Breaking News Report: Iran Now Nuclear Self-Sufficient

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ihLldn30-LkzAZtdoBmLzjez6SKw?...

Gates to Discuss Iran in Oman Visit

By Dan De Luce (AFP) – 3 hours ago

MUSCAT — US Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew to Oman on Sunday to hold talks with Sultan Qaboos on Iran's disputed nuclear programme before heading to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast.

The talks were expected to cover international concern over Iran, the growing terror threat in Oman's neighbour Yemen, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a senior US defence official told reporters.

The visit was mainly a courtesy call as Oman celebrates the 40th anniversary of the reign of Sultan Qaboos, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Oman, which has good relations with both the United States and Iran, played a key role in brokering the release of one of three US hikers accused by the Tehran government of straying from Iraq into Iran's territory.

Muscat has been pressing for the release of the two remaining hikers, held since July last year.

The sultan has also appealed for a diplomatic solution to the long-running dispute over Iran's uranium enrichment programme, which Washington believes is part of a clandestine attempt to build nuclear weapons despite Iranian denials.

President Barack Obama's approach stresses both diplomacy and "holding Iran's feet to the fire with sanctions," and Oman had a useful role to play on the issue, said the official, briefing reporters on Gates's plane en route to Muscat.

"The sultan has been very proactive in pushing for a diplomatic solution and so that's helpful," said the official, who described Qaboos as "among the region's most erudite and insightful leaders."

The visit comes amid the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic memos on the WikiLeaks website, including cables that portray Arab leaders deeply threatened by Iran's nuclear ambitions and urging Washington to take military action.

The WikiLeaks documents dump could come up in the talks as top US officials have sought to reassure allies and partners around the world upset by the leaked files, which included embarrassing revelations and harsh assessments of an array of leaders.

The main purpose of Gates's visit, however, was to spend time on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, to get a first-hand look at operations in support of the war in Afghanistan, officials said.

"It will be the secretary's first visit to a deployed aircraft carrier since taking the job four years ago," press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

Gates planned to thank the ship's crew "for the difference they're making for the troops on the ground," he said.

The crew of the carrier and other naval ships in the area "are largely unseen and unheralded, but they are greatly appreciated by our troops fighting in Afghanistan, and by extension the American people at home."

Nearly 100,000 US forces on the ground in Afghanistan rely on fighter jets based on the carrier and elsewhere to carry out air strikes against Islamist fighters.

The senior defence official briefing reporters on the plane said the secretary's trip to the carrier was not designed "to signal any particular message" to Iran.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/12/05/36255104.html

The Voice of Russia...

Iran claims to have produced uranium concentrate

Dec 5, 2010 14:07 Moscow Time

Ali Akbar Salehi. Photo: EPA

Iran claims to have produced its first batch of uranium ore concentrate.

The announcement was made by chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday.

He said that the concentrate, known as “yellowcake”, needed to enrich uranium had been produced domestically at the southern Gachin mine. Earlier, Iran had imported the concentrate.

The statement came ahead of the resumption of nuclear talks in Geneva between Iran and the six world powers – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/12/20101259318679341.html

Aljazeera...

Iran announces nuclear advance

Atomic chief says country has produced its first batch of "yellowcake", the raw material used for uranium enrichment.

Last Modified: 05 Dec 2010 11:07 GMT

Western powers fear that Iran will use its nuclear capacity to develop nuclear weapons [AFP]

Iran has produced its first batch of uranium concentrates to be used at a nuclear plant, state media has reported.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the atomic chief, said Iranian experts would use domestically produced yellowcake, the raw material for enrichment, at the Isfahan conversion plant.

"The West had counted on the possibility of us being in trouble over raw material but today we had the first batch of yellowcake from Gachin mine sent to Isfahan [conversion] facility," Salehi said on state television on Sunday.

He said the work at the Isfahan facility would be supervised by the UN nuclear watchdog agency.

Timing significant

The announcement comes just a day before world powers meet with Iranian officials in another attempt to persuade them to give up the technology.

In Depth

"Iran has had this capability to produce yellowcake for a very long time, but the important thing is the timing of the announcement," Al Jazeera's Alireza Ronaghi, reporting from Tehran, said.
"Iran is trying to send a message ahead of talks that even if you build a wall around Iran, its nuclear programme will go ahead.
"Iran has been trying to say that its only a matter of time to become totally self-sufficient in its nuclear programme, even with the sanctions."

Enrichment worries the US and some of its allies because the process can also be used for weapons production. Iran insists its nuclear aims are solely peaceful.

The enriched uranium required for use in nuclear reactors or weapons is produced in centrifuges that spin uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6) at high speeds. The UF6 is derived in a reaction from yellowcake, a concentrate processed from mined uranium ore.

Iran has previously used yellowcake bought from South Africa in the 1970s.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/05/AR2010120501071....

The Washington Post...

Iran talks: Strong rhetoric, low expectations

By GEORGE JAHN
The Associated Press

Sunday, December 5, 2010; 6:03 AM

VIENNA -- Iran and six world powers are heading into negotiations about the country's nuclear program Monday with low expectations, at odds on what to talk about and with tensions high over the assassination of one of Tehran's most prominent scientists.

The talks in Geneva - the first in over a year - are meant to ease concerns over Iran's nuclear agenda. Tehran says it does not want atomic arms, but as it builds on its capacity to make such weapons, neither Israel nor the U.S. have ruled out military action if Tehran fails to heed U.N. Security Council demands to freeze key nuclear programs.

Iran's bold stance was highlighted Sunday, when it announced it had delivered its first domestically mined raw uranium to a processing facility, claiming it is now self-sufficient over the entire nuclear fuel cycle.

A senior diplomat in Vienna who is familiar with the issue said the move was expected and mainly symbolic. Still, the timing of the announcement was significant in signaling just a day ahead of the Geneva talks that Tehran was unlikely to meet international demands that it curb its nuclear activities.

Over two planned days, Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, will meet with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, with Ashton's office saying she will act "on behalf" of the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. In fact, senior officials for those six powers will attend and do much of the talking with Tehran.

Chances of meaningful progress were low even before the assassination late last month of a prominent nuclear scientist and the wounding of another further clouded hopes of success at the talks.

Jalili called the killing a "disgrace" for the Security Council on Saturday, claiming the attacks were linked to efforts to implement international sanctions. He did not elaborate.

Still, the expected presence of Ali Bagheri reflects the importance Iran attaches to the meeting. Officials familiar with the composition of the Iranian delegation say Bagheri has a direct line to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Western officials urged Tehran to meet international concerns about its nuclear activities.

Invoking possible military confrontation over Iran's nuclear defiance, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said Saturday that the Geneva talks need to make a serious start toward resolving the issue.

"We want a negotiated solution, not a military one - but Iran needs to work with us to achieve that outcome," he said. "We will not look away or back down."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was up to Iran to restore trust about its nuclear intentions, urging it to come to Geneva prepared to "firmly, conclusively reject the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

But for Iran the main issues are peace, prosperity - and nuclear topics only in the context of global disarmament.

"Iran has not and will not allow anybody in the talks to withdraw one iota of the rights of the Iranian nation," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said before the scheduled talks, warning the other nations at the table to "put aside the devil's temper" and negotiate in good faith.

Expectations are suitably low, even allowing for the fact that both sides are likely talking tough going into the talks with the purpose of maximizing their starting negotiating positions.

Glyn Davies, the chief U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the talks were meant to shape conditions for "a new start," even while insisting that Iran's nuclear program "has to be first and foremost on the agenda."

Other officials from the four Western nations coming to the table acknowledge that the six powers are coming without a firm agenda. One of them used freestyle wrestling as an analogy of what to expect.

"Think of this as a sort of catch-as-catch can," said the official, a senior diplomat who asked for anonymity because he was briefing The Associated Press on privileged information. "I don't think we are going to get into any kind of substantive discussions - the best we can hope for is a second round of meetings."

Such caution is understandable.

The last Geneva meeting of the seven nations in October 2009 appeared to put Iran nuclear talks back on track after a four-year hiatus, but Tehran and the six powers began to quibble about what was agreed on only days after they ended.

Iran initially seemed to accept a plan to export 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium to be made into special fuel for a Tehran reactor making medical materials - a move that would have stripped it of much of the material it then had stockpiled that could have been turned into a bomb.

But it then started putting conditions on the deal, which unraveled, deepening mistrust between the two sides.

A fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions because of Tehran's continued expansion of uranium enrichment has further burdened relations.

Nations have a right to enrich domestically and Iran insists it is doing so only to make fuel for an envisaged network of reactors and not to make fissile warhead material. But international concerns are strong because Tehran developed its enrichment program clandestinely and because it refuses to cooperate with an IAEA probe meant to follow up on suspicions that it experimented with components of a nuclear weapons program - something Iran denies.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iBLQRTgT-BBfcyC6WrgVQ4sHR5AA?...

AFP...

Iran to process its own raw uranium yellowcake

(AFP) – 1 hour ago

TEHRAN — Iran has produced its first batch of uranium yellowcake, the raw material for enrichment, from a mine in the south of the country, atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday.

"The West had counted on the possibility of us being in trouble over raw material but today we had the first batch of yellowcake from Gachin mine sent to Isfahan (conversion) facility," Salehi said on state television.

Conversion is the process by which yellowcake is converted into uranium hexafluoride for enrichment.

Photo: Yellowcake is converted into uranium hexafluoride for enrichment

http://www.newsday.com/news/ap-top-news-at-5-50-a-m-est-1.2518363?qr=1

AP Top News...

Photo credit: AP |

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, right, speaks with media, during a press briefing, in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010. A picture of Majid Shahriari, a prominent nuclear scientist, is seen on the bottom of the podium, who was killed in a bomb attack on Monday, Nov. 29. Iran's top nuclear negotiator said there will be no progress in upcoming nuclear talks with the world powers unless Iran's rights are respected. Saeed Jalili told reporters that Iran's right to enrich uranium is non-negotiatble and can't be part of discussions during Dec. 6-7 talks with the world powers in Geneva.

(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/iran-nuclear-experts-killings

PART ONE...

Covert war against Iran's nuclear aims takes chilling turn

Sophisticated cyber-worms, motorcycling assassins: but who is behind the increasingly sinister campaign against the Iranian energy programme?

* Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan
* The Observer, Sunday 5 December 2010

Iranian police beside the car in which Majid Shahriari was killed Iranian police beside the car in which Majid Shahriari was killed in a bomb attack. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Tehran's streets at the height of the morning rush hour resemble a vast, sprawling car park. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, much of it stationary, the acrid steam of a thousand exhausts hanging in the cold winter air. If you wanted to kill someone, this would be the moment to do it: when they are stuck in their cars – sitting targets.

At 7.40am last Monday, in north Tehran's Aghdasieh district, a motorcycle threaded its way through the long lines of cars on Artesh Boulevard. It edged up to a silver Peugeot 405, hesitating alongside for moment, before moving off into the maze of vehicles. A few seconds later there was a bang from the side of the Peugeot, as a small bomb stuck on to the window detonated, killing one of the men inside. The driver and a woman passenger were wounded.

At the same time, a few kilometres to the west, an identical attack was under way. A motorcycle came up beside another Peugeot and then moved on, but this time a man immediately jumped out of the car, ran around to let a woman out on the other side, and both of them managed to scramble a couple of metres from the car before the bomb went off. They were bloodied, but survived.

The dead man was Majid Shahriari, a senior Iranian nuclear scientist. The head of Iran's nuclear programme, Ali Akbar Salehi, who attended his funeral, said Shahriari had been "in charge of one of the great projects" at Iran's atomic energy agency – a project he did not describe any further.

The wounded man, Fereydoun Abbasi, was a 52-year-old nuclear scientist working for Iran's defence ministry, one of "Iran's few experts on fissile isotopes and the ministry's laser expert". He is also named in a UN security council sanctions resolution as working on "banned nuclear activities" with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the scientist suspected by inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency of running Iran's secret nuclear weapons programme. The wives of both scientists were wounded in the attacks.

The attacks had clear echoes of the unsolved assassination in January this year of one of their colleagues, particle physicist Masoud Alimohammadi. He was killed in north Tehran on his way to work, at about the same time of the morning, by a bomb strapped to a motorcycle. After his death, to the surprise of many of his students, it was reported that he also had links with Iran's nuclear programme.

If there were any doubts after Alimohammadi's killing back in January, there could be none after last week's double attack. Someone is trying to kill nuclear scientists linked to Iran's defence establishment – the people most likely to be involved in the covert side of Iran's nuclear programme, the making of nuclear weapons.

In the febrile atmosphere of Iranian underground politics, speculation quickly spread that the dark forces of the state were at work against would-be dissidents, leakers or defectors, but those rumours quickly evaporated. The Islamic Republic has many other ways of taking people it suspects out of circulation. It has little to gain by sacrificing the nation's must strategic asset – its nuclear know-how, the teachers of a new generation of atomic scientists. After last week, that new generation must be wondering whether to change career.

The Tehran regime itself had little doubt over who was to blame. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quickly pointed the finger at "western governments and the Zionist regime".

Ahmadinejad blames almost every national setback on the same culprits, but in this case there were no snorts of derision from the security analysts and intelligence experts in the west, but rather murmurs of assent.

There is general agreement that the nature of the simultaneous attacks was too sophisticated to be entirely home-grown – the work of the handful of groups who harry the Islamic Republic around its ethnic edges, like the Sunni Jundullah group, the Kurdish rebels in the north-east, or the People's Mujahedin (which has vowed to give up violence to win removal from the US state department's list of terrorist organisations).

The assassination had the hallmark of well-practised professionals. The explosives were shaped to focus the blast and fire a hail of projectiles into the car at an individual target, with minimal "collateral damage". The targets were obviously carefully chosen and the attack would have required weeks of surveillance. So even if local assassins were involved, the questions of who trained and funded them and assigned the targets would remain.

Time magazine last week claimed to have been given details of the attack from "a western intelligence expert with knowledge of the operation" and asserted that it "carried the signature of Israel's Mossad".

It is certainly true that, while the discovery of any involvement in the killings of civilian scientists would be career-endingly embarrassing for the CIA or MI6, the Mossad is known for such exploits. It is widely believed to have killed scientists working on Iraq's nuclear programme in the 1980s.

CONTINUED...

http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidANA20101205T081059ZHLB91

Zawya...

05 Dec 2010 AFP
Defiant Iran meets EU in new nuclear talks with world powers

By Hui Min Neo

GENEVA, Dec 05, 2010 (AFP) - Iran and the EU will hold talks in Geneva on Monday, as Tehran sought to renew contact with world powers after a 14 month break and calm its neighbours even though it held firm on its nuclear programme.

Iran's chief negotiator Saeed Jalili will meet the European Union's top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, over two days in an undisclosed location in the western Swiss city, the Swiss foreign ministry confirmed.

The EU will represent the "E3+3", UN Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany, it added, the same group of nations that last held direct talks on Iran's controversial nuclear programme in October 2009.

An EU source said: "This is an important meeting. We've waited a long time for it."

"It is not important because it will produce instant results but important because we hope it will produce a re-engagement with Iran which we hope will over time produce results," added the source.

On Saturday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said western powers should "stop being hostile."

"We have said many times that we will not negotiate the inalienable rights of the Iranian nation with anyone, but if they want to talk about cooperation, then we are ready," he was quoted as saying on state television's website.

Iran insists that it is entitled to enrich uranium for energy and has vowed to continue the work, despite repeated ultimatums from the UN Security Council to halt enrichment because of fears Tehran secretly wants nuclear weapons.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had seized on the unwanted publication of confidential US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks over the past week to signal that those concerns were shared by Tehran's Arab neighbours.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki sought to counter those fears on the sidelines of an international security conference in Bahrain on Saturday.

He insisted that Iran had "never used" force against its neighbours "and never will because our neighbours are Muslims."

Mottaki cautioned against submitting to "pressure by outsiders to divide us," saying "the presence of foreign powers will not help establish security in the region."

Iran's envoy nonetheless described as a "step forward" separate remarks by Clinton suggesting that Iran is entitled to a peaceful nuclear energy programme.

"But these words should be turned into action," he added.

In Bahrain on Friday, Clinton urged Iran to come to Geneva "in good faith and prepared to engage constructively" on its nuclear programme.

Tehran has defiantly insisted that stepped up international sanctions have had no impact on its economy, while other tensions have grown.

Iran has blamed the US and Israel for being behind bomb attacks that killed a prominent nuclear scientist and wounded another, and accused the UN nuclear watchdog of including "spies" among the inspectors it sends to Iran to monitor the nation's atomic programme.

The UN Security Council has called on Iran in six resolutions -- four of which impose sanctions -- to halt its controversial atomic work.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme has peaceful ends and wants the talks to cover political issues.

Observers believe that there is little hope for a deal emerging in Geneva.

Mohammed-Reza Djalili, of Geneva's Graduate Institute, said that the Iranians "want to show goodwill in discussing but I don't think they want to really negotiate after the declarations that they have made."

Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said "the most fruitful thing that might come of it is... the beginning of a continuing discussion.

Fitzpatrick suggested Iran wanted to be seen to be reasonable.

"If they refuse to continue, they would be pictured as the bad guys, the partner that is inflexible."

Iran nuclear program self-sufficient, top official claims
By the CNN Wire Staff
December 5, 2010 5:46 a.m. EST

Photo: Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi speaking in September during the IAEA general conference.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* The Islamic republic is now independent in the nuclear fuel cycle, Iran claims
* The announcement comes shortly before nuclear negotiations resume
* The United States fears that Iran wants a nuclear bomb, but Tehran denies it

(CNN) -- Iran now produces everything it needs for the nuclear fuel cycle, making its nuclear program self-sufficient, the head of the country's Atomic Energy Organization told state media Sunday.

The Islamic republic has begun producing yellowcake, Ali Akbar Salehi told Press TV.

Yellowcake is an intermediate stage in producing uranium ores, Press TV said.

Iran had been importing it, Salehi said, but is now mining it and processing it within the country.

The United States and its allies fear that Iran is trying to produce a nuclear bomb. Iran denies it.

Salehi's announcement came just a few days before Iran is to continue stalled nuclear talks with the so-called P5 plus 1 countries -- Germany and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom.

The talks are set to take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday and Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/12/05/iran.nuclear/