Iran goal: To build a nuclear bomb in 60 days, says Israel minister
Iran is working toward a 'threshold status' of being able to produce a nuclear bomb with 60 days notice, says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Debate in Israel over Iran's nuclear aims continues.

By Dan Williams, Reuters / May 4, 2012

Iran's nuclear strategy could eventually allow it to build an atomic bomb with just 60 days' notice, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.

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His remarks elaborate on long-held Israeli concerns that Iran is playing for time even as it engages world powers in negotiations aimed at curbing its uranium enrichment drive. Talks are due to resume in Baghdad on May 23.

"They are currently trying to achieve immunity for the nuclear program," Barak told the Israel Hayom newspaper.

"If they arrive at military nuclear capability, at a weapon, or a demonstrated capability, or a threshold status in which they could manufacture a bomb within 60 days - they will achieve a different kind of immunity, regime immunity."

RECOMMENDED: 5 key sites in Iran's nuclear program

Iran insists that its often secretive uranium enrichment is for peaceful energy and medical needs. At higher levels of purification, such projects can yield fuel for warheads, but Israel and the United States agree Iran has not taken that step.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year issued a report detailing alleged Iranian research and development activities that were relevant to nuclear weapons, lending independent weight to Western suspicions.

Barak has said Iran is holding off until it can dig in behind defenses sufficient to withstand threatened Israeli or U.S. air strikes on its nuclear facilities.

His 60-day timeline for potential Iranian warhead production appeared aimed at skeptics both at home and abroad of Israel's alarm who say it is too early to rattle sabres.

Israeli leaders believe the diplomatic drive, which involves the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, has a low chance of success, and suggest that Iran's rulers seek an atomic bomb as insurance against outside intervention.

CONFRONTING SCEPTICS

Some prominent Israelis have questioned the strategic value of a pre-emptive strike, with former spy chief Yuval Diskin last week accusing the government of promulgating the "false impression" it had the means of halting Iran.

"This is not so. We have been talking all the time about a delay," said Barak, indicating that Israel could not eradicate Iran's nuclear program, but saw value in forestalling it.

Israel is reputed to have the region's only atomic arsenal, but many experts - including U.S. military chief, General Martin Dempsey - have voiced doubt that its conventional forces would be able to deliver lasting damage to Iran's distant, dispersed and fortified facilities.

The idea that some countries with civilian atomic projects might then use them for military purposes is commonplace, letting states keep their options open while not necessarily violating their non-proliferation commitments.

A leaked diplomatic cable from 2008 quoted senior U.S. State Department official John Rood saying Japan was "not a nuclear threshold country...but rather is 'over the threshold' and could develop nuclear weapons quickly if it wanted to" should it feel the need to vie with its nuclear-armed Asian neighbours.

Barak, who leads the sole centrist party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative coalition government, has in the past sounded sanguine about Israel's ability to deter a nuclear-armed Iran from attacking.

But with an Israeli election expected in September, and given Iran's nuclear advances as well as Western war jitters, Barak has publicly closed ranks with the hawkish Netanyahu.

In Friday's interview with the pro-government daily, Barak said Iran might regard trying to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons as worth the risk of catastrophic retaliation.

Under such thinking, he said, "after the exchange of strikes, Islam would remain and Israel would no longer be what it was". (Editing by Crispian Balmer and Angus MacSwan)

RECOMMENDED: 5 key sites in Iran's nuclear program

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• How much do you know about Iran? Take our quiz to find out.
• What sanctions? Top five countries buying oil from Iran.
• New kind of Israeli politician? Yair Lapid doesn't talk about Iran, Palestinians

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By Ian Johnston, msnbc.com Russia’s chief of defense staff reportedly warned Thursday that his country was prepared to use "destructive force preemptively" to stop the United States from creating a missile-defense system in Europe.

General Nikolai Makarov made the remark as another Russian official said international talks about the plan were near stalemate, although NATO remained optimistic a deal would be reached, BBC News reported.

Washington says the missile defense system -- due to be completed in four phases by roughly 2020 -- is meant to counter a potential threat from Iran. Moscow says the system will undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent because it could also give the West the ability to shoot down Russian missiles.

Advertise | AdChoices "A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Makarov said, according to BBC News.

He said Russia would improve its defenses to counter the perceived threat, Russia Today reported.

"The deployment of new offensive armaments in southern and northwestern Russia … including Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad Region, provides for the destruction of the European missile defense infrastructure,” Makarov added.

Talks at dead end?
Negotiations between the U.S., NATO and Russia began Thursday in Moscow. However, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the discussions were "close to a dead end," BBC News reported.

The Kremlin wants a legally binding guarantee the system will not be used against Russia. The United States says it cannot agree to any formal limits on missile defense.

US Ambassador Mike McFaul vents on Twitter about Russian media

Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was in London, U.K., said Thursday he was “hopeful” that a deal could be reached.

Rasmussen said a deal would not happen before a NATO summit in Chicago on May 20-21.

Report: Russia faced major nuclear disaster in 2011

"We will continue our dialogue with Russia...after the Chicago meeting," he told reporters.

The missile shield's first phase is to be declared up and running at the summit.

Russia missiles shown heading to U.S. cities
The planned system will include interceptor missiles based in Poland and Romania, a radar system in Turkey and missile-defense capable warships at sea.

At the conference in Moscow, Makarov told delegates the system will have the potential to intercept Russian IBMs and submarine-launched strategic ballistic missiles by 2017-18.

The audience, including U.S. and NATO officials, were shown computer-generated images depicting the reach of radars and interceptor missiles to be deployed as part of the shield.

Dome-like designs displaying interceptor ranges and blips of light representing Russian missiles headed for U.S. cities lit up the screen.

SANAA, Yemen – An airstrike Wednesday killed 15 al-Qaida-linked militants in their training camp in the country's south, Yemeni military officials said. The airstrike resembled earlier U.S. drone attacks, but the U.S. did not comment.

The officials said the air attack targeted the militants' camp north of the town of Jaar in the southern province of Abyan. It coincided with a Yemeni government offensive against the militants.

On Monday, 17 al-Qaida militants were killed in a two-pronged attack by military units and civilians who took up arms against al-Qaida south of the town of Lawder. Two civilians and a military officer were also killed in the fighting.

The Yemeni officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

For several weeks, the Yemeni military has been on the attack against al-Qaida, after a year during which the militants were largely unopposed in their takeover of cities and towns in the south. This came while Yemen was preoccupied with an internal power struggle, set off by huge demonstrations against longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh that eventually led to his resignation in February

The new government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has made fighting al-Qaida a top priority, but his drive has been hindered by resistance from cronies of Saleh, who are hanging on to key military posts and refusing to step down.

Saleh was long considered a U.S. ally in the battle against al-Qaida, but eventually Washington joined the chorus of opponents demanding that Saleh hand over power.

Diplomats said Wednesday that a search has been renewed for a country that would accept Saleh in exile, to prevent him from further meddling. The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, listed Ethiopia and Gulf Arab states as possibilities.

The U.S. has been active against the militants for years, tracking and striking al-Qaida operatives with missiles.

U.S. officials usually don't comment on airstrikes like Wednesday's, but White House counterterrorism official John Brennan acknowledged on Monday that the U.S. carries out attacks using unmanned drone aircraft against specific al-Qaida terrorists, with the cooperation of a local government.

Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen is considered one of its most dangerous and has been linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets.

The training camp hit Wednesday was set up around an abandoned munitions factory seized last year by the militants. Then it exploded, killing at least 100 people. The blast was ignited when impoverished townspeople entered the factory in the aftermath to try to haul away anything of value that remained.

Al-Qaida has held Jaar, about 250 kilometers (160 miles) southeast of Sanaa, for the past year. Parts of the provincial capital, Zinjibar, are also under al-Qaida control, but government troops fought their way into the city's center last week.

Jordan, one of America’s most important allies in the Middle East, was hit in late January 2011 by the waves of unrest that spread across the Arab world in the wake of the revolution in Tunisia.

When the Arab Spring began, Jordan initially appeared vulnerable to the protests that were roiling other nations and toppling their long-serving dictators. With none of the resources of its wealthy neighbors on the Persian Gulf, Jordan struggles with rising energy costs, a water shortage, social strains and an official unemployment rate of around 12 percent — with unofficial estimates of at least double that.

But Jordan is also small, with only about 6.5 million people, and its leader, King Abdullah II, has managed to avoid the kind of turmoil that has upended other Arab countries by granting modest concessions like dismissing government ministers and preserving popular subsidies and by employing security forces. Those forces have proved efficient in suppressing domestic and external challenges, and human rights groups have accused them of restricting freedoms of expression and assembly.

The king also has tried to appease public anger over corruption. In February 2012, Jordan’s official news agency Petra announced that the authorities had detained a former chief of the intelligence service in connection with a continuing graft investigation. Other prominent officials and businessmen also were facing investigation.

Analysts say that several factors unique to Jordan have contributed to its stability, including the king’s promises of democratic reforms, which have led some critics to wait to see if King Abdullah will actually deliver. In a speech in February 2012, the king outlined the goals of what he described as “self-transformation and progressive reform”: fair parliamentary elections, a law guaranteeing the broadest representation, a Parliament based on political parties and governments drawn from that Parliament.

Still, there is growing discontent with King Abdullah and his wife, Queen Rania.

‘Between Iraq and a Hard Place’

With Iraq’s Sunni-Shiite tension to its east and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the western border, Jordan is situated precariously — or, as King Abdullah likes to say, “Between Iraq and a hard place.” There are also tensions between East Bankers, the country’s original residents, who take their name from the nation’s location along the River Jordan, and the millions of Palestinians who have arrived in successive waves and are now a majority of the population.


Fear is also one of the main reasons that Jordan has remained calm, analysts said. The bloodshed in Syria dominates the television coverage here, where many families share tribal bonds with Syrians.

“It doesn’t suit any party in Jordan — East Bankers, West Bankers, right-wingers, left-wingers, anybody — to have the regime fall,” said one analyst. “Especially with what we have seen in our neighborhood as a result of the chaos that started with the Iraq war and that continued with the Arab Spring.”

There is another factor unique to Jordan: the deep-seated fear among both East Bankers and Jordanian Palestinians that if Jordan disintegrates outsiders may try to turn it into a Palestinian state.

Maintaining the delicate balance between the East Bankers and those Palestinians is a matter of utmost importance to many Jordanians, and anything perceived to be a threat to that balance draws strong reaction across the political spectrum.

2011: A Country On Edge

Buffeted by the forces at play across the region — rising prices, a bulging underemployed youth population, the rapid spread of information and resentment, an unaccountable autocracy — Jordan has been a country on edge. What was most striking was that the very system of the monarchy seemed open to question.

In January 2011, thousands took to the streets in the capital, Amman, as well as several other cities, in demonstrations that were the first serious challenge to the rule of King Abdullah. Because direct criticism of the king is banned, the focus was on his government. Demonstrators protested against economic hardship, a common refrain across the region, with banners decrying high food and fuel prices. They attacked corruption, restrictions on freedom of political expression and reductions in government subsidies; they also demanded the right to elect the prime minister, who is currently appointed by the king. The protests were led by the Islamic Action Front, but included leftists and trade unions.

In a bid to tamp down some of the frustration, the king announced $125 million in subsidies for basic goods and fuel and an increase in civil servant pay.

In early February, King Abdullah dismissed his cabinet and prime minister in a surprise move meant to calm street protests that had been fueled by the country’s worst economic crisis in years.

Demonstrations remained peaceful until March 24, when at least one man died when government supporters attacked a tent camp that pro-democracy protesters had set up in the center of Amman, the Jordanian capital, in conscious imitation of Tahrir Square in Cairo. The violence stopped when security forces intervened, and a week later a new round of demonstrations went off peacefully.

In June 2011, King Abdullah announced that the government would in the future be elected, not appointed, responding to a demand of protesters calling for democratic change. But the statement failed to specify any timetable for the change.

In October 2011, under growing pressure to accelerate political reform and anticorruption measures, King Abdullah fired his government again. Changing cabinets was not new for King Abdullah. In his 12 years on the throne, he has done so eight times.

Jordan’s new prime minister is Awn Khasawneh, who was a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague since 2000. He was also a former chief of the royal court and a legal adviser to Jordan when it negotiated its peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

2012: Protests Appear in Tribal Areas

King Abdullah has long faced critics among urban liberals and Islamist fundamentalists who have called for change in the country’s political and economic systems. But public protests have been occurring outside of cities in tribal areas, which are part of the monarchy’s most supportive base.

In late January, a crowd of 150 protesters unfurled banners and began chanting protests against the country’s leadership in its palaces and government offices far below the precipices of the ancient fortress town of Karak.

“We want social justice,” the crowd chanted after Friday prayers, reading from a handwritten list of political, economic and social grievances. “Real elections,” they shouted. “I’m a citizen, not a beggar.”

Such public criticism of Jordan’s nearly century-old monarchy would have been unthinkable just a year previously among these tribesmen of the heartland.

But the protest in Karak was not intended to topple the monarchy. Unlike in Cairo or Tunis, the demonstrators called for overhauling the system, not bringing it down. No one appeared scared, or deterred, as the secret police recorded the protesters, who belonged to the same families from which the nation’s security officers have long been recruited.

“Until this moment, we believe all the authority in the country is with the king and the people have no will,” said a former member of Parliament who was in the crowd. “Our main purpose is to return authority to the people and to have a monarchy similar to that in Britain, a constitutional monarchy.”

Attempting to Revive Peace Talks

In early January 2012, Jordan was host to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, who were meeting for the first time in more than a year in an effort to revive moribund peace talks. However, none of the sides involved suggested any reason to view the meeting as a sign of significant progress. Palestinian officials reported little or no progress in the meetings and, on Jan. 25, Mr. Abbas said that discussions had ended.

King Abdullah had been taking an unusually active role in the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the months leading up to the talks. In November 2011, he made a rare visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah to see Mr. Abbas. A week later, he invited President Shimon Peres of Israel to Amman for a meeting.

The higher profile was partly an effort to fill a vacuum left by the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Mr. Mubarak, who was a central backer of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and had good relations with Israel, often acted as a mediator to spur the two sides to improve their relations.

The king has an interest in a moderate Palestinian state being established in the West Bank and Gaza. He has tensions with Islamists in his own country and he does not want to encourage any thoughts of a Palestinian state being established in Jordan instead, as some on the Israeli right advocate.

Background

Though highly literate and largely stable, with well-developed security and intelligence operations, Jordan has a fundamental vulnerability in the large number of Palestinians living there. Refugees arrived in large numbers from the West Bank and Jerusalem after the war in 1967, and more arrived from Kuwait after Saddam Hussein invaded that country in 1990. They and their descendants make up nearly half the country’s population of 6.5 million.

Jordan’s main constituencies are the so-called East Bankers or tribes, and the Palestinians who constitute a majority of the nation’s six million people. East Bankers, the country’s original inhabitants, dominate the civil service, especially the security forces, while the Palestinians rule in the private sector. Economic reform to bring Jordan in line with the global marketplace has tended to benefit the Palestinians, while the East Bankers — the core of the monarchy’s support — rely on the government payroll.

Before ascending to the throne in 1999, Prince Abdullah had a reputation as a bit of a lightweight, a Prince Hal with a vaguely Falstaffian cast of friends who drove fast cars and enjoyed the company of women.

His ascension to the throne came as a surprise. His father, King Hussein — who ruled Jordan for 46 years and enjoyed near adoration of his people — named Abdullah as his successor only two weeks before his death. The next king was supposed to be Crown Prince Hassan, the youngest brother of King Hussein.

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Jordan Chronology
Feb. 10, 2012

King Abdullah II of Jordan has long faced critics among liberals in the cities calling for changes in the country's political and economic systems, but is presented with new challenge as tribesmen in the heartland begin protests; he is seeking to appease public frustration over government corruption and avoid turmoil that has upended other Arab countries.MORE »
Jan. 30, 2012

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal makes rare visit to Jordan, days after Hamas officials signal that he had effectively abandoned the group's base in Damascus, Syria's capital city; visit is first official one by a Hamas leader since 1999, when the Jordanian government shut down Hamas headquarters, forcing group to relocate to Damascus.MORE »
Jan. 18, 2012

European Court of Human Rights rules that Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, cannot be deported from Britain to his native Jordan because his trial there would be tainted by evidence obtained by torture; Qatada is a radical Islamic preacher that is regarded as one of Al Qaeda's main inspirational leaders in Europe.MORE »
Jan. 4, 2012

Talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Jordan are taking place in a region in which political Islam is emerging as a potentially transformative force; it is first encounter between the parties in more than a year.MORE »
Dec. 14, 2011

Dozens of Jewish settlers, prompted by a rumor that several of their outposts would be dismantled, attack an Israeli Army base in the West Bank; the attack occurs hours after another group of settlers occupied a border post with Jordan, in protest of Jordan's efforts to intervene in Israel's closure of a footbridge leading to a holy compound in Jerusalem.MORE »