F L A S H C L U B » Iran

Iran detains Iraqi soldier in border shooting incident

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:29:14 +0000

Source: Reuters * Iraqi side did not open fire, officials say * Iraqi border patrol officer detained ARBIL, Iraq, May 14 (Reuters) – Iranian troops fired into the air and detained an Iraqi border patrol …

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Iran detains Iraqi soldier in border shooting incident

U.K. Firm Fined $2 Million After Pleading Guilty to Illegally Exporting Boeing 747 Aircraft to Iran

Thu, 13 May 2010 02:17:25 +0000

Balli Aviation Ltd., a subsidiary of the United Kingdom-based Balli Group PLC, was sentenced today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to pay a $2 million fine and to serve a five-year corporate period of probation after pleading guilty on Feb. 5, 2010, to a two-count criminal information in connection with its illegal export of commercial Boeing 747 aircraft from the United States to Iran. The sentence was announced today by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Ronald C. Machem Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; David W. Mills, Commerce Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement; and Adam J. Szubin, Director of the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control

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U.K. Firm Fined $2 Million After Pleading Guilty to Illegally Exporting Boeing 747 Aircraft to Iran

Afghan Leader Karzai Needs a Bit of the Kid Gloves Treatment: Barno

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:43:32 +0000

The Center for a New American Security held a press briefing on the occasion of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to D.C. with its counterinsurgency mafia yesterday, including president and reigning COIN evangelist John Nagl, Andrew Exum, and former Afghan commander ret. Gen. David Barno, who just recently joined CNAS. I’ve been a fan of Barno since 2004, when I was in Afghanistan, he and Zalmay Khalilzad were running the show, and the counterinsurgency effort there to all appearances seemed to be working. How much of that was due to the fact that the Taliban were still very much on their heels after being scattered by the U.S. backed Northern Alliance and how much was due to the command pursuing COIN best practices, I’m not sure. Barno said the tension between Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Amb. Karl Eikenberry is overplayed.

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Afghan Leader Karzai Needs a Bit of the Kid Gloves Treatment: Barno

Pakistani ambassador in Tehran attacked

admin — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:05:55 +0000

Source: Reuters (Adds quote from Pakistani official) TEHRAN, May 11 (Reuters) – Pakistan’s ambassador was attacked and injured in his car in Tehran on Tuesday by an Afghan, officials said. A Pakistani foreign …

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Pakistani ambassador in Tehran attacked

Beware Unpredictable Consequences of Striking Iran: Former Bush Admin Official

Tue, 11 May 2010 16:23:35 +0000

That’s what former Bush administration top arms control official Robert Joseph told reporters at the Heritage Foundation yesterday. Iran has many retaliatory options, from using oil as an economic weapon, unleashing Hezbollah, to attacking U.S. installations in the Gulf, if it’s hit from the air. Even if Israel carried out strikes, the U.S. would be blamed, he said. Because so many potential unforeseen consequences could result, Joseph said he was no fan of striking Iran. – Greg Grant

Iran Nukes – No Easy Choices

Tue, 11 May 2010 13:40:00 +0000

Administration policy aimed at countering Iran’s nuclear ambitions has so far been a “four rail bank shot”, Ambassador Robert Joseph , former arms control official and senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy, told a group of national security bloggers at the Heritage Foundation on Monday. By giving up plans for a third ground-based interceptor missile defense site, Joseph said, the administration eased the path to a strategic arms agreement with Russia, “which was supposed to ease the relations with Russia and help get Russia and China together to put pressure on Iran.” “I don’t know what we got for that,’ Joseph added, “but so far it doesn’t appear to be working.” Overall, he suggests, future administration policy could be “Plan A isn’t working, so Plan B is to do more Plan A.” The NIPP is also urging the Senate to take a hard look at the New Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) treaty signed in Prague last month, in particular what the NIPP calls “explicit and implicit” limits on missile defense and conventional Prompt Global Strike systems. The Prague preamble states that missile defense forces are to be kept proportional to delivery systems, while PGS systems would count against the agreed ceilings on “strategic launchers”. As for Iran, Joseph sees no easy answers. The use of force “could slow the program but not end it, and the consequences would be enormous.” As for an Israeli attack, even if effective, “we would be blamed for it whether we knew about it or whether we didn’t.” The problem with Israel’s own deterrent – generally considered to include a second-strike capability, based on cruise missiles carried by Dolphin-class submarines – is that it is “99 per cent effective”, Joseph says. “Iran’s leader says that he wants to destroy Israel. Would he pull the trigger?

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Iran Nukes – No Easy Choices

U.S. drone missiles kill at least four in Pakistan

Steven Aftergood — Tue, 11 May 2010 01:37:36 +0000

Source: Reuters MIRANSHAH, Pakistan, May 11 (Reuters) – U.S. drone aircraft fired three missiles into Pakistan’s North Waziristan, a major al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary on the Afghan border, on Tuesday, killing four …

Iran Still a Decade Away from Building an ICBM Able to Reach New York, D.C.: IISS

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:39:11 +0000

London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies has released a new “dossier”: “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities: A net assessment,” produced by “an international team of experts.” IISS says that while Iran’s missile program has made impressive progress in recent years, it remains heavily dependent on foreign support and supply of key materials, equipment and components. Certain key technologies it can’t build: “There exists no evidence to date to suggest that Iran can, on its own, develop or produce the individual components of a strap-down navigation and guidance system for ballistic missiles.” Tehran is still four or five years away from rigging some combination of liquid or solid fuel engines to build a longer range missile capable of ranging Western Europe, according to a IISS press release. As for a notional ICBM that could reach 9,000 kilometers and hit America’s east coast, Iran is still a decade away. Iran is though to possess 200–300 Shahab-1 and –2 (Scud-B,C) with a maximum range of 500 kilometers. Iran has bought longer range Shahab-3 missiles from North Korea (No-dong) with a range of 900 kilometers. Iranian has been tinkering with the Shahab-3 to produce the Ghadr-1, with a longer range out to 1,600 kilometers, though with a smaller warhead of around 750 kilograms. Iran appears to be either very close or may already have developed a liquid fuel engine production line of its own. Publicly available information indicates Iran has around six Shahab-3/Ghadr-1 transporter erector launcher (TEL) vehicles and between 12 and 18 TELs for the Shahab-1/-2

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Iran Still a Decade Away from Building an ICBM Able to Reach New York, D.C.: IISS

Long-range Iranian missiles still a decade away

Mon, 10 May 2010 14:31:04 +0000

A new report says Iran has overtaken North Korea when it comes to making missiles but its programme still faces a host of technical obstacles The International Institute for Strategic Studies has just published a new study on Iran’s missile programme. Here are some of the main conclusions. * The Iranian government has diverted enormous resources to its ballistic missile programme and now surpasses North Korea in its capacity to produce missile components. Iran may soon establish a production line for making liquid-fuel engines, “if it has not done so already”. *The solid-fuel Sajjil-2 missiles, with a 2,000 km range, first tested a year ago, may be a “hedge” after engineers realised that any future Iranian nuclear weapon would weigh over 1,000 kg, and any liquid-fuel missile to deliver long distances it would be “very large and cumbersome”, and would require large underground silos which would take a long time to build. * Iranian engineers still have a long way to go to develop and test intermediate and long-range weapons.

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Long-range Iranian missiles still a decade away

Iran hangs five members of Kurdish "terrorist" group

admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 08:24:43 +0000

Source: Reuters * Iran hangs five Kurdish activists * One woman among hanged PJAK group members (Adds detail, background) TEHRAN, May 9 (Reuters) – Iran hanged five members of a Kurdish “anti- …

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