DEBKAfile Special Report September 8, 2009, 9:08 AM (GMT+02:00) Iran's enrichment plant at Natanz The second Israeli cabinet-level discussion in the last few days on the Iranian threat - nuclear and regional - took place Monday, Sept. 7, in the inner cabinet, on the heels of a recent security cabinet meeting which surveyed Israel military and homeland security preparations for a missile attack from four sources, Iran, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza. The Monday meeting was held behind closed doors but DEBKAfile's military sources report that speakers underscored the rapid tempo of the developing Iranian threat. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu went on to pay an extended visit to Mossad headquarters for talks with its chief Meir Dagan and other officers. Monday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he was willing to discuss "global challenges" with US president Barack Obama but repeated his government's standing refusal to negotiate his country's "inalienable nuclear rights." This put the lid on the US president's policy of dialogue with Tehran on its nuclear program and rendered the European engagement initiative pointless. Monday, too, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, said talks with the Islamic republic were at a "stalemate. He delivered a bleak account of Iran's nuclear compliance to a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Yet tougher UN sanctions are a diminishing prospect in the light of Russian and Chinese objections. Saturday, Sept. 5, DEBKAfile reported the growing concern in security circles over the failure of the US, Israel and other international parties to put the brakes on Iran's fast-paced advance toward a nuclear weapon although Obama had been in office for nine months and Netanyahu sat down in the prime minister's office all of six months ago. Tehran seized this inaction for the biggest leap forward since its hidden nuclear program was launched. DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 7, 2009, 12:44 PM (GMT+02:00) Their latest anti-US scheme DEBKAfile's Iranian sources disclose that Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are working on a wide-raging plan to replicate Iran's key nuclear installations in Venezuela, possibly in the framework of a new program there on the Iranian and North Korean models. The French news agency AFP, reporting from Tehran Sunday, disclosed Chavez's suggestion to Iran to establish in his country a "nuclear village" to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But, according to DEBKAfile's Iranian sources, the conversation between the two presidents Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 5-6, when they visited Shiite shrines in Meshhad, went as far as to discuss the relocation or replication of key elements of the Iranian nuclear industry to Venezuela, both to keep them safe and to guarantee they would keep on ticking over if Iran was attacked by the US or Israel. Their talks have advanced far enough to get Washington worried about the prospect of yet another hostile nuclear program coming into being, this one at America's back door. Chavez eagerly embraces the plan as another chance to rile the Americans, while the Iranian president stopped trusting Damascus as Tehran's nuclear back-up partner when Israel demolished the nuclear facility under construction by North Korea in northern Syria two years ago and its president began to be wooed by the Obama administration. While establishing a joint team cagily assigned with developing "nuclear cooperation for peaceful purposes" a covert track between Iran and Venezuela is progressing much faster on costing the replication of Iranian nuclear plants in the South American country as compared with their transfer, lock, stock and barrel.
Israel's inner cabinet focuses on Iran, PM Netanyahu visits Mossad HQ
Chavez ready to shelter duplicate Iranian nuclear facilities in Venezuela
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
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