Rooyesh

The head of the U.N.’s atomic watchdog said on Thursday that Iran was still at the starting stage of creating a uranium enrichment plant and that concerns stem more from its motivations than the scale of production. “There are various definitions of industrial scale production. Iran is still at the starting stage of creating a uranium enrichment plant,” Mohamed Elbaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Riyadh. “The concern does not only stem from Iran conducting industrial scale production but it is rather Iran’s motivations behind (enriching uranium) before it has nuclear reactors for electric power generation that need enriched uranium.”

Source: Asharq Alawsat

While commentators have charged that Britain capitulated to Iran and handed it a humiliating victory in obtaining the release of the 15 Royal Marines last week, it would appear that something more like the opposite is actually the case. But to understand why this is so, we have to look at the larger picture of internal Iranian politics against which the crisis played out. Our Iranian problem is actually a problem with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC or, in Persian, Pasdaran) and allied institutions such as the Basij militia. These are the “power” agencies that serve as the political base for the conservatives inside Iran.

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Iran’s efforts to trumpet its nuclear program are cementing the country’s confrontation with the West regardless of whether its claims this week of technological progress are true, several analysts said Tuesday. The head of Iran’s atomic energy program on Tuesday reiterated Tehran’s long-held claim that it eventually will install 50,000 centrifuges, used to enrich uranium, at its facility in Natanz. That many centrifuges operating at full capacity theoretically could produce nuclear material for 15 atomic bombs a year.

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With its enduring relics of a glorious imperial past, spectacular glittering mosques and breathtaking landscapes, Iran lays claim to some of the finest cultural jewels in the Middle East.But a potentially catastrophic collapse in the country’s tourist trade is threatening to leave this dazzling array of attractions largely unseen by foreign eyes, as international tensions with the west deter a growing number of overseas visitors. The problem has been exacerbated by the recent detention of 15 British marines and sailors, which prompted mass cancellations of foreign tours to a land described this week by its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a cradle of civilisation.

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