China Is Beating the US in the Rare-Earths Game

For more information regarding China and the rare earths situation, see the following previous articles:

• US defense industry over-reliant on rare earth from China
• Rare Earths Rouse Pentagon Fears
• Rare-Earth Market
• China warns of backlash if U.S. presses rare-earths case with WTO
• China Preparing for Drone Warfare
• Report: US military too reliant on foreign suppliers
• China’s Drone Swarms Rise to Challenge US Power
• China Threatens to Pull Pin on Global Economic Hand Grenade

 

 

It’s time for the administration to use its powers to preserve America’s access to vital defense materials.

How to view China’s recent threat to limit domestic production of rare earths, those 16 elements that make our cellphones and smart bombs work? It’s the latest move in a game that began before the United States realized it was even playing, that has grown more complex than U.S. leaders realize, and that is nearing a very unfortunate ending.

Stocking Up for World War III

 

Nuclear nonproliferation efforts are ending. A new arms race has begun.

Since the United States and the Soviet Union backed away from the precipice of nuclear war in the 1980s, the world’s stocks of nuclear weapons have declined from an estimated 60,000 to an estimated 10,000.

According to a 2014 study by science journal Earth’s Future, however, it would take just 100 nuclear detonations to create a worldwide climate catastrophe causing massive famine and death.

Your Friend and Neighbor

 

VIENNA/BERLIN (Own report) – The United Nations is protesting against the surveillance of its Vienna-based institutions conducted for years by the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The Vienna International Center (“UNO City”) “expects” that member states “respect the organization’s independence as well as the inviolability of its premises.” According to recent reports, from 1999 to 2006, the BND had monitored at least 2000 communication lines in Austria including those of the Vienna Chancellery and 128 telecommunication lines of the United Nations. The BND’s espionage in Austria has been known since 2015, but never clarified, because the competent German authorities, including the German Chancellery, refused to render Vienna the necessary assistance. The BND is accused of repeatedly refusing to tell the intelligence service monitors their reasons for spying, for example, on a “public body” of an EU member state. At the time of the large-scale spying in Austria, the current German President bore the highest responsibility for BND activities.

Khamenei: Trump will ‘Vanish from History’

(Photo Credit: http://www.Khamenei.ir via Creative Commons 4.0)

 

The Iranian Supreme Leader also vowed ‘the Americans will be defeated.’

The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has vowed that President Donald Trump will “meet the same fate as his predecessors” and “vanish from history” in a fiery speech lashing out at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 12 requirements for a new nuclear deal.

In a blow to Trump, Europe seeks gas supplies from Iran

The European Commission vice-president for energy union,Maros Sefcovic, said during a visit to Azerbaijan last week that the European Union was ready to negotiate Iran’s participation in the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), a system of pipelines designed to pump Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region to southern Italy via Georgia, Turkey, Greece and Albania.

The European bloc is keen to get its hands on Iranian gas and has already held talks with Tehran on the issue. This means it is unlikely that the EU will budge on its opposition to US President Donald Trump’s demands for revising the Iran nuclear deal.

Saudi Arabia to Extract Uranium for ‘Self-Sufficient’ Nuclear Program

The Kingdom Tower stands in the night in Riyadh / REUTERS

 

ABU DHABI (Reuters) — Saudi Arabia plans to extract uranium domestically as part of its nuclear power program and sees this as a step towards “self-sufficiency” in producing atomic fuel, a senior official said on Monday.

Extracting its own uranium also makes sense from an economic point of view, said Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, head of the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KACARE).

President Trump Takes Aim at Iran’s ‘Clandestine Nuclear Weapons Program’

 

President Donald J. Trump put the Iranian regime on notice with his speech last week: the time when the United States (U.S.) government would turn a blind eye to its decades-long drive for deliverable nuclear weapons is over. Citing a long litany of destabilizing, rogue behavior on the part of Tehran, the president announced he would not re-certify Iranian compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran nuclear deal.

Trump’s ‘Calm before the Storm’ is a Message to North Korea and Iran

U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump pose for pictures with senior military leaders and spouses after a briefing in the White House on October 5, 2017. During the photo session, President Trump spoke of the “calm before the storm”. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)

 

• U.S. policy toward both Iran and North Korea is closely related, because we must prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club and becoming another, even more dangerous version of North Korea.
• President Trump cannot afford to wait and do nothing as Iran and North Korea grow ever stronger, ever more menacing and become greater and greater threats. He must do something — now.

Reporters continue scratching their heads about what President Trump meant when he spoke of the “calm before the storm” Thursday as he was hosting a dinner for military commanders and their spouses. It seems clear to me that he was sending a powerful message to North Korea and Iran: change your behavior now, or prepare to face new but unspecified painful consequences.

How Iran cheats on nuclear deal, with no flat accusation from Trump or IAEA

 

President Donald Trump has dropped teasing hints into the hubbub, high rhetoric and suspense of the run-up to the Oct. 15 deadline, when he must either certify that Iran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear accord or withhold certification. The former would lend the accord another 90-day lease of life; the latter could entail the re-imposition of pre-nuclear deal sanctions against Iran, if approved by Congress.

Preyed by the same uncertainty as everyone else, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday, Oct. 7: “Even 10 Trumps can’t roll back the benefits to this country of the nuclear deal. We have achieved benefits that are irreversible. If the United States violates (the nuclear deal), the entire world will condemn America, not Iran.”

Iranian Uranian Enrichment Streamlines Path to Nukes

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves during a ceremony marking the death anniversary of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Tehran, Iran, June 4, 2017. Leader.ir/Handout via REUTERS

 

According to nuclear verification experts Iran’s streamlining of uranium enrichment could greatly expand their ability to reach nuclear weapons status

(VERO BEACH, FL) In a new report released on May 30th by the Institute For Science and International Security titled “Is Iran Mass Producing Advanced Gas Centrifuge Components?” authors David Albright and Olli Heinonen noted that Tehran’s recent announcement that they now mass produce advanced nuclear centrifuges capable of more quickly enriching uranium “would greatly expand Iran’s ability to sneak-out or breakout to nuclear weapons capability.”

Iran to begin gas injection into new, advanced centrifuges

Illustrative image of centrifuges enriching uranium (photo credit: US Department of Energy/Wikimedia Commons)

 

Tehran insists move permitted under 2015 nuclear deal which allows R&D on IR-8s, capable of enriching uranium 20 times faster than previous machines

Iran’s nuclear energy agency indicated Tuesday that Tehran would soon begin injecting gas into the latest generation of advanced centrifuges, IR-8, in a move that marks the next step to make them operational and that Iran says is permitted under the terms of the nuclear deal signed last year with six world powers.

“The IR8 tests have come to an end and they will go into the stage of gas injection in the next few weeks,” a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Behrouz Kamalvandi, announced at a press conference on Tuesday, according to the semi-official Fars new agency.

NUCLEAR WARNING: Atomic bomb terror attack could strike ANY COUNTRY, warns UN watchdog

Yukiya Amano warned “terrorists and criminals” could strike using illegally obtained nuclear weapons (Getty)

 

EVERY single country on the planet could be attacked by nuclear-armed terrorists, the United Nation’s atomic watchdog has warned.

Yukiya Amano, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said nowhere was safe at a time when terrorists are scouring the globe for any sign of “vulnerability”.

He said: “Ensuring effective nuclear security is important for all countries, including those which possess little or no nuclear or other radioactive material.”

Iran Loses Nuclear Device, Sparks GCC Worry

 

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is concerned over a missing radioactive device from Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, Saudi-owned Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported on Thursday.

Aside from the security concerns, at the forefront in the GCC’s mind is what impact the radioactive device—wherever it may be today—could have on water supplies.

According to the newspaper, the device went missing after the car transporting it was stolen. Thankfully, the vehicle was recovered, but the radioactive nuclear device was not so lucky.

Border Battle: TX agents now looking for terrorists smuggling radioactive material

(TRUNEWS) Texas Game Warden’s have begun training to counter the potential threat that terrorists could use the Port of Houston to smuggle radioactive material into the United States.

In an interview with local news, Tom Harvey, the Deputy Director for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Departments Communications Division, said Friday that “game wardens encounter all kinds of things on their patrols, including a lot of illegal fishing, and this [the threat of terrorists smuggling radioactive material] is a new threat we’re gearing up to be able to address.”

Harvey said that the Port of Houston has for years had radiation detectors to scan cargo, but now “we’ve acquired about a hundred devices that allow game wardens to detect radiological or nuclear emissions. These are little devices that can be worn on someone’s belt.”

Exclusive: Radioactive material stolen in Iraq raises security fears

Iraq is searching for “highly dangerous” radioactive material stolen last year, according to an environment ministry document and seven security, environmental and provincial officials who fear it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State.

The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing in November from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford (WFT.N), the document obtained by Reuters showed and officials confirmed.