3/23/ War Events

Homs comes under fire as pressure on Assad mounts

March 23 - Amateur video appears to show heavy gunfire and explosions in Syrian cities as the European Union turns up the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad's government. Reuters is unable to independently verify the content of this video, which has been obtained from a social media website. Rough Cut

Iran not an immediate nuclear threat, intel shows....Just a Month Ago They were convinced IRAN WAS a Nuclear Threat...Make up your mind

(Reuters) - The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.

Those conclusions, drawn from extensive interviews with current and former U.S. and European officials with access to intelligence on Iran, contrast starkly with the heated debate surrounding a possible Israeli strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities.

"They're keeping the soup warm but they are not cooking it," a U.S. administration official said.

Reuters has learned that in late 2006 or early 2007, U.S. intelligence intercepted telephone and email communications in which Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading figure in Iran's nuclear program, and other scientists complained that the weaponization program had been stopped.

That led to a bombshell conclusion in a controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate: American spy agencies had "high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003.

Current and former U.S. officials say they are confident that Iran has no secret uranium-enrichment site outside the purview of U.N. nuclear inspections. Read More

Scientist: North Korea likely has more nuclear facilities

(CNN) -- North Korea has more uranium enrichment facilities than it has admitted to previously, a U.S. scientist charged Thursday.

Prof. Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University told CNN his conclusion is based on his study of recent satellite images and other research, and what he saw when he was invited by North Korea to visit its Yongbyon nuclear power plant in 2010 to see its secret uranium enrichment program.

"When I saw the sophistication and scale of that uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon in a building that I had been in before that housed something totally different, it was clear that they started the program long before the time that they had said, which was April 2009. So my conclusion was, they had to have another site someplace else," said Hecker.

The Stanford University scientist visited Yongbyon in November, 2010, and reported that he saw a facility that housed 2,000 centrifuges and was producing low-enriched uranium. It could, however, he wrote then, "be readily converted to produce highly-enriched uranium (HEU) bomb fuel." Read More

Japan readies North Korea missile defense

Tokyo (CNN) -- The Japanese defense minister said Friday that he had ordered the country's military to prepare a missile defense system ahead of a planned rocket launch by North Korea next month.

North Korea said last week that it is planning to carry out a rocket-powered satellite launch between April 12 and 16, alarming countries around the region.

South Korea has said it considers the satellite launch an attempt to develop a nuclear-armed missile, while the United States has warned the move would jeopardize a food-aid agreement reached with Pyongyang in early March.

Naoki Tanaka, the Japanese defense minister, said at a news conference Friday that he had requested that officials get ready for the deployment of anti-missile PAC3 and Eagis ships ahead of the launch.

The Japanese government is also considering deploying a PAC3 missile defense system in Okinawa. Tanaka said he would visit Okinawa soon in preparation for such a move. Read More