The White House has said it is disappointed that UN nuclear inspectors were barred from a site in Iran, calling the visit a "failure" for Iran.

"It's another demonstration of Iran's refusal to abide by its international obligations," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

IAEA inspectors had sought to clarify the "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear programme.

Tehran insists its nuclear intentions are purely peaceful.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17133879

Stumbling into war
"A negotiated climbdown by both sides is the least likely option," says an editorial in The Guardian. There are two possible outcomes of the barrage of words being launched against Iran: a war could start inadvertently; or a war could start after an attack by Israel.

As the sabre rattling, crippling sanctions and covert attacks increase, so do the risks of stumbling into an accidental war, says Seumas Milne, also in The Guardian. There has been bluff and bluster from both sides, but “the mood music has become more menacing”. An attack by Israel or the US would be an act of criminal aggression, adds Milne, and one of “wanton destructive stupidity”.

Have we learnt nothing from Iraq?
Western leaders seem to have a shocking lack of imagination, says Mark Steel in The Independent. The most common argument for promoting war against Iran seems to be that they have “weapons of mass destruction”, or at least they “aspire” to have them. How pathetic to pick the same excuse twice in a row. It’s as if the last outing in Iraq was “such a laugh they want to do everything exactly the same”.

If Iran obtains nuclear weapons capability, "I think other nations across the Middle East will want to develop nuclear weapons".

Thus thundered our beloved Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in one of the silliest pronouncements he has ever made. Hague seems to spend much of his time impersonating himself, so I'm not really certain which of Mr Hague-Hague's personas made this statement.

Flaw number one, of course, is Hague-Hague's failure to point out that there already is another Middle East "nation" that has, in fact, several hundred nuclear weapons along with the missiles to fire them. It's called Israel. But blow me down, Hague-Hague didn't mention the fact. Didn't he know? Of course, he did. What he was trying to say, you see, was that if Iran persisted in producing a nuclear weapon, Arab states – Muslim states – would want to acquire one. And that would never do. The idea, of course, that Iran might be pursuing nuclear weapons because Israel already possesses them, did not occur to him.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-new-cold-war-has-already-started--in-syria-7440620.html

Iran condemned production of atomic weapons as a "great sin" as it called for more talks with the United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog.

The country is facing growing international pressure over its nuclear program, which it says is peaceful but Western powers suspect could have a military dimension.

Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had been denied access to a key Iranian military site where it is suspected nuclear activities have been carried out.

Negotiations with the IAEA have stalled, but Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he expected talks to continue and that he was optimistic they would proceed in the right direction.

"I would like to re-emphasise that we do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons," he said in a speech to the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

"Quite the opposite - based on the religious decree issued by our supreme leader, the production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-29/iran-says-nuclear-weapons-are-a-great-sin/3859360

Relations between Israel and its staunchest ally, the United States, appear increasingly strained after Israeli officials said they would not give Washington any advance warning of a decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, according to US intelligence sources.

Israel's message was conveyed during recent high-level talks with Pentagon officials and is apparently aimed at absolving Washington of blame for failing to prevent an Israeli strike, the Associated Press reported, citing an anonymous US intelligence source. Israeli officials declined to comment on the report.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/we-wont-give-us-advance-warning-of-iran-strike-says-israel-7462560.html

Iran is to accept gold instead of dollars as payment for its oil, the country's state news agency has said.

The move comes as US and European Union sanctions against Iran have made it difficult for buyers to make dollar payments to Iranian banks.

Mahmoud Bahmani, the governor of Iran's central bank, is reported to have said that the country would accept payment in gold "without any reservation".

As part of the sanctions, the EU has passed a ban on buying Iranian oil.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17203132

President Barack Obama has assured Israel that the United States will always stand by it in a display of unity between allies who often disagree.

He told visiting prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu they agreed that diplomacy is the best way to resolve the crisis over potential Iranian nuclear weapons.

"Both the prime minister and I prefer to solve this diplomatically," Mr Obama said as he Mr Netanyahu began several hours of White House consultations. The US will consider all options in confronting what it sees as the unacceptable outcome of an Iranian bomb, Mr Obama said.

"Israel and America stand together," Mr Netanyahu said. He added that Israel is a sovereign nation with the right to defend itself, a pointed reference to the main question hanging over the high-stakes meeting: Whether to try to stop an Iranian bomb by with a military attack in the next several months.

Israel’s ambassador to Norway called on a Norwegian daily to apologize and remove a cartoon it published Tuesday, which he criticized as anti-Semitic.

The cartoon, which appeared in the Dagbladet newspaper, portrays Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose body is in the form of a swastika, punching a member of Israel’s Druze minority off a bench reading “whites only.”

The image was apparently commenting on recently passed legislation defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The law has drawn the ire of the Druze and other minority groups, who say it favors the country’s Jewish character over its democracy and effectively renders them second class citizens.

Read more:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-envoy-to-norway-decries-anti-semit...

from a few years ago, Gus' own interpretation of what the Jewish State was doing:

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On July 19, the Israeli parliament passed new legislation declaring Israel to be a "nation-state." The law also declares Hebrew as the only official language.

Thousands of Israeli Arabs and Jews have gathered in the center of Tel Aviv to protest against the 'nation-state' law. Demonstrators shouted "Equality" in Arabic and Hebrew and "Apartheid will not pass." The protesters arae concerned about possible discrimination on the basis of nationality.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201808121067133801-israel-law-protest/

On September 22, 1979, US satellite Vela 6911 detected a ‘double flash’ near the Marion and Prince Edward Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Ever since, there has been speculation that it was actually a nuclear weapon test carried out by Israel. According to the memoirs of then-US President Jimmy Carter, this was also the assumption of American generals who briefed him on the incident. The official position of the Israeli state is to neither confirm nor deny having a homegrown military nuclear program.

Now a new paper, published in the Science & Global Security journal, says radioactive isotope iodine-131 had been discovered in the thyroids of Australian sheep in the month following the so-called ‘Vela incident.’

Christopher Wright of the Australian Defense Force Academy and nuclear physicist Lars-Erik De Geer, who used to work for the Swedish Defense Research Agency, have analyzed thyroid samples that were sent monthly to the US in 1979. The information on test results was only recently made available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

The isotope levels found in the sheep affected by rain four days after the incident, “would be consistent with them having grazed in the path of a potential radioactive fallout plume from a 22 September low-yield nuclear test in the Southern Indian Ocean,” the paper states.

The researchers said that the analysis of weather patterns suggests the fallout plume from a nuclear explosion would have carried over from the test site in the Indian Ocean to parts of Australian territory.

READ MORE: 'I stood up to the world': Bibi reportedly boasted that Israel convinced Trump to nix Iran nuke deal

The assumption that a nuclear test took place in 1979 is also backed by the analysis of the declassified “hydroacoustic signal” from US underwater listening devices, the study added.

The research “removes virtually all doubt that the 'flash' was a nuclear explosion,” Leonard Weiss, nuclear weapons expert from the Stanford University, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

He pinpointed Israel as the responsible party because it was “the only country that had the technical ability and policy motivation to carry out such a clandestine test.” According to Weiss, it was just one of several aerial nuclear explosions performed by the Jewish state, which was detected by the US satellite due to an unexpected change in the cloud cover.

Researchers say the Israeli test was carried out in violation of the Limited Test Ban Treaty from 1963, and urge a large-scale international probe of the incident.

Israeli Ambassador to New Zealand Itzhak Gerberg denied the findings of the research in a comment to the New Zealand Herald, calling them “simply a ridiculous assumption that does not hold water.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/435968-israel-nuclear-test-sheep-australia/

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BY Viktor Mikhin

The United Nations General Assembly has finally voted on a resolution calling on Israel to destroy its entire nuclear arsenal and allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit its nuclear facilities. 152 countries voted “yes”, five – Canada, Israel, Micronesia, Palau, and the United States – against, and another 24 countries, including members of the European Union, abstained from voting.

Few people can say where the “great states” of Micronesia or Palau are located. It is well known that the official head of Canada is the King of Great Britain, and it is not surprising that these three countries have, as befits good servants, unanimously followed the American order. Most states, aware of the enormous danger posed by Israel with its secret nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, responsibly voted in favor of this resolution.

The document states that Israel is the only state in the West Asian region and one of the few members of the UN (193 in total) that has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The strong support for the resolution at the UN General Assembly in New York reflects widespread international frustration with the Israeli regime’s control of the nuclear threat in West Asia. This is especially true given how many countries Israel has invaded or attacked and how many genocides it has committed. The presence of Israel’s nuclear weapons has made the occupation regime over the Arab people of Palestine, according to the Saudi newspaper Arab News, “an extraordinary source of instability in the region.”

The resolution reiterated “the importance of Israel acceding to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and placing all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency to achieve the goal of universal adherence to the treaty in the Middle East (West Asia).” The document called on Israel “to accede to the Treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce, test, or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons, and to place all of its unsafeguarded nuclear facilities under comprehensive safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as an important confidence-building measure among all states in the region and as a step toward strengthening peace and security.”

Despite fierce and extensive Western propaganda and hysteria focused on Iran’s nuclear program, which has been repeatedly deemed peaceful by the IAEA, the resolution emphasizes that Israel poses a real threat to the region. The proposal for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in West Asia was also approved by the First Committee with 170 votes, including Iran. Perhaps not surprisingly, Israel was the only state to again oppose the text, as has happened repeatedly in the United Nations. The United States, Cameroon, Comoros, and Tanzania were the only four countries to abstain.

Iran’s representative to the UN General Assembly First Committee, Heidar Ali Baluji, criticized Israel for acquiring weapons of mass destruction and spending huge sums on conventional military needs. “In addition to weapons of mass destruction, the Israeli regime continues to threaten peace and security in the region and beyond with its large arsenal of sophisticated conventional offensive weapons. The regime is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid since World War II,” Baluji said. Israel spent $24.3 billion on the military last year, equivalent to 5.2% of its GDP, placing it among the top five countries in West Asia for military spending. How much the Israelis spend on the military nuclear program and the constant improvement of these deadly weapons is anyone’s guess.

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear power plant, made headlines when he revealed Israel’s nuclear secrets to the world. The regime sent him to prison and only in 2004, after serving an 18-year sentence, most of which he spent in solitary confinement, was he released. However, strict conditions were placed on his release, including a ban on leaving Israel, a ban on entering the Palestinian territories, and a ban on communicating with foreign journalists. Since his release, Vanunu has served at least two prison terms after being convicted of alleged parole violations.

Not only does Israel possess nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, the regime also disposes of its nuclear and radioactive waste in the Palestinian-occupied West Bank. According to numerous reports that have appeared in Palestinian and Arab newspapers in recent years, there is growing concern about the high rates of various cancers and birth defects among people in the southern West Bank. Israel has turned Palestinian towns and villages into a dumping ground for its nuclear and radioactive waste. Investigations in the Palestinian town of al-Khalil have revealed that its residents are suffering from radioactive contamination. According to reports, the radiation originates from Israeli nuclear facilities and nuclear waste storage sites in the area. It could also be the result of the use of depleted uranium weapons against the Palestinians.

Based on numerous studies, it is widely believed that there is a strong link between radiation and nuclear waste from Israel’s Dimona reactor (where a nuclear weapons facility was completed in 1963) and an increase in cancer cases in the southern West Bank. In the same areas in the south of the occupied West Bank, not a single case of cancer was reported before the Israeli factory began producing nuclear weapons. Many Palestinians currently suffer from cancer and birth defects, as well as recurrent miscarriages among women.

According to an Arabic Post investigation, Israeli authorities have not heeded official warnings from Palestinian officials who expressed serious concern about the danger of high levels of nuclear radiation in the atmosphere and groundwater in areas in the south of the West Bank, particularly in the city of al-Khalil (Hebron), where record levels of cancer and fetal malformations are recorded every year.

In December 2021, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Israel of dumping hazardous nuclear waste, such as burnt oil, chemical and electronic waste, and others in the Palestinian territories. All this, he said, poses a long-term threat to the Palestinian environment (soil, water, air, and wildlife), in addition to the outbreak of cancer and birth defects. “There are 6,251 cancer patients in the country, which is a high percentage compared to neighboring countries,” Shtayyeh said. He also attributed this to the fact that the Israelis use the occupied territories as a dumping ground for nuclear waste.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani speaking before the UN, said that Israel’s advanced nuclear program poses a serious threat to international security and stability. Kanaani called on the IAEA to fulfill its mandate and responsibility in this regard.

It is worth noting that, according to various experts, Israel has 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal due to its active nuclear policy and the patronage of the West, especially the United States. It has repeatedly vehemently refused to have its military nuclear facilities inspected, not to mention refusing to sign the NPT. At the same time, Iran is a party to the NPT and has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is exclusively civilian in nature and subject to the strictest oversight by the UN and the IAEA. It is not surprising that Iran has repeatedly been subjected to the most thorough inspections by international bodies, and in Israel, even experts do not know where and what is located, not to mention the fact that a single IAEA inspection has taken place there.

The policy of double standards is quite clear. When it comes to stopping nuclear proliferation, Israel is absolved of its responsibility. As a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran operates a peaceful program for energy and medical purposes, but is subject to the most stringent inspection program in IAEA history. At the same time, the West, especially the United States, has imposed the most painful sanctions regime on the Islamic Republic.

At the same time, Israel, which has hundreds of nuclear warheads, is not inspected by either the UN or the IAEA, and these organizations do not even want to hear about any control of Israel’s military nuclear program. On the contrary, Israel is supplied with endless amounts of military weapons (paid for by American taxpayers) and huge sums of money from the West, and also enjoys great diplomatic and political support on the world stage. An umbrella of uncontrollability, so to speak, is erected over Tel Aviv. The West is making it clear to Israel: do what you want, and we will cover you. But it is not the same for the peoples of this region, over whom hangs constantly the nuclear sword of Damocles, which can break loose at any moment with the use of nuclear weapons and the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2022/11/16/the-un-calls-on-israel-to-destroy-its-nuclear-weapons/

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