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NUKEWARS
Mystery Iranian deaths amid shadow war
by Staff Writers
Beirut, Lebanon (UPI) Jun 4, 2012


IAEA to hold nuclear talks with Iran Friday: Amano
Vienna (AFP) June 4, 2012 - The UN nuclear watchdog and Iran have agreed to hold talks in Vienna on Friday, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said Monday, calling on Tehran to sign a deal clarifying issues over its atomic drive.

"A meeting between Iran and the agency has been scheduled for 8 June in Vienna," Amano told the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board of governors at the start of a week-long meeting.

"I invite Iran to sign and implement the Structured Approach document as soon as possible and to provide early access to the Parchin site," Amano said, referring to a military base near Tehran.

The IAEA is seeking an accord with Tehran to guarantee swift and unconditional access to sites, people and documents related to the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

"Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation to enable the agency to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," Amano added.

After a visit to Tehran on May 21, where he met Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, Amano said an accord could be signed "quite soon," but there is still no sign of any agreement.

Part of the agreement would involve the Parchin base, where the IAEA believes suspicious explosives testing was carried out.

The agency has been seeking access to the site for months, but has so far been denied by Iran, which says Parchin is of no relevance to its nuclear programme and it is not obliged to allow inspections.

In its latest report last month, the IAEA said new satellite imagery of Parchin indicated "extensive activities" at the base, including the razing of two buildings and what experts have described as a clean-up at the base.

"I urge Iran to take steps towards the full implementation of all relevant obligations in order to establish international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme," the IAEA chief said.

At least 10 high-ranking officers in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps are reported to have died recently, apparently in violent circumstances.

But only two of the deaths have been made public, raising suspicions the officers may have been assassinated by Iran's enemies.

The unusually large number of deaths among senior IRGC commanders followed a disclosure by Israel's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, in April that covert Special Forces operations against "enemy countries" were becoming more intense.

There doesn't appear to be any solid evidence the Israelis were involved in the deaths of the Revolutionary Guard chiefs.

But Gantz told the Yediot Ahronot daily, "You almost won't find a point in time where something isn't happening somewhere in the world. I'm escalating all those special operations."

He didn't say which countries were being targeted. But in recent years Israel has been mounting clandestine operations against Iran and its contentious nuclear program, which Israeli leaders see as an existential threat.

Intelligence Online, a Paris Web site that specializes in global intelligence and security issues, identified the two officers whose deaths were acknowledged by the Tehran regime as Gen. Gholam Reza Qassemi, former commander of the 92nd Armored Division, and Gen. Mohammad Ali Mousavi, leader of a commando regiment in the southwestern city of Ahwaz, a key oil center.

Intelligence Online said there was speculation some of the deaths could have resulted from turf wars within the increasingly powerful IRGC over control of sections of the vast economic empire the IRGC has built up in recent years.

The IRGC is reported to operate widespread illegal economic networks, including smuggling, that have made it one of the most crucial economic forces in the country.

This, on top of its growing political power, has raised suggestions both inside and outside Iran that the IRGC, formed by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to protect the 1979 Islamic Revolution, may seek to take control at some point.

Intelligence Online said the Gen. Ahmed Mansouri, one of the representatives of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei within the IRGC leadership, also died recently, supposedly from a heart attack.

It also said two senior colonels, Najaf Ali Khirallahi and Nassif Pour, were killed in car accidents.

Intelligence Online said other senior IRGC officials, identified as Wafa Ghafarian, 52; Abbas Mehri, 53; Ahmed Siafzadeh, 55; Mansour Tourqan, 50; and Ahmed Soudaker, 51, also passed away recently, with no official explanation.

"Khamenei has not publicly expressed his condolences, which are usually widely reported in the Iranian press," the Web site observed.

Israel and the United States were allegedly involved in cyberattacks using the powerful W32.Flame malware against Iranian targets, including the big Kharg Island oil terminal in the northern Persian Gulf, in April.

Israeli leaders have dropped strong hints that the Jewish state was responsible for the new data-stealing computer virus, much more dangerous than the Stuxnet worm used to attacks Iran's uranium enrichment program in 2009-10.

The New York Times reported that U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the sophisticated cyberattacks on Iran's computer systems, in conjunction with Israel, soon after he took office in a bid to cripple the Islamic Republic's infrastructure.

Recent events have been played out amid crucial meetings between Iran and U.S.-led powers seeking to convince Tehran to halt uranium enrichment and curtail its nuclear program.

Meetings in Istanbul in April and in Baghdad in May failed to produce an agreement. Another meeting is scheduled but the prospect of a deal seems remote.

In the meantime, the Obama administration has disclosed Iranian plots to kill U.S. diplomats and their families in Azerbaijan, Iran's Muslim northern neighbor and increasingly an ally of Israel.

Also, U.S. and Israeli officials have said other plots have been uncovered involving Iran and its Lebanese surrogate, Hezbollah, in India, Thailand, Turkey, Pakistan and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

On May 30, Yoram Cohen, head of Israel's domestic security service, known as Shin Bet, claimed Iranian-funded militants have stepped up attempts to attack Jewish targets around the world in recent months.

He stressed that only a fraction of these operations have been publicized.

On May 11, a senior Israeli officer said security around top military commanders and military delegations traveling overseas has been "significantly stepped up" because of Iranian and Hezbollah plots.

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