China hails bilateral ties with Iran

Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhai Jun says he believes political cooperation between his country and the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to grow.

Zhai Jun said on Monday that the leaders of the two nations have been actively involved in a constant trust-building process, IRNA reported. 

Meeting with Iran's Ambassador to China Mehdi Safari in Beijing, the Chinese official praised Iran's remarkable achievements over the past three decades since the victory of the Islamic revolution. 

The Iranian ambassador also confirmed that the trade volume between the two sides exceeded $30 billion in 2010 and expressed optimism that the figure would reach $50 billion by the end of the current year. 

Earlier in February, Chairman of the Sino-Iranian Chamber of Commerce Asadollah Asgaroladi said the volume of Iran's trade with China has reached $38 billion, up from $7 billion 10 years ago. 

He said the direct trade between the two countries currently stands at $29 billion, a figure that would reach $38 billion taking into account indirect Iran-China trade through the UAE, Afghanistan and Pakistan.


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FROM URUKNET/ AP

Iranian nuclear scientist killed in bomb attack

November 29, 2010

Motorbike-riding bombers killed a leading Iranian nuclear scientist and wounded another by planting explosives on their cars as they drove to work today.

State TV swiftly blamed Israel for the attacks. At least two other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in recent years in what Iran has said is part of a covert attempt by the West to damage its controversial nuclear programme.

Head of the country's nuclear operation Ali Akbar Salehi, issued a stern warning as he rushed to hospital to see the surviving scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi.

"Don't play with fire. The patience of the Iranian nation has limits. If it runs out of patience, bad consequences will await enemies," he said.

Mr Salehi, one of Iran's vice presidents, was apparently referring to Israel and the US, which Iran alleges are trying to damage its nuclear programme.

Tehran's uranium enrichment program is at the centre of a bitter row between Iran on one side and the US and its allies on the other. Uranium enrichment is a process that can be used to produce both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.


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US to spend $85bn on nuclear complex

Fri Nov 19, 2010 10:32PM

A US Titan nuclear missile (file photo)The US plans to allocate more than $85 billion during the next decade to modernize its nuclear weapons complex, according to the White House.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), tasked with ensuring the safety and reliability of the US nuclear weapons stockpile, lost 20 percent of its purchasing power, UPI reported.

The NNSA said it is committed to modernizing the country's nuclear weapons and that it has the backing of the White House.

US president Barack Obama has called for $7 billion to be made available to fund the NNSA by 2011, which would represent close to a 10 percent increase from 2010.

In addition to the funding Obama is seeking, the NNSA would be funded with another $600 million in 2012.

The White House said $85 billion is to be made available to the NNSA in the coming decade, which would enable the agency to comprehensively update the country's nuclear arsenal.

Earlier this year, US lawmakers, made a proposal to allocate $80.9 billion to the NNSA. The White House plan calls $4.1 billion more than the proposal of Congress.

"This level of funding is unprecedented since the end of the Cold War," the White House said in a statement.


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FROM WIRED SHILLS

Chemical Weapons, Iranian Agents and Massive Death Tolls Exposed in WikiLeaks’ Iraq Docs


It Was Iran’s War, Too

No one would accuse WikiLeaks of being pro-war. Not when the transparency group titled its single most famous leak “Collateral Murder.” Not when its founder, Julian Assange, said that its trove of reports from the Afghan conflict suggested evidence for thousands of American “war crimes.”

So it’s more than a little ironic that, with its newest document dump from the Iraq campaign, WikiLeaks may have just bolstered one of the Bush administration’s most controversial claims about the Iraq war: that Iran supplied many of the Iraq insurgency’s deadliest weapons and worked hand-in-glove with some of its most lethal militias.

The documents indicate that Iran was a major combatant in the Iraq war, as its elite Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite insurgents and imported deadly weapons like the shape-charged Explosively Formed Projectile bombs into Iraq for use against civilians, Sunni militants and U.S. troops.

A report from 2006 claims “neuroparalytic” chemical weapons from Iran were smuggled into Iraq. (It’s one of many, many documents recounting WMD efforts in Iraq.) Others indicate that Iran flooded Iraq with guns and rockets, including the Misagh-1 surface-to-air missile, .50 caliber rifles, rockets and much more.

As the New York Times observes, Iranian agents plotted to kidnap U.S. troops from out of their Humvees — something that occurred in Karbala in 2007, leaving five U.S. troops dead. (It’s still not totally clear if the Iranians were responsible.)

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