Iran Readies Construction of New Nuke Plant
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Iran is gearing up to begin construction this year on a second nuclear reactor that will be built with the help of the Russians, according to regional media reports.
The nuclear plant is currently being designed, and formal construction will begin in the next several months in Iran’s southern Bushehr province, the site of Iran’s existing and operational nuclear reactor.
A third nuclear plant will be constructed soon after the second is operations, according to Iranian officials.
While many critics of the recently inked Iran nuclear deal have expressed concern that these nuclear reactors could provide Iran with an additional pathway to a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has said this type of construction is permissible under the parameters of the accord.
Ali Akbar Salhi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), announced the upcoming construction on Monday and said Russia will be assisting with much of the nuclear plant.
“The contract for building two (new) power plants has been inked with Russia and the preliminary steps and their designing have already started,” Salehi was quoted as telling Iranian reports on Monday, according to the state-controlled Fars News Agency.
Iran’s controversial first nuclear reactor also was built with the help of Russia, which provided much of the technology and know-how to construct the plant.
“Construction of the second nuclear power plant will begin by the end of this (Iranian) year,” according to Salehi.
“Construction of the third power plant will also start two years after the second power plant will be launched,” the official added.
The new nuclear plants will cost Iran more than $10 billion dollars, according to Salehi.
It is possible that the money used to fund the construction could come from the billions of dollars in sanctions relief promised to Iran as part of the nuclear deal.
Iran also will hire about “15,000 technicians” to complete the construction of operation of the plant, according to Salehi.
The Obama administration admitted to the Washington Free Beacon in January that the construction of the nuclear plants is acceptable.
“In general, the construction of light water nuclear reactors is not prohibited by U.N. Security Council resolutions, nor does it violate [past nuclear agreements],” a State Department official said at the time.
The post Iran Readies Construction of New Nuke Plant appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Putin jockeying for deal with US on Syriaby VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
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Russian drone submarine would threaten U.S. coast; nuclear vessel in development by Bill Gertz - The Washington Free Beacon
Russia is building a drone submarine designed to launch nuclear weapons against U.S. harbors and coastal cities, according to Pentagon officials.
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Russia is building a drone submarine to deliver large-scale nuclear weapons against U.S. harbors and coastal cities, according to Pentagon officials.
The developmental unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV, when deployed, will be equipped with megaton-class warheads capable of blowing up key ports used by U.S. nuclear missile submarines, such as Kings Bay, Ga., and Puget Sound in Washington state.
Details of the secret Russian nuclear UUV program remain closely held within the U.S. government.
The Pentagon, however, has code-named the drone “Kanyon,” an indication that the weapon is a structured Russian arms program.
The nuclear drone submarine is further evidence of what officials say is an aggressive strategic nuclear forces modernization under President Vladimir Putin. The building is taking place as the Obama administration has sought to reduce the role of nuclear arms in U.S. defenses and to rely on a smaller nuclear force for deterrence.
Officials familiar with details of the Kanyon program said the weapon is envisioned as an autonomous submarine strike vehicle armed with a nuclear warhead ranging in size to “tens” of megatons in yield. A blast created by a nuclear weapon that size would create massive damage over wide areas.
A megaton is the equivalent of 1 million tons of TNT.
On missiles, megaton warheads are called “city busters” designed to destroy entire metropolitan areas or to blast buried targets. An underwater megaton-class drone weapon would be used to knock out harbors and coastal regions, the officials said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the information.
“This is an unmanned sub that will have a high-speed and long-distance capability,” said one official, who noted that the drone development is years away from a prototype and testing.
Russian nuclear buildup
The Kanyon appears to be part of a Russian strategic modernization effort that seeks to give Moscow the ability to coerce the United States. It is also expected to complicate the Obama administration’s attempts to seek further reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces after the 2010 New START arms treaty.
New arms cuts were derailed after Russia’s military annexation of Crimea and continuing destabilization of eastern Ukraine, as well as by Moscow’s failure to return to compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
“It’s very difficult to consider Russia a responsible party when it’s developing something like this,” the official said.
Another official familiar with the program said that the Kanyon will be a large nuclear-powered autonomous submarine. This official said the size of its nuclear warhead is not clear.
Russian leaders announced a new maritime strategy in July that provided hints about the new drone sub. The doctrine calls for developing innovative technologies, including unmanned underwater vehicles, IHS Jane’s 360 reported last month.
The new underwater nuclear weapon is also raising concerns among Pentagon strategic planners. The Navy, in particular, is worried about the Kanyon. Navy forces are charged with conducting underwater warfare operations, including countering enemy submarines.
Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman, declined to comment on the nuclear-armed underwater drone.
The Pentagon said last week that it is closely watching a Russian military research ship that sailed along the east coast of the United States. The ship, a research vessel called the Yantar, was engaged in underwater reconnaissance, gathering intelligence that could be used to support a weapon system like the nuclear UUV.
While the United States currently has no similar plans for a megaton-class underwater nuclear strike vehicle, the Navy is developing a range of UUVs, including a weapons-carrying drone.
The Pentagon is in the process of retiring all of its megaton weapons. The stockpile of 9-megaton B53 bunker-buster bombs were dismantled several years ago, and the 1.2 megaton-B83 will be retired after the upgraded B61 bomb is deployed.
Russia’s arsenal of megaton warheads and bombs includes an estimated five SS-18s armed with 20-megaton warheads and previously deployed 5-megaton warheads on SS-19s. Moscow once built the largest nuclear weapon, the 150-megaton bomb called the Tsar Bomba, or “Tsar of bombs.”
China uses megaton warheads on its DF-5A missiles. The two-dozen DF-5As are said to be armed with 5-megaton warheads.
Goal: causing catastrophic damage
“The Kanyon represents another example of Russia’s aggressive and innovative approach to the development of military capabilities against U.S. and Western interests,” said Jack Caravelli, a former CIA analyst who specialized in Soviet and Russian affairs.
“The possible yield of the warhead, in the megaton class, clearly is an attempt to inflict catastrophic damage against U.S. or European naval facilities or coastal cities,” he added. “Nations vote with their resources, and the Kanyon, along with an expanding number of other military modernization programs, indicates the priority Vladimir Putin places on military preparedness against the West.”
Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon nuclear policymaker, said Russian state-run media have announced plans for UUV development.
“In 2014, Putin stated that there were undisclosed strategic nuclear modernization programs that would be made public at the appropriate time,” Schneider said.
A Russian weapons engineer told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency in June that UUVs are being developed.
“Our institute already concluded a number of new developments in the sphere of command systems automation… [including] remotely-operated, unmanned sea-based underwater vehicles. We hope that these developments will be applied for designing of a new destroyer vessel,” said Lev Klyachko, director of the Russian Central Research Institute.
Moscow nuclear threats worrying
Robert Kehler, who retired two years ago as commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, said development of a robot underwater nuclear strike vehicle could be part of what he termed a “troubling” Russian strategic nuclear buildup.
“Overall, we were watching the Russian nuclear modernization effort very carefully,” Kehler said in an interview. “And that effort was finally starting to put forces in the field.”
Kehler said he was not “particularly bothered” by the Russian nuclear buildup as long as Moscow stays within the limits of the New START arms treaty. The treaty limits the United States and Russia to 700 strategic missiles and bombers and a total of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. The retired four-star Air Force general said he was unaware of the Kanyon drone program.
However, recent threats and belligerent statements by Russian leaders about using nuclear weapons are compounding concerns about Moscow’s arms buildup.
“That was disturbing as well, their rhetoric,” Kehler said. “Again, that said something about how nuclear weapons fit in their national security. From their perspective, they’re saying, ‘We still need these weapons.’”
Putin has stated publicly that he is willing to use Russia’s nuclear forces in response to Western opposition to the military annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military analyst, said he has not heard about the Kanyon program. “But such things could have easily been developed during the Cold War and may be still being developed or modernized,” he said.
Felgenhauer said a nuclear drone submarine would involve launch from a mother sub and would require getting close to a target, something he said would result in a “semi-suicidal” bombing run.
Russia has researched exotic nuclear weapons concepts in the past, including underwater blasts aimed at creating massive tsunamis, like those caused by undersea earthquakes, he said.
However, Felgenhauer said he does not believe the underwater nuclear drone would be a mainstream weapons development program for Moscow.
Based on Soviet nuclear torpedo
Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and author, said the Kanyon could be based on a Soviet-era nuclear torpedo disclosed in his 2003 book, Cold War Submarines.
Both the Russian navy and its predecessor, the Soviet navy, have been innovators of undersea systems and weapons. “These efforts have included the world’s most advanced torpedoes,” Polmar said. “Early in the nuclear age, the Soviets began development of a massive torpedo for attacking coastal cities and ports.”
The T-15 torpedo was about 75 feet long and was capable of carrying a high-yield thermonuclear warhead some 15 miles underwater, something Polmar called “a truly innovative concept.”
The Navy is developing UUVs as well, including some capable of conducting strike operations. No details of the Navy’s underwater drone program could be learned.
A 2004 Navy study on the subject lists nine functions for underwater drones, ranging from intelligence gathering to anti-mine warfare to special operations delivery and “time critical strike.”
“Warfighters need the ability to strike time critical targets at precisely the right moment in battle,” the Navy study said. “UUVs can perform some of the necessary functions for [time critical strike], for example, clandestine weapon delivery or remote launch.”
“Stealth and long-standoff distance and duration allow a UUV to be an effective weapon platform or weapon cache delivery vehicle for TCS missions.”
The UUV is part of a major nuclear modernization by Russia that includes a new class of ballistic missile submarine called the Borey-class, and a new submarine-launched missile, the Bulava.
Two new intercontinental ballistic missiles are being deployed as well, along with development of three more new ICBMs, including a replacement for the SS-18 and a new rail-mobile missile. A new strategic bomber is also under development, and there are reported plans to restart production of the Tu-160 Blackjack bomber.
Russia is also developing a new long-range, air-launched nuclear-tipped cruise missile, the KH-101, which will be capable of hitting targets in the United States from launch areas within Russian airspace.
Navy seeking UUVs
Navy seeking UUVs
Navy Secretary Ray Maybus said in a speech in April that unmanned systems are a high priority for future Navy weapons.
“While unmanned technology itself is not new, the potential impact these systems will have on the way we operate is almost incalculable,” Maybus said.
The submarine warfare division of the chief of naval operations stated on its website that the future submarine force will include UUVs.
U.S. Navy UUV / U.S. Navy
“UUVs allow an [attack submarine] to safely gain access to denied areas with revolutionary sensors and weapons,” the website stated. “UUVs provide unique capabilities and extend the ‘reach’ of our platforms while reducing the risk to an [attack submarine]” and its crew.
The site made no mention of a future UUV strike weapon, only intelligence and reconnaissance, mine warfare, and mapping.
“UUVs are key elements in maintaining submarines’ future undersea dominance against any threat.”
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U.S. naval forces operating in and around the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane, are “routinely approached by Iranian warships and aircraft” on a “nearly daily basis,” according to a Pentagon official familiar with operations in the region.
During these interactions between U.S. and Iranian forces, American aircraft and ships are routinely photographed by the Iranians for intelligence purposes, according to the official, who said that most confrontations between the sides are “conducted in a safe and professional manner.”
The disclosure of these daily run-ins comes following the release of footage by the Iranian military purporting to show a reconnaissance mission over a U.S. aircraft carrier station in the Strait of Hormuz.
The clip, which was filmed at the end of August and is punctuated by dramatic music, shows U.S. personnel aboard the ship and shots of U.S. warplanes stationed on it.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps “drones have carried out such missions many times; although the drone remains for a long time above the [American crew’s] heads, they didn’t notice it,” Iran’s state-control media reported in Persian at the time, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “In some cases, [the American crew] did notice the IRGC drone awhile after the filming and tried to drive it off by sending a helicopter or fighter jet after it.”
When asked about the veracity of the clip, a Pentagon official said that Iran conducts surveillance missions on a routine basis.
“U.S. Naval forces are routinely approached by Iranian warships and aircraft as they operate in the region, with the majority of all interaction by the Iranians conducted in a safe and professional manner,” the official said. “This happens on a near daily basis.”
“The Iranians’ primary purpose for approaching U.S. forces is for ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance] so these interactions are almost always characterized by the presence of Iranian photographers capturing photos and video,” the official added.
The United States also films these encounters, the official noted.
“During these interactions we, too, capture imagery for the record,” the official said. “Safe, professional, and routine interactions are of no concern, and we are fully confident in the ability of U.S. Naval forces to defend themselves. We also publicly acknowledge those interactions with the Iranians which we consider to be unsafe.”
These encounters are underscored by violent and threatening rhetoric from senior Iranian officials, who have maintained in recent weeks that despite the recently signed nuclear accord, Iran will not end its support for terrorist proxy groups.
These officials have issued threats towards the United States and Israel, saying that the regime continues to work for the destruction of both nations.
“I officially declare that under no circumstances will we refrain from providing material and moral support to Hezbollah, or to any group of the resistance to the U.S. and Israel,” said Hossein Dehghan, Iran’s defense minister, in an interview this month, according to a translation of his remarks.
Iran continues “to consider the U.S. to be the ‘Great Satan’ even after the nuclear deal,” Dehghan said.
The post Iranian Warships Confront U.S. Navy On ‘Daily Basis’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Cheney delivered a speech against the president’s nuclear deal at the American Enterprise Institute on Monday, calling it “madness” that will empower an anti-American and anti-Semitic regime.
Cheney fielded a question from Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), a veteran of the Iraq War and strong critic of the deal.
“The last question is from Sen. Tom Cotton,” former Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen said. “The president has said he will confront Iran’s regional aggression after this deal is implemented. What steps should this confrontation include to stop Iran’s aggression and reassure Israel and our Sunni partners?”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Cheney said.
Cheney said it is disingenuous to say the U.S. will stop Iranian aggression when the nuclear deal gives Iran the means to act aggressively, as Obama administration officials have admitted.
“I think you’ve given them an enormous shot in the arm in terms of their support for illicit regimes, and then you’re going to turn around and mount military operations somehow to take ’em down?” Cheney said. “It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t calculate in my mind.”
Under the terms of the nuclear deal, Iran will pause its nuclear program for a decade in exchange for roughly $100 billion in previously frozen assets. Iran will also receive sanctions relief on its arms trade, intercontinental ballistic program, and Quds Force, the military group responsible for assisting Iran’s proxies and exporting the Islamic revolution abroad.
The Iran deal has already prevented Obama from taking action against a violent Iranian proxy, Cheney said. He speculated that the president backed down on his “red line” against Syrian chemical weapons use in 2013 to protect the delicate negotiations that were ongoing with Iran at the time.
“He was in that phase of the process where he did not want to offend the Iranians who were closely tied to Syrians,” Cheney said. “So I think the deal had a direct result of limiting the administration’s actions with respect to the Syrian case.”
The post Cheney Says Obama Won’t Stand Up to Iran’s Violence appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
Russia is constructing a military base in the Syrian port city of Latakia, U.S. intelligence officials said last week, raising alarm about the country’s increasing support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Telegraph reports:
The anonymous officials say Russia has set up an air traffic control tower and transported prefabricated housing units for up to 1,000 personnel to an airfield serving the Syrian port city of Latakia. Russia has also requested the rights to fly over neighboring countries with military cargo aircraft during September, according to the reports.
Such activity is evidence that Russia may be increasing its involvement in the Syrian civil war. Russia has been backing the Assad regime by providing Syria with financial help, intelligence, advisers, and weapons.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has stood on the side of the Syrian rebels fighting the regime. On Friday, President Obama and Saudi Arabian King Salman emphasized that the settling of conflict in Syria will only be possible in the wake of an end to the Assad regime.
Amid the reports of Russian action in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry called his counterpart in Russia, Sergey V. Lavrov, Saturday to warn against bolstering military assistance to Syria.
“The secretary made clear that if such reports were accurate, these actions could further escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-ISIL coalition operating in Syria,” the State Department said in a statement.
Recently, photographs emerged that appear to depict a Russian fighter jet and troops speaking Russian operating in Syria. Moscow has couched its support of the Assad regime as an effort to help combat the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIL or ISIS) in the region. The U.S. campaign against IS in Syria has relied on training moderate Syrian rebels to fight the terrorist group.
On Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the Moscow’s aid to Syria as consistent with its policy toward the country.
“We have always supplied equipment to them for their struggle against terrorists,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria V. Zakharova said in an interview with the New York Times. “We are supporting them, we were supporting them and we will be supporting them.”
Russia and Iran have both been big supporters of the Assad regime, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asserting Monday, “Those who have set a condition about the Syrian president in the past two years should be blamed for the continued war and they should account for the bloodshed.”
The post Russia Constructing Military Base in Syria, US Intelligence Officials Say appeared first onWashington Free Beacon.
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According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are nearly 4.1 million registered refugees from Syria. Some countries have opened their gates, hearts and pocketbooks to varying degrees. Others have hoisted barriers to the migrant tide.
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Democrats clinched the crucial Senate votes Tuesday to block passage of a disapproval resolution against the Iran nuclear accord, an outcome that would be a major victory for President Barack Obama against united Republican opposition.
U.S. military branches have four months to meet the Pentagon’s deadline for opening all front-line combat positions to women, unless a service seeks exception to the policy before Oct. 1. Much of the debate swirling around the coming change has focused on the physical standards women will be held to in those positions.
Documents scattered only meters from Serbia's border with Hungary provide evidence that many of the migrants flooding Europe to escape war or poverty are scrapping their true nationalities and likely assuming new ones, just as they enter the European Union.
France wants to hold a meeting among the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Germany in the coming weeks to resolve tensions around eastern Ukraine, in hopes of eventually lifting EU sanctions.
This may be the most surprising of President Barack Obama’s foreign-policy legacies: not just that he presided over a humanitarian and cultural disaster of epochal proportions, but that he soothed the American people into feeling no responsibility for the tragedy.
Starvation in Biafra a generation ago sparked a movement. Synagogues and churches a decade ago mobilized to relieve misery in Darfur. When the Taliban in 2001 destroyed ancient statues of Buddha at Bamiyan, the world was appalled at the lost heritage.
Today the Islamic State is blowing up precious cultural monuments in Palmyra, and half of all Syrians have been displaced — as if, on a proportional basis, 160 million Americans had been made homeless. More than a quarter-million have been killed. Yet the “Save Darfur” signs have not given way to “Save Syria.”
One reason is that Obama — who ran for president on the promise of restoring the United States’ moral stature — has constantly reassured Americans that doing nothing is the smart and moral policy. He has argued, at times, that there was nothing the United States could do, belittling the Syrian opposition as “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”
He has argued that we would only make things worse — “I am more mindful probably than most,” he told the New Republic in 2013, “of not only our incredible strengths and capabilities, but also our limitations.”
He has implied that because we can’t solve every problem, maybe we shouldn’t solve any. “How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” he asked (though at the time thousands were not being killed in Congo).
On those rare occasions when political pressure or the horrors of Syrian suffering threatened to overwhelm any excuse for inaction, he promised action, in statements or White House leaks: training for the opposition, a safe zone on the Turkish border. Once public attention moved on, the plans were abandoned or scaled back to meaningless proportions (training 50 soldiers per year, no action on the Turkish border).
Perversely, the worse Syria became, the more justified the president seemed for staying aloof; steps that might have helped in 2012 seemed ineffectual by 2013, and actions that could have saved lives in 2013 would not have been up to the challenge presented by 2014. The fact that the woman who wrote the book on genocide, Samantha Power, and the woman who campaigned to bomb Sudan to save the people of Darfur, Susan Rice, could apparently in good conscience stay on as U.N. ambassador and national security adviser, respectively, lent further moral credibility to U.S. abdication.
Most critically, inaction was sold not as a necessary evil but as a notable achievement: The United States at last was leading with the head, not the heart, and with modesty, not arrogance. “Realists” pointed out that the United States gets into trouble when it lets ideals or emotions rule — when it sends soldiers to feed the hungry in Somalia, for example, only to lose them, as told in “Black Hawk Down,” and turn tail.
The realists were right that the U.S. has to consider interests as well as values, must pace itself and can’t save everyone. But a values-free argument ought at least to be able to show that the ends have justified the means, whereas the strategic results of Obama’s disengagement have been nearly as disastrous as the human consequences.
When Obama pulled all U.S. troops out of Iraq, critics worried there would be instability; none envisioned the emergence of a full-blown terrorist state. When he announced in August 2011 that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” critics worried the words might prove empty — but few imagined the extent of the catastrophe: not just the savagery of chemical weapons and “barrel bombs,” but also the Islamic State’s recruitment of thousands of foreign fighters, its spread from Libya to Afghanistan, the danger to the U.S. homeland that has alarmed U.S. intelligence officials, the refugees destabilizing Europe.
Even had Obama’s policy succeeded in purely realist terms, though, something would have been lost in the anesthetization of U.S. opinion. Yes, the nation’s outrage over the decades has been uneven, at times hypocritical, at times self-serving.
But there also has been something to be admired in America’s determination to help — to ask, even if we cannot save everyone in Congo, can we not save some people in Syria? Obama’s successful turning of that question on its head is nothing to be proud of.
Fred Hiatt is The Washington Post’s editorial page editor.
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This may be the most surprising of President Barack Obama’s foreign-policy legacies: not just that he presided over a humanitarian and cultural disaster of epochal proportions, but that he soothed the American people into feeling no responsibility for the tragedy.
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