"Terrorism" Outrage in Tehran

"The question is: what caused it - a cyber-attack or a physical act of sabotage, like a bomb?"

"The speculation of cyber-attack comes because Natanz is Ground Zero for cyber-war - the place where the world's first real cyber-attack took place a decade ago." 

"Most events called cyber-attacks are not really attacks in the physical sense - they are thefts of data. But Stuxnet - the name given to the incident that targeted Iran's nuclear programme over a decade ago - is not just one of the few exceptions but arguably also the first demonstration of what such a cyber-attack looks like."

"In that case, computer codes caused real-word damage by interfering with the centrifuge controllers to spin them out of control (and even relaying false messages back to those monitoring them so they would not worry until it was too late). The result was what sounded like a slow-motion explosion as centrifuges crashed into each other. It was an incredibly sophisticated and targeted operation, run jointly by the US and Israel and developed over a period of years."

Gordon Corera, Security correspondent, BBC   

Within hours of Iran proudly announcing the launch of its latest centrifuges, a power blackout damaged some of the precious machines at its site in Natanz.

Iranian authorities are furious. Yet another attack against their peaceful intentions to become nuclear-sufficient. Life is so unfair. "Terrorists" targeted the underground-secreted, bunker installation at Iran's  Natanz nuclear facility; an obvious act of "nuclear terrorist". This is the contorted reasoning for which Tehran's Ayatollahs and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is famous. As sponsors of terrorism, the godfathers of terrorist groups with whom Tehran conspires to wreak atrocities abroad, spread a network of like-minded Islamists globally, threaten the stability of the Middle East and its Sunni neighbours, warn Israel repeatedly of Iran's intention to destroy it, the Islamic Republic is a sterling world citizen.

Placing the blame on the state of Israel for infiltrating Iran's inner circles through intelligence agencies recruiting disaffected Iranians working underground to destabilize the Iranian Republic, human intelligence resources working hand-in-glove with Israeli intelligence has been able, time and again to demonstrate its capabilities in interfering with the internationally proscribed nuclear program that Tehran is determined to succeed with. Elimination of the IRCG's top general was ascribed to Israel even though it was a planned American operation. The targeting of a number of top Iranian nuclear scientists is considered to be a result of Israel's advanced technology enabling it to extinguish those lives.

But it might easily have been the work of disaffected Iranians, longing for the opportunity to free the country of the control of its Shi'ite Islamist fundamentalists whose agenda is to create a vice-grip on the Sunni Arab states by forming a dedicated extremist military clique prepared to dominate the Middle East and destroy the Jewish state. Previous Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before the general assembly of the United Nations voicing Iran's intention to destroy Israel, and there were no formal repercussions forthcoming when one member of the UN baldly stated its intention to eliminate another. 

The Islamic Republic of Iran fits all the metrics of 'terrorism', from its control and direction of Lebanon-based Shiite terrorist militia Hezbollah, to its support of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and that of the Houthis in Yemen. The alliance it has formed with Iraq, Syria, Qatar and Lebanon pits the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi'ite against one another in a bitterly violent upheaval of sectarian hatred. Iran is directly involved in the mass murder of Yemenite and Syrian civilians through the directed influence of the al-Quds division of the IRGC. 

Banks of centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear plant    Reuters

All of this is well enough established and yet the European Union spearheads a return to the nuclear agreement that gave practical assent to Iran's ongoing nuclear program, now re-joined by the new U.S. administration. With or without the nuclear agreement in force, Iran stealthily and steadily proceeded with its verboten nuclear enrichment. The International Atomic Energy Agency discovered through its limited inspections ample evidence that the IRGC detonated atomic devices surreptitiously, but of course for strictly 'peaceful' purposes.

Israel has warned time and again of its existential concerns over a country dedicated to terrorism which has directly threatened its security by plainly stating repeatedly its intention to wipe Israel from the map of the Middle East, that it will not tolerate nuclear weapons in the hands of a country as violently belligerent as Iran. Technological advances in the accuracy and range of ballistic missiles which can have one purpose only beyond conventional warfare, to carry nuclear warheads would be aimed directly at Israel. Possession of those nuclear weapons will play a fundamental role in ensuring that the Arab Muslim nations of the Middle East must take especial care in dealing with a viciously controlling Iran.

So now that, yet again, Iran accuses Israel of 'nuclear terrorism', reserving the 'right' to take active action against the 'perpetrators', the world has been put on notice that more drama is set to ensue courtesy of the Islamic Republic. The 'problem' with the electrical distribution grid of the Natanz site that 'caused an incident' as a result of a cyber attack -- popularly attributed to Israel's Mossad, its external intelligence-and-action arm -- in actual fact, caused more than an 'incident'. Expectations are that the damage that ensued with this carefully constructed cyber attack will set back Iran's nuclear ambitions for close to a year. 

Germany, whose historical record with Jewry represents a colossal milestone in hideous genocide has a shameful soft spot for doing business with Iran, and deplores this act of sabotage as being 'unhelpful', while not recommending out of the goodness of its love for the state of Israel and its Jewish heritage anything remotely 'helpful' in possibly restraining a terrorist regime from carrying out its promised agenda of launching another Holocaust.

"While condemning this despicable move, Iran emphasizes the need for the international community and the International Atomic Energy Agency to deal with this nuclear terrorism and reserves the right to take action against the perpetrators."

Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi

The international community, the United Nations and its various bodies and committees choose not to react when Iran threatens the destruction of Israel, but Iran has full expectations and the chutzpah to go with it, that there will be global condemnation aimed at Israel for interrupting the methodology by which Iran plans to annihilate the Jewish state. The timing of the cyber attack can be viewed as a message, from Israel to all those who tolerate Iran's terrorism with implacable cynicism, that Israel has no intention of sitting back complacently while Tehran builds the wherewithal for its destruction.

"The fight against Iran's nuclearization ... is a massive task", commented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the occasion of a ceremony with the Israeli military and intelligence chiefs to mark the 73rd anniversary upcoming of the founding of the State of Israel. Tehran's strictly peaceful nuclear program last year saw a fire break out at the facility; eliciting another claim by Iran of an attempt to sabotage the country's nuclear ambitions. 

Natanz is an uranium enrichment facility about 250km south of the Iranian capital Tehran   Maxar Technologies

Nuclear Threats and Deterrence

A photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran, Iran, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020 (Fars News Agency via AP); insert: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in an undated photo

"[There were] serious indications of [an] Israeli role [in the assassination]."

"Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice — with serious indications of Israeli role — shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators."

"[The international community must] end their shameful double standards and condemn this act of state terror."

"[Iran will] respond to the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time. The Iranian nation is smarter than falling into the trap of the Zionists. They are thinking to create chaos."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

 

"[Fakhrizadeh was] their senior-most nuclear scientist and was believed to be responsible for Iran’s covert nuclear program."

"He was also a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that will magnify Iran’s desire to respond by force."

Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Patrick Mulroy

 

"In the last days of their gambling ally’s political life, the Zionists seek to intensify and increase pressure on Iran to wage a full-blown war." 

"We will descend like lightning on the killers of this oppressed martyr and we will make them regret their actions!"

Hossein Dehghan, adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands in front of a picture of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who he named as the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, April 30, 2018 (YouTube screenshot)

Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was not only "the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program", according to Israel's Channel 12, but the man determined to ensure that "he delivered the bomb" for the Republic's ayatollahs. He had other talents to his credit, as a ballistic missiles expert, who was intimately involved in Iran’s missile development, which despite the signing of the nuclear accord with the West, continued apace, resulting in more sophisticated, longer-range ballistic missiles which would, needless to say, be required once nuclear warhead was achieved.

 

It is now assured that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will no longer personally be capable of delivering on his long-held aspiration. According to Iranian state television, an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood was staged to explode close to where a sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh and his bodyguards passed on the highway. As the sedan came to a halt, five gunmen emerged to begin raking the car with rapid gunfire, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. Israeli TV Friday night filled in the gaps, that the gunmen after fatally wounding Fakhrizadeh and shooting the three bodyguards dead, escaped.

To state that a pattern has emerged is to state the obvious, given the sequential mysterious deaths of other Iranian nuclear scientists. Clearly, someone, some entity, some group, has reason to believe the world would be better off without the Islamic Republic of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. In early November, the New York Times reported al-Qaeda’s second-in-command had been fatally shot and killed in Tehran by two Israeli operatives on a motorcycle at Washington’s behest.

The senior leader, whose nom de guerre was Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed in August as unfortunately was his daughter, Miriam, widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, according to the Times, citing intelligence sources. Iran "carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device" in a "structured program" through the end of 2003, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the Amad program -- which included work on the carefully timed high explosives needed to detonate a nuclear bomb.

The IAEA also revealed that Iran "conducted computer modeling of a nuclear explosive device" prior to 2005, between 2005 and 2009. The agency concluded on the other hand, that those calculations were "incomplete and fragmented". They had for years attempted to meet with Fakhrizadeh to question him on his activities, only to be rebuffed repeatedly by Tehran. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out that Fakhrizadeh continued to lead Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts, despite the 2015 nuclear deal meant to prevent Tehran from constructing such weapons.

For an important scientist in the nuclear field with the example of previous Iranian scientists taken out of contention in Iran's constantly developing nuclear program Fakhrizadeh was held to be "one of the most closely protected people in Iran", surrounded by bodyguards accompanying him everywhere. Another powerful figure also considered to be inviolable was the head of Iran's Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Qassem Soleiman, yet an American airstrike at Baghdad International Airport in January put an end to his exertions on behalf of Iranian state terrorism. 

That led to the sordid event pf two Iranian missiles stricking a Ukrainian passenger jet leaving from Tehran en route to Ukraine, and then on to Canada. All 175 passengers and crew on board, 63 among them Canadians, and including Iranians bound for Canada on study visas, along with other nationals, being killed outright. This, after Iran fired missiles at a U.S. base in Iraq. The matter of the Ukrainian passenger flight still has not been settled, and likely never will be, Tehran insisting it was an accident, a series of misdirected missiles faulted to an unauthorized, overzealous IRGC officer.

This is yet one more event in an ongoing series of dramatic consequences for Tehran relating to its nuclear ambitions linked to its aspirations of attaining supreme control of the Middle East and beyond, its formation, training and equipping of proxy Islamist militias, its ongoing threats to annihilate the State of Israel, and its Shia axis of evil, aligning Lebanon through Hezbollah, Syria through the Alawite leadership, Yemen through the Houthi rebels against the majority Sunni Muslim states of the Middle East.

Previous manifestations of Israel's refusal to become a victim of the vicious plans set in motion to destroy it by the Iranian ayatollahs include the Stuxnet virus that temporarily set back Iran's uranium centrifuge enrichment project, the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari ten years ago, and other, associated targeted assassinations, all of which Tehran identified with Israel. Failing to grasp that as long as they continued to broadcast their intention to wipe Israel from the map of the Middle East, their target would take all necessary actions to set back that ardent plan of Islamofascism.

For the presence, Israel's national security and intelligence arms remain focused on deterrence. In the future, they may be called upon to expand measures to ensure Israel's security that would surely include military conflict. By that time, if matters continue to proceed as they are, other Middle East states that feel similarly threatened by Iran's nuclear ambitions and at the present time supportive of Israel's measures at impeding Iran's nuclear progress may themselves harbour a compelling desire to once and for all put a stop to the threatening posturing of the Islamic Republic.

It is entirely possible that while U.S.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Saudi Arabia last week and Prime Minister Netanyahu flew to Saudi in the company of Yossi Cohen, director of Israel's spy agency Mossad, to meet secretly with Pompeo and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a plan was divulged that would remove another threat to the region as collaborationists for whom a successful mission would spell temporary relief. And perhaps serve to nudge MbS a little closer to persuading his father that full diplomatic ties and normalcy with Israel is a project whose time has come.

"Remember that name, Fakhrizadah", Mr. Netanyahu said in 2018 when he gave a presentation to the UN accusing Iran of continuing to seek nuclear weapons on the basis of new information revealed by Israel's secret service. It was known that this man headed a coordinated nuclear weapons program in Iran, the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency's 2015 "final assessment" of open questions on Iran's nuclear program where the IAEA's report stated Fakhrizadeh supervised  activities "in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran's) nuclear program."

"The story is not Trump, nor even Israel. The story is Iran -- the growing dread that a new U.S. administration will go back to the nuclear deal which threatens the very existence of the Gulf countries."

"We will know how to handle the issue of the Iranian threat, even if through our own means."

Tzachi Hanebi, member, Israeli security cabinet

Students protesting outside the foreign ministry in Tehran on Saturday.

An Ambitiously Atrocious Experiment

"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it."    “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent."                                                                                J.Robert Oppenheimer, head, Los Alamos Laboratory, the Manhattan Project

A photograph on display at The Bradbury Science Museum shows the first thermonuclear test on October 31, 1952    Bradbury Science Museum / Getty Images

"There's just no comparison [between the first atomic bombs and present-day nuclear weapons]; the shift in our nuclear arsenal is astounding."                     "When you have the leaders of countries issuing nuclear threats on [Twitter], that's a serious development."                                                                                        "The world is sleepwalking its way through a newly unstable nuclear landscape." "Any belief that the threat of nuclear war has been vanquished is a mirage."      "[The trend for] tactical [weapons doesn't make us safer."                                   Sharon Squassoni, global security expert, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

"The overall trend has been away from mass destruction to prevision, reducing collateral damage."                                                                                        "However, the argument goes that precision actually makes it more likely that we might use them."                                                                                                                Seth Baum, executive director, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute

"The idea was to explode the damned thing,"                                                       "We weren't terribly concerned with the radiation."                                                 Hymer Friedell, Manhattan Project

"[In Hiroshima many survivors were brought to the Hiroshima Communications Hospital, to the care of Dr.Michihiko Hachiya."                                                   "They began vomiting, leading the doctor to wonder whether] the new weapon [threw] off a poison gas or perhaps some deadly germ?"                           "Unconsciously, I grabbed some of my hair and pulled ... The amount that came out made me feel sick."                                                                                                   Dr.Michihiko Hachiya, Hiroshima Communications Hospital

Dr.Hachiya had just completed his air raid duty, noting in his logbook that there was nothing to report. The residents of Hiroshima were accustomed to hearing the American bombers overhead, but for some reason unknown to them the bombs never rained down on Hiroshima, as they did elsewhere in Japan. Hearing the planes pass overhead, the residents felt no tense expectation, just a casual acceptance that this was what U.S. B-29 bombers did.

Dr.Hachiya noted that "The hour was early; the morning still, warm and beautiful." Overhead flew a plane called the Enola Gay, and it carried a new device named Little Boy. Mere hours earlier  in the New Mexico desert the first ever produced atom bomb had been detonated. "The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun", observed General Thomas Farrell, deputy commander of the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos.

The "Trinity" test completed, Little Boy headed toward the Southwest Pacific in a ship. The crew of the Enola Gay discover their mission and are informed that the bomb they are set to release over a Japanese city is powerful enough to crack the Earth's crust. That night a clear night sparkling with shooting stars lay over Hiroshima. The crew of the Enola Gay is given four cyanide capsules, one for each member of the crew, should they be captured.

WWII veterans recall the tough missions leading up to Hiroshima and the efforts to hide the Enola Gay, seen here returning from dropping the atomic bomb on that city 75 years ago today. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Early morning, their flight close to their destination, the 4,400 kg warhead is armed. Two hours later, a tone alerts the crew to prepare for the explosion. At 8:15 a.m. the bomb bay doors release Big Boy on a beautiful sunny morning, and a fireball hotter than the sun appears, vaporizing everything within a mile, instantly killing a quarter of the 350,000 residents of Hiroshima. Those who survive the initial blast are naked, their clothing seared into their backs, wandering about within the inferno.

The sky that was so clear and the sun that shone its warmth and light down onto the city have been eclipsed, and black rain envelopes the city. Survivors have no memory of the great boom the explosion caused; recalling only the flare. And the silence. "That beautiful cloud! I have never seen anything so magnificent in my life!", enthused one mystified survivor. The Enola Gay returned to its base.

Peace Memorial Park cenotaph atomic bombing in Hiroshima, (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)

Since the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, weapons whose power have been exponentially magnified have emerged. Spurring bans and treaties. In 1986 there were 70,000 nuclear weapons globally; that number now stands at 14,000. How many such weapons of dreadful killing magnitude would it take to turn the globe into a burnt ember?

Technology never looks back, only forward. Hypersonic delivery systems have been designed to evade missile shields to high-altitude strikes, disabling communication networks. The creation of the atomic bomb took much furiously intensive creative thinking and careful experimentation. Refining the bomb, making it infinitely more destructive was a relatively relaxed task in comparison to the deep experimentation required to build the first nuclear device.

A minute of silence for the victims of the atomic bombing. (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)

 

Now, miniaturized and still powerful nuclear devices are on the cusp of the future, where terrorist groups dream of arming themselves with the world's most destructive weaponry. Back in time, 70 years ago, the navy secretary informed Harry Truman that Japanese survivors held open to them "a unique opportunity for the study of the medical biological effects of radiation". Scientists arrived in Japan to study the survivors.

Five years later, 130,000 survivors had been 'enrolled' in the Life Span Study, its results forming the world's larget bank of data on the effects of radiation, helping to develop safe medical uses, like CAT scans and X-rays. The Survey remains active; now studying the effects of the nuclear detonation on the next generation of children. "Some people didn't want to go naer them because they were 'infected'", Takuo Takigawa, director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum notes.

Hibakusha, as survivors and their offspring were called, were not permitted use of public baths fearing contamination. They were unable to find employment, rejected as survivors contaminated by radiation, viewed as societal castoffs. There was a reason that U.S. bombers refrained from bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The purpose was to be able to study the total annihilation and material effects of the atom bomb from a clean slate.

Valuable scientific and medical information was derived from studying the effect on human habitation and human life, destroyed by a nuclear blast. Resembling nothing so much as Nazi medical experimentation on slave labourers and concentration camp inmates. The most infamous of these experiments were carried out under the precise instructions and directions of SS physician Dr.Josef Mengele, at Auschwitz.  

Two women and a child, subjected to medical experiments —--

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Out of his experiments where living human beings == many of them children, and infamously twins, were routinely tortured, experimented on, most frequently perishing from the rigours they suffered -- came data on the conditions under which human life would be forfeit. Sterilization, artificial insemination, extreme temperatures, poison and wound experiments and many others on an ad hoc basis were carried out on helpless prisoners. Their results formed the basis of an entire range of data compiled into medical texts.

These 'research' results made their way into reputable medical journals as data that could never have been assembled under universal medical/scientific rules of research. Yet these data have been used as valuable insights compiled on living human beings by meticulous note-taking on the part of cold-blooded medical professionals whose oath of conduct would have included the ancient, revered code of 'do no harm'.

 Righteous Hypocrisy or Just Plain Sanctimony?

Russian Defense Ministry officials show off Russia's 9M729 cruise missile at the military Patriot Park outside Moscow on January 23. Moscow insisted the range of a missile system that has prompted Washington to withdraw from a key Cold War-era arms treaty is allowed under the agreement. VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty Images

"It is noteworthy that the test of an advanced Tomahawk-type missile was conducted just 16 days after the U.S. withdrew from INF, and the treaty was terminated."
"Perhaps, there can be no clearer and more explicit confirmation of the fact that the United States has been developing such systems for a long time, and preparations for quitting the agreement included, in particular, the relevant research and development."
"The missile had been fired using the Mk41 vertical launching system. That's a universal launching system that is suitable for both firing SM-3 interceptor missiles and ground-to-ground and surface-to-surface cruise missiles. All that is regrettable."
"The United States has evidently set the course for fomenting military tensions. Russia will not be pulled into [a] new arms race."
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov

"We do not give in to provocations. As Russian President [Vladimir Putin] said in France yesterday, we reiterate our commitment to a unilateral moratorium on deploying land-based intermediate-range systems until the U.S. deploys such systems in some part of the world."
"Several weeks and even months are not enough to make preparations for such a test."
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov

The U.S. conducts a test flight of a conventionally-configured ground-launched cruise missile at San Nicolas Island, California, August 18. The weapon, which the Pentagon told Newsweek "was a variant of the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile" using a Mark-41 Vertical Launch System, was said to have flown more than 310 miles, a range once restricted by a deal signed by Washington and Moscow in 1987 and since abandoned by both. U.S. Department of Defense

"[The test occurred] less than three weeks after the U.S. announced its official withdrawal from the INF Treaty."
"This move by the U.S. will trigger a new round of an arms race, leading to an escalation of military confrontation and a serious negative impact on the international and regional security situation." 
"We advise the U.S. to abandon its outdated Cold War mentality and zero-sum game concept, maintain restraint in the arms development, earnestly safeguard the existing arms control system and do more that is conducive to maintaining global strategic balance and stability and conducive to international and regional peace and tranquility."
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang

Three radiation victims were brought to the Arkhangelsk regional hospital

"[The emergency room continued to admit other patients for about an hour, until the doctors realized that the three] had received a very high radiation dose."
"The radiation picture was developing by the hour. Blood tests were being done, and every hour you could see that this or that cell count was plunging. That signified a very high radiation dose."
"[The casualties' clothing was removed, along with stretchers and a] highly radioactive bath."
"Our cleaners should have been advised, they're just simple country folk, they were just picking up sacks and bundles and carrying them out."
Arkhangelsk medics

 According to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) operating as an international network of radiation monitoring stations, two Russian radiation monitoring stations went offline two days following a mysterious nuclear accident in Arkhangelsk near the northern frontier of Russia. The logical conclusion being that a rather clumsy cover-up operation had been launched; none too subtle, at that. Russian officials have their own explanation.

According to a local news website there is a simple enough explanation, "network and communications problems" have beset the stations in Dubna and Kirov, necessitating their temporary shut-down. Completely defensible, logical and acceptable. And that mysterious explosion hard by a military test range on August 8? What explosion? Oh, that one. Yes the one where five nuclear scientists died. The one where nearby Severodvinsk was the site of a brief and inexplicable radiation spike.

Take it from the Russian military, though, no radiation was released, and they should know, should they not? The public was notified through an official statement from Severodvinsk authorities of a radiation level increase, but that official statement was unofficially withdrawn from the website of the city government. The CTBTO head, Lassina Zerbo noted his organization was looking at "technical problems experienced at two neighbouring stations", amid speculation the blast was caused by a failed nuclear-powered cruise missile.

And according to the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, two of the Russian specialists who died in the explosion at a White Sea missile testing range died of radiation sickness before they could be shipped out to Moscow for treatment, and not as a result of traumatic injuries caused by the blast's impact. An unnamed medical worker involved in their care explained: "Two of the patients did not make it to the airport and died. The radiation dose was very high, and symptoms of radiation sickness grew every hour."

Rest assured, all is well. The blast, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, took place during a test of 'promising' new weapons systems. "When it comes to activities of a military nature, there are certain restrictions on access to information". Moscow, he stressed cannot reveal everything because of its delicate military nature, so which weapons system was being tested is kept under careful wraps, understandably.

"[Medics were speaking out now because they feared for their own health and did not want any similar] safety violations [to recur]."
"We don't want them to bring us next time not three, but ten people, God forbid, and hide the information from us again."

Lassina Zerbo ✔ @SinaZerbo

To requests on #IMS detection beyond #CTBT, data in, or near the path of potential plume from the explosion are being analyzed. We’re also addressing w/station operators technical problems experienced at two neighboring stations. All data are available to our Member States.

CTBTO ✔ @ctbto_alerts

In response to media queries, and to meet civil society expectations on applications of #CTBTO data beyond the Treaty, we confirm an event coinciding with the 8 Aug explosion in #Nyonoksa, Russia, was detected at 4 #IMS stations (3 seismic, 1 infrasound).

The Long Reach of Canada's Hard Place

"The appropriate authorities took the decisions in this case."
"We were advised by them with a few days' notice that this was in the works but of course there was no engagement or involvement in the political level in this decision because we respect the independence of our judicial processes."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"[Although  China is likely to] understand [that Canada is under pressure from the U.S., the Chinese will have] special concerns that the arrest took place on Canadian soil."
"I imagine that some Chinese are going to see this as the equivalent of a hostage-taking. I hope very much that this will not escalate into the equivalent of what happens sometimes when spies are arrested in one country and the other country retaliates." 
"I think there's a lot of things we don't know about this yet but this is not small potatoes. This is a significant symbolic and material action at a time of growing U.S.-China tension around geopolitics and techno-nationalism."
Paul Evans, University of British Columbia Institute of Asian Research

"I think because of the super-delicate phase that we're at in terms of U.S.-China trade relations that China is more likely to wait for this process to move a little bit further in the legal proceedings rather than retaliate immediately."
"It's like the dog that didn't bark, if a business person decides not to make an investment, or [an] existing company decides not to expand their investment [in Canada]."
"I don't see the basis on which this could be quashed by Canada."
Gordon Houlden, director, China Institute, University of Alberta

"The company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng."
"The company believes the Canadian and U.S. legal systems will ultimately reach a just conclusion."
Huawei Technologies statement

The U.S. is seeking the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co., after convincing Canada to arrest her on Dec. 1, likely in connection with violating sanctions against Iran. Huawei via AP

This is Canada being caught in the crosshairs of a shot across the bow by the United States at its economic and trade rival, China. On the one hand, Canada's closest neighbour and trading partner, which has of late been treated by the current administration of the U.S. with suspicion and paranoia and accompanying penalties, which Canada, perennially dependent on American goodwill and trade for its economic health, on the other hand, squeezed by interest in another trade giant as a potential alternate for investment and trade opportunities now finds itself deeply compromised.

Canada's proximity to, and dependence on successive U.S. administrations to keep its economy hale and hearty is the rock, and Canada's view to the future in establishing greater ties with a country whose 1.4-billion consumers representing a welcome market freeing it from its unstable, long dependence on the U.S. is the hard place. That Prime Minister Justin Trudeau actually hopes his explanation will have resonance with the Communist Party of China which has ultimate control over everything in China, including the judiciary is a fond, misplaced hope of desperation.

That the chief financial officer of Huawei Technology has suffered the gross indignity of being arrested on a stopover at Vancouver International airport on her way between Hong Kong and Mexico is a grave affront to China, no less than to Meng Wanzhou whose father is one of the wealthiest men in China, the founder of the company she now represents, with a long reach internationally. She has been arraigned and her bail hearing set, alleging she has committed multiple fraud acts in a scheme to trick financial institutions into transactions violating American sanctions against Iran.

Members of the media and public line up to enter a courtroom to attend a bail hearing for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, on Friday December 7, 2018. She was arrested Saturday after an extradition request from the United States while in transit at the city’s airport. Darryl Dyck / THE CANADIAN PRESS

"She has the means to flee and to remain outside Canada. Her ordinary home is in a country without an extradition treaty with ['the] U.S.", stated the federal prosecutor assigned to the case, the courtroom stuffed with international media, along with members of the Chinese-Canadian community many of whom, like her, own palatial mansions in Vancouver. At the heart of the allegations leading to Ms. Meng's arrest is the charge that the company used a subsidiary, Skycom, for business in Iran with an Iranian telecommunications company between 2009 and 2014, in violation of American sanctions.

In 2013, a Reuters wire agency story published a description of Huawei-controlled Skycom, detailing that Skycom had moved to provide U.S.-manufactured computer equipment to Iran, violating the sanctions, when several banks with involvement in the transactions enquired of Huawei whether the revelations were actual fact. The alleged "damage control" undertaken by Ms. Meng was described in the news agency's article, according to federal Crown prosecutor John Gibb-Carsley.

On this article and its contentions hangs the nub of the case against this powerful woman, representing a company that is among the most linked of Chinese technology giants to the Chinese government. "Skycom was Huawei. This is the alleged fraud. Skycom employees were Huawei employees", charged Gibb-Carsley. Those actions placed the financial institutions at serious risk as unknowing co-conspirators involved in defying U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran for its nuclear ambitions.

Ms. Meng's lawyer's appeal to Justice William Ehreke at B.C. Supreme Court to grant bail to his client failed. She is compelled to spend at least the week-end in incarceration. Earning a huge black mark for Canada in China's books where retaliation will eventuate at some time and place chosen for its most emphatic efficacy. "[The Chinese embassy in Canada] firmly opposes and strongly protests over such kind of actions which seriously harmed the human rights of the victim" was the first shot in what will become a barrage of blowbacks courtesy China to Canada.

In this courtroom sketch, Meng Wanzhou, right, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, sits beside a translator during a bail hearing at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on Friday. Meng was arrested last Saturday while she was travelling through Vancouver airport, after an extradition request from the United States. (Jane Wolsak/Canadian Press)

Crown counsel informed the Friday bail hearing in B.C. Friday that Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou is "charged with conspiracy to defraud multiple international institutions", each of those charge brought against her by American authorities carrying a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Befriending Iran

"Exiled Iranian human rights activists such as Toronto-based Maryam Nayeb Yazdi have pointed out that stoning is still a viable legal threat in Iran, for both men and women, and that executions in general are rising."
"Anything less than a continuing diplomatic boycott and the seizure of Iranian government assets [in Canada], as well as a ban on visits by their government officials, would be a betrayal of [Canadian] democracy and of those Iranian-Canadians who have fled that Islamic dictatorship since the revolution that brought these evil men to power in 1979. It would also be a slap in the face to the children waiting in Iran's prisons for their turn on the gallows."
Geoffey Clarfield, Toronto-based anthropologist

Photo of an execution in Iran. (AFP/Arash Khamooshi/ISNA)

The Islamic Penal Code administered by mullahs in the Islamic Republic of Iran is a daunting system of enacting justice. Due process carried out in the Western world is a practise of justice unknown in the Islamic theocracy. There, people can be arrested, interrogated, even tortured even before they ever appear in a court of law and stand before a judge. Trials are short and closed. If a lawyer is hired for the defence he too is often harassed and occasionally arrested on charges of representing the interests of Europe or North America.

Human rights groups make it a point of regularly tracking in particular the war waged by the Islamic Republic against Iranian youth. When murder is committed, under the justice system practised in the West, it is considered a heinous violation of the social contract, devised to ensure security and peace among people, guaranteeing safety under the law. Murder in Iran is viewed as a private matter between families. Should a murder occur, the culprit arrested and tried, possibly condemned to death, the family of the deceased can accept blood money for the release of the murderer.

Execution by hanging is often staged in public where people are encouraged to attend; the event viewed as public entertainment as well as a warning to others. Those heading to the gallows are often first beaten and tortured, then brought out to entertain the crowd. The spectacle can include a botched  hanging where it takes ten to twenty minutes of expressed agony before death by asphyxiation is finally achieved, and justice is seen to be done. That justice is the state's response to unforgivable crimes such as:

• Should a man or woman under the Islamic Shariah of Iran be convicted of fornication out of wedlock four times, he/she can be executed;
• Fornication by a non-Muslim with a Muslim woman can result in execution;
• Anal sex among adult males (over the age of 15) is justification for capital punishment;
• Lesbians are condemned to death if they are caught in a 'criminal act' four times;
• Possession of obscene audio-visual materials can be punished by death;
• Caught drinking alcohol for the third time can seal one's fate in punishment by execution;
• Thefts are punished by amputations; if four such occasions arise, the punishment is execution;
• If one is born a Muslim then seeks to convert to another religion, it is termed apostasy, punishable by death;
• Killing a non-Muslim by a Muslim does not automatically merit the death penalty.

Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code a female is considered a fully responsible adult at 13 years of age, while a male is considered adult at age 15. When youth under 18 are arrested, tried, condemned and set for execution they are thus considered fully adult under the law and the death penalty can be administered lawfully. Iran is responsible for 73 percent of all child executions worldwide, with a 47 percent under-18 population, ranking as the world's top child-executioner.

When Iranian children under age 18 are charged with a capital offence and sentenced to death, Iranian authorities, sensitive to world opinion, allow them to remain incarcerated awaiting their 18th birthday at which time the death sentence is carried out. In this manner the Islamic Republic lives up to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child which states that those under 18 years of age are to be considered children.

A missile launched from the Alborz mountains in Iran on March 9, 2016, reportedly inscribed in Hebrew, ‘Israel must be wiped out.’ (Fars News)

 

Infamously, Iran threatens world stability through its furtive efforts in streamlining ballistic missiles to accompany the nuclear warheads it claims it has no interest in producing. The Republic's support for terrorist groups such as its proxy militia Hezbollah in Lebanon which it dispatches on missions abroad to produce bloody carnage and which has most latterly been involved along with the Iranian Republic Guards Corps al-Quds division in Syria, is responsible for sectarian conflict in the Middle East.

In this 2015 file picture released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei listens to IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari during a graduation ceremony of officers in Tehran, Iran. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

In response to Iran's reputation and its penchant for meddling in other countries' affairs to its advantage, Canada's former Conservative-led government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut off diplomatic relations with Iran, closing the Canadian embassy in Tehran, and inviting Iran to close its embassy in Ottawa, while taking steps to take possession of its non-diplomatic financial assets in Canada to be used in financing compensatory awards to victims of Iranian terrorism.

Unfortunately, the following Liberal-led government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seeks to reverse all of that under the influence of a pro-Iranian lobby urging the reopening of the embassies and re-engaging in trade with Iran through commerce with companies owned and operated by the revolutionary Islamic government's ayatollahs and their Iranian Republican Guard Corps elite commanders. Canada's Liberal government recently financed a $100-million business deal between Iran and Bombardier, Canada's aerospace conglomerate.

People hold placards displaying portraits of Iranians on death row during a demonstration denouncing Iran's use of the death penalty on 28 January 2016 in Paris, France AFP/Getty Images

Denuclearizing North Korea

"If you think the North Koreans would revolt or the regime would collapse because of sanctions, you don't know anything about the North Koreans."
"These are people who survived the famine by eating weeds and even talk proudly about it."
Kang Mi-jin, North Korean defector, South Korea

"I can feel they [the Korean public] are not satisfied with the government, and if the authorities cannot resolve the sanctions problem, such dissatisfaction will go on and on."
"They have lost the [peoples'] loyalty toward the regime."
Terry, Chinese trader

"Once we start talking, the United States will know that I am not a person to launch nuclear weapons at South Korea, the Pacific or the United States."
If we maintain frequent meetings and build trust with the United States and receive promises for an end to the war and a non-aggression treaty, then why would we need to live in difficulty by keeping our nuclear weapons?"
"Some say that we are terminating facilities that are not functioning, but you will see that they are in good condition."
Kim Jong Un, North Korean President

An earthquake expert presents evidence of a seismic event at the nuclear test site near Mount Mantapsan in North Korea      Credit:  AP

"They imply a phased process with reciprocal concessions."
"It is not clear that the Trump administration will accept that kind of protracted program."
Adam Mount, senior defence analyst, Federation of American Scientists

South Korean President Moon Jae-in really believes that a breakthrough in relations has occurred between Seoul and Pyongyang, the love-in between himself and North Korean President Kim Jong Un on Friday at Panmunjom was a demonstration of warmth, trust and yearning. On his part, in any event; it is generally acknowledged that Kim loves game-playing as much as he enjoys pushing limits and there is no ignoring the fact that the North established a reputation of gaming the South and the U.S. in previous attempts to persuade the Kim dynasty to surrender its nuclear ambitions.

On previous occasions it did so, exhibiting in the process a level of authentic, believable commitment, mothballing its nuclear research, only to soon afterward fire it up again, taking up where it left off, after accepting the promised international aid to lift the North out of dire economic and social straits. Gaming the gullible West just as the Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly done, then in stealth resuming its research under cover of a signed and sealed agreement otherwise.

There is little resemblance to logic but much cognitive dissonance for the West to now believe that North Korea, after expending time, energy, lucre and secret intelligence and technological exchanges in establishing the reality of nuclear success paired with the engineering technology required to succeed in producing ICBMs, that it would be prepared to surrender all of it now, set it aside permanently as a sacrifice to achieve peace between it and its neighbour and the international community.

Before and after images show the Punggye-ri test site where on September 3, 2017, North Korea claimed to have conducted the underground explosion of a hydrogen bomb Credit: AFP/Planet

This is a regime, after all, which failed to be deterred by robust threats by the U.S. administration of full-blast Trump, going on to test its latest, most successful nuclear device and ballistic missiles in full provocation mode. As for pressure brought to bear by more seriously-imposed sanctions, even those supported by China, reports surface of witnessed border trade where tungsten, lead, zinc, copper and gold concentrates, banned for export under UN sanctions are spirited into China.

In return, nightly transports are smuggled into North Korea carrying sugar, flour, fertilizers and other living necessities in exchange for the Chinese-sought natural resources. Factories in North Korea may have been shuttered and fishermen leaving their boats unattended while military units resort to charcoal-engine vehicles for transport, but shortages aside, vital consumer prices remain stable and no food shortages loom in the near future, according to North Korean defectors.

Electricity doesn't appear lacking where street lights are kept on all night in Pyongyang according to South Korean journalists on a recent visit. Everyone seems equipped with a cellphone, and women appeared in fashionable dresses, far more than previously. "We have seen no big disruption in markets yet that could be attributed to sanctions", according to Jiru Ishimaru, operating Asia Press, a website based in Japan monitoring North Korea. "North Korean markets  have proved quite resilient."

Perhaps it's likelier that Kim is enjoying his little cat-and-mouse game. The nuclear installation that he claims will be shuttered will indeed be, since the mountain under which it was built has been utterly destabilized by the succession of nuclear blasts set off for test purposes, resulting in quakes, requiring that a new nuclear installation be built, in a less environmentally disruptive area of the North to enable it to resume its nuclear program.

Denuclearizing North Korea? Doesn't seem all that likely.

The nuclear tests have taken place in a system of tunnels dug below Mount Mantap, near the Punggye-ri site.

Fool Me Once, Shame on You: Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

"To secure transparency on the suspension of nuclear tests, we will close the republic's northern nuclear test site."
"[A] great victory [has been attained in the nation's official] 'byungjin' [policy line; pursuing economic and nuclear development in synchronicity]." 
"Nuclear development has proceeded scientifically and in due order and the development of the delivery strike means also proceeded scientifically and verified the completion of nuclear weapons."
"We no longer need any nuclear test or test launches of international and intercontinental range ballistic missiles and because of this the northern nuclear test site has finished its mission."Statement, Korean Workers' Party's Central Committee

"There is nothing in North Korea's statement that signals a willingness to give up their nukes."
"On the contrary, the tone of the message is one of confidence and strength."
Benjamin Silberstein, North Korea researcher, University of Pennsylvania

Attendees at the Third Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea  Credit: Reuters

There, it's done -- the long-awaited announcement made after a meeting of North Korea's full Central Committee, focusing on its "new stage" of policies and national directions. The committee saw fit to unanimously resolve to concentrate its national efforts to consolidate a strong socialist economy for the purpose of embarking on "groundbreaking improvements in people's lives". So, it is clear after all that the Kin dynasty is not heartlessly oblivious to the plight of its starving people, envisioning a glorious future of strong economic and social growth.

Of course that future could have been achievable in the past, had it laid aside its commitment to its communist-era pledge and aligned itself with its South Korean cousins who have long since achieved pride in self-sufficiency that it created as an Asian Tiger of stellar technological achievement and production reaching into international corridors of trade and becoming wealthy in the process; the South's robust economy a stark contrast to the North's.

The South has demonstrated incalculable patience with its wayward cousin to the North where -- despite being constantly threatened, suffering violence and loss of life at the vicious whims of Jim Jong Un, putting the South to the test -- it now hopes to usher in a new era, convincing Kim there is nothing to fear from its neighbours, much less the United States, and everything to gain.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in claims Kim's expression of interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons is genuine, that they plan to meet to discuss this and other areas of common interest in Panmunjom during a summit to resolve the standoff with Pyongyang. Sadly, North Korea's idea of "denuclearization" fails to accord with the American definition; it is an issue that remains live; nuclear development to resume unless Washington removes its troops from the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Jong Un's view of himself as a supreme leader, one whose prestige and power resides in his ability to bellicosely threaten his perceived enemies teeters on the brink of acceding to the demands of those enemies, and it just simply does not appear to jive with the former commitment into which so much treasury and effort has been poured. Still, there are those who find the newer statements of accommodation believable.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington is certainly one among them, taking comfort that North Korea is signalling it is prepared to freeze its program; a significant first step -- with others equally welcome -- to follow, they would like to believe, despite past such episodes being turned upside down and inside out, as examples of what can go wrong.

North Korean launching of the Hwasong-15 missile which is capable of reaching all parts of the US in November 2017 Credit: AFP/ KCNA VIA KNS