Russia Reactivates Arctic Military Presence; India fires nuclear-capable 'Agni V' missile

Developments around the world are making nations think their stand on the international plane. The American strength and its apparent ability to touch on any country it wishes is giving others the motivation to go tough militarily too. Russia has reactivated its presence in the Arctic by deploying its nuclear-powered ice breaking warships to the region.

Russia’s Defence Ministry officially announced return of Russia’s military to the Subarctic region. The statement was made to mark the arrival of a task group of 10 warships and support vessels to the western coast of Kotelny Island in the Novosibirsk (New Siberian Islands) Archipelago.

The task group is headed by Russia’s most powerful battleship and the flagship of the Northern Fleet, cruiser Peter the Great (Pyotr Veliky). The group is accompanied by four nuclear icebreakers facilitating the passage through areas with particularly thick ice.

“For the first time ever, all Russia’s nuclear surface ships – heavy nuclear missile cruiser Peter the Great and nuclear icebreakers Yamal, Vaigach, Taimyr and 50 Let Pobedy, were combined to perform a joint task,” Commander Admiral Viktor Chirkov told journalists.

Russia's first Defence Minister, Army General Arkady Bakhin said that Temp military airfield on Kotelny Island that was inactive for over 20 years will become operable in October, as An-72 and An-74 cargo planes will land there, bringing instruments and supplies for the reactivated Air Force base.

In the near future the airstrip will be modified to be able to receive heavy cargo planes such as Il-76 and An-22 Antey military jumbos. This will speed up reestablishing Russia’s military presence in the Arctic region, as the air connection will be regular, all-weather and all year around.

The task group left the port of Severomorsk and has already covered 2,000 nautical miles, crossing the Barents, Kara and Laptev seas. The region has been left unmanned militarily since the demise of the USSR. Now, Russia says it wants to take charge fully.

The simple theory of might is right. China itself has embarked on massive military developments which definitely is making the Asia-Pacific region look more like an upcoming theatre of war. America too has been bolstering its forces in Asia especially by radical increase in troops presence in the Philippines. It already has Seoul and Tokyo within its ambit.

India has conducted a second test firing of its nuclear-capable 'Agni-V' long-range ballistic missile, which boasts a strike range of over 5,000 kilometers – capable of reaching Beijing and much of Europe, The Indian Express reported.

The three-stage solid propellant missile was test-fired from Wheeler Island off the coast of Odisha on Sunday. The 'Agni-V' can carry a nuclear warhead of over 1 ton. India has been struggling to keep up with China's growing military might, and is eager to have a viable deterrent against its larger, nuclear-armed neighbour.

Russia Warns of Nuclear Disaster in Syria ahead of America's Military Push

A military strike on Syria could lead to a nuclear catastrophe if a missile were to hit a reactor containing radioactive uranium, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman warned. The remark comes as the US continues to push for a military strike on Syria. "If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic," Aleksandr Lukashevich said in a Wednesday statement.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to complete a risk evaluation as the US continues to seek support for military action. It asked the agency to “react swiftly” and carry out “an analysis of the risks linked to possible American strikes on the MNSR and other facilities in Syria.” Lukashevich stated that the region could be at risk of “contamination by highly enriched uranium and it would no longer be possible to account for nuclear material, its safety and control.” He added that such material could fall into the wrong hands.

The IAEA said that it is aware of the statement, but it is waiting for a formal request asking the agency to complete a risk evaluation. “We will consider the questions raised if we receive such a request," Reuters quoted an IAEA spokesperson as saying. The agency said in a report to member states last week that Syria had declared there was a “small amount of nuclear material” at the MNSR, a type of research reactor usually fuelled by highly enriched uranium.

Although this type of a reactor would not contain a lot of nuclear material, it would be enough to cause "a serious local radiation hazard" if the reactor was hit, nuclear expert Mark Hibbs from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Reuters. The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted on Wednesday to approve President Obama's plan to strike Syria in retaliation against the alleged use of chemical weapons by President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Should Congress move to approve the president’s request, the US could soon initiate a limited strike on Syria. On the other hand, Moscow needs convincing proof – not rumours - from UN experts that chemical weapons were used in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with AP and Channel 1 on Tuesday.

“We believe that at the very least we should wait for the results of the UN inspection commission in Syria,” Putin said. He added that so far there is no information regarding exactly which chemical agent was used in the attack in the Damascus suburb, or who was behind it.

RT

Snowden: United States and Israel created the Stuxnet Virus that attacked Iran

The Stuxnet virus that decimated Iranian nuclear facilities was created by the NSA and co-written by Israel, Edward Snowden has confirmed. The whistleblower added the NSA has a web of foreign partners who pay “marginal attention to human rights.”

In an interview with Jacob Applebaum published in German daily Der Spiegel on Monday, Snowden stated that the US and Israel were behind the computer worm. Stuxnet infiltrated Iranian nuclear facility networks in 2009-2010 and was used to change the speed of thousands of gas-spinning centrifuges, sabotaging nuclear research.  

Washington and Tel Aviv were thought to have been behind the cyber-attack, however, this was never confirmed by either government. “The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together,” Snowden told Applebaum in the interview that was carried out in May.

Snowden stressed that the National Security Agency (NSA) often cooperates with foreign partners through a special body known as the Foreign Affairs Directorate (FAD). Referring to Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, also known as the ‘Five Eye Partners,’ he said their practices often go further than those of the NSA.

In particular he flagged the system used by the UK’s General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), TEMPORA as one of the worst offenders. “TEMPORA is the signals intelligence community's first ‘full-take’ internet buffer that doesn't care about content type and pays only marginal attention to the Human Rights Act,” said Snowden.

The UK buffer is able to hold a vast quantity of internet data for up to three days, said the whistleblower. “You should never send information over British lines or British servers. Even the Queen’s ‘selfies’ with her lifeguards would be recorded, if they existed.”

While Snowden conceded that monitoring abroad had its limits and the NSA has to prioritize the information it collects, he stressed that monitoring on its own territory was “practically limitless.” Private enterprise is also involved in the NSA’s mass collating of internet data, but proving their complicity is very difficult.

“The names of the cooperating telecom companies are the crown jewels of the NSA... Generally you can say that multinationals with headquarters in the USA should not be trusted until they prove otherwise,” Snowden pointed out.

When asked about how one could avoid falling into the traps of NSA surveillance, Snowden said anyone who had been targeted “was just owned.” The analyst charged with following an individual receives a report every day, meaning the “target's machine doesn't belong to them anymore, it belongs to the US government.”

Snowden’s interviewer, 30-year-old Jacob Applebaum, has also fallen foul of US law enforcement in the past. Applebaum co-wrote a book with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange detailing tips on how to evade cyber-surveillance while surfing the web.

The book called ‘Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet’, was also co-written by Jeremie Zimmermann and Andy Muller-Maguhn. Assange invited his co-authors on to the Julian Assange show, which aired on RT last year in March, to discuss cyber resistance.

“Two of them, besides myself, have been targeted by law enforcement agencies as a result of their work to safeguard privacy and to keep governments accountable. Their words, and their stories, need to be heard,” Assange told the New York Times.

The members of the Cypherpunks movement shared their stories with Julian Assange whilst sitting down to discuss the problems of privacy, online communication and freedom on the internet.

US citizen Edward Snowden is believed to be eluding an extradition order to the US on charges of espionage in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Snowden has sent a number of applications for political asylum. Thus far Venezuela and Nicaragua have confirmed receipt of the applications, but are yet to grant asylum. However, Snowden is still unable to travel as his passport has been voided by the US authorities.

Russia Today

United States missile interceptor test ends in failure

Though the United States and Russia are showing interests in reducing the stock of destructive nuclear batteries, the decisions are not effective. The tones are still more like that of the predecessors; SALT1 and SALT2 as well as the STARTs.

The two 'pledges' but the consequent actions are always anti-pledges. Russia recently successfully tested a prototype ICBM with mammoth destructive capabilities which was antithetical to its reduction facade.

United States of course did not go to bed despite Obama's interest in engaging Russia. It is also advancing to prove that arms race has no end in sight. The latest test of a US missile interceptor system from a Southern California coastal base failed to destroy its target, the third such consecutive result for Boeing Co., according to the Defence Department.

In the test, target designed to emulate an incoming long-range ballistic missile was launched from the US Army's Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

The interceptor missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, though it failed to intercept its target. The US military has tested the ground-based defence system a total of 16 times, with eight confirmed instances of a successful interception, the last of which was reported in December of 2008.

The Pentagon has said that the latest test will not affect a decision to expand the missile defence system, which is in part aimed at North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. Defence secretary Chuck Hagel announced in March an additional 14 new anti-missile interceptor batteries at a cost of nearly $1 billion.

The North Korea and Iran debacle have been Washington's excuses to bolster its arsenal while Russia usually cites US expansion into its 'sphere of influence'; Georgia, Poland and Ukraine as reason to be security-conscious and not go to bed too on missiles' build-up.

Russia wants Nuclear Reduction from all Possessing Countries

Russia is trying to expand the coast and island of the nuclear states, away from the United States 'limited' acceptance of reality. The US is tactically interested in discussing with Moscow alone on reduction of nuclear missiles while Russia believes the reality has gone beyond the Cold War strategic balance.

The response of Russia to Barack Obama's proposal on the reduction of missiles in their nuclear arsenals is to tell the US to take note of the contemporary international order in nuclear distribution and arrangement.

Russia says it would discuss further strategic nuclear arms reduction if all countries possessing nuclear weapons were involved, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He added that this includes not only the five members of the “nuclear club”, but all nations with the nuclear capability. 

The comment came after US President Barack Obama suggested that Russia and the US scrap one third of their strategic nuclear arsenals and possibly dismantle tactical nuclear weapons. 

The US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea officially have atomic weapons at the moment, and Israel is widely believed to have a secret nuclear arsenal. Iran is speculated to be building its own though Tehran has strongly denied any interest in such missiles.

Obama-Putin agree to settle scores in Geneva. Obama to boost aid to Syria and Neighbours

After the two leaders; Putin and Obama, central from the outside to the conflict in Syria met, they made the pledge after a 2 hour meeting at the G8 summit to push the sides of the conflict to the negotiating table in Geneva.

“We have agreed to push the sides of the Syrian conflict to come to the negotiating table at the international Geneva conference,” Putin said.

“On some points, we still have a different stance, but we are united by an aspiration to prevent violence, to put an end to the growing number of victims, to solve the problem by peaceful means, including through negotiations at the international conference at Geneva,” the Russian President added.

President Obama also conceded that he has a “different perspective” on Syria than his Russian counterpart, but confirmed that both countries have a shared interest in stopping the violence and “securing chemical weapons” in Syria.

“We do have differing perspectives on the problem but we share an interest in reducing the violence, securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they're neither used nor are they subject to proliferation,” Obama said. “We want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible.”

President Obama is set to announce a further $300 million in new humanitarian aid to Syria, which will bring the total of US aid during the two-year civil war there to over $800 million. A little less than half of the new aid package will go to Syria itself, with the rest being sent to neighbouring countries harbouring Syrian refugees, the White House said on Monday.

The Obama administration had already declared that Assad’s government had crossed a red line when it looked like Assad was winning the war despite all efforts to pull him down. Obama claimed new classified evidence showed chemical weapons use by government forces. As a result, American officials went on the record supporting the idea of military aid to the Syrian insurgency.

US officials had already told Reuters that Washington was also reviewing the possibility of setting up a no-fly zone in Syria that would extend 40km into its territory and would be used as a safe haven for refugees and a platform to train rebels. Moscow spoke out against the US plan to aid the rebels, saying Kremlin officials were “unconvinced” by the US claim of evidence.

Apart from Syria, in the course of their nearly two-hour-long talks the presidents touched on a number of sensitive issues including Iran, nuclear security and the prevention of nuclear arms proliferation, as well as cyber security and cooperation in fighting terrorism.

“We spoke in detail about strategic security between the two countries and the world in general. I think that we have opportunities to move forward in the most sensitive areas,” Putin said.

Iran announces new Security-oriented 'space tracking centre'

The Iranian defence minister revealed that a new Iranian space monitoring centre will track orbiting objects. It is the latest of Iran's space programme claims, which include sending a monkey into orbit.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad praised the new centre as a benchmark in the country's space programme.

“This is a highly great achievement and we are among the few countries with such a centre and if we send a satellite into the space, we can receive its information in our country,” Ahmadinejad said in an address inaugurating the centre in Markazi province on Sunday.  He added that the "inauguration of this centre has brought us one step closer to the complete use of space."

Defence Minister General Ahmad Vahidi told reporters that the centre would mostly be used to monitor satellites passing overhead using radar, electro-optic and radio systems.

Iran already maintains a number of command and control stations around the country, and one inside the territory of its regional ally Syria.

The US has voiced fears that developments in space technology could bring Tehran closer to making long-range missiles. This is the main reason while it is targeting her and her oil industry with crippling sanctions to crumble her muscle to develop nuclear missiles.

Tehran has denied these claims, maintaining that the space programme is purely civilian-orientated. Of particular concern to Washington is Iran’s ambition to put more satellites into orbit, which Tehran says are aimed at monitoring earthquakes, improving security and increasing military surveillance.

Iran regularly boasts about its many technological advances. In March, the Aerospace Industries Organization claimed it sent a monkey into space aboard a Pioneer explorer rocket. The monkey allegedly returned to Earth alive after being sent into orbit at an altitude of 120 kilometers.

Iran has claimed it sent a number of smaller animals into space, including a rat, turtles and worms aboard a capsule carried by its Kavoshgar-3 rocket in 2010. The Director of the Iran Space Agency (ISA), Hamid Fazeli, hailed the mission as a huge success and said it was a prelude to sending a human into space.

South Africa gets waiver from Washington on Iranian Oil

United States has given South Africa a six-month waiver on purchase of Iranian oil in exchange for promise to reduce oil transactions. South Africa is one of the 10 countries with such waiver.

The US State Department on Wednesday renewed waivers on Iran sanctions for South Africa, China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Taiwan. Japan and 10 EU countries got waivers earlier this spring.

"The United States and the international community stand shoulder to shoulder in maintaining pressure on the Iranian regime until it fully addresses concerns about its nuclear programme," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.

The waivers, which the State Department calls exceptions mean that financial institutions in the consumer countries do not risk being cut off from the US financial system for the next six months.

Washington has adopted sanctions has the main focal point among the strategies meant to choke fund for Iran and its nuclear programme, which Western countries suspect seeks to develop the ability to make weapons. Iran insists the programme is for peaceful purposes.

State Department and Treasury officials have pushed consumer countries to "significantly reduce" their purchases of Iranian oil without defining the volumes that have to be cut.

US and EU sanctions more than halved Iran's oil shipments last year, helping to devalue the rial, the country's currency, and pushing up inflation.

This May the sanctions drove the Islamic Republic's crude exports to the lowest level in decades according to industry sources and tanker tracking data.

Despite the damage the sanctions have done to its economy, Iran's government has foreign currency reserves worth tens of billions of dollars with which it can fund the nuclear programme. There is little evidence the sanctions have slowed the programme ahead of a presidential election in Iran next week.

President Barack Obama on Monday issued an executive order imposing sanctions on foreign financial institutions that facilitate deals in the rial, which has lost two-thirds of its dollar value since late 2011.

Lawmakers in Congress also hope to pass legislation this year that could further limit Iran's oil sales and reduce Tehran's access to its foreign currency accounts, mostly held in euros.

Search for an Alternative to Fossil Fuel: The Rising Power of Solar Energy

Royal Dutch Company prognosticates that world demand for oil will reach its peak between 2035-2040, after which solar power or gas will take the lead according to a study.

After research into global energy prospects, Shell came up with two possible scenarios called ‘Mountains’ and ‘Oceans’.

The first one predicts slow international economic development and the markets largely controlled governments that will stimulate nuclear energy exploitation.

It also suggests that ecology-friendly natural gas will become the backbone of the world’s energy system substituting coal as the main fuel in electricity generation. In this case, there will be some changes in transportation, with trucks and cars largely powered by electricity and hydrogen, and CO2 emissions will be reduced.

‘Oceans', which is the second forecast considers a more dynamic and ‘fluid’ global economy where reforms trigger a productivity growth and whose development will be determined largely by market forces and civil society, with a smaller role of government.

This scenario focuses on solar power that can become the dominant energy source outsmarting the traditionally known ones in 2060s-2070s as high energy prices unlock more expensive resources and technologies based on the in-depth analysis .

Nuclear energy development will be restrained by the popular concern while coal will continue to be widely used in electricity generation, Shell experts predict.

The demand for oil has been declining every month and at the end of the year will have decreased by 2.08% which is 18.56 million barrels per day according to global oil report.

Will Iran Ease Up?

Tehran is prepared to ease Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for pledges about the country's ability to enrich uranium, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

Ramin Mehmanparast said that an important "opportunity" awaits next week's talks in Kazakhstan between Iran and six world powers, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.

“We will offer ways for removing possible concerns and ambiguities to show our goodwill, if Western countries, especially the US, fully recognise the nuclear rights of countries, which shows their goodwill,” Mehmanparast said. Same-level mutual actions can be followed by Iran to reach an "understanding point," he added.

This declaration is likely not to yield any meaningful result because one of the cogent conditions to make Washington listen is for Iran to allow full access of the UN Nuclear Watchdog, IAEA into its facilities, a move Iran resents.

Iran continues to reiterate that her Nuclear Programme is completely for peaceful means; medical research for isotopes while the West with the interest of Israel at heart believes she wants to produce nuclear weapons.

Nuclear talks between Russia and the United States

                              

                              
The United States is to send a top arms-control official to Moscow to convince the Russians to continue to decommission deployed nuclear weapons by saying it would save the two countries $8 billion a year, Kommersant reported citing an undisclosed source.

The initiative will target weapon categories not covered by the Russian-US agreement, which is called New START. The treaty pretends that strategic bombers can carry only a single warhead instead of up to 20 and does not consider weapons held in storage and smaller-scale tactical weapons.

A more drastic reduction would bring down the number of warhead by another third to some 1,000 to 1,100, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalistic organization. The number would be sufficient to maintain US’ deterrence capability and would not require structural changes to nuclear forces, the consensus in Washington says.

White House officials reportedly believe that the approaching limit of 1,550 strategic deployed nuclear weapons, agreed upon in the 2010 New START agreement, could be brought down to 1,000 without compromising nuclear deterrence between the two powers.

Pyotr Topychkanov, a nonproliferation programme coordinator at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that "in terms of its defence strategy, the US is shifting its focus toward conventional [non-nuclear] weapons, while Russia remains more nuclear-dependent. Therefore, it is easier for the US to talk about further nuclear arms reductions."

"Russia cannot keep up with the pace of these [conventional-weapon] developments and thus still heavily relies on its nuclear might," he added. "In contrast with the US, Russia also finds itself in a close vicinity of many other nuclear-weapon states, such as India, Pakistan and North Korea."

Ahmadinejad to be the first Iranian Astronaut

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he is ready to take the risk of becoming the first human being sent into space by Iran, national media reports.

"I'm ready to be the first Iranian to sacrifice myself for our country's scientists," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying on the sidelines of an exhibition of space achievements in Tehran on Monday.

Iran said it sent a monkey into space, describing the launch as a successful step towards Tehran's plan to send an astronaut into space within the next five to six years. The monkey named "Pishgam", which means pioneer in Farsi, reportedly travelled 120km and safely returned to Earth.

The launch added to Western concerns about Iran's space programme because the same rocket technology could potentially be used to deliver a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.

In 2010, Iran said it launched an Explorer rocket into space carrying a mouse, a turtle and worms.

Iran's space officials say Iran will launch a bigger rocket carrying a larger animal to obtain greater safety assurances before sending a man into space.

Space tourist Anousheh Ansari was the first Iranian to make a journey into space aboard a Soyuz TMA-9 capsule from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in 2006. The 40-year-old telecommunications entrepreneur paid a reported $20m for a space station visit.

Russia condemns Israel's attack on Syria

The Russian Foreign Ministry has issued a statement expressing deep concern over Israel’s airstrike on Syria saying that it violates the UN Charter.

The Ministry website says; if this information is confirmed that would mean that we have to deal with unprovoked attacks on the territory of a sovereign state which is inadmissible, whatever objectives are declared as a justification.

Russia has again called upon the international community to stop the violence in Syria, prevent foreign intervention in the conflict, and assist the start of a nationwide dialogue based on the Geneva agreements.

Syrian military command had reported that Israeli aircraft bombed a research facility near the country’s capital Damascus on Wednesday killing two people and wounding five. The statement called the attack a “blatant act of aggression” and blasted Israel for supporting Syrian terrorists.

So far, the Israel has refused to comment, but unnamed sources in the US have told news agencies that the Israeli Air Force did strike a truck convoy on the Syria-Lebanon border that supposedly carried anti-aircraft weapons. Lebanese media has reported a number of air raids conducted by Israel war planes over its territory but said nothing about any strikes.

If confirmed, the air strike will be Israel’s first attack on a Syrian target since 2007 when the Israeli Air Force destroyed what they thought to be an almost complete nuclear reactor in the East of the country, near the border with Iraq. Syria denied the site was a nuclear facility.

Wednesday’s alleged attack would also be Israel’s first direct intervention into the almost-two-year Syrian crisis caused by the standoff between President Bashar Assad and an armed opposition supported by radical Islamists.

Russia has repeatedly called upon the international community to help stop the violence by forcing the opposing sides to negotiation table. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says it was the opposition that rejected talks in Syria adding that the crisis would end when the opposition abandons its obsession with ousting Assad, and if this does not happen the fighting will continue and more people will die.

At the same time, Lavrov pointed out that the Russian point of view was that preserving or deposing President Assad’s regime was not a priority. What really mattered, he said, is an immediate stop to the bloodshed and the stabilization of the situation in Syria.

Syria seems to be the last bastion of the Cold War struggle in terms of open support by Russia both in the media and at the UN and fragrant opposition by the US and other Western powers. The second unresolved Cold War dilemma is the Koreas.

Iran: War Game

Iran continues to test her military prowess in the Strait of Hormuz. The naval force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has held exercises to test new equipment and battle tactics in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Iranian media reported on Sunday. The new drills is to test the combat-readiness of the military, speed and accuracy in responding to natural disasters and familiarity with new weapons.

They were the fifth such tactical exercises held by the force and took place near Bandar Abbas, a Gulf port on Iran's southern coast, Fars said. It did not say when they took place.

Iran's regular navy, separate from the IRGC's naval branch, held drills in the Gulf in late December and early January meant to showcase the country's military capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil exports passes.