US raises stakes on Iran by sending in ships and missiles

Pentagon says Patriot shield will deter strike on American allies in the Gulf

Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran.
The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait – and keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations.
American officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran and reassuring Gulf states fearful that Tehran might react to sanctions by striking at US allies in the region. Washington is also seeking to discourage Israel from a strike against Iran by demonstrating that the US is prepared to contain any threat.
The deployment comes after Obama's attempts to emphasise diplomacy over confrontation in dealing with Iran – a contrast to the Bush administration's approach – have failed to persuade Tehran to open its nuclear installations to international controls. The White House is now trying to engineer agreement for sanctions focused on Iran's Revolutionary Guard, believed to be in charge of the atomic programme.
Washington has not formally announced the deployment of the Patriots and other anti-missile systems, but by leaking it to American newspapers the administration is evidently seeking to alert Tehran to a hardening of its position.
The administration is deploying two Patriot batteries, capable of shooting down incoming missiles, in each of the four Gulf countries. Kuwait already has an older version of the missile, deployed after Iraq's invasion. Saudi Arabia has long had the missiles, as has Israel.
An unnamed senior administration official told the New York Times: "Our first goal is to deter the Iranians. A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don't feel they have to go nuclear themselves. But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well."
The chief of the US central command, General David Petraeus, said in a speech 10 days ago that countries in the region are concerned about Tehran's military ambitions and the prospect of it becoming a dominant power in the Gulf: "Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the Gulf front."
Petraeus said the US is keeping cruisers equipped with advanced anti-missile systems in the Gulf at all times to act as a buffer between Iran and the Gulf states.
Washington is also concerned at the threat of action by Israel, which is predicting that Iran will be able to build a nuclear missile within a year, a much faster timetable than assessed by the US, and is warning that it will not let Tehran come close to completion if diplomacy fails.
The director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, met the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and other senior officials in Jerusalem last week to discuss Iran.
Pro-Israel lobby groups in the US have joined Republican party leaders in trying to build public pressure on the administration to take a tougher line with Iran. One group, the Israel Project, has been running a TV campaign warning that Iran might supply nuclear weapons to terrorists.
"Imagine Washington DC under missile attack from nearby Baltimore," it says. "A nuclear Iran is a threat to peace, emboldens extremists, and could give nuclear materials to terrorists with the ability to strike anywhere."
Washington is also concerned that if Iran is able to build nuclear weapons, other states in the region will feel the need to follow. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to already have atomic bombs, although it does not officially acknowledge it.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said in London last week that the US will press for additional sanctions against Iran if it fails to curb its nuclear program.
Europe's foreign affairs minister, Catherine Ashton, today said the UN security council should now take up the issue. "We are worried about what's happening in Iran. I'm disappointed at the failure of Iran to accept the dialogue and we now need to look again at what needs to happen there," she told Sky News.
"The next step for us is to take our discussions into the security council. When I was meeting with Hillary Clinton last week we talked about Iran and we were very clear this is a problem we will have to deal with."
However, China and Russia are still pressing for a diplomatic solution.
Tony Blair, Middle East envoy on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, continually referred to what he described as the Iranian threat during his evidence at the Chilcot inquiry last Friday. Textual analysis now shows that he mentioned Iran 58 times.
Besides the new missile deployment, Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia to create a 30,000-strong force to protect oil installations and other infrastructure, as well as expanded joint exercises between the US and military forces in the region.
The move is a continuation of the military build-up begun under former president George W Bush. In the past two years, Abu Dhabi has bought $17bn (£11bn) worth of weapons from the US, including the Patriot anti-missile batteries and an advanced anti-missile system. UAE recently bought 80 US-made fighter jets. It is also buying fighters from France.
Petraeus said in a speech in Bahrain last year the UAE air force "could take out the entire Iranian air force, I believe".
Patriot missiles are designed to intercept enemy missiles before they reach their target. Since production began in 1980, 9,000 missiles have been delivered to countries including Germany, Greece, Taiwan and Japan.
During the first Gulf war Patriot success was 70% in Saudi Arabia and 40% in Israel. Since then the US has spent more than $10bn (£6.3bn) improving, among other aspects, the system's radar and computer compatibility for joint forces action. Once in position, the system requires a crew of only three people to operate. Each missile weighs 700kg and has a range of about 100 miles.
The US navy is in the process of upgrading all its Ticonderoga class cruisers and a number of destroyers to carry the Aegis ballistic missile defence system. It uses a surface-to-air missile that is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles above the atmosphere. It has also been tested on failing satellites as they fall to earth. Each missile is over 6m long and costs more than $9m.

Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk

Iran warns: it will make its own nuclear fuel

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran set a one-month deadline Saturday for the West to accept its counterproposal to a U.N.-drafted nuclear plan and warned that otherwise it will produce reactor fuel at a higher level of enrichment on its own.
The warning was a show of defiance and a hardening of Iran's stance over its nuclear program, which the West fears masks an effort to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran insists its program is only for peaceful purposes, such as electricity production, and says it has no intention of making a bomb.
"We have given them an ultimatum. There is one month left and that is by the end of January," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, speaking on state television.
Even if Tehran started working on the fuel production immediately, it would likely take years before it could master the technology to turn uranium enriched to the level of 20 percent into the fuel rods it needs for a medical research reactor.
Still, any threat to enrich uranium to a higher level is likely to rattle the world powers that have been trying to persuade Iran to forgo enrichment altogether.
Enrichment is at the center of the West's concerns because at high levels it can be used in making nuclear weapons. At lower levels, enriched uranium is used in the production of fuel for nuclear power plants.
Iran dismissed an end-of-2009 deadline imposed by the Obama administration and its international partners to accept a U.N.-drafted deal to swap most of its enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The deal would reduce Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, limiting—at least for the moment—its capability to make nuclear weapons.
The U.S. and its allies have demanded Iran accept the terms of the U.N.-brokered plan without changes.
Instead, Tehran came up with a counterproposal: to have the West either sell nuclear fuel to Iran, or swap its nuclear fuel for Iran's enriched uranium in smaller batches instead of at once as the U.N. plan requires.
This is unacceptable to the West because it would leave Tehran with enough enriched material to make nuclear arms.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, refused to comment Saturday on Iran's announcement of a one-month deadline. The U.S. State Department also had no immediate comment.
The U.N. deal has been the centerpiece of the West's latest diplomatic push to get Iran to scrap a key part of its nuclear work.
Under the plan, drafted in November, Iran would export most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium for further enrichment in Russia and France, where it would be converted into fuel rods. The rods, which Iran needs for the research reactor in Tehran, would be returned to the country about a year later.
Exporting the uranium would temporarily leave Iran without enough of a stockpile to further enrich the uranium into material for a nuclear warhead, and the rods that are returned cannot be processed further for use in making weapons.
"They (the West) must decide on supplying fuel for the Tehran reactor on one of the two offers—purchase or swap," Mottaki said. "Otherwise, the Islamic Republic of Iran will produce the 20 percent enriched fuel with its own capable experts."
Iran currently has one operating enrichment facility that churns out enriched uranium at a level of 3.5 percent. The country needs fuel enriched to 20 percent to power the Tehran medical research reactor. For nuclear weapons, uranium needs to be enriched to 90 percent or more.
The U.N. has demanded Iran suspend all enrichment, a demand Tehran refuses to meet, saying it has a right to develop the technology under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iran has also defiantly announced it intends to build 10 new uranium enrichment sites, drawing a forceful rebuke from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and warnings of the possibility of new U.N. sanctions.
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press

Iran - Montazeri ceremony

Iranian security forces have clashed with crowds of opposition supporters in the city of Isfahan, according to opposition website reports. Activists said police used tear gas and batons to disperse people gathering to commemorate Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri, who died at the weekend. The cleric was one of the country's most influential dissidents. On Monday, tens of thousands attended his funeral in the holy city of Qom - many shouting anti-government slogans. 'Fiercely confronted' The funeral saw reports of clashes between security forces and mourners - with confrontations continuing Qom on Tuesday. State television reported that government supporters staged counter-demonstrations on Tuesday and Wednesday in Qom. Reformists say there has also been unrest in the ayatollah's home city of Najafabad over the past two days. BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne says the confrontations are all part of a build-up to a big series of demonstrations expected at the weekend. The authorities have not yet confirmed the unrest in Isfahan, but the country's police chief warned on Wednesday that protests would not be tolerated. "We advise this movement to end their activities," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam as saying. "Otherwise those who violate the order will be fiercely confronted, based on the law." The Rahesabz website said crowds of opposition supporters had gathered at a mosque in Isfahan for a memorial service for the ayatollah. But hundreds of police and plain-clothes security officers were already there. The website said opposition supporters had been injured and there were a number of arrests. Another reformist website, Parlemannews, said more than 50 people had been detained. The ayatollah's funeral was attended by several leading opposition figures, including Mir Hossein Mousavi. Mr Mousavi, who came second in this year's presidential election, has been an outspoken critic of the current government and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On Tuesday, Mr Mousavi was dismissed as head of the Council for Cultural Revolution, an arts institution affiliated to the president's office. In recent days hardliners have urged Iran's judiciary to put Mr Mousavi on trial for instigating unrest.
BBC

Iran nuclear Bomb tests

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed as a US forgery a document allegedly showing plans by Tehran to test a nuclear bomb trigger.
In a US TV interview Mr Ahmadinejad said the report in the Times newspaper was "fundamentally not true".
He said criticism of Iran's nuclear program had become "a repetitive and tasteless joke".
Iran denies claims it wants to build atomic weapons, saying its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.
The BBC's Jane O'Brien in Washington says the interview offered a rare opportunity to see an Iranian leader being questioned by the US media.
But Mr Ahmadinejad's answers gave little indication that his administration is moving towards a more conciliatory position, says our correspondent.
'Fabricated papers'
The Times reported last week that it had obtained a document, dating from 2007, describing a four-year plan by Iran to test a nuclear trigger using uranium deuteride.
The product can be used as a neutron initiator: the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion.
The memo apparently details how some work on the trigger should be outsourced to universities, but other work is too secret and must be carried out by "trustworthy personnel" within the organisation allegedly carrying out Iran's secret nuclear weapons research.
Another document seen by the Times is said to be a memo from Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, naming him as the chairman of the Field for the Expansion of Deployment of Advance Technology (Fedat) - which the newspaper says is a cover for a secret nuclear weapons programme.
In his first public response to the report, Mr Ahmadinejad said the accusations were "fundamentally not true".
In an interview filmed on Friday with ABC News, but broadcast on Monday, he dismissed the documents, saying: "They are all a fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government."
When asked if there would "be no nuclear weapon in Iran, ever", Mr Ahmadinejad said his view was already known.
"You should say something only once. We have said once that we don't want a nuclear bomb. We don't accept it."
A senior adviser to US President Barack Obama, David Axelrod, said it was "nonsense" that the US had fabricated the documents.
"Nobody has any illusions about what the intent of the Iranian government is," he told ABC.
'Bullying'
Iran is already subject to three sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.
It is at risk of further sanctions after it rejected a deal to send low-enriched uranium abroad to be refined into fuel for a research reactor.
A defiant Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran would welcome talks "under fair conditions".
"We don't welcome confrontation, but we don't surrender to bullying either," he said.
"If you are saying you are going to impose sanctions, then go and do it."
Ahmadinejad also rejected criticism of Iran's human rights situation and allegations of mass arrests following the elections which returned him to office in June.
"These things have to do with the judiciary. We have good laws. There is the judge. These people have got lawyers. These are not political questions."
He said people in Iran had more freedom than in the US.
The ABC interview took place before the latest protests held at the funeral of the influential dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
Iran says its uranium enrichment program is for purely peaceful purposes, aimed at generating electricity so that it can export more gas and oil.
But the US and its allies say it could be used to develop weapons.

Source: BBC News