Military Madness > Iran very close to Nuclear Weapons grade uranium - Bloomberg

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Iran: International nuclear inspectors alarmed to find

uranium enriched to 84% purity, now in talks

FEB 21, 2023 9:00 AM 

BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

Jihad Watch

The IAEA is backpedaling and trying to save face. In 2020, a report in the Guardian stated:

Iran has admitted a further breach of the 2015 nuclear deal by firing up advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges installed at its underground plant at Natanz.

The finding was made by the UN nuclear weapons inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Association, and confirmed by the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA.

And in 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered extensive proof that the Obama Iran nuclear deal was based on lies, but the world chose to side with the Shia doomsday regime — except, that is, for Donald Trump, who abandoned the nuclear deal and slapped new sanctions on Iran. As reported by Haaretz:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed a cache of documents he says proves Iran lied to the world about its nuclear program for years, even after the 2015 nuclear deal with the world. “Iran did not come clean about its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said in a prime time address in English. Iran, for its part, blased the speech as “propaganda.”

In 2021, Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that Iran was enriching uranium at purity levels that “only countries making bombs are reaching.”

Iran has now returned to full denial mode despite its previous admission, while the IAEA also hides in denial, thus abandoning its duty to monitor Iran.

Now the IAEA says that it is in discussions with Iran, which means nothing, if the past is any indicator. As danger rises steadily from states that are armed with lethal weaponry, America under Joe Biden is absent and lost.

Iran Nuclear Inspectors Find Uranium Enriched to 84% Purity

by Jonathan Tirone, Bloomberg, 

February 19, 2023:

(Bloomberg) — International atomic monitors in Iran have detected uranium enriched to levels just below nuclear weapons-grade, risking an escalation over Tehran’s expanding program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is trying to clarify how Iran accumulated uranium enriched to 84% purity — the highest level found by inspectors in the country to date, and a concentration just 6% below what’s needed for a weapon.

Iran says its decades-long atomic program is for peaceful purposes but Western powers and Israel have accused it of working toward a nuclear bomb. Building a bomb would require further technical steps which have so far not been detected by the IAEA and a political decision to go ahead.

The development was reported by Bloomberg on Sunday, citing two senior diplomats. Iran had previously told the IAEA that its centrifuges were configured to enrich uranium to a 60% level of purity.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had seen the report and is in close contact with the IAEA and European countries about the matter, adding he’ll have more to say when he has more information, according to comments made to reporters in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Monday.

The development comes as Iran is increasingly isolated from the West, nuclear talks with world powers are suspended and regional tensions have sharpened. Israel has blamed Iran for a Feb. 10 attack on an oil tanker in the Arabian Sea, that Iran has denied. It came about a fortnight after a drone strike on a weapons depot near Iran’s city of Isfahan that Tehran blamed on Israel, the latest incident in a string of suspected tit-for-tat attacks.

Iran has also faced widespread condemnation for its deadly crackdown on major protests and the US and European Union have tightened sanctions on Iran over its military support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Inspectors need to determine whether Iran intentionally produced the material, or whether the concentration was an unintended accumulation within the network of pipes connecting the hundreds of fast-spinning centrifuges used to separate the isotopes. It’s the second time this month that monitors have detected suspicious enrichment-related activities…..

Yeah, they accidentally enriched uranium from 60% to 84%!

The next accident could be a really big one. How long will Isreal wait before blowing Natanz to Hell?

Islam - Current Day - IS Recruiter in Texas; Islamic Hysteria; Iranian Uranium; Somalia Car-Bomb

 Self-styled ‘Islamic State recruiter’ in Texas faces 15 years

for threatening real bombing during ‘Zoom-bombing’

8 Sep, 2020 

© Reuters / Stringer

A Texas man has been charged with making terror threats after allegedly ‘Zoom-bombing’ a University of Houston lecture to threaten the school on behalf of the Islamic State terror group. He insists it was just a joke.

Ibraheem Ahmed Al Bayati faces up to 15 years in prison after federal authorities charged him with making bomb threats against the University of Houston, the Justice Department revealed on Tuesday. He allegedly boasted of his Islamic State ties before ‘Zoom-bombing’ the class with threats of a real bombing.

Al Bayati drew gasps from his newfound classmates by interjecting in the discussion, “What does any of this have to do with the fact that UH is about to get bombed in a few days?” He then uttered an Arabic IS slogan that translates to “Islamic State will remain,” complete with a pointing-skyward gesture popular with Islamic fundamentalists dubbed the “tawheed finger,” according to an FBI agent’s affidavit supporting the charges.

While Al Bayati had used the false name Abu Qital al Jihadi al Mansur on the Zoom call, the FBI quickly apprehended the 19-year-old at a relative’s home on Friday, tracking him by his IP address. While he admitted delivering the “threats,” he insisted it was just a joke, showing the agents text messages with a friend who’d texted him the link to the class – then supposedly goaded him to “say some Arabic s**t and leave lmaooooo.”

However, further probing of Al Bayati’s phone revealed he had discussed recruiting IS supporters over social media with another friend and mentioned getting someone to “pledge allegiance to Islamic State,” the indictment claims. He later reminded his friend “he was ‘literally known’ as an ISIS recruiter.”

Al Bayati is due in Houston federal court on Tuesday to answer to charges of conveying false information to destroy by means of fire or explosives and making a threat over interstate commerce. In addition to a potential 15-year prison sentence, he may also be fined. 

Tens of thousands in Pakistan protest Charlie Hebdo’s reprint

of Prophet Mohammed cartoon

8 Sep, 2020 

Mass protests, involving tens of thousands of people, have continued in Pakistan after French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to mark the start of a trial over the deadly 2015 attack.

This is how easy it is to mobilize tens of thousands of devout Muslims. 

The protests in the country kicked off last Thursday, attracting large crowds of devoted Muslims to condemn the cartoon parody, the satirical weekly and even France as a whole. On Monday, a massive rally was organized by Jamiat Ulma-e-Islam in Peshawar, when the Islamist party gathered for a congress in the city.

Tens of thousands of its supporters took to the streets venting their anger over the controversial cartoons. Drone footage of the event, taken both during the day and night, shows a massive crowd of people flooding the city.

“If non-Muslim people use Islamic symbols and they commit blasphemic acts, the reaction from our people must not be declared unjustified,” the party’s leader, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, stated. 

The magazine’s decision also triggered an angry reaction in other Muslim countries. On Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei branded the re-emergence of the offensive imagery an “unforgivable sin,” adding that it clearly shows “hostility and malicious grudge” against Islam harbored in the West.

Charlie Hebdo reprinted the controversial cartoons last week, marking the beginning of the trial of 14 suspects, linked to the 2015 attacks on the satirical weekly's office and the kosher supermarket Hyper Cacher that left 17 people dead.

Iran building production hall for uranium-enriching centrifuges

‘in the mountains’ near Natanz facility

8 Sep, 2020 

FILE PHOTO. An Iranian technician pictured at a uranium conversion facility. © AFP / Behrouz Mehri

Iran’s nuclear chief has revealed the country is building a new production hall for advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment. The site is concealed “in the heart of mountains” near the Natanz nuclear facility.

Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting on national security on Tuesday, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi said construction work is already underway.

“It was decided to establish a more modern, wider and more comprehensive hall in all dimensions in the heart of the mountains near Natanz. Of course, the work has begun,” the official said.

The facility will produce “advanced centrifuges” meant for uranium enrichment and is expected to be highly-secure. The AEOI took into account “the vicious and subversive action” it faced, Salehi noted, referring to an incident at the Natanz site early in July.

Back then, the facility suffered a blast and subsequent fire that badly damaged its central centrifuge assembly workshop. In late August, the AEOI said it established the incident was the result of sabotage, yet did not name those behind it.

Iranian energy, nuclear and other strategically important sites, have been plagued by a string of mysterious incidents this summer, including explosions and fires, triggering allegations that the mishaps might have been the result of sabotage or cyber attacks from abroad, yet no evidence to back up this theory has emerged yet.

Iran’s arch-enemy, Israel, which Tehran usually points the finger at over such incidents, has released carefully worded statements on the matter. "Not every incident that happens in Iran necessarily has something to do with us," Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said after the Natanz fire.

Of course, Saudi Arabia and several Gulf States are also arch-enemies of Iran, although Iran has never threatened to annihilate them over and over again.

Suicide car bomb kills Somali special forces, injures 1 U.S. officer

By Jean Lotus

Multiple members of the Somali Defense Forces were killed in southern Somalia and a U.S. officer was injured Monday after a car bombing in the southern part of the country. File Photo by Said Yusuf Warsame/EPA

Sept. 7 (UPI) -- A car bombing and mortar attack in southern Somalia on Monday killed at least three Somali special forces soldiers and wounded a U.S. officer in the state of Jubaland, officials said.

The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group claimed responsibility and claimed that 20 Somali soldiers were dead, Al Jazeera reported.

Ismail Mukhtar Oronjo, a Somali government spokesman, told Anadolu news agency a suicide car bomb exploded outside the special forces base.

"A [suicide] car bomb blast targeted a military base in Janay Abdalla earlier on Monday," Oronjo said. "One U.S. service member was injured in an attack by al-Shabab this morning," Col. Chris Karns, the director of public affairs for the United States Africa Command, said in a statement.

"U.S. and Somali forces were conducting an advise, assist and accompany mission when al-Shabab attacked using a vehicle employed as an improvised explosive device and mortar fire."

Karns said the wounded U.S. soldier was in stable condition after being airlifted to Kismayo along with several wounded Somali troops.

The attack occurred at a military outpost in the Jana Abdalle area in the Lower Juba region of southern Somalia, the New York Times reported. Somali forces, with American military support, had just reclaimed the area, the Times said.

"After their defeat, we were expecting attacks like this," Mohamed Ahmed Sabrie, the director of communications at the office of the regional president of Jubaland, told the Times. "But nothing will stop us from freeing more areas from the Shabab and ensuring the safety of our people. We will do all we can."

The Somali government in Mogadishu has been fighting al-Shabab forces since 2008.

Al-Shabab militants attacked a Mogadishu beachfront hotel in August, killing at least 16 people, including at least one police officer. That attack occurred after a violent jailbreak in Mogadishu by Al-Shabab insurgency prisoners in which 19 guards and inmates were killed.

In January, three U.S. soldiers were killed during an Al-Shabab gun battle attack on a U.S. surveillance aircraft at a Kenya military base airport.

Was UN Secretary General Assassinated?

Evidence may lead to new probe in 1961 death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld

Documents, testimony add weight to case that plane crash was no accident

By Melissa Kent, CBC News 

Nearly 56 years after the plane carrying UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld crashed in the African bush during a peace mission to Congo, the accident remains one of the Cold War's greatest unsolved mysteries. 

New evidence to be submitted to the United Nations' General Assembly this week could help shed light on one of the enduring mysteries of the 20th century — namely, was the 1961 death of the second UN Secretary General an accident or an act of murder?

Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia — now Zambia — along with 15 others on Sept. 18, 1961.

The 56-year old Swedish diplomat was in Africa to try to unite the Congo, but faced resistance from a number of multinationals, often supported by mercenaries and openly hostile to the UN, who coveted the area's mineral wealth.

The crash has been a source of widespread speculation for decades, which has ramped up thanks to evidence uncovered in the last few years.

Searchers walk through the scattered wreckage of the DC6B plane that had
carried Dag Hammarskjöld, in a forest near Ndola, Zambia, Sept. 19, 1961.
(Associated Press)

That includes testimony from a former U.S. National Security Agency intelligence officer who claims he heard a recording of another pilot attacking the plane, as well as a Belgian pilot who says that he accidentally shot the plane down after being hired to merely divert it.

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said a three-member panel appointed by current Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently travelled to Zambia to interview new witnesses and gathered new documents from public and private archives in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Belgium.

Ban is examining the panel's report and will make his own recommendations on how to proceed before it is distributed to the General Assembly — expected to happen this coming week.

The evidence could result in a new UN probe into the crash, which would be the first since an inconclusive 1962 UN inquiry. But Dujarric says that decision will be left up to member states.

'They killed him'

Suspicions that the plane was shot down more than half a century ago are not new.

Just two days after the crash, former U.S. President Harry Truman told The New York Times, "Dag Hammarskjöld was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said, 'When they killed him,'" Truman emphasized, without elaborating.

At the time of the tragedy, Hammarskjöld was on a peace mission to unite the Congo, which had just gained independence from Belgium.

He was flying from the capital, Léopoldville (which later became Kinshasa), to meet with secessionist leader Moise Tshombé, who had declared the mineral-rich southeastern province of Katanga an independent state.

The men were to meet in Ndola, in the neighbouring British colony of Northern Rhodesia, because of ongoing fighting in Katanga.

But just after midnight on Sept. 18, Hammarskjöld's chartered DC6 crashed in a forested area about 14 kilometres from the Ndola airport. Hammarskjöld received a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize later that year.

Renewed speculation of foul play arose in 2011, on the 50th anniversary of his death, when Susan Williams published the book Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa.

It offered a new analysis of the evidence, including previously unseen documents, photographs, as well as testimony from eyewitnesses, many of them African, who had either not participated or not been taken seriously by Rhodesian officials or the UN.

Williams argues this was a direct result of the white minority regime in place in Northern Rhodesia at the time.

"[The locals'] testimony was dismissed, disqualified, ignored, in some cases changed," said Williams, adding that some people were afraid to come forward.

Williams said a number of local eyewitnesses told her that they saw a second, smaller aircraft "that dropped something that looked like fire" on top of the bigger plane right before it went down.

Queen Elizabeth addresses the General Assembly, as her husband Prince Philip,
sits at left, Oct. 21, 1957. Hammarskjöld sits on the far left,
behind the Queen. (John Rooney/Associated Press)

The crash killed the UN chief and 15 others, including Alice Lalande, Secretary to the head of the UN mission in the Congo, who was from Joliette, Que. She was the only Canadian and the only woman on board the aircraft.

Williams has two primary theories: that it was an assassination or a hijacking gone wrong.

The second theory is based on testimony from a former Belgian pilot known only as "Beukels," who claimed in 1967 that he accidentally downed Hammarskjöld's plane while trying to divert it with warning shots.

A group of international jurists known as the Hammarskjöld Commission sums up Beukels' testimony in a 2013 independent investigative report by stating he claimed he was acting on behalf of a group representing "a number of European political and business interests" who wanted to "persuade [Hammarskjöld] of the case for Katanga's continued independence."

No shortage of suspects

Henning Melber, former director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, explains the UN chief's mission to unite the Congo automatically pitted him against colonial settlers desperate to hold onto power and Katanga's vast mineral resources.

That included Belgians, French, the British and "mercenaries of all shapes and colours," said Melber, who also helped establish the Hammarskjöld Commission of Inquiry.

For the Rhodesian Federation, which included modern-day Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, Katanga acted as a barrier against the southward migration of African nationalism. One year earlier, in 1960, the UN had admitted 17 new member states, 16 of which were newly independent nations in Africa — including the Congo.

While the European colonies were slowly dying, the U.S. and USSR were jockeying to expand their Cold War sphere of influence, as well as their share of the resources.

"One needs to remember that the uranium that was used in the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from the Katanga province," said Melber.

Feb. 15, 1961, Hammarskjöld attends a meeting
 at the UN headquarters in New York. That was
 7 months before he died in what is now Zambia,
a death still shrouded in mystery. (AP)

The commission said the "chaotic, contradictory, frequently inexplicable and in places irresponsible reaction (or lack of reaction) of the Federation authorities" following the crash has helped fuel the rumour mill.

For example, it took the Rhodesian RAF pilots 15 hours to "officially" locate the aircraft, while Daily Telegraph correspondent Ian Colvin said he had spotted the crash site — crawling with police — six hours earlier in a chartered Cessna.

Other oddities: Some of the bodies of the victims had bullet holes, and a playing card — rumoured to be the ace of spades — was found in Hammarskjöld's collar.

The sole survivor of the crash was American security officer Sgt. Harold Julien. In his testimony, he spoke of "sparks in the sky" and said the plane "blew up," but the lead inspector of the local investigation dismissed his statements as "rambling."

According to the Hammarskjöld Commission, hospital staff said that although he was badly burned, Julien was often coherent and lucid. He died six days after the crash.

'The Lone Ranger'

Some of the most compelling testimony of foul play comes from Charles Southall, who in 1961 was an intelligence officer stationed at the U.S. National Security Agency's naval communications base in Cyprus.

He said he heard a pilot shoot down Hammarskjöld's plane and that the CIA and/or the NSA have a recording of it.

"The watch supervisor called me and said, 'Come [into work] about midnight, something interesting is going to happen,'" Southall told CBC.

That's when he said he heard a recording of the crash that somebody told him was seven minutes old, which, according to Southall, "meant that somebody down there in the Ndola area, also waiting for this to happen, made a recording of it, put a date-time stamp on it and… sent it off."

In his statement to the Commission of Inquiry, Southall recalled the pilot saying, "I see a transport plane coming low. All the lights are on. I'm going down to make a run on it. Yes, it's the Transair DC6. It's the plane."

Then, the sound of cannon fire, at which point the voice, which he described as cool and professional, became animated: "I've hit it. There are flames. It's going down. It's crashing."

Southall, now 82, believes the voice he heard was that of a Belgian mercenary pilot nicknamed "The Lone Ranger."

Hours before the wreckage was officially located, the U.S. Ambassador in the Congo, Edmund Gullion, sent a cable to Washington speculating that the secretary general's plane might have been attacked by a known Belgian mercenary.

"There is possibility he was shot down by the single pilot who has harassed UN operations," Gullion wrote.

The document, which was released by the State Department following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on behalf of the Hammarskjöld Commission, identified the pilot as Vak Riesseghel, likely a misspelling of Katanga Air Force Commander Jan Van Risseghem.

A UN Military report stated that Van Risseghem, a former South African and Royal Rhodesian AF pilot, had been arrested and repatriated to Brussels 10 days before the crash, but had managed to return to Katanga.

"As long as he is still operating he may paralyze the air rescue operations," wrote Gullion in the 1961 cable.

The FOIA request, which asked for any recording, transcription or radio message intercepted the night of the crash, produced two additional documents.

But the Hammarskjöld Commission says that more than 50 years on, they remain "top secret" and sealed for national security reasons.