Iran expands nuclear activities

According to a new U.N. atomic agency report, Iran is expanding its nuclear program by accelerating the installment of advanced uranium enrichment equipment at Natanz, a nuclear facility. Iran has installed 700 advanced IR2m centrifuges, an increase from 180 in February, although the new centrifuges are not yet operating. The report said there hasn’t been a significant amount of growth of enriched uranium and therefore Tehran has not yet reached a "red line" that might call for military action. Iran also has a new production strategy. In addition to accelerating the installation of equipment, Tehran has started to produce plutonium. The report also elaborates on the heavy water reactor under construction in Arak, which is nearing completion and is expected to have a reactor running by the end of 2014. Iran has not started to operate on new equipment at the Fordo facility, but it has covered much of the Parchin military base with asphalt, restricting the work of nuclear inspectors. Nonetheless, Israeli and American officials have expressed confidence that both countries would have sufficient time to stop the production of a weapon if Iran builds one. The report appears in advance of the country’s presidential elections next month and amid a lull in diplomatic efforts to achieve a settlement on Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran insists is exclusively for civilian purposes.

Syria

The Syrian National Coalition will gather in Istanbul to discuss whether they will attend a proposed peace conference initiated by Russia and the United States that will bring the Assad regime and opposition to the negotiating table. A member of the coalition reiterated that "The Coalition and (key opposition movement) the Syrian National Council have made clear their condition to any talks is the resignation of Bashar al-Assad." In addition, Salim Idriss, the commander of the opposition group the Supreme Military Council, has said the United States must provide them with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry, in addition to man-portable air-defense systems, as a precondition for attending the peace talks. The United States is pressuring Europe to accept a British plan to amend the EU arms embargo on Syria thereby allowing weapons to be delivered to the opposition. Meanwhile, German’s foreign intelligence services reversed its earlier prediction that the Assad regime would fall by early 2013 and instead argues in a new report that the Syrian president’s forces have gained strength recently. Assad forces have rebuilt their own supply lines for weapons and for fuel for tanks and airforce jets while cutting off the opposition forces from their resources. Meanwhile, John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, has accused Hezbullah, the militant Lebanese Shia Islamist group, of contributing to Assad’s "campaign of terror." He added that thousands of Hezbullah fighters have joined the ranks of the Syrian army, both of whom receive support from Iran. Recently, Hezbullah militants have been fighting alongside the Syrian army and pro-regime militants in Qusair, a Syrian town near the Lebanese border.

Headlines

• Bahrain’s opposition group has withdrawn from reconciliation talks with the Bahraini government in protest over harsh sentences for demonstrators.   
• Egypt’s Interior Ministry has created a special all-female police unit to combat violence against women.
• John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in attempts to restart peace talks between Israel and Palestine, which were derailed in 2010 over Israeli settlement expansions.
• An unknown gunman killed twelve Iraqis, seven women and five men, in a brothel in Baghdad’s eastern district of Zayouna, just a week after liquor shops were attacked in the same neighborhood.
• Clashes in Tripoli between Lebanese fighters backing rival factions in Syria’s civil war have killed 20 people since Sunday and wounded dozens more, as sectarian violence spills over.
• The White House has admitted publically that it killed four American citizens in drone strikes, three of whom were in Yemen at the time, and one in Pakistan.

–By Jennifer T. Parker