S ource: TheNewsPK

TEHRAN: Iran will make absolutely no concessions on its nuclear programme, a key lawmaker declared on Sunday amid high geopolitical tensions and ahead of mooted talks with world powers.

“The parliament will never allow the government to go back even one step in its nuclear policy,” Aladin Borujerdi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary foreign policy commission, told the official IRNA news agency.

Iran’s recent announcements that is stepping up uranium enrichment and made its own 20-percent enriched nuclear fuel showed the country “totally masters nuclear science,” he said. “If the P5+1 countries don’t accept the reality of Iran’s nuclear abilities, they will suffer from that,” Borujerdi was quoted as saying.

His comments precede expected talks agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 group of powers — the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany.Iran has formally requested a date and venue for the negotiations, the previous round of which collapsed in Istanbul in January last year.

The Islamic republic has been buffeted in recent months by ramped-up Western economic sanctions. It has also been threatened with possible military action against its nuclear facilities by Israel and the United States.

Throughout, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, denying Western suspicions — largely echoed in a November report by the International Atomic Energy Agency — that it was conducting military research towards designing nuclear weapons.

Borujerdi told IRNA that the United States and its allies have seen in recent months that Iran’s scientists have managed to make nuclear fuel enriched to 20 percent, among other achievements.

“Lawmakers expect the (Iranian) nuclear negotiating team to change the situation, to obtain a cancellation of (UN) resolutions (on Iran) and that the Iranian nuclear issue is taken from the Security Council and put back before the governors’ board of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said.

The remarks suggested Iran was taking a defiant negotiating position for the talks with the P5+1 — one as hardball as the stance adopted by the United States and some of its allies, notably France and Britain.

US President Barack Obama has warned that Iran’s leaders have to understand that “the window for solving this issue diplomatically is shrinking.”

The US navy will have three aircraft carriers positioned near Iran in the coming days, and is doubling the number of minesweeping ships and helicopters based in the Gulf.

Israel, meanwhile, is keeping up rhetoric that makes many think the Jewish state — the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, which is not involved in the talks — is serious about possibly attacking Iran, with or without US support.

More here:  http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/4723

Leon Panetta confirms U.S. will ‘take action’ if Israel strikes Iran

By Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
BlacklistedNews.com

 With senior Pentagon officials confirming that they have already been drawing up plans to attack I..., the continued (and accelerating) buildup of military assets in the ..., and now United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirming that the United States would backup Israel in an attack on Iran, the unfortunate prospect of an attack looks even more likely.

While he did indeed confirm that the United States would take a role if Israel moved to strike Iranian nuclear facilities – which are not producing nuclear weapons – he would not explicitly explain the extent to which the United States would be involved.

Similarly, in the past Obama has made statements about “having Israel’s back,” but both Obama and Panetta have not been forthcoming when it comes to details or specifics.

“Obviously Israel is an independent country, and they’ll make whatever decisions they make on their own based on what they think is in their national interests,” Panetta said to Arabic news outlet al Hurra.

“If they should make that decision, then obviously the United States will – would take action to protect our facilities in this area and protect our interests in this area,” Panetta stated.


I find Panetta’s correction from “will” to “would” a bit interesting. It might be an innocent slip, but it also might be an indication that an attack on Iran by both the United States and Israel is set in stone at this point.

However, Panetta was sure to echo the rhetoric of President of the United States Barack Obama who insists that diplomacy is the preferred route, even as the military continues to roll out military hardware into the Persi... which indicates that diplomacy is not their true goal.

“We think we have the room and the space to try to conduct diplomacy,” Panetta said. “Military action should always be a last resort.”

That being said, it is clear that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not really want a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to this conflict.

This is evidenced by his irrational insistence that Iran must dismantle all uranium enrichment facilities and ship ever....

Netanyahu’s position is essentially that Iran has no right to conduct peaceful nuclear research for either medical or power generation purposes, which is ludicrously hypocritical given Israel’s nuclear situation.

When questioned directly about military action concerning Iran, Panetta became increasingly evasive and opaque, which is not a positive indicator for me.

“We have common cause here and a concern that Iran should not develop a nuclear weapon,” he said, once again calling for more diplomacy instead of even bothering to address the possibility of a military assault on Iran.

“This is not the time to take military action. This is the time to allow diplomacy and these sanctions to take effect and to hopefully change the behavior of Iran,” Panetta said, although it is unclear what exactly the behavior is that has the West so irate.

Seeing as Iran is not developing nuclear weapons according to Panetta himself, and unlike Israel, they are not attacking their neighbors and murdering civilians, nor threatening to, I do not see any behavior that should propel the international community into acting against Iran.

More here:  http://www.blacklistednews.com/Leon_Panetta_confirms_U.S._will_%E2%...