrian skies for the first time. They were shown by "The Aviationist," Italian magazine, escorting heavy Russian bombers, including the Tupolev TU-160, the heaviest, fastest and most destructive bomber ever built, on missions no more than 150 km from Israel's northern border.
The ageing F-14s, built in the 1970s by American aviation giant Grumman, were originally sold to Iran when the Shah was in power and taken over by the reorganized Iranian air force after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Upgraded many times, the F-14s now feature state-of-the-art avionics, weapons and navigation systems, procured byTehran despite the strict UN embargo on their sale to the Islamic Republic.
Dozens of these upgraded warplanes, upgraded with intelligence-collection and tracking systems, have begun operating in Syrian air space near the Israeli border, under the pretense of escorting the Russian bombers. Iranian eyes in the sky are therefore studying the frontier area and gather valuable intelligence on Israel's air defenses. Normally, if Iranian warplanes had turned up in Syrian air space, the Israeli Air Force would have fought them off and shot them down, but by flying alongside Russian bombers they are protecting themselves against Israeli action.
As debkafile reported on Saturday, November 21, Russian air and missile attacks are systematically destroying Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria, without consideration of civilian casualties. The Russian general staff is now gearing up to embark on an unprecedented assault on rebel and ISIS strongholds, a blitz involving hundreds of simultaneous sorties by warplanes and bombers, as well as cruise missile attacks from planes and warships in the Mediterranean and the Caspian Seas.
High-altitude surveillance planes as well as low-altitude drones, fitted with imaging and targeting systems that will send live video and images to the command center in Moscow, will provide an umbrella for the attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will personally manage the multilayered military coordination between Russia and Iran when he visits Tehran on Nov. 23, accompanied by top military officers.
Iran Guard simulates capture of Al Aqsa Mosque - Ali Akbar Dareini - http://apnews.myway.com/article/20151121/ml--iran-israel-802f84ed57.html
Thousands of paramilitary forces from the country's powerful Revolutionary Guard have held a war game simulating the capture of Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control.
Iran's state media reported Saturday that the forces stormed and "liberated" a replica of the mosque in the exercise. They say that 120 brigades from the Basij, the paramilitary unit of the Guard, participated in Friday's exercise outside the holy city of Qom in central Iran.
The symbolic operations were backed up by Guard helicopters, drones and Tucano planes that bombed hypothetical enemy positions before ground troops captured the replica of the mosque set up at the top of a mountain.
In a common mistake, the Guard set up a replica of the gold-topped Dome of the Rock instead of the nearby mosque. Official photos showed one of the troops going to the top of the dome and waving an Iranian flag and a red-colored flag, a symbol of martyrdom.
The hilltop compound, which is holy to Jews and Muslims, has been at the heart of weeks of unrest between Israel and the Palestinians. Muslims call the spot the Noble Sanctuary, and the mosque is Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Jews revere the spot as the Temple Mount - home to the biblical Temples and the holiest site in Judaism.
The current round of fighting was sparked in part by rumors that Israel was plotting to take over the site - a charge that Israel vehemently denies. Clashes outside the mosque erupted in September and quickly spread across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Guard's aerospace division, said his force deployed Shahed-121, or Witness-129, drones during the war games. The drone, unveiled in 2013, has a range of 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles), a 24-hour nonstop flight capability and can carry eight bombs or missiles.
Even so, the exercise appeared to be largely for show. Iranian commanders have not said how they would be able to deploy large numbers of forces against Israel, located 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away, or overcome Israel's powerful and technologically advanced military.
Iran, Israel's arch-enemy, frequently expresses solidarity with the Palestinians and holds an annual "Jerusalem Day" each year on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan. Iran does not recognize Israel, has called for its destruction and supports anti-Israel militants across the Middle East.
How Iran exploits ISIS to wage terror - http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran/Analysis-How-Iran-exploits-ISIS-to-wage-terror-434892
With the Obama administration and Europe courting the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism to help defuse the Syrian civil war, core aims of Tehran's clerical regime have been ignored.
The intense Western effort to decimate Islamic State after the terrorist entity executed attacks in Paris has largely relegated Iranian and Hezbollah jingoism in Syria and Iraq to a secondary status.
With the Obama administration and Europe courting the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism - the Islamic Republic of Iran - to help defuse the Syrian civil war, core aims of Tehran's clerical regime have been ignored.
Writing on last week's events in Foreign Affairs magazine's website, Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted: "Iran is using ISIS' ascendance in the Middle East to consolidate its power. The country is now the key ally keeping Iraq's Shi'ites and the Alawite [Syrian President] Bashar Assad regime standing against well-armed and tenacious Sunni jihadists.
"In those battles, Tehran will likely do just enough to make sure the Sunnis don't conquer the Shi'a portions of Iraq and Assad's enclave in Syria, but no more. Meanwhile, in ISIS' wake, Tehran will strengthen its own radical Shi'a militias. The result could be a permanent destabilization of the Arab heartland."
To counter Iran's expansion, Saudi Arabia and Qatar spearheaded on Thursday a non-binding anti-Iran UN resolution to keep some semblance of a spotlight Tehran.
The resolution condemned the intervention in Syria of "all foreign terrorist fighters... and foreign forces fighting on behalf of the Syrian regime, particularly the al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (of Iran) and militia groups, such as Hezbollah." The resolution passed in the General Assembly 115-15, with 51 abstentions.
In many ways Iran and Islamic State are mirror images of each other. Take a historical example from a half millennium ago. Asked what Francis I of France sought in his war with Charles V of the Habsburg Empire, the French king replied: "None, we are in complete agreement. We both want control over Italy."
Fast forward to 2015. Both Islamic State and Iran seek to exert hegemony over the Islamic heartlands.
It is worth recalling that the Iran-Hezbollah- Syria troika is responsible for eight times as many Syrian dead as Islamic State. An October German survey conducted among nearly 900 Syrians revealed 70 percent of those questioned held the Assad regime responsible for their exodus from Syria. The poll showed 52% of the Syrians would not return to Syria if Assad remained in power.
All of this helps to explain J. Matthew McInnis's conclusion. The resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute wrote, "ISIS also serves a practical purpose for Iran. [Islamic State's] reign of terror and global ambitions have effectively distracted the international community from President Assad's butchering of his own people."
Iran and its strategic partner Hezbollah have invoked a kind of plastic surgery to disguise their terrorism in the West. French literary star Michel Houellebecq reminded readers in his Thursday New York Times op-ed titled "How France's Leaders Failed Its People" that in 1986 Hezbollah launched "a series of bombings in various public places in Paris."
Hezbollah's so-called political operation still remains a legal organization in France.
While European politicians have largely gone to great lengths to mainstream Iran's regime - and as a corollary effect, Hezbollah, too - there is a countervailing force in Congress. Last week, the US Senate unanimously adopted the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act.
The legislation would permit the US government to sanction foreign financial organizations for providing monetary services to Hezbollah or its subsidiaries.
The sheer barbarity of the massacres in Paris has understandably overshadowed the role of Iran's terrorist apparatus in the region. The Islamic Republic's nefarious behavior is a kind of masterpiece of a dialectic. Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei manages to keep his hands in all political buckets in the region.
If France and its allies - the US and the EU - are serious about slashing Islamic State terrorism, they will need to examine how the Islamic state of Iran helps boost Islamic State and Syria's al-Qaida franchise Nusra Front.
Iran leader hosts Putin, says U.S. policies threaten Tehran, Moscow - By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin -
http://news.yahoo.com/irans-leader-calls-u-regional-policies-threat-tehran-152817820.html
Iran's supreme leader, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran, said on Monday U.S. policies in the Middle East region were a threat to both countries and called for closer ties between Tehran and Moscow.
The civil war in Syria has evolved into a wider proxy struggle between global powers, with Russia and Iran supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while Western powers, Turkey and Gulf Arab states want him out.
"The Americans have a long-term plot and are trying to dominate Syria and then the whole region ... This is a threat to all countries, especially Russia and Iran," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, according to his website, at the meeting on the sidelines of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) Summit in Tehran.
"The United States is now trying to achieve its failed military objectives in Syria by political means," he added, referring to proposed peace talks to end the civil war in Syria.
The U.S. State Department pushed back against the remarks, saying its only intentions in Syria are to help find a peaceful solution to the conflict there.
"It's somewhat of a continuation of a pattern that we've seen from the supreme leader in terms of ... over-the-top rhetoric about the United States and our intentions," department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters in a briefing on Monday.
At a meeting in Vienna this month following deadly attacks in Paris and Beirut, world powers, including Russia, the United States and countries from Europe and the Middle East agreed on a political process in Syria leading to elections within two years, but differences remained on key issues such as Assad's fate.
A Kremlin spokesman was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying that Putin and Khamenei had agreed at their talks that global powers should not impose their political will on Syria.
Putin, on his first visit to Iran since 2007, presented an old edition of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, to Khamenei, the Iranian leader's website said, publishing photos of the book.
Khamenei praised Putin for "neutralizing Washington's plots" and said economic relations between the two countries could "expand beyond the current level".
Tehran and Moscow have stepped up ties following a landmark nuclear deal in July between Iran and six world powers including Russia and the United States. Under the deal, Tehran agreed long-term curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions.
On Monday Putin relaxed an export ban on nuclear equipment and technology to Iran.
Iran's ambassador to Russia also said on Monday that Moscow had started the process of supplying Tehran with an S-300 anti-missile rocket system.
Russia and Iran are undertaking joint military action in support of Assad. Backed by Russian air strikes, hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived since late September to take part in a major ground offensive planned in western and northwestern Syria, their biggest deployment in the country to date.
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