In Jordan, Al Ghad has been issuing an interesting analysis regarding the recent Syrian crisis. The following lines are a translation of the most relevant part.
The press has been talking a lot about a raid on the Syrian missile industry that was cooperating with North Korea and other times, they say that the raid was aimed at nuclear research site in the primitive stages of the process. For the American media so far, the rumors are feeding the press. Of course sometimes rumors are close to the truth. That does not mean that North Korea military experts from diverse disciplines are not present in Syria. But it means that they are not, or at least not in the coming years able to enable Syria's possession of nuclear capability, military or peaceful, or any production. But they are likely to help the Syrian army in developing medium and long-range ballistic missiles, known in the whole world to be a skill in which North Korea excels.
The task of North Koreans military experts is likely to be one of the two. The first, improvements to rockets and medium-range missiles owned by the Syrian army, is very essential in the arsenal of Syria and the Arabs in general because of their ability to overcome Israeli superiority. The second option for the cooperation with Syrians experts would be reaching conventional explosives. It can provide non-traditional materials including weapons of mass destruction, despite not being nuclear, and this type of material is known to be available in Syria.
Source: Al Ghad
Iranian Daily: 'The Intelligence That the West Currently Has on Iran's Nuclear Program is Limited to the Sites Accessible to IAEA Inspectors – And More Than That They Do Not Know'
Against the backdrop of the increasing threat of a possible attack on Iran, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Ali J'afari warned the countries in the region against permitting the U.S. to attack Iran from its territory, saying "We will pay you back, and this is only natural."
In addition, the conservative Iranian daily Kayhan, which is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, hinted that Iran had not yet revealed all its nuclear facilities, and maintained that the West does not have all the intelligence information that it needs to completely destroy Iran's nuclear program.
The following are the highlights of the Kayhan article:
"Is a new war on the way?... It seems that there is a need to precisely clarify, once and for all, why [the U.S.] cannot launch a war on Iran... All the questions and intelligence ambiguities that are facing the U.S.... make any discussion of [the U.S.'s] preparedness for an attack on Iran a joke, at best.
"The important questions are: How wide is the gap between the exact point to which Iran's nuclear program has progressed and what the Americans perceive to be the point of no return[?]... The intelligence that the West currently has on Iran's nuclear program is limited to the sites accessible to IAEA inspectors, and more than that they do not know... Is the [total] number of Iran's nuclear facilities [really] limited to those facilities that have been reported - so that America can be certain that by destroying them it will destroy Iran's entire nuclear program, or at least set it back for a very long time?...
"Iran declares that it will consider to be an enemy any country that places its territory at the disposal of the Americans so that they can attack [Iran]... Iran's strategic facilities are scattered across the breadth of Iran, and are completely camouflaged... "
Source: MEMRI
Saudis worried Iran nuke issue headed to “confrontation”
27 September 2007
NEW YORK - Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said here Wednesday that Iran’s standoff with Western powers over its nuclear program is heading toward a “confrontation.”
Saudi Prince Saud Al Faisal met in New York with other Gulf foreign ministers as well as the chief diplomats of Jordan and Egypt, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“We talked certainly about Iran with the Secretary Rice,” Prince Saud told reporters.
“Definitely what we are seeing is a confrontation in the making,” the prince said.
“And we have pressed in our mutual discussions with the Iranians the question on them: “Why such a precipitous move toward confrontation, what is your intent in this?’ And their answer was that they are not looking for confrontation or building nuclear weapons.”
He said Saudi Arabia is “very concerned” about Iran’s nuclear program, which Western powers charge is a cover for building an atomic bomb. Tehran rejects the charge, saying it only seeks to produce energy.
Prince Saud said Tehran must prove its program is peaceful.
“We hope that, if anything, that this will be settled through negotiations,” he said. “The region is volatile and a conflict in that region is the most dangerous thing to conceive and therefore we hope it can be solved diplomatically.”
Source: Khaleej Times
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