6 April 2013. RIA-Novosti Infographics. Where Can DPRK Missiles Strike?

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The DPRK leadership is ready to use nuclear weapons against the USA if they’re provoked. We show you the range of the various missiles and the main strategic objects in the DPRK in our Infographic.

5 April 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://ria.ru/infografika/20130405/931244183.html

Missiles in the DPRK Inventory:

R-17 8K14 SRBM

Hwasong-5 SRBM

R-17 8K14/ER SRBM

Hwasong-6 SRBM

R-17 VTO SRBM

Rodong-1 MRBM

Taepodong-1 ICBM

BM25 Musudan IRBM

Taepodong-2 ICBM

Taepodong-3 ICBM

 

Could Romney Deliver on His Hawkish Pledges?

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The campaign pledges of American Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney include 50 new ships for the US Navy and, notably, a tougher stance towards Putin on everything that concerns missile defence. The crux of the matter is that George W Bush planned to deploy an early-warning radar site near Prague in Czechia and ABM interceptor silos in northern Poland. Barack Obama deemed this layout useless against Russia and superfluous for fending off potential missile threats from North Korea and Iran. Accordingly, he redirected American missile defence development plans towards Rumania, Turkey, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Apparently, Romney’s promising a return to the original layout plus heavy interceptor rockets, also positioned in Poland and capable of destroying Russian ICBMs within moments of their blast-off. To put it bluntly, Mitt’s planning another Cold War. Can Mitt deliver on his defence plans? The answer is “no”. They’re no more than hawkish campaign rhetoric. Should he try to implement them, the debt- and deficit-burdened USA would have to squander tens of billions more dollars each year and reduce resources allocated to programmes to fend off looming military threats from China. America’s real moneybag rulers would immediately put things right and make Romney’s ABM plans fizzle out.

10 October 2012

Ilya Kramnik

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_10_10/Could-Romney-deliver-on-his-hawkish-pledges/

Komersant Sez that Russia Scrapped Nunn-Lugar Agreement

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 On Wednesday, Kommersant reported that Moscow would end its participation in a decades-old program with the USA aimed at dismantling WMDs. The paper reported sources in the US State Department as saying that Russia’s no longer interested in the Nunn-Lugar programme…also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme (CTR)… that dates back to the early 1990′s, which helped decommission scores of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons after the Soviet collapse.

US officials told the paper that their Russian counterparts informed them during a recent meeting that Moscow no longer needed financial assistance, emphasising instead the importance of guarding state secrets. The move is the latest in Moscow’s review of its relationship with Washington, and comes after the Kremlin kicked the USAID out of Russia earlier this month. It also follows comments last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the “reset” policy between Russia and the United States “can’t last forever”.

The CTR program began in 1991, and has had two extensions, in 1999 and 2006. The current terms expires in 2013. According to the CTR website, the USA spent an estimated 8 billion USD on CTR, which included measures to increase safety at nuclear plants in the former USSR and generating alternative work for former institutes and production facilities that had produced WMDs.

10 October 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/mlitary_news/20121010/176527879.html

Israel: Expert in Having Its Own Way

Shhh!!! Denouncing Israel’s War Crimes is Anti-Semitism

Carlos Latuff

2009

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Let’s not be coy. Bibi Netanyahu is a political gangster. However, there’s a good thing… Israel’s torturous domestic politics will tie him up so thoroughly that he can’t strike Iran. To attack one man, Netanyahu, as a creep isn’t anti-Semitism… it’s just good-sense. To attack all Jews for the faults of one man, Netanyahu… now, THAT’S anti-Semitism!

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Israel will abstain from attacking Iran before the American election if the USA promises to start a military campaign against Iran next spring. Allegedly, that’s the main clause of a secret preliminary agreement, which the two countries’ leaders will discuss in the lobby of the UN General Assembly. This leak appeared in the Israeli media ahead of a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear problem. Experts believe that this could be a covert request to the USA to boost assistance.

Tom Donilon and Ron Dermer, advisers to the two countries’ leaders, developed the agreement mentioned by the media. The agreement contains some other provisions as well. If there’s no progress in the settlement of the Iranian problem, Barack Obama would write to the US Congress about his decision to use the army to prevent the appearance of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Closer to the American election in November, Obama would speak in the Israeli parliament and publicly promise to use force. The media leaks say that if these procedures are observed, Israel will agree to postpone the attack against Iran. Over the last few months, the USA’s been at great pains to hold back Israel’s militant rhetoric towards Iran. On 14 August, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta pointed up that Israel was incapable of causing serious damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Ludmila Kuleshova, an expert from the Institute of Oriental Studies, said, “The USA is procrastinating, in an attempt to give diplomacy another chance, so this kind of agreement is likely to have been achieved. The USA’s sparing no effort in trying to come to an agreement with Iran, especially now, when Iran’s in a rather difficult economic and financial situation. For this reason, it’s more likely to compromise on its nuclear programme. Probably, the situation in Syria will also be clarified by next spring, which is very important as well. Obama recently announced that he was actually on the verge of interfering in the Syrian crisis, and, now, this problem with Iran on top of all that. This is too much even for the USA”.

In a recent report, Shai Feldman, a well-known Israeli expert in Tehran–Washington-Tel Aviv relations, concluded that a military attack against Iran is very unlikely. Andrei Volodin, the head of the Centre for Oriental Research of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) shared this opinion, saying, “A military operation against Iran would be sheer lunacy. The USA would have to use at least a million soldiers and over 2,000 aircraft, which is beyond its means. Any other assault rather than a ground operation wouldn’t have any effect. A limited campaign would only speed up the appearance of nuclear weapons in Iran. So far, at least, there’s been no political decision about their production”.

Volodin went on to say, “The publication about some secret arrangement isn’t an attempt to put pressure on Iran ahead of a new round of talks. Its authors must have been thinking logically. Israel set up the leak to put pressure on the USA. Israel means to take advantage of the controversy between the two main presidential candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Israel believes that now is the best time, when it’s easy to obtain even more compromise both from the president and from the Republican presidential candidate. If the leak works, Israel will get a greater amount of military and financial aid from the USA. There’s no doubt about it, because, so far, all Israel’s requests have been fully satisfied”.

23 August 2012

Boris Pavlichyov

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_23/Israel-expert-in-having-its-own-way/