Iranian nuclear drive being slowed by sanctions, sabotage
Thursday, July 15, 2010
By: ICEJ News

Israel claims new sanctions 'have teeth' and are effecting regime

Reports this week indicate that Iran’s drive to achieve nuclear weapons capabilities is apparently being slowed, though not completely halted, by the new sanctions regimes adopted by Western powers as well as by continuing sabotage efforts by Western intelligence agencies.

Israeli intelligence is claiming that just two weeks after the US and EU imposed new unilateral sanctions on Iran over its renegade nuclear program, the economic effects are already visible on the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday praised the latest American sanctions, saying they “actually have teeth.” He urged other world leaders to “follow the president’s lead, and other countries to follow the US lead, to adopt much tougher sanctions against Iran, primarily those directed against its energy sector.”

"If you read comments by former officials, people who have recently left the Iranian state machinery, they are coming out and very clearly saying that sanctions do matter; sanctions do make prices go up, in some cases by a third," said Iranian-born analyst Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

Still, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko announced on Wednesday that Russian companies will buck the sanctions trend and continue to deliver oil products to Iran. In a meeting with Iranian Petroleum Minister Massoud Mir Kazemi in Moscow, Shmatko discussed joint plans to cooperate with Iran on a vast array of new energy-related projects. “Sanctions cannot hinder us,” Shmatko declared.

Russia’s course of action is at odds with the US and most of Western Europe, as several large French, Dutch, Spanish and British companies have all canceled or scaled back joint energy projects with Iran in recent days and Lloyd’s of London announced that it would cancel insurance for any tanker ship transporting refined petroleum to Iran. Banks and other companies in the Arab Persian Gulf countries as well as South Korea have also trimmed or canceled business dealings with Iran in the last month.

Meantime, a report in the journal New Republic this week adds to the public’s growing knowledge of clandestine Western efforts to sabotage Iran’s atomic program, especially its critical uranium enrichment facilities. It cites David Kay, who led the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, as saying he is positive that such sabotage is taking place. "The Israelis have been doing this for years and so have the British,” he stated.

Michael Adler, an expert on Iran's nuclear program, added: "There is an active and imaginative sabotage program from several Western nations as well as Israel involving booby-trapping equipment which the Iranians are procuring, tricking black-market smugglers, cyber-operations, and recruiting scientists."

Three current US government officials all confirmed that sabotage operations have been a key part of American plans to slow down the Iranian program - and that they are continuing under President Barack Obama.

According to a former Mossad operations officer, in 1998, the Mossad and the CIA developed a plan to sell Iran on the black market a chemical substance that actually worked to gum up centrifuges over time. Nuclear expert David Albright also verified that high-quality vacuum pumps crucial for uranium enrichment were modified to make them break down under operational conditions, which could ruin hundreds of centrifuges.

IDF Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Uzi Dayan cautioned, however, that "this approach can delay the program and slow it down... But it cannot prevent Iran from achieving their goal."

In related news, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, who has authority to represent the P5+1 powers in dealing with Iran, announced on Wednesday that she was willing to resume nuclear talks with Iran whenever the Iranian government was ready. This comes after Iranian officials claimed this week that a Turkish mediated fuel-swap deal will be back under discussion in September.

Nonetheless, Iranian leaders remain defiant as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared on Wednesday that Iran’s armed forces are on the alert and will be used to defeat any attempt to bring pressure on the Islamic Republic. "The US is a bullying power which seeks to blackmail others but it fails to materialize its sinister goals," he said. "The Islamic Republic of Iran with reliance upon its pious nation is successful in the frontline of struggle with global arrogance. Imposing sanctions on Iran leaves no impacts on the country’s success and development.”