All Blog Posts from World Watch

Turkey's president has sought to allay Western fears that his country — NATO's only majority-Muslim member — is shifting its affinity from Washington and Europe toward Iran.

Increasing closeness between Turkish leaders and Iran, and Turkey's quest for better ties in the broader Muslim world, have fueled concerns in the West that this key U.S. ally is moving gradually to the East.

But Turkey's president used a speech Monday at the opening of an Islamic nations' summit in Istanbul to try and ease worried Western minds.

President Abdullah Gul told the Organization for the Islamic Conference's Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) that Turkey's foreign policy maneuvers in the West and in the East are "complementary to each other, not contradictory."

Read full post…

Leaders from 48 Islamic states met Monday in Turkey to begin an economic summit which may see its stated purpose overshadowed by some controversial guests, and the decades-old quest for peace in the Middle East.

The one-day gathering drew Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is engaged in a standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear program, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on his first trip abroad since being controversially re-elected, and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Gul told attendees that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the basis of all conflicts in the Middle East, stressing the need to find a final solution to this issue and end the Israeli occupation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Read full post…

Iran has experimented with a nuclear warhead design so advanced, it's still a secret in both the U.S. and Britain, according to a report in Friday's Guardian.

The British newspaper reports that intelligence suggesting the isolated Islamic regime tested components of a "two-point implosion" warhead has been handed over to Iran by the U.N. nuclear watchdog as part of a dossier of matters requiring explanation.

Parts of the International Atomic Energy Agency's dossier has been published in the past, but this is the first claim that Iran has sought such advanced weaponry — a claim nuclear experts called "breathtaking" when asked by the Guardian.

Read full post…

This story was filed by CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk at the United Nations.

---

The leak of information about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother and his alleged connection to the CIA and tribal drug lords is curious. Leaks always are. But in this case, the release of this sensitive information is troublesome and potentially game-changing in a dangerous war.

Ahmed Wali Karzai admitted to giving the agency information, but has denied receiving any money from the CIA, or being part of the lucrative Afghanistan opium trade – making him, at least in Washington-talk, that much more guilty.

The report itself will change the political and military landscape in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The insurgents will use it as proof of the U.S. meddling at the highest level of the Afghan government. In Pakistan, where the use of drones is already being questioned by the U.N. envoy for extrajudicial killings — and the Pakistani Parliament questions the strings on the $7.5 billion U.S. aid package — the equation of the U.S. government to the CIA is devastating.

So, the obvious, unanswered question is: who leaked the information?

Read full post…

This story was filed by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer in Vienna. CBSNews.com's Tucker Reals in London contributed to the report.

---

Updated, 7:59 a.m. Eastern:

Diplomats from Iran, the U.S., Russia and France agreed Wednesday to a draft proposal that would see Iran ship about 75 percent of it's enriched uranium to Russia by the end of this year.

Each nation's government will still need to ratify the agreement individually by Friday, and it's unclear whether Iran's hard-line rulers intend to do so.

Iran's envoy was upbeat following the morning talks. Lead negotiator Ali Asghar Soltanieh told reporters upon emerging from the closed door meetings that a side deal attached to the proposal includes an historic first: a proposed direct transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Iran, including "control, instrument and safety equipment" for the research reactor at Tehran University.

Read full post…

This story was filed by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer in Vienna.

---

Senior diplomats from the U.S., Iran, France and Russia missed a noon deadline Tuesday to start talks aimed at hammering out a historic deal on Iran's uranium stockpile.

At first, the negotiations at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria seemed to hold real promise. After the introductory round of talks late Monday, a senior U.S. official said the Iranians had "engaged constructively".

Officials said Iran forced Tuesday's delay by suddenly announcing that France should be excluded from the talks — apparently the latest twist in a long-running business dispute.

Diplomats are now wondering whether Iran's last-minute objections to France's presence at the table in Vienna are in fact a thinly disguised attempt to derail the whole process.

Read full post…

Hundreds of hardcore Arab fighters loyal to al Qaeda have fled the Afghanistan-Pakistan region this year, heading mainly to Yemen to bolster an Islamist insurgency targeting oil-rich Saudi Arabia, according to Arab, Pakistani and Western officials who spoke to CBS News.

The implications of such a buildup in Yemen are profound not only for the stability of Saudi Arabia — the birthplace of Islam and home to the holiest of Islamic shrines — but for the world's dependence upon a continued flow of petroleum from the largest known oil reserves.

Read full post…

Saudi Arabia is looking to purchase billions of dollars in weapons from Russia in an effort to get the Kremlin to scrap plans to sell surface-to-missile Iran, according to a Financial Times story this week.

But official Russian sources have not confirmed the Kremlin's willingness to agree to such a deal, reports CBS News' Alexei Kuxnetsov. In fact, even analysts with knowledge of the Kremlin’s policies sounded rather skeptical.

Back in 2007, Iran announced plans to acquire Russia's S-300 weapons system for upwards of $1 billion. Since then, Russia has been facing pressure from the United States not to go through with the sale.

According to the Financial Times, Saudi Arabia's offer to buy the latest version of the system, the S-400 – akin to the U.S. Patriot missile defense system – for $2 billion is the latest attempt to get Moscow to back out of its deal with Tehran.

“The U.S. pressure is the stick, and a huge Saudi arms package is the carrot,” Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, told the Times.

Pukhov said the deal may actually go as high as $7 billion.

Alexander Khramchikhin, a senior analyst with the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow, told Kuznetsov that while a deal between Russia and Saudi Arabia could be theoretically possible, a "number of stumbling blocks" make its probability near zero.

Read full post…

Iran has tried to acquire materials for a nuclear weapon in Canada, according to a top official in Canada's Border Services Agency.

George Webb, head of the agency's Counter Proliferation Section, says customs officers have seized centrifuge parts (centrifuges are used to enrich uranium) and electronic components for bombs and guidance systems.

Webb made the claims in a story published Thursday in Canada's National Post.

"Anything to do with a nuclear program [is] going to Iran," Webb said in the article.

Webb said that Iran is acquiring the components through "procurement rings" involving front companies and unprincipled entrepreneurs. The components move along elaborate paths through Vancouver, Hong Kong, and particularly the United Arab Emirates, where Webb says the Iranian government is controlling a port for the purpose of clandestinely moving such goods.

Webb's allegations come as the U.S., Britain, France and other western countries are expressing alarm over a recently-declared nuclear facility in Iran and ratcheting up threats of harsh retaliation against Iran should it pursue a nuclear weapon.

The article, however, offers nothing to corroborate Webb's claims and reports them without even a hint of skepticism, except to say that "The devices can be used in peaceful nuclear plants but are also required to produce nuclear weapons" and to note that there have been few arrests and no convictions in connection with Webb's far-reaching claims.

But skepticism is merited. The government claims and breathless media reporting – without adequate evidence – that Iran is a grave and looming threat is reminiscent of the same claims and media coverage in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as several commentators have pointed out. Remember Saddam Hussein's horde of yellowcake uranium?

Read full post…

Going into Thursday's high-stakes negotiations with Iran, President Obama will soon see for himself the corner into which the Islamic Republic has thrust his predecessors.

Iran has the world over a barrel, literally. The country's vast oil reserves will undermine Obama administration efforts to increase U.N. sanctions, and Iran knows it.

U.N. sanctions only work when they are airtight. Despite the White House's message that the veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council (the P5 as they are called: the U.S., Russia, France, China, and the U.K.) and Germany are unified in their response and that the Iranian missile tests of last week were a game changer, they are dodging the harsh reality that China is not even close to being "on board" for tough sanctions.

Read full post…