Iran will talk with the US about Nukes

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

I still can't decide if this is a great bluff or if they are really trying to defuse the situation over there. Either way, I hope the White House is smart enough to try the talks.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041214/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_us_nuclear&e=3&ncid=

Some of the article:

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By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran is willing to talk with the United States about a nuclear program that Washington alleges is aimed at secretly acquiring the bomb, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Monday.



Germany, Britain and France launched new negotiations with Iran on Monday to try to persuade Tehran to abandon any nuclear program that could be used for weapons, in return for aid to build up its civilian energy program.


Kharrazi told a news conference that talks with Washington could also be possible. The United States broke diplomatic relations with Iran after militant students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.


"If negotiations are on the basis of equality and mutual respect in the same way we are talking to Europeans now, there is no reason not to talk to others," Kharrazi said when asked whether Tehran was also willing to talk to the United States about its nuclear program

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you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[Gravitymaster 0]

It's just a stall. Iran has no intention of giving up it's desire to develop nuclear weapons.

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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It's just a stall. Iran has no intention of giving up it's desire to develop nuclear weapons.

But we really don't know that. Therefore we must step in and go talk to them - they put the invite out there. If we don't go, then Bush gets trigger happy again and we invade Iran only to find out nothing was there yet again???? Is it risky to let a possible stall happen? Yup. But we need to pursue peace first.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[rhino 0]

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It's just a stall. Iran has no intention of giving up it's desire to develop nuclear weapons.

Agreed... They stall us.. We stall Israel.. They build a bomb and nuke Israel.. Israel nukes everyone around them...

[Gravitymaster 0]

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It's just a stall. Iran has no intention of giving up it's desire to develop nuclear weapons.

But we really don't know that. Therefore we must step in and go talk to them - they put the invite out there. If we don't go, then Bush gets trigger happy again and we invade Iran only to find out nothing was there yet again???? Is it risky to let a possible stall happen? Yup. But we need to pursue peace first.

Oh, I agree we must talk to them. I'm just saying not to get your hopes up because it's likely just a stall tactic. BTW if we invade, I doubt we will be unable to find signs of a nuclear program.

[ad151 0]

I agree with gravity... my bet is that we are at war until Bush is not president anymore

[Gravitymaster 0]

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I agree with gravity... my bet is that we are at war until Bush is not president anymore

My bet is we are at war long after Bushs' term is over regardless of whether it's a Dem. or Rep. in office.

[Gawain 0]

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I still can't decide if this is a great bluff or if they are really trying to defuse the situation over there. Either way, I hope the White House is smart enough to try the talks.

Start talks with a country we don't even have diplomatic relations with? Not a chance. When Iran suffered that earthquake this past spring, the US quietly held out an olive branch to Iran about possibly trying to rebuild a back-channel diplomatic dialoge. Iran slapped it away.

This is a stall tactic, nothing more. I hope we are smart enough to realize that. If we were to do so, we then weaken our hand with DPRK, and alienating Japan and ROK.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[ad151 0]

Definitely possible.. just speaking from a political perspective; with all the nuclear developments its likely to turn into WWIII.

[downwardspiral 0]

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Definitely possible.. just speaking from a political perspective; with all the nuclear developments its likely to turn into WWIII.

Its time to buck up folks, WWIII is already in the history books thanks to Reagan and Bush senior. This is WWIV and looking real bad from where I'm sitting. Which side will you be on?

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Definitely possible.. just speaking from a political perspective; with all the nuclear developments its likely to turn into WWIII.

Its time to buck up folks, WWIII is already in the history books thanks to Reagan and Bush senior. This is WWIV and looking real bad from where I'm sitting. Which side will you be on?

Then perhaps you are sitting in a closet with the lights turned out. This war is against terror. I don't recall the US being the aggressor. They blew up our Marine Corp. Barracks, Tried to blow up the WTC in 1994, blew up the Cole, blew up the WTC in 2001. What would you have us do?

[downwardspiral 0]

I agree. The US isn't the aggressor and I don't have the answers to solve the worlds problems. I certainly don't envy GW for the situation he is in but I respect him for not "sitting in the closet with the lights turned out" (lol sorry I liked that ) At least I hope he isn't.

The world just seems to be getting more and more complicated. There is a fine line between paranoia and sticking your head in a hole in the ground.

Disclaimer: Don't Take me so seriously cause I probably am just paranoid

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[Casurf1978 0]

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It's just a stall. Iran has no intention of giving up it's desire to develop nuclear weapons.

Agreed... They stall us.. We stall Israel.. They build a bomb and nuke Israel.. Israel nukes everyone around them...

I say sit down and try the talks. At the same time we should also be ready to do what Israel did to Saddam in the 1980s when he tried building his reactors.

[Gravitymaster 0]

Congressman Warns of Iranian Attack on U.S.
BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 14, 2004

WASHINGTON - A senior Republican congressman has been warning America's intelligence community for more than a year of an alleged Iranian plot to crash commercial airliners into a New Hampshire nuclear reactor.

Since February 2003, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania has held a series of secret meetings in Paris with a former high-ranking official in the Shah's government who has correctly predicted, according to Mr. Weldon, a number of internal developments in Iran ranging from the regime's atomic weapons programs to its support for international terrorism, including Al Qaeda.

Based on two informants inside the mullahs' inner circle, Mr. Weldon's source, whom he code-named "Ali," relayed allegations to the Pennsylvania lawmaker that an Iranian-backed terrorist cell is seeking to hijack Canadian airliners and crash them into an American reactor. The target of the operation was only identified by Ali as SEA, leading Mr. Weldon to predict it was the Seabrook reactor in New Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston. Ali told the congressman that the attack was first planned for between November 23 and December 3, 2003, but was postponed to take place after this year's presidential election.

For nearly two years, Mr. Weldon tried to quietly press the CIA and a Senate panel that oversees Langley to follow up on the intelligence his Iranian source in Paris was providing. But these efforts came to nothing, according to Mr. Weldon. So now Mr. Weldon is going public. The congressman said in an interview last week that he intended to publish a book early next year outlining the intelligence he has collected from various sources that he said will detail an Iranian plot to conduct a more lethal attack on America than September 11, 2001.

"I get a lot of wackos who come to see me, who claim to have information," he said. "In this case, this source came to me from a former member of Congress, a Democrat. I followed up a lead. That lead developed an ongoing process of information-sharing for two years that I took to the highest levels of the intelligence community."

In Washington, the new book from Mr. Weldon, based in part on his meetings with Ali, will provide fresh ammunition for the Republicans against an intelligence community perceived by the White House as hostile to the president's policies.

Last month, the new director of the CIA, Porter Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent many of the most senior analysts and operations officers into early retirement. In a speech he gave to the staff at Langley, Mr. Goss had to remind the employees that the president sets national security policy.

But if Mr. Weldon's source turns out to be right, America could also be losing a valuable intelligence asset on Iran, a country where most intelligence analysts in America concede the CIA has too few human sources.

The congressman's experience with America's spy service in the last year echoes frustrations from other American officials and analysts who have cultivated Iranians willing to provide America with intelligence, but who have been ignored. After a December 2001 meeting in Rome between Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, the State Department and CIA went out of their way to shut down the channel. Mr. Franklin is now the target of a grand jury investigation into alleged espionage activities for passing information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

A summary of Ali's predictions were outlined in a November 2003 letter to the Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Roberts from Kansas. In its opening lines, Mr. Weldon wrote, "This letter is to warn you of an intelligence failure in the process of happening."

Later in the letter, Mr. Weldon, who is the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote, "I am not asserting that such an attack shall occur. But given [Ali's] record of accurate predictions, shouldn't the Intelligence Community at least be investigating his story?"

The letter and an accompanying memo titled, "Ali: a Credible Source," goes into detail about information Mr. Weldon's source provided that was later confirmed in the press. For example, Ali first passed on the Iranian threat to the reactor at a Paris meeting on May 17, 2003.

On August 22, 2003, the Toronto Star reported the arrest of 19 people in Canada for immigration violations who were suspected of being connected in a terrorist conspiracy. One of the men in the cell was taking flight lessons and had flown an airplane directly over an Ontario nuclear power plant, according to the newspaper.

So, impressed with the quality of his source's information, Mr. Weldon met in 2003 with the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, to plead his case to get funding for Ali. But the CIA, according to the Pennsylvania lawmaker, demanded to know the identities of Ali's sources inside Iran, a condition Mr. Weldon said was unreasonable given the high-risk espionage.

"I took this straight to the top," Mr. Weldon said in an interview. "I wanted to work through the channels but I did not get anywhere."

Frustrated with the CIA's response, Mr. Weldon took his case to the Senate panel that oversees the agency.

He pressed them in the 2003 letter to hold a hearing on the matter and urge the CIA to get Ali the money to continue to pay off his sources inside the Islamic republic. According to Mr. Weldon, the committee did not respond in any meaningful way. "One or two senior people called the chief of staff. Not the kind of response I wanted. I had to get this off my shoulders," he said in an interview.

Mr. Weldon said more of Ali's intelligence will be shared in his forthcoming book, which he promised would "shake Washington."

He said that the manuscript, which he has just completed, details how Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, "has set up a separate entity in the government the president does not know about, which includes all the terrorist groups connected to bin Laden and others. They are avowed to consummate a major attack inside the United States. In the book I name this plot."

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Then perhaps you are sitting in a closet with the lights turned out. This war is against terror. I don't recall the US being the aggressor. They blew up our Marine Corp. Barracks, Tried to blow up the WTC in 1994, blew up the Cole, blew up the WTC in 2001. What would you have us do?

And what again did Iraq have to do with this?

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Then perhaps you are sitting in a closet with the lights turned out. This war is against terror. I don't recall the US being the aggressor. They blew up our Marine Corp. Barracks, Tried to blow up the WTC in 1994, blew up the Cole, blew up the WTC in 2001. What would you have us do?

And what again did Iraq have to do with this?

Where did I mention Iraq?

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Where did I mention Iraq?

That is a huge part of your administrations war against terror. Or, are you now telling me there is a war against terror and a seperate war against Iraq?

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Where did I mention Iraq?

That is a huge part of your administrations war against terror. Or, are you now telling me there is a war against terror and a seperate war against Iraq?

Considering the title of this thread is about Iran not Iraq, it's pretty obvious we are talking about the war on terror in a broader view. Can you see that?

[pajarito 0]

If let go, Iran will turn out to be similar to North Korea. They'll use their capability to hold the world hostage with their threats every few years to get money or power and then they'll settle down. Yet another thug nuisance in the world. More countries will no doubt follow their example if organizations like the UN keep up their "paper tiger", passive, ineffective approach to policy.

[Gravitymaster 0]

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If let go, Iran will turn out to be similar to North Korea. They'll use their capability to hold the world hostage with their threats every few years to get money or power and then they'll settle down. Yet another thug nuisance in the world. More countries will no doubt follow their example if organizations like the UN keep up their "paper tiger", passive, ineffective approach to policy.

Agreed, and if the article I posted above is true, we have more to worry about from Iran than the development of nukes.

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

Interesting story. Link?

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crash commercial airliners into a New Hampshire nuclear reactor.

I was under the impression that the reactors we had in this country would not cause a meltdown in a situation like this. I remember hearing talk about that around here in Chicago due to the reactors we have around the city. Maybe Kallend or someone else studied in this area can correct my thinking on this?

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For nearly two years, Mr. Weldon tried to quietly press the CIA and a Senate panel that oversees Langley to follow up on the intelligence his Iranian source in Paris was providing.

You have to wonder why they didn't want to listen to the source. Either they know it is false or we are really that understaffed when it comes to Iran. You figure after 9/11 and the letter from the agent in AZ would cause them to look into this.

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But the CIA, according to the Pennsylvania lawmaker, demanded to know the identities of Ali's sources inside Iran, a condition Mr. Weldon said was unreasonable given the high-risk espionage.

I wonder if this is typical in the spy world. I can understand protecting your sources, but if you can't trust the head of the CIA with something this secure, who can you trust?

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He pressed them in the 2003 letter to hold a hearing on the matter and urge the CIA to get Ali the money to continue to pay off his sources inside the Islamic republic.

Maybe the sources are giving out fake stories just to get money from the US?

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Mr. Weldon said more of Ali's intelligence will be shared in his forthcoming book, which he promised would "shake Washington."

Trying to create a best seller? I would be more impressed if he said he was going to use the money from the sales to feed the source. Who knows, maybe he will.

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Ayatollah Ali Khameini, "has set up a separate entity in the government the president does not know about, which includes all the terrorist groups connected to bin Laden and others. They are avowed to consummate a major attack inside the United States. In the book I name this plot."

Interesting again that he doesn't name the plot here in the story - trying to push sales?

The only problem I have with him trying to draw connections between Khameini and OBL is that it sounds a lot like the promise made of Sadam and 9/11 connections. All OBL terrorists groups run thru Iran and they have avoided letting anyone in our intelligence community from knowing this? Doesn't that seem a bit far fetched? Yes, it is scary if it is true, but that is the mother of all claims to try to prove.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[billvon 3,108]

>if the article I posted above is true, we have more to worry about
>from Iran than the development of nukes.

True. We may have to deal with them as equals. The world is learning the lesson of North Korea - get nukes and the US will respect you. If your WMD program fails, well, hello occupation!

[ad151 0]

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Definitely possible.. just speaking from a political perspective; with all the nuclear developments its likely to turn into WWIII.

Its time to buck up folks, WWIII is already in the history books thanks to Reagan and Bush senior. This is WWIV and looking real bad from where I'm sitting. Which side will you be on?

Then perhaps you are sitting in a closet with the lights turned out. This war is against terror. I don't recall the US being the aggressor. They blew up our Marine Corp. Barracks, Tried to blow up the WTC in 1994, blew up the Cole, blew up the WTC in 2001. What would you have us do?

I wasn't referring to any terrorist crap, I am referring to developments in Iran and N. Korea with nuclear weapons, which is likely where our troops are going to be after this Iraq phase.

[ad151 0]

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>if the article I posted above is true, we have more to worry about
>from Iran than the development of nukes.

True. We may have to deal with them as equals. The world is learning the lesson of North Korea - get nukes and the US will respect you. If your WMD program fails, well, hello occupation!

N. Korea doesn't have any oil. Ultimately, the best thing the US can do is become independant from needing these types of resources and countries like Iraq who are far behind in civilization and intelligence will slip off into the ice age again from not having such a lucrative export and be forced to domesticate and expand their minds.

[Zenister 0]

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Last month, the new director of the CIA, Porter Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent many of the most senior analysts and operations officers into early retirement. In a speech he gave to the staff at Langley, Mr. Goss had to remind the employees that the president sets national security policy.

off topic, but what is really sad is that the american public knows/ pays little attention to this or knows what it means to our REAL security and intelligence position.... this administration doesnt want to hear ANY dissenting voices, it creates policy based on its own goals without the benefit of peer review and silences the voices of outrage in the most arbitrary manner possible...

filling the halls with 'yes men' is a piss poor way to run Intel...

"get on the bandwagon, open the books we have provided you and shut up and color"

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Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.