

By Brooklyn Eagle

Iran Finishing Her Nuclear Horn: Daniel 8:4

Iran produces first nine grams of uranium enriched to 60%

Earlier on Friday, Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the Iranian authorities had managed to obtain the first batch of uranium enriched to 60%

TEHRAN, April 16. /TASS/. Iran last night produced nine grams 60% purity uranium, Vice-President Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said on Friday.

“On Friday, we achieved 60%-enrichment of uranium. Currently we have nine grams [of 60% purity uranium] at our disposal,” the news agency ISNA quotes Salehi as saying.


On Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Tehran was starting the enrichment of uranium to 60% as of Wednesday. President Hassan Rouhani said the measure was in retaliation for Israel’s act of sabotage at the nuclear facility in Natanz on April 11. He promised that the enrichment would be carried out for peaceful purposes and under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Woes of Asian Nuclear Procurement

Procurement: South Asian Weapons Woes
April 25, 2021: India and Pakistan, two South Asian nations that have been military adversaries since the late 1940s, have both had difficulty developing local defense industries. That is still a problem but in the last five years (2016-20) both nations have made major changes in how they handle imports and local manufacturing. Pakistan has become almost entirely dependent on China for weapons, and is the major customer for Chinese military exports. India, in contrast, has cut military imports by a third, mainly by making major reductions in what it buys from Russia. In response to this, Russia has offered Pakistan weapons similar to what China delivers. Russia points out that having two main suppliers creates competition that great for the customer.

India wants to continue reducing its dependence on imports, even it means accepting clearly inferior (to Western and Chinese alternatives) weapons. During the Cold War India declared itself neutral but became a major importer of Russian weapons because they were cheaper, and Russia more willing to transfer manufacturing technology so India could build many of the Russian weapons under license. Pakistan obtained most of its imported weapons from European and American manufacturers.

After the Cold War both Pakistan and India made major efforts to develop and produce major weapons systems, and both largely failed. Except for nuclear weapons, which both nations developed internally by the late 1990s, and ballistic missile tech based on what they could obtain from China and Russia respectively, Pakistan and India have handled their failures to develop and build their own conventional weapons differently. India believes its nuclear weapons aimed at China will prevent major losses on the border while Pakistan, even with superior Chinese weapons, is not a major threat.

In contrast Pakistan, or at least the Pakistani military, has long considered India a military threat, despite the fact that India does not reciprocate. The only dispute the two nations have is over who should own the border province of Kashmir. Technically it belonged to India according to the 1948 agreement both nations developed to handle the separation of British India into Moslem and non-Moslem portions. Pakistan reneged on that deal at the last minute and grabbed about half of Kashmir. Pakistan has been fighting, unsuccessfully, ever since to obtain the rest of Kashmir. After three failed wars, in the 1980s Pakistan switched to a campaign of supporting Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. That failed as well but the Pakistani military insists on continuing to try.

India considered the Pakistani efforts to regain Kashmir a secondary defense concern as India had more problems with leftist rebels in eastern India and tribal separatists in the northeast. The Pakistani Islamic terrorism policy eventually, over the last two decades, led to an end of American military imports and total dependence on China. During that period China renewed long (since the 1950s) dormant claims on portions of the Indian and Pakistani border territory. Pakistan gave up what China wanted while India refused. Now China and India are confronting each other in disputed border areas, with a growing number of violent clashes. This made it clear that China was militarily superior to India while India maintained its military superiority versus Pakistan. China did not become a military ally of Pakistan because China does not have allies, it has foreign customers for Chinese products, including weapons and will adjust its diplomacy to further that. China has a military defense treaty with North Korea, but that is only to ensure that North Korea remains a compliant neighbor of China and nothing else.

During and after the Cold War (1948-1991) Pakistan and India relied on importing many of their weapons. This was unpopular in both countries, especially since much smaller nations, like Israel and South Korea were becoming developers and manufacturers of world-class defense equipment and weapons while India and Pakistan largely failed to do so. What was particularly embarrassing for India was that China, with the same population as India has, since the 1990s, far surpassed India in economic growth and the ability to manufacture world class weapons. Back in 1948, when India became independent of British colonial rule and China was reunited after two decades dealing with invasion and civil war, India had a larger GDP and more modern military. Pakistan consisted of Moslem majority portions of British India and became an independent state because Moslem leaders in British India insisted and the rest of India was willing to go along with that. Since 1948 India evolved into the world’s largest democracy with the military firmly under government control while Pakistan evolved into an army with a country attached. While both nations are democracies with fair voting and many political parties, the Pakistani military has become a major, if technically illegal power broker in Pakistani politics.

Another major development in the past five years it the Pakistani government budget and economy undergoing a crisis caused by unwillingness to control corruption and military spending. The problem has been building for years but has now created a fiscal disaster as Pakistan ran out of nations willing to provide military aid or loans. As a result, Pakistan has had to cut back on military imports and instead pay more attention to upgrading or refurbishing existing equipment. That was a serious problem because the foe the Pakistani military is preparing to fight has a lot more money, people and creditworthiness. This made Chinese offers to supply cheaper weapons and massive investments in building needed infrastructure projects palatable. The billions in Chinese investments went to build rail, pipeline and road links from China to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean. Many Pakistanis opposed this policy but the military insisted and that was that.

The Pakistani generals still pushed the idea that India might invade with non-nuclear forces. Anyone paying attention to Indian media and politics would realize that isn’t true but the Pakistani military needed to maintain the illusion of an Indian “threat” to justify its relatively large military budget. With that Pakistan maintains an active-duty force of 650,000 troops using a large number of older, but upgraded, tanks and warplanes. India has more modern equipment and a million troops on active duty.

The Indian population is six times larger and the Indian economy (GDP) is ten times that of Pakistan. India spends nearly $66 billion a year on defense, the fifth largest defense budget on the planet, right behind the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan barely makes the top 20 with $12 billion. Indian spending is 3.1 percent of GDP while Pakistan is now at four percent. The usual general financial support for the military did not survive the Pakistani debt crises of 2019, and now the Pakistani military has lost most of its recent budget gains and is likely to lose even more.

Pakistan has fought several wars with India since 1948 and lost all of them. What Pakistan does have going for it is Chinese claims on a lot of Indian territory. India and China fought a brief border war in 1967 which India lost, along with some territory high in the mountains where most of the India-China border is. Both China and India have nuclear-armed ballistic missiles aimed at each other so if there are going to be any wars, they will be small scale and brief ones on this high-altitude mountain border. Unlike Pakistan, China is a real threat to India.

At the same time, India and Pakistan share a border that contains lots of flat, lowland terrain that has been the scene of tank battles in the past. As a result, Pakistan tries to maintain a force of tanks equal, at least in numbers, to the more modern Indian tank fleet.

All this leaves Pakistan on its own to maintain a credible force of armored vehicles to face the “Indian threat.” The Pakistani air force is largely dependent on F-16s bought from the United States over the last few decades and upgraded somewhat since then. But now with American aid gone along with cash for additional (and often much needed) refurbishment for the 78 remaining F-16s, Pakistan is more dependent on a hundred or more of the Chinese JF-17s. This is a Chinese design that is similar to the F-16 but only Pakistan uses it. China prefers other aircraft it has designed and only got the JF-17 into production so Pakistan could assemble most of them in Pakistan and call them “Pakistani built” fighters. Most Pakistani fighters are about 600 older French and Chinese models.

There was a similar situation with tanks but early in 2019, Pakistan decided to get out of the tank design/development/manufacturing business, at least for now. Because of that, the army placed an order for a hundred Chinese made 52-ton VT4/MBT-3000 tanks. This order is now on hold because of the budget cuts. The VT4 is an updated version of the 330 46 ton VT1/MBT-2000/Al Khalid tanks Pakistan already has. The Al Khalid was a joint China-Pakistan project to create a Pakistani tank that built in Pakistan. Basically, Al Khalid was a variant of the Chinese VT1 (also known as the MBT2000). The VT1 was the export version of the Chinese Type 90 tank. Actually, the Type 90 (an improved T-72) was not accepted by the Chinese army which preferred the 54-ton Type 99, a superior T-72 variant that entered service in 2001 and underwent a major upgrade (the 58-ton Type 99A) in 2011 and is still in production.

The rest of the 2,000 Pakistani tanks are based on much older (1950s) Russian models, with some upgrades. Pakistan also looked at the latest Ukraine had to offer but decided to go with China, which has access to more advanced tech than Ukraine and is willing to be competitive when it comes to price. This confidence in China was based on how the 2012 agreement worked out. For that deal, Pakistan and China also agreed to jointly market the Al Khalid tank but had limited success. That was because there were a lot of improved T-72s on the market, including the Chinese MBT-2000. Al Khalid was more expensive to develop as Pakistan began the project in 1991 and made a lot of mistakes. The Al Khalid ended up costing ten percent more than the MBT-2000, and Pakistan was unable to keep its costs under control when it came time to develop and a major upgrade for Al Khalid. It was pointed out that China already had what Pakistan wanted in the VT4. In the end the Al Khalid demonstrated why Pakistan has never been a major player in the arms export business and this deal with China was more for show than anything else.

Because of the current budget crisis, the military released a long list of alternate procurement plans that rely on items that can be produced locally. The air force plans to increase JF-17 production from 16 a year to 24. Work will also continue on developing UAVs and building them in Pakistan. Design and development will also continue on the AZM fifth generation (stealth) fighter. This is largely a propaganda effort because Pakistan expressed interest in buying one of the two new Chinese stealth fighter designs but could not afford it, and China has reduced its own construction plans because of performance issues. Most of the local procurement will be rebuilding or refurbishing older armored vehicles with local electronic or mechanical items. This does not improve the Pakistani arsenal as much as it tries to maintain what it has. In this respect, Pakistan has something of an edge over India. The military procurement bureaucracy India is burdened with is spectacularly inefficient and a major reason why India does not have much better weapons than Pakistan. The Indian military knows this but Indian politicians refuse to recognize the problem, which is a tremendous benefit for the Pakistani military. Even with that, and the Chinese threat to India, Pakistan is still not a major conventional military threat to India.

With China the major threat, India has to obtain the best weapons possible to deal with that. As a result, the remaining imports, which are still substantial, concentrate on systems India cannot produce at all. This includes first-line jet fighters like the Russian Su-30, and French Rafale. India still buys air defense and electronic items from Israel and specialized UAVs from the United States. Russia has a more modern and recent fleet of the latest Russian tank models. In fact, India has more of these T-90 tanks than Russia. India is trying to eliminate its dependence on Russia for modern warships but continues to encounter problems with Indian built nuclear submarines. Indian ballistic missiles appear to be competitive, as are their nuclear weapons. New restrictions on military imports are forcing the armed forces and Indian manufacturers to catch up in the areas of developing and manufacturing competitive modern weapons. This isn’t easy because India has a long, and growing, list of locally developed systems that failed, even after several generations of “improved” models.

Iranian Horn says 60% uranium enrichment response to Israel’s ‘nuclear terrorism’

Iran says 60% uranium enrichment response to Israel’s ‘nuclear terrorism’
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh April 13, 2021 14:05
TEHRAN/JEDDAH: Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday Tehran’s decision to boost uranium enrichment to 60 percent was a response to Israel’s “nuclear terrorism,” three days after an attack on its Natanz nuclear facility.

“Enabling IR-6 (centrifuges) at Natanz today, or bringing enrichment to 60 percent: this is the response to your malice,” Rouhani said in televised remarks. “What you did was nuclear terrorism. What we do is legal.”

The new move casts a cloud over talks in Vienna aimed at reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, after former US President Donald Trump abandoned it three years ago.

Enriching uranium to 60 percent from Iran’s current 20 percent would take the fissile material closer to the 90 percent required to make a nuclear bomb. Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi also said it would activate 1,000 advanced centrifuge machines at Natanz, which was crippled on Sunday by an explosion that knocked out its power supply. Israel’s Mossad spy agency is thought to have been behind the attack.

The blast at the underground Natanz plant was a “very bad gamble” that would boost Tehran’s leverage in the talks to salvage the nuclear deal, which resume on Thursday in Vienna, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

“I assure you that in the near future more advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges will be placed in the Natanz facility,” he said.

The Vienna talks began last week, when Iran and other signatories to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) held what they described as “constructive” discussions about salvaging the deal, which collapsed when Trump reimposed economic sanctions on Tehran and Iran began breaching its limits on uranium enrichment.

Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, has said he will ease sanctions when Iran returns to compliance with the deal. Iran insists sanctions must be lifted first. In addition, Israel and US allies in the Gulf oppose any revived agreement that does not address Iran’s ballistic missile program and its regional meddling through proxy militias in Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere.

The JCPOA had capped the level of purity to which Iran can enrich uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, at 3.6 percent, far below the 90 percent needed for bomb-grade material.

Iran in recent months has raised enrichment to 20 percent purity, a level at which uranium is considered to be highly enriched and is a significant step toward weapons grade. Civilian nuclear power plants, which Iran claims are its only objective, only require enrichment to between 3 percent and 5 percent.

The biggest obstacle to producing nuclear weapons is accumulating sufficient quantities of fissile material, either 90 percent enriched uranium or plutonium, for the core of a bomb. Western intelligence services believe Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons program that was suspended in 2003.

Antichrist Accuses Parties of Undermining Security in IraqBaghdad – Asharq Al-Awsat

Sadr Accuses Parties of Undermining Security in Iraq
Baghdad – Asharq Al-Awsat

A number of outlaw militias continue to launch missiles in Iraq, especially targeting the Green Zone, trying to threaten security in the country to delay or prevent elections and prolong the US troops’ presence, according to the leader of Sadrist movement.

Muqtada al-Sadr pointed out in his last tweet that no one knows if these are the same groups that launched attacks in the past or new parties are now involved in the incidents.

He indicated that the attackers want to prove the effectiveness of their missiles and their ability to attack farther targets.

The aim of the launch is not to hit the target, because that would completely change the rules of engagement. Rather, the goal is to remind the target of their existence, according to Sadr.

The only time armed factions were able to approach the US embassy in the heart of Baghdad, was at the end of 2019 when they tried to storm the Green Zone.

In response, the US launched a drone attack against the commander of al-Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad airport. The missile also killed the leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was receiving Soleimani.

Sadr accused some parties of wanting to disturb the security for many reasons, notably delaying or canceling the elections, and prolonging the presence of the occupying forces.

He called for a comprehensive peace without weapons or violence and foreign agendas, indicating that “Iraq needs peace.”

The presence of US troops for another period justifies the presence of the militia, which usually launches a few missiles now and then.

MP of Saeroon, of the Sadrist movement, Salam al-Shammari, confirmed the movement and the bloc’s refusal to make Iraq an arena for settling regional and international scores.

Shammari asserted that the Iraqi people want to live in peace and security, stressing the need for diplomacy to highlight the role of Iraq as an effective force, without allowing any state to interfere in its domestic affairs.

Bolstering Iron Dome, IDF threatens harsh response outside the Temple Walls: Revelation 11

Bolstering Iron Dome, IDF threatens harsh response to Gaza rockets

Security cabinet meets after south battered by multiple barrages overnight and Jerusalem clashes resume; army chief cancels U.S. trip to monitor situation; ‘I have ordered preparations for any scenario,’ says Netanyahu

Yoav Zitun, Itamar Eichner| Updated: 04.24.21 , 20:02 nullThe IDF decided Saturday to reinforce the Iron Dome missile defense system located across southern Israel, after the communities close to the Gaza Strip border were pounded by dozens of rockets from the Palestinian enclave overnight. A source in Jerusalem, meanwhile, warned that “Israel will respond severely to rocket fire from Gaza.”

While the Hamas terror group that controls Gaza has refrained from allowing rocket fire on communities that are not adjacent to the Strip, the IDF fears that if the rocket barrages continue, they could target areas further away from the border.Despite the concerns over further escalation, the IDF decided not to reinforce the Gaza Division, whose troops secure the area of the Gaza-Israel border fence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convened the security cabinet for a rare Saturday meeting, after the nightlong barrages and as clashes between Arab protesters and police continued in Jerusalem.

Hamas urges Gaza terrorists to prepare missiles for attacks on Israel: Revelation 11

Hamas urges Gaza terrorists to prepare missiles for attacks on Israel
Terror group urges armed factions to “keep the finger on the trigger by preparing the missiles and training them on the enemy’s bastions and essential military installations.”

(April 25, 2021 / Israel Hayom)
The Hamas terrorist group on Sunday called on the various Islamic factions in the Gaza Strip to prepare for a potential flareup with Israel, amid renewed tensions in Jerusalem and southern Israel.

The various armed groups in Gaza should “close ranks … and continue to gather in the Old City of Jerusalem and preserve the prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Hamas said in a statement.

The terror group went on to praise the factions for “coping with the oppressive Zionist regime through determination” and added that they must “keep the finger on the trigger by preparing the missiles and training them on the enemy’s bastions and essential military installations.”

The statement comes in the wake of clashes in Jerusalem between Jewish and Arab protesters over the past several days and amid renewed rocket fire on Israeli communities in southern Israel.

The statement went on to call on the factions to “reach the Al-Aqsa Mosque and hold prayers in front of the military checkpoints that are preventing entry to Jerusalem. You must hold a presence all over Palestine during the night and make sure the settlers don’t infiltrate. We must confuse the Zionists.”

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.