The foreign minister highlighted two options for responding to Tehran's enrichment breakthrough.
Nuclear option. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen threatened military intervention or the reinstatement of “snapback” sanctions against Iran over its uranium enrichment. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently confirmed reports that particles of highly enriched uranium (83.7 percent) had been found at Iran’s Fordo nuclear site. (Weapons-grade uranium is 90 percent purity.) Iran denies that it hit the milestone intentionally. The head of the IAEA is due to visit Tehran on Friday.
Balancing. Speaking on the anniversary of South Korea’s first major protest in 1919 against Japanese occupation, a national holiday, President Yoon Suk-yeol said Tokyo has become a partner with the same universal values as Seoul. The two countries should cooperate on global challenges, together and in a trilateral format with the United States, he said. Threats from North Korea, as well as China’s rise, have helped to push the two U.S. allies closer together.
NATO standards. Kazakh defense firms are eager to work with Turkey and shift to NATO standard equipment, according to the head of Kazakhstan’s Association of Defense Industry Enterprises. He said that NATO gear was more modern and that Kazakhstan could begin with drone assembly. Kazakhstan shares a 4,750-mile border with Russia, which will not take kindly to the possibility of integration into a NATO supply chain.
Irritant. The secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, traveled to Caracas to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Among other things, they discussed “countering color revolutions” and information security. Venezuela is one of the few places in the Western Hemisphere where Russia can irritate the U.S., but it can’t do much more.
Rebuilding confidence. Peru’s government announced $9 billion worth of public-private investment projects to be rolled out through 2024 in a bid to kick-start the economy following widespread protests.
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Geopolitical Futures (GPF) was founded in 2015 by George Friedman, international strategist and author of The Storm Before the Calm and The Next 100 Years. GPF is non-ideological, analyzes the world and forecasts the future using geopolitics: political, economic, military and geographic dimensions at the foundation of a nation.
Here is an article by Stephanie Liechtenstein 28.02.23 for The Times of Israel corroborating earlier reports, IAEA says inspectors found traces of material at 83.7% purity in Fordo; Tehran says it’s only enriched to 60%, which already has no civilian use.
The article ends with these words:
“We are united by concern about the nuclear escalation on Iran’s part and about the recent reports about the very high uranium enrichment,” Baerbock said. “There is no plausible civilian justification for such a high enrichment level.”
Speaking in Berlin, Israel’s visiting Foreign Minister Eli Cohen pointed to two options to deal with Iran — using a so-called “snapback” mechanism in the Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2015 nuclear deal to reimpose UN sanctions, and “to have a credible military option on the table as well.”
“From our intelligence and from our knowledge, this is the right time to work on these two specific steps,” he said.
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Various centrifuge machines line a hall at the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility, on April 17, 2021. (Screenshot/Islamic Republic Iran Broadcasting-IRIB, via AP)
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