China Confidential
Foreign Reporting and Analysis Since April 2005
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Missile-Mad Iran Approaching A-Bomb Breakthrough
Foreign Confidential....
Islamist Iran will have enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb by 2009. Next February's 30th anniversary of the country's Islamic Revolution is a key date.
Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and ally, Syria, are already capable of leveling Israeli cities and towns--with ballistic missiles.
Hezbollah continues to receive smuggled Iranian and Syrian weapons in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006. The terrorist army has over 40,000 rockets--three-and-a-half times what it had before its war with Israel two years ago. Hezbollah has built an underground storage system, partly in south Lebanon, for tens of thousands of rockets. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard helped Hezbollah to harden the storage system against air attack.
Israeli intelligence experts say some rockets of Syrian and Iranian manufacture can hit Israeli targets as far south as Beersheba, 350 kilometres away from Hezbollah launching pads north of Lebanon’s Litani River. Moreover, the Israelis say, not only has Tel Aviv come within range, but Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza can between them cover most of Israel except for its southern-most tip at Eilat on the Red Sea.
Syria also has a large stockpile of chemical warheads.
In light of the above, it is imperative that any American or Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear installations (ahead of Iran actually acquiring atomic arms) first address the ballistic missile threat. Iran has threatened to "burn Tel Aviv" and to bombard US military bases across the Middle East.
Unlike US, Jordan Plans to Produce its Oil Shale
Investor's Business Daily reports that Jordan is moving ahead with plans to produce oil from shale rock, while the United States (paralyzed by Pelosi's no-drill Democratic Party) ignores its immense shale reserves.Jordan imports 95% of its oil. Unlike the U.S., the desert kingdom plans on doing something about it. It does not, however, plan to cover its flat open spaces with solar panels or wind farms. It's going to do something the Democratic Congress has refused to do — get oil from its abundant shale rock.
On Sunday, Maher Hjazin, head of the Jordanian National Resources Authority, announced that negotiations with the Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell to extract oil from the kingdom's shale reserves "are nearing an end."
Hjazin made the announcement before the Jordan Engineers Association and told the Jordan Times that Shell will survey and develop 22,000 square meters of land, one quarter of the country, in the central and southern regions.
He also told the JEA that other parties are itching to develop Jordanian shale rock. Estonia's state-owned energy company, Eesti Energia, has completed a study to produce 36,000 barrels a day from just one of the kingdom's 20 locations rich in oil shale. Estonia produces all its energy from oil shale reserves in the Baltic state.
Under separate agreements with the Brazilian firm Petrobras, Jordanian-British Jordan Energy & Mining Ltd. (JEML) and a Saudi firm are examining separate blocks for oil shale extraction. Yes, even the Saudis, a charter member of OPEC, want to get oil from shale. One day we may be importing it.
Jordan has the world's fourth largest reserves of oil shale. Wael Saqqa, president of the JEA, said exploiting the 40 billion tons of shale in 26 areas of Jordan "would provide the kingdom with oil for the coming 700 years." Jordan even fancies itself a net oil exporter within a decade.
Meanwhile, we sit on enough oil to make OPEC look like a mom-and-pop operation. In the West we may have what could be called a Persia on the Plains. A Rand Corp. study says the Green River Formation, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world....
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Thursday, 14 August 2008
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