This article titled “Iran faces new wave of sanctions over nuclear programme” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington and Julian Borger, for The Guardian on Monday 21st November 2011 19.44 UTC

The US and Britain are leading a new wave of international sanctions targeting Iran’s banks and oil industry following the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report earlier this month that said Tehran worked for many years to develop nuclear weapons and may still be doing so.

Britain has used counter-terrorism powers to order its financial sector to cut all ties with Iranian banks in an attempt to undermine funding of the nuclear programme. The US announced measures intended to limit Tehran’s ability to refine its own fuel as well as targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ financial interests.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wrote to European leaders as well as the US and Japan calling for “unprecedented” sanctions against Iran, including a halt to buying its oil.

But the measures are expected to have a limited impact in the face of resistance from China and Russia to strengthening global sanctions against Iran through the United Nations security council.

Britain went the furthest by, for the first time, cutting an entire country’s banking system off from London’s financial sector. It said that Iranian banks “play a crucial role in providing financial services to individuals and entities within Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes”.

The foreign secretary, William Hague, said the measures are part of increasing pressure on Iran to engage with the IAEA and foreign governments about its nuclear programme.

“The IAEA’s report last week provided further credible and detailed evidence about the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear programme,” he said. “Today we have responded resolutely by introducing a set of new sanctions that prohibit all business with Iranian banks.

“We have consistently made clear that until Iran engages meaningfully, it will find itself under increasing pressure from the international community. The swift and decisive action today co-ordinated with key international partners is a strong signal of determination to intensify this pressure.”

British diplomats said the Iranian central bank plays a direct role in procuring equipment for its nuclear programme and added that the sanctions were also intended to punish Tehran for its refusal to compromise over its enrichment of uranium, which can produce reactor fuel or fissile material for a bomb, despite a series of UN security council sanctions calling on it to do so. They said that denying Iran access to the international financial hub in London would raise the cost and hassle for the Iranians of doing business with the rest of the world.

Canada took a similar step against Iran’s central bank.

In Washington, President Obama said additional US sanctions are intended to discourage business with Iran’s petrochemical industry, which traditionally has produced plastics and similar products but has increasingly been used to refine petrol because international sanctions have hit Tehran’s refineries.

“New sanctions target for the first time Iran’s petrochemical sector, prohibiting the provision of goods, services and technology to this sector and authorising penalties against any person or entity that engages in such activity,” Obama said. “They expand energy sanctions, making it more difficult for Iran to operate, maintain, and modernise its oil and gas sector.

“As long as Iran continues down this dangerous path, the United States will continue to find ways, both in concert with our partners and through our own actions, to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime.”

Washington designated Iran a territory of “primary money-laundering concern” in the expectation that it will discourage foreign banks from doing business with Iranian financial institutions.

However, Washington continues to avoid directly targeting Iran’s central bank because if Tehran is unable to carry through financial transactions necessary to sell its oil, that could force the cost of petroleum up and hit the US economy.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, called the measures a “significant ratcheting-up of pressure” on Iran and said other countries will follow in the days ahead.

In his letter, Sarkozy said that Iran’s nuclear programme represents a “serious and urgent threat to peace”. He called for a halt to purchasing Iranian oil and for the assets of Iran’s central bank to be frozen. EU foreign ministers are also expected to consider further measures at a meeting on 1 December.

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This article titled “Obama urged to accept Iranian nuclear offer” was written by Julian Borger, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 10th October 2011 12.13 UTC

There is a growing chorus of approval among US experts for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s offer of a new uranium deal. So far the enthusiasm has failed to catch on inside the Obama administration or among the rest of the six-nation group that handles nuclear negotiations with Iran. But that could change as the months go by and the Iranian government builds up its stockpile of low enriched and medium (20%) enriched uranium.

Ahmadinejad made this latest offer in the press, first with an interview with the Washington Post in mid-September, and then with the New York Times a week or so later. The essence of the deal, the Iranian president told the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, was: “If they give us the 20% enriched uranium this very week, we will cease the domestic enrichment of uranium of up to 20 percent this very week.”

The offer is a variant on a series of proposals and counter-proposals on the supply of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), for the production of medical isotopes. The first version involved Iran shipping out of its low enriched uranium (LEU) in return for the 20% enriched uranium required for the TRR. Ahmadinejad seemed to back the deal but it crashed on the reefs of internal Iranian politics. It resurfaced in May 2010 in a proposal brokered by Turkey and Brazil which was rejected by the West when it became clear that Iran intended to continue making 20% uranium at home. This was crucial as mastery of 20% uranium production is said to be 90% of the way to making weapons-grade (90% enriched) uranium in terms of technical difficulty.

In this latest reincarnation of the proposal, Ahmadinejad is saying Iran will stop 20% production. For that reason, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, argued that it would be wise to pursue the deal, on a temporary trial basis:

To test out Ahmadinejad’s offer, the United States could suggest that it would arrange the sale of two-year’s worth of TRR fuel in exchange for a two-year halt to any production of uranium enriched over five percent. TRR targets for medical isotope production could also be offered for sale to increase interest in the deal.

The idea has been seconded by Ali Faez and Charles Ferguson of the Federation of American Scientists, who suggest supplying Iran with 50 kg of fuel for the TRR unconditionally. They argue it would be seen as a humanitarian people-to-people gesture, helping 850,000 Iranian cancer patients receive treatment, with the strategic benefit of removing “Iran’s rationale for refining uranium to more than 3.5 percent”.

Faez and Ferguson wave away the risk that Ahmadinejad might not have the regime’s full backing for this gambit, as proved to be the case two years ago. They say Ahmadinejad has “repeated the offer often enough, and with confirmation from the foreign minister, that it must have the backing of the Iranian political elite, including Khamenei.”

That argument is debatable. Some Ahmadinejad watchers counter that he says lots of things without the Supreme Leader’s backing. The bigger problem is that it easier for academics to take these kind of gambles than leaders. Obama is in election mode and all foreign policy decisions are being subjected to a sniff test by his political advisors. Giving Ahmadinejad the benefit of the doubt once more will not sit well in a presidential debate against his eventual Republican challenger.

The rest of the 5+1 group (the P5 and Germany) have had little to say about the offer, holding fire until there is internal cohesion among the six, but if Iran continues to increase 20% U production at the present rate, and Israel shows signs of contemplating military action once more, desperation may take the upper hand and the Obama administration will be under increasingly heavy international pressure to take the risk.

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This article titled “Los Alamos nuclear laboratory threatened by wildfire” was written by Ed Pilkington, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 29th June 2011 18.50 UTC

Teams of firefighters are battling to prevent a wildfire in New Mexico from reaching the Los Alamos National Laboratory, America’s largest and most important research and development site for nuclear weapons.

The fire that started on Sunday, probably as a result of a downed power line, has forced the entire 11,000 population of Los Alamos to be evacuated and has reached within a road of the outer perimeter of the lab on its south-western and western sides. An acre of vacant land on the south-western border of the lab experienced a spot fire, though that was quickly brought under control.

The wildfire has drawn attention to at least 10,000 drums of radioactive waste dating back to the Cold War era which are being stored in a part of the laboratory known as Area G. The 55-gallon drums are stored three deep on concrete under fire-protected tents.

The management of Los Alamos says that the waste is under little danger following the investment in recent years of m of firefighting measures including the thinning of trees and creation of fire breaks.

As a last resort, plastic foam could be used to seal off the drums from incoming flames.

But the prospect of a possible threat to such a sensitive nuclear site has raised alarm in the region, and specially converted planes known as “flying laboratories” are being flown over the area to monitor air quality to detect whether any nuclear particles are entering the atmosphere. No radioactive contaminants have been recorded so far.

“There are fire mitigations at all of our nuclear facilities, and I am confident in our ability to protect all of them. This is a strong team protecting a national treasure”, said the laboratory’s director, Charles McMillan.

The lab was created during the second world war as a secret location for the Manhattan Project, the mission to develop the first atomic bomb. It has since grown into a massive research institute with an annual budget of more than billion covering such diverse studies as nanotechnology, computing and space science.

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While the world focuses on the nuclear proliferation happening in Iran and North Korea there is gathering danger in Southeast Asia. One that no one is paying attention to but is every bit as lethal as anything we’ve ever faced. That threat is from the country of Myanmar. Formerly known as Burma. The last remaining pure military dictatorship on the planet. And one of the most brutal dictatorships the world has ever known. The general who runs Burma is right up there with Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-Il, Joseph Stalin, and Adolph Hitler. What’s worse, he and his regime have nuclear ambitions.

I don’t mean they would love to have nukes one day. I mean they’re in the midst of a covert nuclear weapons program equal to or greater than the one in Iran. The kind of underground facilities being constructed in Myanmar would make Saddam Hussein blush. They are enormous, sophisticated, and no one is stopping them.

This article titled “North Korea ‘building’ new missile launch site” was written by Tania Branigan in Beijing, for The Guardian on Wednesday 16th February 2011 21.59 UTC

North Korea appears close to finishing a new missile launch site, according to analysis of satellite images taken in the last month, which show an almost completed 100ft tall launch tower, suggesting a step forward in Pyongyang’s inter-continental ballistic missile programme.

“I think its fair to say that the tower is basically operational,” said Tim Brown, the globalsecurity.org image analyst who identified the development. “I do not see the North Korean missile programme as a real military threat. It is just enough of a programme to get political attention and be used as a bargaining chip. It is one way they can go to the six-party talks and have something real to negotiate with.

“Talks on aid for denuclearisation, which North Korea walked out of in 2009, remain stalled following its attack on Yeonpyeong island and the sinking of a South Korean warship. Although the country already has one launch site, at Musudan-ri, Tongchang-dong appears far more sophisticated. Brown and a colleague were the first to publicly reveal the facility, in 2008.

He told Voice of America that Pyongyang had been developing the site, in the north-west of the country, for around 10 years.

“The other [site], it had dirt roads; it was pretty primitive. This one looks to be more of a serious site with support facilities that are needed to sustain a program – what you’d want to do if you are serious about testing long-range missiles,” Daniel Pinkston, Seoul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, told the Washington Post

But Michael Ellemann, a proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, noted: “[It is] not clear why [North Korea] is building it, as the existing facilities at Musudan-ri are adequate and better located for space launches, or missiles against US or Japanese targets.”

He added that although it might be used in the near future, given how close it was to completion, it was unclear what it would be used for.

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said last month that the North was becoming a threat and he believed it would develop an intercontinental ballistic missile within five years.

But proliferation experts were sceptical, noting that although Pyongyang has been attempting to create a long-range missile for years, its tests have been sporadic and largely unsuccessful.

David Santoro, also of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, noted: “Much more important [than this site] is the missile itself. And in this regard, North Korea does not have the technology to strike the United States, nor will it have it anytime soon, despite what Robert Gates suggested last month. The ICBM tests it conducted in 2006 and 2009 were quite revealing in this regard.”

Brown also noted the failures of the missile tests, but added that the North was likely to be benefiting from Iran’s “much more successful” and better-funded research.

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This article titled “Korean colonels hold talks in demilitarised zone” was written by Justin McCurry, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 8th February 2011 08.15 UTC

Senior military officials from the two Koreas have met for talks that could pave the way for a resumption of multi-party negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

Colonels from the two countries met in the border village of Panmunjom in their first meeting for four months.

The talks are supposed to lay the foundations for higher-level discussions later in the year, but the fact that the two sides are talking is evidence that tensions have eased since North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong island in November.

The prospects for dialogue looked remote after that attack and the sinking of a South Korean warship by a North Korean torpedo last March.

But the countries’ leaders have come under pressure to tone down their rhetoric and resume dialogue amid concerns in Washington and Beijing about recent advances in North Korea’s uranium enrichment capability.

North Korea walked out of the nuclear talks – which involve the North and South Korea, China, the US, Russia and Japan – in April 2009, and promptly conducted its second nuclear weapons test. Its first was in 2006.

In November, a US scientist revealed he had been shown around a new uranium enrichment plant in North Korea that has the potential to dramatically strengthen its nuclear arsenal.

Tuesday’s talks, taking place in one of the blue huts along the demilitarised zone that divides the two countries, could lead to discussions between their defence ministers, reports said.

Video footage showed Ri Son-kwon, a North Korean colonel, pat his South Korean counterpart, Moon Sang-gyun, on the shoulder before they shook hands prior to the meeting.

South Korea is expected to demand an apology for the Yeonpyeong and Cheonan incidents, while North Korea is reportedly keen to resume bilateral trade, most of which was halted after the Cheonan sinking, which killed 46 sailors.

North Korea has been calling for dialogue with its neighbour for several weeks as it seeks to alleviate the effects of international sanctions and the withdrawal of aid by South Korea’s conservative government. Analysts say it also wants to create stability inside the country as its leader, Kim Jong-il, prepares to hand over power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un.

Last week the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, said he was willing to consider a summit with Kim, just weeks after Lee threatened to retaliate to any further provocations by Pyongyang. The countries have held only two summits, in 2000 and 2007.

Seoul has promised huge sums in aid and development investment, but only after North Korea has dismantled its nuclear programme. The US and China, meanwhile, have made inter-Korean dialogue a prerequisite for the possible restart of nuclear negotiations.

“When they [North Korea] need something, which usually means money, they first drive tensions high, then switch to the charm offensive and start talks in order to get something,” Andrei Lankov, a North Korean expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, told Reuters.

The tensions that followed the 23 November shelling of Yeonpyeong, in which four people died, was followed by an international diplomatic effort to avert a full-scale conflict and to restart nuclear negotiations.

Those efforts are set to continue this week when South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy, Wi Sung-lac, travels to Beijing to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wu Daiwei.

“The two will exchange ideas on a wide range of issues, including the current situation of the north’s nuclear programmes and future responses,” the South Korean foreign ministry said.

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This article titled “Iranian nuclear scientist ‘tortured on suspicion of revealing state secrets’” was written by Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan, for The Guardian on Tuesday 4th January 2011 17.26 UTC

An Iranian nuclear scientist who claimed to have been abducted by the CIA and who returned to a hero’s welcome in Tehran in July has been imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of giving away state secrets, according to an opposition website.

Iranbriefing.net – run by a US-based group that normally reports on political prisoners and the activities of Iran’s revolutionary guard – said the scientist, Shahram Amiri, had been interrogated intensively for three months in Tehran before spending two months in solitary confinement, where his treatment left him hospitalised for a week.

The Tehran authorities would not confirm or deny the account. Asked to comment, a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary said: “I haven’t heard anything about this [his arrest] and I don’t have any information regarding this matter.”

Amiri has not been seen in public in the six months since his much-publicised homecoming from America, where he claimed to have been held against his will. State media portrayed him at the time as a daring patriot who had escaped from his alleged CIA captors with critical information about US covert operations against Iran.

US officials, surprised by Amiri’s unexpected return to Iran, insisted he had gone to the US willingly. However, there was concern in US intelligence circles that his original “defection” in Saudi Arabia in 2009 could have been a trap to embarrass the CIA and trick its officials into revealing how much the US knows about the Iranian nuclear programme.

The evidence is contradictory. During his time in the US, Amiri appeared to have made three videos – one saying he had decided to continue his studies in the US, another saying he was being held captive and a third claiming to be on the run from the CIA. He then presented himself to the Iranian interest section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington, asking to go home.

Independent but unverified reports from inside Iran said Amiri’s family had been stripped of their passports and placed under close scrutiny after the scientist went missing on his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Western observers said his disappearance from public view since last summer strengthened their view that he had been forced to return by threats to his relatives. It is not yet clear whether a planned Iranian television drama based on the official version of his story will be aired as scheduled this year.

Amid the conflicting reports, it is clear that the struggle over Amiri is just one more battle in an increasingly ferocious secret war over Iran’s nuclear programme that has seen two other Iranian scientists assassinated and a third injured in bomb attacks last year.

Iran has blamed western and Israeli intelligence for the attacks, and for a computer worm, known as Stuxnet, that caused centrifuges to malfunction at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.

Tehran also claimed last week that General Ali Reza Asgari, a former revolutionary guard commander and deputy defence minister who disappeared in Istanbul just over four years ago, was being held in an Israeli prison. Mohammad Raouf Sheybani, a deputy foreign minister, called for an international inquiry into Asgari’s fate.

Covert operations against Iran’s nuclear programme appear to have had some success in slowing it down. The main enrichment plant in Natanz stopped processing uranium altogether for a few days in November. But diplomatic efforts to persuade Tehran to suspend its programme in return for foreign technical and financial assistance have so far failed.

Talks in December between Iran and six major powers in Geneva led only to an agreement to meet again, in Turkey later this month. Tehran has invited selected foreign diplomats to tour some of its nuclear facilities ahead of the meeting. But the US, which is not invited, has dismissed the invitation as a propaganda ploy.

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This article titled “Dmitry Medvedev welcomes US nuclear arms treaty” was written by Tom Parfitt in Moscow, for The Guardian on Thursday 23rd December 2010 18.53 UTC

MPs in Russia could approve a new strategic arms reduction treaty with the US as early as tomorrow after President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed the pact.

The country’s overwhelmingly pro-Kremlin parliament is likely to push the agreement through swiftly, despite doubts over Washington’s desire to station a missile defence shield in Europe.

Medvedev’s office said today he was “pleased to learn that the United States Senate has ratified the Start Treaty and expressed hope that the State Duma and the Federation Council [lower and upper houses of parliament] will be ready to consider this issue shortly and to ratify the document”.

The US Senate voted 71 to 26 in favour of the treaty yesterday, despite expectations that Republican members might try to block its passage.

The speaker of the State Duma, Boris Gryzlov, said the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party, which dominates the chamber, was ready to approve the treaty at a parliamentary session scheduled tomorrow.

The speaker of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov, said he could push it through the same day.

Under New Start, as the agreement is called, strategic nuclear warheads deployed by each country will be reduced to 1,550 within seven years. Deployed missile launchers would be cut to 700.

Mikhail Margelov, head of the Federation Council’s foreign relations committee, said the treaty “represents a shift away from cold war mentality and demonstrates that Russia and the US are focused on achieving 21st-century global security”.

Its ratification in both countries will be seen as step forward after a difficult period in bilateral relations since Medvedev and Barack Obama signed the treaty in Prague in April.

Two months after that meeting, the US exposed 10 Russian sleeper agents living in New York and Washington, although the fallout was partly defused when they were exchanged for four men jailed in Russia who had allegedly worked for western intelligence agencies.

Relations appeared to be warming last month when the Nato military alliance invited Russia to participate in a US-led missile defence system about which Moscow is deeply suspicious. But the thaw came under threat when WikiLeaks revealed US diplomatic cables suggesting Russia is a “mafia state”.

Analysts say the treaty overrides such irritants, showing progress in the attempts to improve ties with Russia, which began after Obama came to power.

Sergei Rogov, head of the influential US and Canada Institute in Moscow, told the RIA Novosti news agency: “It is, of course, a positive step and it shows that the ‘re-set’ in Russian-American relations is bringing real results, but the question now is, what next?”

Top of the agenda for the Kremlin will be hammering out details of its role in the missile defence project. Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, warned this month that Russia would be obliged to deploy “new strike forces” on its borders if talks with Nato over the system failed to show progress.

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This article titled “South Korean army chief quits as scale of North’s nuclear ambition emerges” was written by Justin McCurry and agencies, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 14th December 2010 07.57 UTC

The chief of the South Korean army resigned today, two weeks after the defence minister was replaced amid sharp criticism of the country’s response to North Korea’s attack on Yeonpyeong island.

General Hwang Eui-don’s resignation came as South Korean intelligence officials warned that North Korea has been secretly enriching uranium at as many as four undisclosed locations, potentially giving it access to a new source of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

The enrichment plants are in addition to a similar facility at the regime’s main nuclear facility in Yongbyon, revealed last month, following a visit by the US scientist Siegfried Hecker.

North Korean officials claimed that the Yongbyon plant had more than 1,000 working centrifuges, but insisted they were intended for power generation and not for the production of weapons-grade uranium.

“The business of peacefully developing nuclear energy and using it is happening in our country, in line with the international trend,” the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of North Korea’s ruling party, said today. “Peaceful nuclear activity is a sovereign right of all nations.”

Hwang is said to have resigned over his involvement in a property investment deal, but his departure will be seen as a further blow to the country’s military so soon after the Yeonpyeong attack, which killed two soldiers and two civilians.

Kim Tae-young resigned as defence minister to take responsibility for what many South Koreans believed was a weak response to the 23 November attack, the first targeting civilians since the 1950-53 Korean war.

The South fired artillery rounds in response but did not order air strikes. It has since vowed to retaliate with much greater force to any further provocations by Pyongyang.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said Hwang, who only took up the post in June, was under pressure over profits from the property deal.

“General Hwang offered to retire following media reports about his property investment, because he judged it was inappropriate for him to stay in the post at a time when he has to lead reform of the army,” Yonhap quoted a defence ministry official as saying.

His resignation comes on the eve of South Korea’s biggest civil defence drill for years. Fighter jets will fly around the country and people will run to thousands of underground shelters as part of a simulation of a North Korean air attack.

News that the North’s uranium enrichment programme may be more widespread than previously thought could add to fears that the regime is seeking to augment its plutonium stockpile.

“The uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon that the North disclosed to US scientist Siegfried Hecker is not among the three or four South Korea and the US have established to be in existence,” the intelligence official was quoted as saying in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

“We have established that the uranium enrichment tests that the North has been conducting for some time are at separate locations.”

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, yesterday voiced “deep concern” about the uranium enrichment programme in a meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Pak Ui-chun.

Lavrov urged Pyongyang to comply with UN security council resolutions banning uranium enrichment and called for a quick resumption of six-party talks on its nuclear programme. Aside from Russia and the two Koreas, the stalled talks involve the US, China and Japan.

The failure to resume multiparty negotiations sparked a new regional diplomatic push that will continue in the coming days.

South Korea’s nuclear envoy was due to meet his Russian counterpart to discuss the shelling and uranium enrichment, while the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, will begin a four-day, private visit to North Korea on Thursday.

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Breaking on Twitter…

Don’t know much yet, but just moments ago South Korea detected an “artificial earthquake” in North Korean territory believed to be from a nuclear test.

Developing…

***UPDATE***

From the AP:

SEOUL, May 25 (AP) – (Kyodo)—North Korea appears to have gone ahead with its threat to conduct a second nuclear test, South Korean media reported Monday.

Yonhap News Agency quoted a source as saying South Korea detected an “artificial earthquake” in North Korea that was felt shortly before 10 a.m.

Developing…