Syria defends Iran nuclear plans

Syria defends Iran nuclear plans
Damascus (AFP) Dec 3, 2009 - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad defended Iran's controversial nuclear programme on Thursday, during a visit to Damascus by Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, and promised that cooperation between the two countries would continue. Assad asserted "the right of Iran and other countries that are signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich unranium for civilian purpo ... more

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Syria_defends_Iran_nuclear_plans_999.html

S.Korea hails first nuclear reactor export

S.Korea hails first nuclear reactor export
Seoul (AFP) Dec 4, 2009 - South Korea on Friday hailed its first export of an atomic reactor, saying the deal with Jordan would spur future overseas sales of nuclear technology. Government officials said a South Korean consortium has won a deal worth about 173 million dollars to build a five megawatt multi-purpose reactor at the Jordan University for Sciences and Technology by 2014. Jordan will use the reactor ... more

http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/S.Korea_hails_first_nuclear_reactor_export_999.html

World Powers Could Hold Iran Meeting Next Week

World Powers Could Hold Iran Meeting Next Week
Slobodan Lekic and Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press
World powers trying to end a standoff over Iran's nuclear program are weighing whether to meet next week to discuss tougher measures, a European Union official said Thursday as Russia reiterated its reluctance to agree to new sanctions.
Full Article
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRqjZV1Meppj40hTs8IBOv4DdsQwD9CGHHL00

Iran Tries to Reassure IAEA over New Uranium Units Aresu Eqbali, Agence France-Presse

Iran Tries to Reassure IAEA over New Uranium Units
Aresu Eqbali, Agence France-Presse
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran's plan to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants was not aimed at confronting the UN atomic watchdog, which censured Tehran last month, the state television website reported.
Full Article
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hhmmOJ92Y3l7_UloldsmxhEqyGdA

U.S. Envoy: No Commitment by N. Korea on Future Talks Blaine Harden, The Washington Post

U.S. Envoy: No Commitment by N. Korea on Future Talks
Blaine Harden, The Washington Post
BosworthPresident Obama's envoy to North Korea said Thursday that his journey to Pyongyang produced no commitment that the North would return to international talks aimed at ridding the country of nuclear weapons.

But Stephen Bosworth, after a three-day visit that marked the first high-level contact between the Obama administration and the government of leader Kim Jong Il, said his conversations had established a "common understanding" of the need for negotiations.
Full Article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121000756.html

Obama’s Nobel & START: Peacemaker Arrives Empty-handed

Obama’s Nobel & START: Peacemaker Arrives Empty-handed

by Eric Walberg / December 9th, 2009 (0)

Obama desperately needed a new nuclear arms treaty to replace START I to provide some justification for the Nobel Committee’s gamble. The award in the face of US imperial wars and hubris is proving to be extremely embarrassing to everyone, left and right. In awarding the Nobel Prize to Obama on 9 October, the selection committee “in particular looked at Obama’s vision and work toward a world without atomic weapons,” giving him an out, if he could at least bring a nuclear arms treaty with him.

Instead, US inspectors packed their bags last week and left Russian nuclear sites unmonitored for …
(Full article …)
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/12/obamas-nobel-start-peacemaker-arrives-empty-handed/

The real path to green energy: Hybrid nuclear-renewable power

The real path to green energy: Hybrid nuclear-renewable power Premium
BY CHARLES FORSBERG
A targeted use of nuclear power could solve the major problems of renewable energy sources by providing carbon-emission-free power for biofuel refineries and backup energy for solar, wind, and other renewable sources.

http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/k5mg3023428g312l/?p=3e066ae975cf41419a094c318b039a9e&pi=6

Malaysia Recalls U.N. Envoy after Iran Nuclear Vote

Malaysia Recalls U.N. Envoy after Iran Nuclear Vote
Reuters
Malaysia said on Sunday it recalled its envoy to the United Nations in Vienna for "consultations" after he voted against a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency rebuking Iran.
Full Article
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-44506820091206

Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire: Russia Sees New Arms Control Deal in 10 Days Global Security Newswire

Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire: Russia Sees New Arms Control Deal in 10 Days Global Security Newswire

Russia Sees New Arms Control Deal in 10 Days Global Security Newswire

Russia Sees New Arms Control Deal in 10 Days
Global Security Newswire
A successor to a key nuclear arms control treaty could be signed by late next week, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 7).
Full Article
http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20091208_8224.php

Turkey Balks at Iran Sanctions

Turkey Balks at Iran Sanctions
Jay Solomon, The Wall Street Journal
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan balked at supporting new economic sanctions against Iran after a White House meeting with President Barack Obama Monday, arguing diplomacy aimed at ending Tehran's nuclear program needed more time.
Full Article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126021478791880453.html

Iran's Growing Weapons Capability and Its Impact on Negotiations

Iran's Growing Weapons Capability and Its Impact on Negotiations
David Albright and Jacqueline Shire, Arms Control Association
AhmadinejadThe crisis over Iran's growing nuclear weapons capabilities is rapidly reaching a critical point. Recent developments do not bode well for the prospect of successful negotiations that can end concerns about Iran's nuclear program, at least in the short term.

These concerns center on two related questions: whether Iran can be prevented from using its nuclear program for weapons purposes, and how much confidence the United States and other countries can have in verification measures to ensure that the Iranians are not using their program for such purposes.
Full Article
http://armscontrol.org/act/2009_12/AlbrightShire

Russia, India forge nuclear-cooperation agreement

Russia, India forge nuclear-cooperation agreement
Russia has signed a nuclear-cooperation deal with India, becoming the latest country to do so. "Today, we have signed an agreement which broadens the reach of our cooperation beyond the supply of nuclear reactors to areas of research and development and a whole range of areas of nuclear energy," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said after his meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/86b6465c-e398-11de-9f4f-00144feab49a.html

Climate talks should include nuclear power, Constellation CEO says

Climate talks should include nuclear power, Constellation CEO says
Nuclear energy should be part of climate-change discussions in Copenhagen, said Constellation Energy Group CEO Mayo Shattuck III. The power source plays an important role in the country's carbon-reduction targets and should be promoted internationally, he added. The use of nuclear energy should "increase substantially" if the world seeks to achieve a 50% cut in emissions by 2050, Shattuck said. American City Business Journals/Baltimore

http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2009/12/07/daily7.html

U.S. nuclear companies express concern over land scarcity in India

U.S. nuclear companies express concern over land scarcity in India
The lack of land in India could further postpone a nuclear-cooperation agreement between the U.S. and India, a consortium of American nuclear companies said. Aside from land scarcity, businesses are concerned with delays including differences over a fuel-reprocessing deal. "Yes, we realize land acquisition is a problem here," GE executive Timothy Richards said. Reuters

http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINDEL26413220091208

Nuclear waste storage decision will affect SRS

GAO report suggests 2 options for nuclear-waste storage
A Government Accountability Office report identifies two possible solutions to concerns over the country's nuclear-waste storage. One is the centralized storage of the material at two unnamed sites, and the other is continuing the practice of on-site storage at 80 locations. The Augusta Chronicle (Ga.)
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2009/12/07/met_558496.shtml

India, Russia sign deals on nuclear energy, defence

India, Russia sign deals on nuclear energy, defence
Moscow (AFP) Dec 7, 2009 - India and Russia signed deals on nuclear energy and arms sales on Monday as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held talks in the Kremlin with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "We welcome Russia's participation in the broadening of our nuclear energy programme," Singh told reporters after the talks, according to remarks translated into Russian. "The successful end of the negotiations ... more
http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/India_Russia_sign_deals_on_nuclear_energy_defence_999.html

S. Korea wins contract to build Jordan's first nuclear reactor

S. Korea wins contract to build Jordan's first nuclear reactor
A South Korean consortium has secured a bid to build Jordan's first nuclear reactor, beating offers from Argentina, Russia and China, according to South Korea's science ministry. The contract, which is worth more than $170 million, requires the group to build a five-megawatt reactor for research purposes. Chosun Ilbo (South Korea)/Arirang News

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/12/07/2009120700607.html

U.S. nuclear companies proceed with India talks

U.S. nuclear companies proceed with India talks
A consortium of U.S. companies led by GE and Westinghouse Electric is scheduled to meet today with their counterparts in India to discuss nuclear construction plans in the country. The meetings come in the wake of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's U.S. visit last month and the possibility that India will advance a nuclear liability bill that would open up the industry to U.S. businesses. Hindustan Times (India)

http://www.hindustantimes.com/US-nuclear-firms-set-for-Take-2-of-talks-with-India/H1-Article1-483680.aspx

Iran Is No Existential Threat The best way to rescue Obama's failing diplomacy with the Islamic Republic is to stop letting Israel call the shots. BY

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/04/iran_is_no_existential_threat?page=full
Iran Is No Existential Threat
The best way to rescue Obama's failing diplomacy with the Islamic Republic is to stop letting Israel call the shots.
BY HILLARY MANN LEVERETT, FLYNT LEVERETT | DECEMBER 4, 2009

After months of halfhearted, fruitless attempts at engagement, the United States and its European partners are effectively re-enacting George W. Bush's Iran policy. In 2006, after Iran had ended a nearly two-year voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, then-U.S. president pushed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to send Iran's nuclear file to the U.N. Security Council, which duly imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic. But the sanctions did not prove "crippling," as Bush had hoped: Iran continued to expand its nuclear infrastructure, and the risks of a military confrontation between the United States and Iran climbed.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama's administration has decided to repeat this sorry history. Last Friday, the IAEA passed a resolution urging Iran to send most of its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium abroad. It also reported Iran once again to the Security Council. Iran has wasted no time in upping the ante rather than backing down, saying it would restrict cooperation with the IAEA only to those measures "statutorily" required. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also announced that the Islamic Republic would build 10 new enrichment facilities in coming years. He later added, "Iran will produce fuel enriched to a level of 20 percent," the level required for Iran's research reactor in Tehran. This would be well above the 3 to 4 percent level that Iran has already achieved in producing low-enriched uranium and would take Iran closer to the 90 percent-plus level required for weapons-grade fissile material.

These developments again demonstrate the counterproductive futility of enshrining uranium enrichment and sanctions as the keys to resolving the nuclear issue. By prompting Tehran to reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the United States and its European partners have done real damage to the international community's ability to monitor the state of Iran's nuclear program. More broadly, U.S., British, and French insistence on "zero enrichment" in Iran makes successful nuclear diplomacy with Tehran impossible. At this point, there is no chance that Tehran will accept "zero enrichment" as a negotiated outcome, for at least two reasons: It is a country-specific formulation applied to Iran but not to anybody else, and it requires Iran to forswear its sovereign right to the full range of civil nuclear technology.

If the United States and its partners continue on their present course, the Islamic Republic will continue to expand its nuclear infrastructure, and the risks of an eventual military confrontation between the United States (or Israel, with U.S. support) and Iran will, once again, rise inexorably. There is no set of sanctions the Security Council might plausibly authorize that would change this reality, and various unilateral and secondary sanctions initiatives moving through the U.S. Congress will not work either.

A more constructive approach would seek to maximize international monitoring of Iran's nuclear activities by emphasizing country-neutral formulations for curbing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. This would require international acceptance of enrichment on Iranian soil. Getting Iran to ratify and implement the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would be an important step in this direction, but the most effective country-neutral initiative would be the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region.

Although talk of an NWFZ -- or, more broadly, a weapons of mass destruction-free zone (WMDFZ) -- in the Middle East is not new, serious consideration of these ideas in U.S. foreign policy circles always stops as soon as Israel's nuclear status comes up. For years, the Israeli position has been that, once Arab-Israeli peace is achieved, it might become possible for Israel to join in creating an NWFZ/WMDFZ in the region. Although American foreign-policy elites typically take this position at face value, it deserves a higher degree of critical scrutiny.

It is simply not analytically credible to describe the unresolved Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese tracks of the Middle East peace process as "existential threats" to Israel. The 1978 Egypt-Israel Camp David accords effectively dispelled the prospect of Arab armies uniting to "push the Jews into the sea." Similarly, there is no amount of additional armed capabilities that would allow Palestinian and Lebanese militants to destroy Israel without also destroying the populations they are ostensibly seeking to liberate.

More recently, the dominant Israeli discourse about Iran has routinely characterized an Islamic Republic with a nuclear "breakout" capability -- not to mention actual nuclear weapons -- as an "existential threat" to Israel. (Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have reiterated Israel's position that Iran's full suspension of uranium enrichment is the only acceptable outcome from nuclear talks with Tehran.) But this position, too, does not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. It is not analytically serious to describe an Iran with mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle as an existential threat to Israel or any other state. Even if Iran were to fabricate a nuclear weapon, it is not credible to describe that as an existential threat to Israel -- unless one has such a distorted view of Shiite Islam that one believes the Islamic Republic is so focused on damaging "the Zionist entity" that it is collectively willing to become history's first "suicide nation."

Rhetoric from senior officials and politicians characterizing Iran as an existential threat resonates with the Israeli public, for understandable historical reasons, and Ahmadinejad's statements questioning the Holocaust only reinforce Israeli fears. As a result, there is, effectively, no political debate in Israel about Iran policy.

But, when Israeli politicians and policymakers use politically effective rhetoric about Iran's nuclear development being an existential threat to Israel, what is really motivating them? Fundamentally, Israel's political and policy elites are focused on eliminating Iran's fuel-cycle capabilities in order to preserve a regional balance of power that is strongly tilted in Israel's favor. Regional perceptions that the Islamic Republic had achieved a "breakout" capability would begin to chip away at Israel's long-standing nuclear-weapons monopoly. That, in turn, might begin to constrain Israel's currently unconstrained freedom of unilateral military action.

One can readily appreciate why Israel values its status as the Middle East's military hegemon and wants to maintain the maximum possible room for unilateral military initiative. But that strategic preference is not legitimated by the U.N. Charter, the laws of war, or any international convention. Moreover, Israel's strategic preference for preserving and enhancing its military hegemony does not, at this point, serve the cause of regional stability or containing the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities in the Middle East.

The United States has an abiding commitment to Israel's survival and security. But that commitment should not be confused with maintaining Israel's military hegemony over the region in perpetuity, by continuing to allow U.S. assurances of an Israeli "qualitative edge" for defensive purposes to be twisted into assurances of maximum freedom for Israel to conduct offensive military operations at will against any regional target.

It is time for the United States and its international partners to get serious about creating a regionwide framework for controlling WMD capabilities in the Middle East, including the full range of Israel's WMD capabilities, to create a more secure environment for all Middle Eastern states. Obama's observation, in his June 4 Cairo speech, that no single country should determine which other countries are permitted to have particular types of weapons, could be a positive first step in this direction. But, if he does not follow up purposefully, this will become one more good Obama idea that ends up disappointing the expectations it initially raised.

Flynt Leverett directs the New America Foundation's Iran Initiative and teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State University. Hillary Mann Leverett is the chief executive officer of Stratega, a political risk consultancy. Together, they have more than 20 years of experience working on Middle East issues for the U.S. government, including at the National Security Council and the State Department, and now publish www.TheRaceForIran.com.