IAEA ready for talks with Iran in near future: Amano

PressTV

UN nuclear chief Yukiya Amano says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is ready to hold negotiations with Iran in the “near future.”

"I confirmed to Dr. Abbasi that the Agency is committed to continued dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran and expressed the readiness of Agency negotiators to meet with Iran in the near future," Amano said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The brief statement was issued after a meeting between Amano and Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereydoun Abbasi on Monday.

After the IAEA annual meeting in the Austrian capital, Vienna, Abbasi told reporters on Monday that Iran has no intention of enriching uranium above the 20 percent level.

The head of AEOI said most of Iran's enrichment activities are conducted at the 3.5 percent level, but added that in the future, Tehran will determine its uranium enrichment level according to its needs.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of IAEA, it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, but has never found any evidence indicating diversion in Tehran's nuclear energy program toward military purposes.

US spy agencies see no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons program (VIDEO)

Global Post

US intelligence analysts believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reported Saturday. 

US intelligence analysts believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The report comes a day after the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said that Iran had accelerated its nuclear program, with the country having increased its production of higher-grade enriched uranium over the past few months.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's director-general Yukiya Amano wrote in the report issued Friday that Iran had also refused to answer key questions about its nuclear development program.

"As Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation … the agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," Amano stated, the LA Times reported.

Citing unnamed officials, the Times said the latest assessments by US spy agencies were broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
The report, while not explicitly stating that the Islamic Republic is pushing ahead with atomic bomb plans, will likely further inflame Israeli fears that is the case, Reuters reported.
"The Agency continues to have serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," the IAEA wrote in its a quarterly report about Iran issued to member states.

In response to the report, the White House said it was clear Iran was violating UN Security Council resolutions with its nuclear enrichment program.

"When combined with its continued stonewalling of international inspectors, Iran's actions demonstrate why Iran has failed to convince the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful," White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

The Times, meantime, wrote that there was no dispute among US, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran had been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power.

However, the CIA and other intelligence agencies believed that Iran had yet to decide whether to design a nuclear warhead.

They believe that program was halted in 2003, the paper noted, adding that their assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America's 16 intelligence agencies.

Target Iran: Washington's Countdown to War

Global Research
Tom Burghardt

Antifascist Calling...

The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather.

As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953's CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the "crime" of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have "saved" Iran from a nonexistent "Red Menace," but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial "safe hands"--those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Similarly today, a nonexistent "nuclear threat" is the pretext being used by Washington to install a "friendly" regime in Tehran and undercut geopolitical rivals China and Russia in the process, thereby "securing" the country's vast petrochemical wealth for American multinationals.

As the U.S. and Israel ramp-up covert operations against Iran, the Pentagon "has laid out its most explicit cyberwarfare policy to date, stating that if directed by the president, it will launch 'offensive cyber operations' in response to hostile acts," according to The Washington Post.

Citing "a long-overdue report to Congress released late Monday," we're informed that "hostile acts may include 'significant cyber attacks directed against the U.S. economy, government or military'," unnamed Defense Department officials stated.

However, Air Force General Robert Kehler, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) told Reuters, "I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind."

The Pentagon report, which is still not publicly available, asserts: "We reserve the right to use all necessary means--diplomatic, informational, military and economic--to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests."

Washington's "interests," which first and foremost include "securing its hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia" as the World Socialist Web Site observed, may lead the crisis-ridden U.S. Empire "to take another irresponsible gamble to shore up its interests in the Middle East ... as a means of diverting attention from the social devastation produced by its austerity agenda."

Recent media reports suggest however, that offensive cyber operations are only part of Washington's multipronged strategy to soften-up the Islamic Republic's defenses as a prelude to "regime change."

Terrorist Proxies

For the better part of six decades, terrorist proxies have done America's dirty work. Hardly relics of the Cold War past, U.S. and allied secret state agencies are using such forces to carry out attacks inside Iran today.

Asia Times Online reported that "deadly explosions at a military base about 60 kilometers southwest of Tehran, coinciding with the suspicious death of the son of a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have triggered speculation in Iran on whether or not these are connected to recent United States threats to resort to extrajudicial executions of IRGC leaders."

And Time Magazine, a frequent outlet for sanctioned leaks from the Pentagon, reported that the blast at the Iranian missile base west of Tehran, which killed upwards of 40 people according to the latest estimates, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program, was described as the work "of Israel's external intelligence service, Mossad."

An unnamed "Western intelligence source" told reporter Karl Vick: "'Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident,' adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. 'There are more bullets in the magazine,' the official says."