Crossfire War – RAPID FIRE NEWS=TEHRAN – BEIJING – DAMASCUS WATCH – Eurasia Theatre: Iran Ends All Cooperation with UN International Atomic Energy Agency – States Investigation into Nuclear Warhead Production “Outside of Agency’s Domain”
Night Watch: VIENNA – Diplomatic masques are coming off. The Jerusalem Post/AP have just reported Tehran has announced the end of any further cooperation with the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based in Vienna. The angry announcement was made by Iran Vice-President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh today, Thursday, in response to allegations by some of the IAEA thirty-five board members, based on U.S. and other intelligence, that the uranium Iran is enriching can make nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles. Knowing Tehran’s offensive foreign policy this should not be a revelation. It was known Iran’s nuclear program was revived in the early 1980s and was shrouded in secrecy. Reports about it were supposedly first made known by Iranian opposition figures in exile. An Iranian exile informed me a few years ago he last visited Tehran in August 2001 and in the hotel he was staying there were a lot of Chinese technicians he assumed were working on weapons of mass destruction. [JPOST]
Tehran has been one of the main investors in the international clandestine nuclear network with Beijing being a major supporter not only of Iran but also of Pakistan’s ballistic nuclear program because the Chinese government is aware if Iran-Pakistan’s foreign policies are successful then three of China’s rivals will become weaker, the West-India-Russia. Beijing also shipped nuclear-ballistic missile technology through North Korea, as it staged the Six Party talks, and when some of the same weapons production technology arrived in Syria the Israel Air Force (IAF) bombed it last September just one week before it went into production.
It has finally dawned on Western governments no peaceful resolution is possible and any further round of negotiations just adds to Iran’s nuclear weapons stockpile, so now Tehran, through its Vice-President is incensed. The IAEA instituted its new inspection regime early last year with great fanfare by its director Mohamed El Baradei who has always been overly eager to show he is doing something significant which has always made it easy for Tehran to manipulate him. But his “work-plan” was constantly stifled by Iran which led to several unmet deadlines for Tehran to release information on the real nature of its production. The inspection probe was forced to extend its deadline into early this year and in May El Baradei stunned Tehran by allowing an IAEA report to actually admit for the first time Iran may actually be involved in nuclear weapons production.
What finally ended the pretense of cooperation was when the thirty-five member IAEA board was presented with a multi-media display, by its Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen, which as mentioned above, used intelligence information provided by the U.S and other sources. Both sides are now on a collision course, diplomatic as well as military with Vice-President Aghazadeh indicating his government is no longer even willing to discuss the issue. He stated any investigation by the IAEA into weapons production “is outside the domain of the agency.” And any more queries on the issue “will be dealt with in another way.” I suspect that means by testing the accuracy of the missile guidance systems and not in any more wargames but in a real one.
