Russia plans land-based intermediate missiles in two years
"U.S., And Now Russia, Announce Plans To Withdraw From Nuclear Arms Control Treaty"
Defence minister instructs military to develop missiles following collapse of US-Russia nuclear weapons treaty
Andrew Roth in Moscow
Tue 5 Feb 2019 13.02 EST
Sergei Shoigu holds video conference meeting at the Russian defence ministry. Photograph: Alexei Yereshko/TASS
Russia’s defence minister has called on his country’s military to develop land-based intermediate-range missiles within two years.
In instructions to his ministry on Tuesday, Sergei Shoigu called on the military to adapt existing technology to develop a land-based cruise missile and hypersonic missile that would previously have been banned by the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty.
The United States and Russia announced they would halt their participation in the treaty last week.
Although Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has said that Moscow should not participate in a new arms race with Washington, Russia has now signalled it will develop new land-based missiles as quickly and at as low a cost as possible.
Shoigu on Tuesday told his ministry to develop the new weapons by adapting existing missiles to be launched from land. The INF specifically limited land-based missiles, a condition that Russia has claimed was advantageous to the United States.
“Ground-launched modifications of sea- and air-launched missiles will significantly cut the production period of new missile systems and reduce the production budget,” Shoigu said, according to remarks carried by Russian state news agencies.
They include a nuclear-capable cruise missile called Kalibr, which Russia has launched in repeated naval strikes at Syria since 2015. The missile, which has an estimated range of at least 2,500km (1,500 miles), could reach most of continental Europe and the UK if stationed in western Russia or the Kaliningrad region. Russian news agencies have reported that the country is working on an extended-range version that could travel 4,500km (2,800 miles).
Russia earlier this week said it would not station intermediate-range weapons in Europe as long as it did not see similar steps by the United States.
Shoigu said that the country’s new land-based intermediate-range missiles should also incorporate hypersonic technology – which allows missiles to travel at more than five times the speed of sound. Russia revealed it was developing several hypersonic missile systems last year.
“We must design a ground-launched modification of the sea-launched long-range Kalibr cruise missile system, which has proven its worth in Syria, in 2019-2020,” Shoigu told his ministry during a teleconference on Tuesday. “We also must create a ground-launched long-range hypersonic missile system within the same period of time.”
The INF treaty, concluded in the final years of the cold war, banned the deployment of short and medium-range missiles with a range of 500km to 5,500km by both countries. The pact is credited with helping to keep nuclear-capable missiles out of Europe .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/europe-news .
Washington exited the treaty because it said that Russia had developed a cruise missile with greater than 500km range, an accusation that Russia has denied.
The Trump-Bolton arms race is on. The corrupt, transactional president no doubt has glory tingles and money jingles where he feels the most.
More than ever now what sort of leadership would be good for America after Trump?
Transactual Versus Transformational Leadership February 28, 2015 / eloquentblogging [...] Transactional leaders work on the premise of providing rewards for accomplishing tasks. This type of leadership style only provides limited motivation.
Transformational leaders change members’ values and motivate them to perform beyond expectations. This type of leadership style provides a more lasting mode of motivation.
Iran nuclear deal: what has Tehran said and what happens next?
"U.S., And Now Russia, Announce Plans To Withdraw From Nuclear Arms Control Treaty"
Hassan Rouhani’s move to alter commitments amid crippling US sanctions outlined
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
Wed 8 May 2019 09.38 EDT Last modified on Wed 8 May 2019 10.34 EDT
Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani (centre at rear) in a cabinet meeting 8 May, in Tehran, Iran. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
What has Iran announced?
Iran .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran .. has suspended commitments it made under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, which lifted sanctions on the country in exchange for limits on Tehran’s nuclear programme. The deal was reached after years of negotiations.
Hassan Rouhani .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/hassan-rouhani , president of Iran, said Tehran would hang on to its stocks of excess enriched uranium and heavy water instead of exporting them. He threatened to resume enriching uranium above a limit set out in the deal unless there was progress on sanctions relief.
In theory, uranium enriched to much higher levels of purity than Iran’s current stocks could be used as the fissile core of a nuclear weapon, while heavy water is a source of plutonium, which can be used to produce a warhead.
Why has Iran done this now?
Iran is suffering under crippling sanctions restored by the US after Donald Trump .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump .. withdrew from the nuclear deal last year. The Iranian rial, which traded at 32,000 to $1 at the time of the accord, traded on Wednesday at 153,500.
Tehran rightly said the deal had been premised on ending Iran’s economic isolation in exchange for strict and verified limitations on its nuclear activities. By re-imposing sanctions with extraterritorial effects the US has scared companies and banks around the world into reducing, ceasing or not starting business with Iranian counterparts.
The economic crisis has increased internal pressure on Rouhani, a relative moderate within Iran’s Shia theocracy, to take some sort of counter action. His policy of waiting for Trump to be succeeded by a nuclear deal-friendly Democrat as US president in 18 months’ time was failing, and he will hope that he is now shielded from criticism from hardliners who have long maintained that Iran gave up too much in the nuclear deal.
The Iranians felt they had given the Europeans ample time to come up with a mechanism that would foster trade between the EU and Iran immunised from the threat of American sanctions.
Does this spell the end of the agreement?
Not yet. The Iranians have set out a timetable for a staged withdrawal from the agreement dependent upon the actions of the EU. “This surgery is to save the [deal] not destroy it,” Rouhani said. He has also said the actions are justifiable under articles of the deal which set out the countermeasures party could take if another party was clearly in breach of their obligations.
Iran has not done anything to restrict UN inspection of its compliance or to increase research on advanced centrifuges – two steps that might be seen as EU red lines.
What will the Americans do?
The White House will be delighted that its maximum pressure campaign has finally made the Iranians crack. The US will use this as a lever to prise the EU away from the agreement, or at least to demand that the EU impose sanctions of its own. Speculation mounts that some Washington figures, such as John Bolton, the national security adviser, is trying to assemble a case for war with Tehran as he did against Iraq in 2002. If there is a single over-riding American foreign policy at present it is hostility to Iran.
Where does the EU stand?
Europe collectively has heavily invested in diplomacy with Iran and regards the nuclear deal as the high-water mark of multilateralism. Washington’s European allies say Trump’s repudiation of the deal weakens the pragmatic wing of Iran’s leadership and plays into the hands of hardliners. It means the public in Iran see no economic benefits from Rouhani’s efforts to open the country. The EU has long had doubts about Tehran’s missile programme, and activities in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, but they are viewed separately from the nuclear agreement.
Is there a resolution?
It is not evident. Europe has been served notice by Tehran that it must deliver on its commitments to help the Iranian economy, but given the dollar-dominated global economy EU banks and firms are never going to choose trading with Iran over trading with the US, which is the choice the US treasury is placing before them.
The French may make calls for greater European economic sovereignty, but changing the dollar’s dominance is a work of two decades and not two months, the time-frame set by Rouhani.
U.S. issues new sanctions against Iran on anniversary of Trump’s withdrawal from nuclear deal
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, right, arrives with British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to speak at Lancaster House in London on Wednesday. (Hannah Mckay/Reuters)
By Carol Morello May 8 at 3:56 PM
The Trump administration issued new sanctions against Iran on Wednesday targeting its metal exports, hours after the Iranian president threatened to start enriching more uranium if it doesn’t get relief from U.S. measures that are crippling its economy.
The new sanctions included in an executive order signed by President Trump apply to Iranian iron, steel, aluminum and copper.
The measure comes exactly one year after Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement that lifted U.S. and international sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. In the past year, the United States has designated nearly 1,000 Iranian individuals and entities for sanctions and is attempting to drive its oil revenue down to “zero.”
INSERT: 'No-clothes', Donald Trump, needs division and continual crisis leading to the next election.
The United States has said the sanctions will only be lifted if Iran fundamentally changes its behavior and character.
In the past year, Iran exported a total of $5.5 billion of products using the four targeted industrial metals, according to Iranian customs data analyzed by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The materials also are used in Iran’s ballistic missile program.
VIDEO - Pompeo, Hunt discuss Iran British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke on Iran's announcement it will stop complying with parts of a nuclear deal May 8. (Reuters)
In a statement, Trump said the newest sanctions target a sector that generates 10 percent of its export revenue.
“Tehran can expect further actions unless it fundamentally alters its conduct,” Trump said. “Since our exit from the Iran deal, which is broken beyond repair, the United States has put forward 12 conditions that offer the basis of a comprehensive agreement with Iran. I look forward to someday meeting with the leaders of Iran in order to work out an agreement and, very importantly, taking steps to give Iran the future it deserves.”
The new round of sanctions duplicate sanctions already in place and are likely to have little impact. Financial sanctions already bar some trade in iron, steel and aluminum for companies around the world.
Ryan Costello, policy director for the National Iranian American Council, said the administration’s policy of drying up any economic benefits for Iran explains why Tehran appears more willing to abandon the agreement, too.
“Sanctions are worse than they were before the nuclear deal,” he said. “This is just layer on layer of sanctions. The Trump administration is pretending it’s doing something productive, when it’s just driving Iran away from the negotiating table.”
VIDEO - Rouhani announces 'reduction not withdrawal' from Iran nuclear deal In a May 8 televised address, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country would stop complying with parts of the landmark nuclear deal. (Associated Press)
Rouhani said in a televised address Wednesday that Iran is preparing to keep its stockpiles of excess uranium and heavy water used in its nuclear reactors. Although he stopped short of announcing a complete withdrawal from the 2015 accord, he said Iran will resume the enrichment of high-grade uranium in 60 days unless more is done to improve economic conditions. Europe is caught between wanting Iran to keep its commitments under the agreement and not wanting to run afoul of U.S. sanctions.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has taken a hard-line position against the Iranian government, said the United States will be watching to see whether any steps Iran takes reduce the breakout time to amass enough material to build a nuclear weapon. Speaking at a news conference in London, Pompeo said the United States will work with Europeans “to ensure Iran has no pathway for a nuclear weapons system.”
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned of serious consequences if Iran breaks its commitments under the deal.
“So we urge the Iranians to think very long and hard before breaking that deal,” he said. “It is in no one’s interest. It is certainly not in their interest. Because the moment they go nuclear, Iran’s neighbors will as well.”
Some analysts fear the U.S. policy is counterproductive and even dangerous.
“One year after the President’s withdrawal, we are closer to military conflict with Iran, closer to Iran resuming nuclear activities, no closer to negotiations with Iran over its other dangerous activities, and further from our allies,” said Thomas Countryman, a former State Department official who now advises the group Foreign Policy for America. “This is winning?”
But U.S. officials say the policy is working, and insist the White House will maintain the pressure on Iran.
“We have a maximum economic pressure campaign that is designed to deny the regime the revenue it needs to conduct its foreign policy,” said Brian Hook, the diplomat in charge of countering Iran. “We are making Iran’s foreign policy prohibitively expensive.”
He said the administration is determined to prevent Iran from ever being able to acquire a nuclear weapon.
“America is never going to be held hostage to the Iranian regime’s nuclear blackmail,” he said.
Administration officials insist the economic pressure is doing its job and say the blame for Iran’s spiraling inflation and budget crisis lies in Tehran.
Tim Morrison, senior director for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Biodefense at the National Security Council, accused Iran of trying to blackmail Europe and urged European nations to join in pushing the country back to the negotiating table.
“Let us be clear: This is nothing less than nuclear blackmail of Europe,” he said.
Morrison, speaking at a conference organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., said Iran cannot he trusted with any nuclear capability and has no right to enrich uranium under the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
U.S. officials have said they have intelligence that Iran or its proxies may be planning an attack on U.S. forces in the region, but they have provided few details.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee hearing Wednesday, acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan described the intelligence as “very, very credible.”
Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon sent messages to Iran to make sure it was clear “that we understood the threat, and were postured to respond to the threat.”
Dunford said he asked Shanahan to accelerate the movement of USS Abraham Lincoln to the Persian Gulf “so that there were would be no ambiguity about our preparedness to respond to any threat to our people or partners in the region.”
William Booth in London and Paul Sonne and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.
WHAT TUCKER CARLSON DIDN'T TELL FOX VIEWERS By Max Boot April 11 at 12:39 PM [...] He claimed: “In the years since 9/11, Max Boot has demanded military intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and North Korea and likely many other places. He has called for the U.S. to topple the Saudi monarchy.” I have never called for the United States to topple the Saudi monarchy or to attack North Korea — I have, in fact, warned against a strike on North Korea. I did in the past advocate some kind of military action in a few other countries (e.g., a no-fly zone over Syria), but more recently I have supported the Iran nuclear deal and argued that we need to accept a Bashar al-Assad victory in Syria. What Carlson did not mention was that, just like me, he supported the Iraq War before turning against it. A big omission, that. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148186458
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