IAEA inspectors have concluded Iran is further along in its nuclear program than believed before, now being able to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before after solving technological issues.

More troubling, however, is that the IAEA admits they still don’t know a great deal about Iran’s nuclear program.

Inspectors are concerned that Iran has declined to answer a series of questions, posed more than a year ago, about information Iran probably received from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer. Of particular interest is a document that shows how to make uranium into spheres, a shape suitable for use in a weapon.

The IAEA estimates that by June Iran may have 3,000 centrifuges in operation, enough to build one bomb per year, but Iran also plans to expand that amount of centrifuges in the future.

Is the act seen in the photo at right indecent?  The act in question is of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kissing the hand of one of his former teachers at a ceremony held in Tehran to honor Iranian teachers.  It’s a holiday in Iran.

I certainly don’t believe it’s indencent, however ultra-hardliners in Iran are quick to point out it’s against Sharia to touch a woman whom they are not related to.

“The Muslim Iranian people have no recollection of such acts contrary to sharia law during Islamic rule,” seethed the ultra-conservative Hezbollah newspaper, on its front page.

“This type of indecency progressively has grave consequences, like violating religious and sacred values.”

“This astonishing act by the president comes as the faithful have yet to forget his decision to allow women to watch football,” noted the Hezbollah newspaper.

However, other hardline publications published the images without further comment. “A kiss on the hand for the teacher,” was the headline in Iran, the government daily.

The London Times notes the teacher was wearing thick gloves so Ahmadinejad never actually touched the woman on the skin, which begs the question if there is a loophole in Sharia to allow groping through clothes, gloves or bubbles.

What connection this heinous act by Ahmadinejad has to women watching soccer (football for the non-Yanks) I don’t know.  I suppose it is seen as Ahmadinejad giving women rights and treating them more as equals even though his government has banned ‘Western’ hairdos, clothing and satellites.

Two fascinating stories pertaining to Iran seeking out Iraqi Kurds to attack Coalition forces and the Iraqi government, one by Eli Lake in the New York Sun and the other by Richard Minister at Pajamas Media. This is especially interesting due to a fairly large chunk of the intelligence and political crowd believing the Shia government of Iran could not support a Sunni group, which has always been bogus as Hamas is the perfect example of a known Sunni group Iran supports, but it’s also interesting since Iran has been at war with Kurdish separatists for many years too.

Both columns shed light on why the United States would raid the supposed Iranian consulate in Irbil, capturing members of the elite QUDS force which answers only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. Iran cried and still cries foul at the raid, but both columns show there is reason to conclude Iran is more than just assisting insurgency inside Iraq, but they are directing at least some of it too outside of Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

First from the Sun:

Mr. Mustapha, whose story appeared in The New York Sun on Thursday, said the commander of the Quds Force, General Suleimani, “spoke on behalf of Ali Khamenei,” Iran’s supreme leader, at a summit in the Iranian city of Kermanshah. Mr. Mustapha continued, “He said, ‘Ali Khamenei told us that any group of Islamists, Tawhid and Jihad, Ansar al Sunna, any group can go across the border to Iraq.” (Tawhid and Jihad is the original organization founded by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.)

The account of Mustapha would seem to suggest not only was Iran trying to get Iraqi Kurds on Iran’s side to attack the Coalition, but they have also been allowing Al Qaida in Iraq safe passage through Iran and into Iraq. This would, by default, suggest Iran has also allowed the larger Al Qaida to pass through Iran.

So who is Mustapha? Miniter interviews him and the story Mustapha tells is quite telling.

As Mustafa waited for his first mission, he began to learn more about Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist attacks inside Iraq. “I was told that Ansar al Islam members met with [Iranian] Brigadier [General] Qasim Sulemani,” a high ranking member of Iran’s Quds Force, on April 4, 2005, Mustafa said. “The meeting was in Kermanshah, at the head office” of Iran’s intelligence service there. He said that the Itilaat service also briefed him on upcoming missions of the al Qaeda-linked terror group. Iran often has advance knowledge of these attacks and helps fund and plan them, he said.

He was paid $400 a month, but he was eager for the bonuses that came with missions inside Iraq. Those could pay as much as $1500. By contrast, his police salary in Iraq was $220 per month in 2005.

At last, after four months, the mission came. He was given a small digital camera and sent to the Iraqi city of Kirkuk to photograph U.S. bases. From the window of taxi, he shot movies and stills of American checkpoints and base perimeter security operations. Over the course of a long day he shot some 55 minutes of movies of guards, bomb-sniffing dogs, and base buildings vulnerable to attack.

When he returned with the “flash movies,” Iranian intelligence officers were very happy.

Next, they sent him to photograph Iranian opposition figures in Iraq, especially those connected to the Democratic Kormala party. Col. Yacubi also wanted Mustafa to discover their home addresses. These men, Mustafa was told, would be targeted for assassination.

Mustapha was recruited by Iranian agents to work for the Iranian government, which should come to no surprise as Iran would rightly want information on Coalition bases within Iraq.  What is though quite telling is that the person sent to him was a survivor of ‘Operation Viking Hammer,’ one of the Iraq war’s first strikes by the United States set to dismantle a known Army of Ansar al-Sunnah (Ansar al-Islam branch) base.  Zarqawi was the leader of the Army of Ansar a-Sunnah prior to branching off to Tawhid wal Jihad to recruit non-Iraqis to join the jihad.

In simple terms, Iran sent an emissary connected to Al Qaida in Iraq to recruit Mustapha to work for Iranian intelligence, believing Mustapha too was a former member of Ansar al-Islam.  This means Iran is aiding both the Shia and Sunni factions within Iraq to create instability, another item which has largely been known since the last thing Iran wants to see is in Iraq is a government friendly to the so-called West develop a Democracy.

Read Miniter’s full column as there’s much, much more including how the operations Mustapha was sent on started to close in on sabotaging the Iraqi government and the Coalition forces, and he carried out some of those missions as opposed to just running surveillance.

According to MEMRI, Iran has threatened to use its ‘long-ranged’ missiles to attack United States targets and Israel in case the U.S. attacked Iran.

In an April 25 speech, Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Mohammed Baqer Dho Al-Qadr threatened that if the U.S. attacked Iran, “nowhere will be safe for America, because of [Iran’s] long-range missiles. Iran is capable of firing dozens of missiles every day at American targets, and with the long-range missiles we can also threaten Israel, as a supporter of America.”

First off, of course Iran will strike out if attacked.  One wouldn’t expect anything else.  But it is interesting to note that Iran seeks to dissuade an American strike by saying it would attack Israel.  Of course Iran would attack Israel because they would need to try to galvanize the Iranian people and the support of other nations in the region.  It just so happens many of those American targets within the region are in nations Iran would seek the support of.

The longest range of the Iranian missile class comes in the form of the Shahab-3, which has a range of 800 miles.  Shahab-4 and Shahab-6, someone forgot the fifth class, has been in development, but at this point there is no reason to believe either exists.

In Iran, if you’re a member of the Basiji Force, an Islamic militia close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and boasts Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a former member, you can kill people for being “morally corrupt” without reprieve.  Six members of this state-sponsored militia were exonerated for doing just that.

The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who the killers claimed were walking together in public . . .

Iran’s Islamic penal code, which is a parallel system to its civic code, says murder charges can be dropped if the accused can prove the killing was carried out because the victim was morally corrupt.

This is true even if the killer identified the victim mistakenly as corrupt. In that case, the law requires “blood money” to be paid to the family. Every year in Iran, a senior cleric determines the amount of blood money required in such cases. This year it is $40,000 if the victim is a Muslim man, and half that for a Muslim woman or a non-Muslim.

Quite interesting that the life of a woman or a non-Muslim is worth half that of a Muslim male, and yet feminists in the United States seem to prefer the Iranian regime to that of the United States.  Yay, feminism.

“The roots of the problems are in our laws,” said Mohammad Seifzadeh, a lawyer and a member of the Association for Defenders of Human Rights in Tehran. “Such cases happen as long as we have laws that allow the killer to decide whether the victim is corrupt or not. Ironically, such laws show that the establishment is not capable of bringing justice, and so it leaves it to ordinary people to do it.”

The ruling stems from a case in 2002 in Kerman that began after the accused watched a tape by a senior cleric who ruled that Muslims could kill a morally corrupt person if the law failed to confront that person.

Some 17 people were killed in gruesome ways after that viewing, but only five deaths were linked to this group. The six accused, all in their early 20s, explained to the court that they had taken their victims outside the city after they had identified them. Then they stoned them to death or drowned them in a pond by sitting on their chests.

It would seem to me that though this is the law in Iran, the number of cases that use this law are relatively low.  We would have heard more about it before this, seeing as how it originated in 2002.

Even so, it is rather disturbing in the greater sense that the Iranian government believes all citizens of so-called Western nations are morally corrupt.  Using this guideline it would be permissable to simply kill all citizens of said nations under Iranian law, but also morally correct to do so because this law was handed down by a cleric.  I needn’t remind anyone, but Iran is building a nuclear program.

The debate over the ‘Islamic‘ headscarf may be raging in France or England, just to name two nations, but starting on April 21 women without the traditional Arab head dress can be arrested.  While this law seems almost comical since the headscarf pre-dates Islam but is now seen as a symbol thereof, but Iran’s police chief, Gen. Ahmad Moghaddam, warns the ending of this tradition is a “[tool] of the enemy.”

“Women who do not wear the veil and don’t abide by the Muslim dress code are tools of the enemy, who tries to destroy the system by spreading a cuture which goes against Islamic values,” he said. The general slammed recent criticism of a police measure which will become effective starting on 21 April under which women who do not respect the Islamic dress code will be arrested.

“The police must solve this problem because it is intolerable to accept the challenge posed by some women to the Islamic principles on which our system is based and which the enemy would like to overthrow,” said General Moghaddam.

The police chief also spoke about growing alcohol consumption banned by Sharia law and Iranian laws: “In the past 12 months, security officials have seized four million litres of alcohol which represent less than 25 percent of alcoholic beverages being produced illegally in the country.”

What about when men wear business suits, even sans tie?  What about London Fog jackets?  Neither piece of clothing is exactly Arab or Islamic, but they somehow get a free pass.

Iranian support of the Mahdi Army in Iraq is known.  Iran arms and helps finance the group while counseling its leader, Muqtada al Sadr, in Tehran.  Further into grey areas is whether or not militia members train inside Iran.

It has been suggested previously based on captured Iranian documents in Irbil that Iran also assissted Sunni groups, and the name at the top of that list was Al Qaida in Iraq.  At the time the report came out, detractors quickly pointed out that a Shia state would not help a Sunni group, nor that a Sunni group who slaughters as many Shia as possible and considers all Shia to be apostates would want a Shia state’s help.  But the two religious sides have teamed up before against a common foe, and there’s reason to believe they would do it again.  The division is at times merely superficial.

Iran has helped turn Lebanon into nothing more than a launchpad for Hezbollah ‘martyrs.’  The nation has helped foment an entire culture of murder in Palestine.

Now, at least according to Gen. Peter Pace, Iran is sending arms shipments to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran,” General Pace told reporters. “It’s not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible.”

The shipment involved mortars and plastic explosives and was seized within the past month near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Markings on the plastic explosive material indicated that it was produced in Iran, General Pace said . . .

According to American intelligence officials, the support to militant groups in Iraq is so systematic that it could not be carried out without the knowledge of some senior Iranian officials. “Based on our understanding of the Iranian system and the history of I.R.G.C. operations, the intelligence community assesses that activity this extensive on the part of the Quds Force would not be conducted without approval from top leaders in Iran,” a senior intelligence official said this year. The Quds Force is an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards.

General Pace has been much more cautious about asserting involvement by senior Iranian officials.

“We know that there are munitions that were made in Iran that are in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” General Pace said Tuesday. “And we know that the Quds Force works for the I.R.G.C.”

“We then surmise from that one or two things,” he said. “Either the leadership of the country knows what their armed forces are doing, or that they don’t know. And in either case that’s a problem.”

There have been previous whispers of Iran’s support for Gulbuddin Hekmaytar, a former commander of the mujahideen during the Afghan-Soviet War, but these charges of Iranian involvment in the Afghanistan theater have been around for some time.  They are, however, conflicting based upon Iran opposing the Taliban previously due to the Taliban’s connections with Pakistan.

United States military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told the press he’s confident Iran has trained members of the Mahdi Army and continues to provide bomb making material.

“We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees debriefs,” Caldwell said at a weekly briefing.

“We also know that training still is being conducted in Iran for insurgent elements from Iraq. We know that as recent as last week from debriefing personnel,” he said.

“The do receive training on how to assemble and employ EFPs,” Caldwell said, adding that fighters also were trained in how to carry out complex attacks that used explosives followed by assaults with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.

“There has been training on specialized weapons that are used here in Iraq. And then we do know they receive also training on general tactics in terms of how to take and employ and work what we call a more complex kind of attack where we see multiple types of engagements being used from an explosion to small arms fire to being done in multiple places,” he said.

The general would not say specifically which arm of the Iranian government was doing the training but called the trainers “surrogates” of Iran’s intelligence agency.

A story we’ve heard several times over, always followed by Iranian denials and flights to Tehran for Muqtada al Sadr.

The Iranian diplomat who was arrested and later released prior to the British hostages being released is claiming the CIA tortured him in prison.  Jalal Sharafi now sits in a hospital where Iranian state-run television spreads the story that the CIA drilled holes in his foot presumably to get him to speak.

During the examination, the voice of a doctor could be heard describing how Sharafi had been beaten by a cable during his detention. Claims of torture have not been independently verified.

Following his visit, Stocker confirmed to The Associated Press that he saw wounds on Sharafi’s body that “were several weeks old,” but said he did not know how the injuries occurred.

“I cannot say who did it and where it happened,” he said. “I can only say that it happened during his detention.”

Earlier in the week, Sharafi’s doctors reported that holes had been drilled into his foot, but the TV images were not clear enough to indicate whether the small, red marks on his foot were indeed holes.

Doctors also reported earlier that he had suffered a broken nose, serious injuries to his back, bleeding in his digestive system, and damage to his ears. None of these injuries has been independently verified, nor were they discernible from the TV footage.

Ok, let us look at this logically, shall we?  Doctors featured in the television coverage of Sharafi indicated the holes had been drilled into his foot, but wouldn’t that be rather obvious if that was the case?  It would also do permanent damage, which would be rather stupid for any interrogator to do.

But what are those red dots on his foot?  It must be from a cable I suppose, or something like that.  And if Stocker did not diagnose Sharafari before he was arrested, how does he know if his foot injury was while he was in captivity?

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the IRGC roughed him up last week when he was released, but I don’t think that happened either.   It makes absolutely no sense for the CIA to do anything to this man other than ask him questions because he would eventually be released.  There was no question he’d say he was tortured, so why do it to him and give him validation of his later claims?

On the day Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met the 15 British hostages, gave them a goodie bag and freed them as an ‘Easter gift’ to the British people, I recall hearing how Ahmadinejad threw a couple of barbs England’s way regarding the sole woman hostage, Faye Turney. The Iranian leader ridiculed England for sending a mother into a war, which certainly at least gives the impression he cares about those type things.

Now that Turney is back in England, she’s speaking and at least according to her, Ahmadinejad’s alleged concern for her child is transparent.

As Faye stood in front of bearded Ahmadinejad he asked her through a translator: “How is your daughter?”

Faye fumed in response: “I don’t know, Mr President, I haven’t seen her for 13 days — remember?”

The Islamic fanatic stuttered: “Oh yes. But haven’t you been allowed a phone call to her?”

Faye replied: “No I most certainly have not”.

Taken aback by her forthright response, Ahmadinejad was momentarily lost for words. Red-faced, he then muttered: “Er, well, good luck in your life and your future”.

And with that he nervously signalled to flunkies to move Faye on so he could meet the next hostage . . .

Faye’s showdown explains why state-controlled Iranian TV aired the clip of her meeting only very briefly and without sound.

Turney also reveals that members of the IRGC were stunned to see a woman and were reacting like teenagers.

In the Daily Mirror, Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor recalled how the Iranians became “very excited” when Leading Seaman Turney was ordered to take off her helmet by a Revolutionary Guardsman.

“When the guard saw her face, his jaw dropped so far it practically touched the bottom of the boat,” OM Batchelor said. “He just stared and pointed at her chanting, ‘woman, woman, woman, woman!’ The blood drained from her face and Faye whispered, ‘there’s going to be a rape involved in this’.”

You know, hair just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s because I see it all the time, but I’ve got to admit I am not a ‘hair man.’

Alone in a cell, she heard nails being hammered and wood being sawn. A woman measured her with a tape. “She shouted the measurements to a man outside. I was convinced they were making my coffin.” She was stripped to her pants and given some pyjamas, then put in a 6ft by 5ft 8in cell with a few flea-ridden blankets.

But Miss Turney, did you use Mahmoud’s personal telephone to call your daughter?

Meanwhile According to the Iranian Student News Agency as relayed by AKI, the government of Iran is working on a book and a film of the hostage taking, interrogation and outcome of the event.  Who will play Mahmoud?