Confirmed: Iran has installed hundreds of additional centrifuges for uranium enrichment, while continuing enrichment activities, and is creating a plutonium enrichment plant at Arak.

At a time when news headlines from the Middle East are dominated by battles in Syria, growing Sunni-Shi’ite conflict in Iraq and Lebanon, and mass disturbances in Turkey, it is easy to forget about Iran’s nuclear program; but early warning indicators are signaling an impending, explosive crisis over Iran’s refusal to halt its covert nuclear weapons program.

At enrichment facilities in Natanz and Fordow, Iran is continuing to inch closer to the point of nuclear breakout, as a report by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently noted.

The report confirmed what defense analysts had been saying for months: that Iran installed hundreds of additional centrifuges for uranium enrichment, enhancing its nuclear program, while continuing enrichment activities.

Tehran has also taken steps to create a parallel path to nuclear weapons through its plutonium plant at Arak.

Iranian engineers are constructing a reactor at the heavy water plant at Arak, which could enable the production of a plutonium-based atomic bomb.

Meanwhile, Iran continues to deny IAEA inspectors access to its suspected nuclear trigger facility at Parchin, and has been busy shifting earth around the site to cover its activities. At this point, the IAEA said, even if inspectors were allowed to visit, the cover-up would mean they may not find a thing.

These developments have led leading Israeli defense experts at the Institute for National Security Institute in Tel Aviv to conclude that unless the White House soon adjusts its policy on Iran, the U.S. may end up adopting a policy of nuclear containment rather than prevention.

The analysts, Emily Landau, director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at the INSS, and Ephraim Asculai, a senior research associate, questioned President Barack Obama’s assertion that the US will know ahead of time if Iran took a decision to produce nuclear weapons. They cited historical failures by intelligence agencies, and cautioned that relying on the IAEA to identify the danger in time could prove disastrous.

Even if a timely warning were received, they said, it remains unclear that there would enough time to reverse Iran’s trajectory, or that the White House would be willing to employ force.

Most importantly, their paper said that it is now “blatantly apparent” that the diplomatic approach for solving the Iranian crisis has failed, “even though the US administration has yet to admit this.”

Their stance was echoed on Monday by the United Nation’s top nuclear diplomat, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

Amano told the IAEA’s board of governors that talks with Iran are simply “going around in circles,” and described the past ten rounds of negotiations as failures.

Using unusually blunt language to underscore the dead-end situation, Amano said: “To be frank, for some time now, we have been going around in circles. This is not the right way to address issues of such great importance to the international community, including Iran.”

Iran’s intransigence, and its unwillingness to cooperate or provide assurances about the absence of nuclear material and activities were all to blame, he said.

“These activities are in clear contravention of resolutions adopted by the Board of Governors and the United Nations Security Council,” Amano added.

Israel, which is more threatened by Iran’s nuclear program than is the U.S., as well as militarily weaker than Washington, has less time to make its up mind on how and when to proceed to avert a threat to its existence.

Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs, Yuval Steinitz, reflected the urgency of the situation in a warning he sent out to the public last week. “Time is running out,” he said. “We have only a few months. The danger is a global one, which will change the face of history. Iran could have hundreds of atomic bombs and hundreds of long-range missiles.”

He added: “The danger is many times bigger than North Korea.”

Against this background, the Israeli military’s former intelligence chief, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, and former Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright USMC (ret.), published an analysis in the Atlantic examining what would happen if either Israel or the US launched military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.

Yadlin and Cartwright simulated a classified phone call between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, which would take place later this year. During the call, the two leaders agree that the diplomatic-sanctions route to stopping Iran has failed.

Their starting position is the current situation, and the timing of their piece is not coincidental. Their envisaged phone call may well occur sooner rather than later.

A central conclusion reached by the defense figures is that Israel has the highest moral authority to launch military action, as it faces the greatest threat.

Practically, an Israeli strike might also safeguard the U.S.’s ability to act as a broker and negotiate a permanent diplomatic solution to the crisis after a strike – a role the U.S. could not undertake if it carried out the strike itself. Nevertheless, the U.S. enjoys superior military capabilities to launch such an operation.

Iran’s response to an attack from either side could range from a limited retaliation to launching a regional war.

The other day, an Israeli defense official said the production of Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile defense systems – which intercept incoming long-range missiles in space – have been fast-tracked.

Eight months ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the international community at the United Nations that the clock was ticking for a resolution to the Iranian crisis, and that time could be up by the spring or summer of 2013.

A growing number of alarms are ringing.

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

Iran’s construction of a research reactor that can produce plutonium for a nuclear weapon continues full steam, according to a UN report issued this week. And the UN International Atomic Energy Agency is now convinced that Iran has increased to a dangerous level its capacity to refine uranium, a prerequisite for constructing a bomb. And, according to the IAEA, the part of Parchin, a military site the agency insisted on inspecting, has now been paved over by the Iranians.

Obviously, the Iranians have a lot to hide, and they’re hiding it. When they finally let UN inspectors in, it would be after all traces of nuclear bomb-related research have been covered by asphalt.

Judging by what the Administration has been saying—that Iran is “advancing its enrichment program in blatant violation of its international obligations”—somebody is going to start a war over these facilities.

U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters that the UN report “marks an unfortunate milestone with regard to Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.”

Ventrell added that “despite more than a decade of dedicated effort on the part of the IAEA, Iran still has not provided the requisite cooperation with the IAEA for them to complete their investigation,” and that “we’re going to continue to hold Iran accountable for its international nuclear obligations.”

According to Reuters, the West is mostly concerned about Iran’s uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow. But experts suggest the research reactor being built outside the town of Arak could be used to produce plutonium for nuclear arms.

The IAEA says Iran is planning to commission that plant in the first quarter of 2014 and expects it to become operational in the third quarter.

The UN report seems to confirm—at least indirectly—Israeli claims that Iran could produce at will a nuclear weapon as early as this summer, and could certainly accumulate a stockpile of bombs next year.

The Associated Press on Tuesday published a diagram showing that Iranian scientist have run computer simulations that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

A.P. reported that it got the diagram from officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon.

A.P.  furthermore wrote that the International Atomic Energy Agency — the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog — last year reported that it had obtained diagrams indicating that Iran was calculating the “nuclear explosive yield” of potential weapons.

A senior diplomat who is considered neutral on the issue confirmed that the graph obtained by the A.P. was indeed one of those cited by the IAEA in that report.

This alarming news came after the publication of the latest IAEA report that was unusually outspoken about the development of a nuclear weapon by Iran.

The IAEA report contained the following information:

40.  ‘The Annex to the Director General’s November 2011 report (GOV/2011/65) provided a detailed analysis of the information available to the Agency, indicating that Iran has carried out activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.’

Since November 2011, the Agency has obtained more information which further corroborates the analysis
contained in the aforementioned Annex.

42. As indicated in Section B above, since the November 2011 Board, the Agency, through several rounds of formal talks and numerous informal contacts with Iran, has made intensive efforts to seek to resolve all of the outstanding issues related to Iran’s nuclear programme, especially with respect to possible military dimensions, but without concrete results.

43. Parchin:…information provided to the Agency by Member States indicates that Iran constructed a large explosives
containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments…

44. As previously reported, satellite imagery available to the Agency for the period from February 2005 to January 2012 shows virtually no activity at or near the building housing the
containment vessel. Since the Agency’s first request for access to this location, however, satellite imagery shows that extensive activities and resultant changes have taken place at this location.

45. …such experiments would be strong indicators of possible nuclear weapon development….the Agency notified Iran of that location in January 2012. Iran has stated that “the allegation of nuclear activities in Parchin site is baseless.”

Originally published at the Missing Piece.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will soon issue a report showing that Iranian nuclear centrifuges are dramatically increasing their production, according to a report by the AFP.

The watchdog group says Iran has completed the installation of 2,700 new centrifuges at its Fordo plant, which is buried deep in a mountain range and is considered impenetrable by air assault.

US President Barack Obama has said sanctions are having a strong impact on Iran.  Israel has asked the US to institute “red line” standards, the infraction of which by Iran would lead to a US military response.  The Obama administration said it would not institute such measures.

Aerial photos have shown Iran conducting clean ups of the areas around nuclear plants to eliminate evidence of their activities.

Iran’s Vice President Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, who heads the Iranian delegation taking part in the 56th session of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, told the newspaper Al-Hayat: “We sometimes gave false information to protect our nuclear sites and our interests. This inevitably misled other intelligence agencies.”

It appears that Iran has been regularly giving false information to the IAEA, assuming that it had been infiltrated by intelligence agencies interested in Iran’s nuclear program.

The Iranian VP blamed these infiltrators for two explosions that took down the electric supply to two nuclear plants.

“The IAEA says it gets its information from the intelligence services belonging to the member states, and we monitor and followed up seven years ago activities of the British foreign intelligence service, which gathered information for people, which then exposed [Iranian nuclear scientists] to assassination at the hands of Zionist intelligence agents. Some of the information provided by the agency related to these events. For our part, we sometimes gave false information to protect our nuclear sites and our interests. This inevitably misled other intelligence agencies,” Davani told Al-Hayat.

Shaul Chorev, director of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, announced that Israel would not attend a conference on the creation of a nuclear-free Middle East which will take place in Finland. AFP reports that the conference is scheduled for later this year or early in 2013, and it is backed by the U.S.

Chorev told the IAEA meeting in Vienna that a nuclear-free Middle East “will be possible only after the establishment of peace and trust among the states of the area, as a result of a local initiative, not of external coercion.”

“Such a process can only be launched when peaceful relations exist for a reasonable period of time in the region,” Chorev said. “Regrettably, the realities in the Middle East are far from being conducive.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief Fereydoun Abbasi says he has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to provide Iran with information about Israel’s nuclear installations, the Tehran Times reported.

“I told [IAEA director Yukiya] Amano to allow (Iran) to defend its achievements on an equal footing (with Israel) in view of the situation in the region and the danger that exists for Iran,” Fereydoun Abbasi told reporters after a meeting with the IAEA director in Vienna on Monday.

JERUSALEM – Barring any scheduling changes during the forthcoming UN General Assembly gathering, President Obama will not formally meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York. This follows Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s rejection of Netanyahu’s demand that the U.S. and its Western allies deliver a red line ultimatum to the Iranian regime regarding their escalating nuclear weapons program.

For the past several months, American and Israeli politicians have told the international media that the U.S. and Israel were in complete agreement about thwarting the Iranians from building a nuclear bomb but differed on a deadline when a possible preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would be necessary.

The seeming confidence gap between the U.S and Israel comes against the backdrop of a series of detailed reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and various media sources in Europe highlighting Israel’s growing concerns about the nature and accelerated pace of Iran’s nuclear program. Israel’s apprehension about suspicious movements of key elements of the program into underground sites was justified, according to the IAEA findings.

In related news, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has severed his country’s diplomatic ties with Iran. Harper expressed his disapproval of Iran’s dangerous intentions toward Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vitriolic rhetoric against the Jewish state and the lack of productive negotiations on the explosive nuclear issue between the West and Iran – as noted in the IAEA reports.

For her part, Clinton was reportedly caught off guard by Harper’s harsh assessment of Iran’s intentions toward Israel.

Harper’s close personal and political relationship with Netanyahu apparently differs from the rapport between Netanyahu and Obama. A high-ranking Israeli government source told Yediot Aharonot, “There is an ongoing debate among Obama’s reelection campaign team about whether a meeting with Netanyahu should take place in New York. They fear a bad meeting could result in a bad photo-op that could affect the U.S. elections. There is a very serious trust issue between the U.S. administration and Netanyahu.”

Despite the ominous reports from the IAEA and Harper’s actions, a number of high-ranking American military commanders, as well as senior British and German politicians, have traveled to Israel during the past week to warn Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak against launching a unilateral attack on Iran’s suspected nuclear development and weapons sites.

But Netanyahu and Barak are deeply concerned about long-term White House and State Department policies about existential threats against Israel, policies that date back to George W. Bush’s administration. In 2007 President Bush refused to attack a secret Syrian nuclear weapons development site despite irrefutable evidence of its existence presented to the White House by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. (Details about the spectacular March 2007 Israeli raid on the Syrian site were revealed in this week’s New Yorker magazine.)

Respected Israeli media commentator Dan Margalit rebuked Clinton and the White House for sidestepping Israel’s continuing concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. “The only thing that currently fuels the American administration is the November elections. The administration prefers to keep things quiet with regard to negotiations with Iran and not [be] involved with military muscle flexing,” Margalit said.

Britain’s Sunday Times of London speculated that Netanyahu, Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz are working on an unconventional attack scenario that would destroy Iran’s military capabilities while sparing IDF forces and Israeli citizens from massive casualties. The newspaper said that the IDF was capable of launching a lightning annihilation of Iran’s nuclear weapons by employing a devastating electro-magnetic pulse against key Iranian targets that would permanently eliminate all electronic devices and circuits.

It is believed that the Israeli government, through diplomatic channels, recently passed along a message to senior members of the Lebanese government that the IDF would also target electrical power grids in Beirut and beyond if Hizbullah, the Iranian proxy militia, attacked the Israeli home front with missiles.

Iran has moved further along in its ability to build nuclear weapons, according to some diplomats.

The diplomats say intelligence provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear monitor of the United Nations, shows that Iran has advanced its work on calculating the destructive power of an atomic warhead through a series of computer models that it ran sometime within the past three years, The Associated Press reported.

The information comes from Israel, the United States and at least two other Western countries, according to the diplomats.

Iran denies it is working on a nuclear weapon.

The IAEA would not comment, but four of the six diplomats who spoke to the AP on the issue said an oblique passage in its August report on Iran saying that “the agency has obtained more information which further corroborates’’ its suspicions alludes to the new intelligence.

The information, if credible, could provide added fuel for the Israeli officials who want a preemptive military strike on Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for “red lines” to be set for Iran, and said sanctions have not worked.

“Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel,” Netanyahu said Tuesday at a meeting with his Bulgarian counterpart, Boyko Borisov.

He added, “Every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear bombs. If Iran knows that there is no red line, if Iran knows that there’s no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it’s doing: It’s continuing without any interference towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there nuclear bombs.”