Iran Cuts Oil to Six EU Countries

Source: Telegraph

Iranian state TV says Tehran has cut oil exports to six European countries in response to European Union sanctions, which include a boycott of new oil contracts with Iran.

No details were immediately made available on the Press TV report on Wednesday, including which six nations were affected by the decision.

The move comes days after Iran's oil minister, Rostam Qassemi, said Tehran could cut off oil exports to "hostile" European nations as tensions rise over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

Iran argues that the EU oil embargo will not cripple its economy, claiming that the country already has identified new customers. European sales account for about 18 percent of Iran's total crude exports.

State television reported earlier on Wednesday that Iran has made advances in its nuclear programme, building new uranium enrichment centrifuges and producing its own nuclear reactor fuel plates.

The announcement, to be confirmed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad later on Wednesday, was likely to further unsettle the United States and allies who believe Iran is also forging ahead with atomic weapon development.

Iran has developed "4th generation centrifuges" made of carbon fibre that are "speedier, produce less waste and occupy less space" as they spin at supersonic speeds to purify uranium, state television reported, citing Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation. 

UK Gears Up for Iran Face Off

Source: PressTV

UK Defense Secretary Philip Hammond says Britain could send military reinforcements to the Persian Gulf in the wake of a military confrontation with Iran.

Speaking at a press conference in London on Tuesday, he said two British and French warships and the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln had entered the Persian Gulf on Sunday. 

Hammond added that the decision to send British HMS Argyll sent a "clear signal" to Tehran, The Telegraph reported. 

When asked if more resources could be sent, Hammond said, "The UK has a contingent capability to reinforce that presence should at any time it be considered necessary to do so." 

UK defense ministry declined to offer further details on what assets and personnel are currently in the Persian Gulf. 

Anti-Iran measures and war rhetoric provoked by the United States and its Western allies are aimed to deny Iran's right of having peaceful nuclear program. 

Iran, as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has the legal right to develop nuclear capability for civilian purposes. 

Iran's nuclear facilities are under the constant surveillance of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) cameras. The agency's inspectors have repeatedly traveled to Iran and inspected the country's nuclear sites and held talks with officials at the sites. A high-ranking delegation of IAEA negotiators is also scheduled to visit Iran on Saturday, January 28. 

Information obtained by the IAEA inspectors during visits to Iran's nuclear sites has been abused, and the leakage of confidential information by the UN nuclear agency to the Western countries and the Israeli regime has led to all the recent assassination attempts against Iranian nuclear scientists. 

Vladimir Putin Accuses Hillary Clinton of Inciting Protests

Source: The Telegraph
Andrew Osborn 

Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating public unrest on Russia’s streets after last Sunday’s disputed parliamentary election in a Cold War-style outburst certain to damage US-Russia relations. 

In his first comments on three days of anti-Kremlin protests, the Russian prime minister alleged that Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, had deliberately encouraged his political opponents to take to the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“She sent a signal to some activists inside the country,” Mr Putin told a meeting of his supporters. “They got the message and started active work with the support of the US state department.”

Mrs Clinton angered the Kremlin after she declared that the vote, which international observers said was riddled with fraud, was neither free nor fair.

But Mr Putin accused Mrs Clinton of rushing to conclusions before the facts were all in.

He said: “I watched the reaction of our American partners. The first thing that the secretary of state said was that the elections were dishonest and unfair even though she had not even received material from the election monitors at that stage.” 

Double Standards: US Condemns Attack On British Embasy In Iran

Source: Prison Planet
Kurt Nimmo

The United States has condemned the storming of the British embassy in Iran. Obama’s press secretary issued the following statement:

The United States condemns in the strongest terms the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran. Iran has a responsibility to protect the diplomatic missions present in its country and the personnel stationed at them. We urge Iran to fully respect its international obligations, to condemn the incident, to prosecute the offenders, and to ensure that no further such incidents take place either at the British Embassy or any other mission in Iran. Our State Department is in close contact with the British government and we stand ready to support our allies at this difficult time.

Iran has reportedly reacted to the storming of the embassy in Tehran by arresting a number of protesters. The Iran foreign ministry has issued a statement saying it regrets the attack and that it is committed to the safety of diplomats. 

British officials had earlier talked with the Iranian charge in London and urged Iranian authorities to “act with utmost urgency to ensure the situation is brought under control and to protect our diplomatic compound, as they are obliged to do under international law,” according to a report posted on The Telegraph website. 

International law, however, is only followed by Britain and the United States when politically advantageous. 

For instance, the U.S. violated international law in 2007 when it raided the Iranian Liaison Office in Arbil, Iraq, which was at the time in the process of becoming accredited as an officially recognized consulate. 

The U.S. insisted the office was being used by Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a local headquarters. However, both Iranian and Kurdish Autonomous Region officials said it was a diplomatic mission in the city of Arbil located in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Following the raid, the U.S. illegally detained a number of Iranian diplomats for a period of two and a half years. It had kidnapped the officials after failing to grab the deputy head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Mohammed Jafari, and chief of intelligence of the IRGC, General Manuchehr Frouzandeh. Both were on an official visit to Iraq in an effort to improve bilateral security. They met the Iraqi president Jalal Talabani. 

Syrian Baath Party Builiding 'Hit By Rockets'

Source: London Telegraph
Josie Ensor

Syrian Army defectors say they launched a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a Baath Party building in Damascus on Sunday, in the first insurgent attack inside the Syrian capital since the uprising began. 

Witnesses reported hearing two explosions before seeing smoke rising and fire trucks rushing to the scene early this morning.

It is thought the attack was carried out just before dawn when the building was mostly empty. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Thabet Salem, a journalist who lives close the party building, told Al Jazeera: "This is a clear-cut escalation of what's going on ... It will bring us into a dangerous phase."

The Free Syrian Army is a rag-tag group of defectors who have taken up arms against state security forces. Last week they claimed responsibility for an attack on an air force intelligence base on the outskirts of Damascus.

The Arab League today rejected amendments proposed by Syria to a peace plan to end the crisis in the country, which has so far claimed the lives of at least 3,500 people.

Flying in the face of the League's peace plan, a defiant President Bashar Assad said over the weekend he was prepared to fight and die for Syria if faced with foreign intervention, while calls for an end to the government crackdown seemed to have fallen on deaf ears, as violence overnight showed no sign of abating.

Among the dead from Saturday were four intelligence agents killed by gunmen who raked their car with gunfire, and two defecting soldiers who died in clashes with regular troops in the central town of Shayzar, human rights campaigners said.

With rebel troops inflicting mounting losses on the regular army, Turkey and the United States both raised the spectre of civil war and Russia called for restraint.

Israel Refuses to Tell US its Iran Intentions

Source: The Telegraph
Adrian Blomfield
  

Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capabilities, raising fears that it may be planning a go-it-alone attack as early as next summer. 

The US leader was rebuffed last month when he demanded private guarantees that no strike would go ahead without White House notification, suggesting Israel no longer plans to "seek Washington's permission", sources said. The disclosure, made by insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America's most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hawkish prime minister, comes amid concerns that Iran's continuing progress towards nuclear weapons capability means the Jewish state has all but lost hope for a diplomatic solution.

On Tuesday, UN weapons inspectors released their most damning report to date into Iran's nuclear activities, saying for the first time that the Islamic republic appeared to be building a nuclear weapon. It was with that grave possiblity in mind that Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, flew into Israel last month on what was ostensibly a routine trip.

Officially, his brief was restricted to the Middle East peace process, but the most important part of his mission was a private meeting with Mr Netanyahu and the defence minister, Ehud Barak. Once all but a handful of trusted staff had left the room, Mr Panetta conveyed an urgent message from Barack Obama. The president, Mr Panetta said, wanted an unshakable guarantee that Israel would not carry out a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear installations without first seeking Washington's clearance.

The two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States.

"They did not suggest that military action was being planned or was imminent, but neither did they give any assurances that Israel would first seek Washington's permission, or even inform the White House in advance that a mission was underway," one said. 

Alarmed by Mr Netanyahu's noncommittal response, Mr Obama reportedly ordered the US intelligence services to step up monitoring of Israel to glean clues of its intentions. 

World's Most Powerful Laser to Tear Apart the Vacuum of Space

Source: The Telegraph
Richard Gray
  

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain as part major new scientific project that aims to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our universe. 

Due to follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider, the latest "big science" experiment being proposed by physicists will see the world's most powerful laser being constructed.

Capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it would be equivalent to the power received by the Earth from the sun focused onto a speck smaller than a tip of a pin, scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space – the vacuum. 

Contrary to popular belief, a vacuum is not devoid of material but in fact fizzles with tiny mysterious particles that pop in and out of existence, but at speeds so fast that no one has been able to prove they exist. 

The Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would produce a laser so intense that scientists say it would allow them to reveal these particles for the first time by pulling this vacuum "fabric" apart.

They also believe it could even allow them to prove whether extra-dimensions exist.

Imran Khan Leads 100,000 Rally Against Pakistan's US Alliance

Source: The Telegraph

Khan, 58, entered politics 15 years ago when he founded Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or the Movement for Justice Party, but up to now he has struggled to translate his fame into votes.

The rally in the eastern city of Lahore indicated his message may have found new resonance at a time when Pakistanis are fed up with the country's chronic insecurity and economic malaise.

"I have come here to register my hatred against this corrupt system," said 29-year-old Nadeem Iqbal, who attended the rally.

A poll conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center in June found Khan, the captain of Pakistan's 1992 world champion cricket team, to be the most popular political figure in the country.

He has been especially critical of U.S. drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's rugged tribal region along the Afghan border. The latest suspected strike killed six alleged militants on Sunday. Khan has argued that Pakistan's alliance with the U.S. is the main reason Pakistan is facing a home-grown Taliban insurgency.

"Our leaders owned this war on terror for the sake of dollars," Khan told the crowd assembled around the country's most important national monument, the Minar-e-Pakistan. "Let me curse you. You sold out the blood of innocent people."

New World Next Week - World Peace, British Heat, God's Banksters

Source: Corbett Report and Media Monarchy

Welcome back to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com – the video series from
Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most
important developments in alternative news and open source
intelligence. This week: