Iran is helping to detect uranium deposits in Venezuela and initial evaluations suggest reserves are significant, President Hugo Chavez’s government said Friday.

Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz said Iran has been assisting Venezuela with geophysical survey flights and geochemical analysis of the deposits, and that evaluations “indicate the existence of uranium in western parts of the country and in Santa Elena de Uairen,” in southeastern Bolivar state.

“We could have important reserves of uranium,” Sanz told reporters upon arrival on Venezuela’s Margarita Island for a weekend Africa-South America summit. He added that efforts to certify the reserves could begin within the next three years.

Read it all.

On Tuesday evening in New York, top officials of the world nuclear watchdog agency approached two of President Obama’s senior advisers to deliver the news: Iran had just sent a cryptic letter describing a small “pilot” nuclear facility that the country had never before declared.

The Americans were surprised by the letter, but they were angry about what it did not say. American intelligence had come across the hidden tunnel complex years earlier, and the advisers believed the situation was far more ominous than the Iranians were letting on.

That night, huddled in a hotel room in the Waldorf-Astoria until well into the early hours, five of Mr. Obama’s closest national security advisers, in New York for the administration’s first United Nations General Assembly, went back and forth on what they would advise their boss when they took him the news in the morning. A few hours later, in a different hotel room, they met with Mr. Obama and his senior national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, to talk strategy.

The White House essentially decided to outflank the Iranians, to present to their allies and the public what they believed was powerful evidence that there was more to the Iranian site than just some pilot program. They saw it as a chance to use this evidence to persuade other countries to support the case for stronger sanctions by showing that the Iranians were still working on a secret nuclear plan.

Read it all.

Foreign policy is full of dilemmas and nuances. It is important to have the subtlety to understand them. And this is certainly true of policy towards Iran. But there are some foreign policy judgments where clarity matters more than subtlety. Here is one. Iran is led by a man who denies the Holocaust and rants about the “global Jewish conspiracy”. He is sustained in office by an oppressive regime that treats its population with contempt. It would be very dangerous if such a government possessed nuclear weapons.

It is hard, therefore, to imagine a more significant or worrying admission than that of Tehran yesterday. One of the most threatening governments in the world is building a secret uranium-enrichment facility hidden inside a mountain near Qom. Until now it had concealed this second facility, declaring (after its discovery by intelligence sources) only its plant at Natanz.

Iran has admitted to what Gordon Brown has correctly described as “serial deception”. Iran has repeatedly claimed, indeed it still does, that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful. This was always an unpersuasive assertion. President Obama now says that the existence of the new plant is “not consistent” with that peacable aim. Iran will doubtless suggest that its admission of the new plant’s existence demonstrates Tehran’s transparency. But the regime only owned up to the facility because it knew that Mr Obama had been informed about it and was about to tell the world.

Read it all.

It is still far from certain whether Russia will support tough new UN sanctions against Iran.

In his talks with President Barack Obama in New York Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev’s language was equivocal.

He said sanctions “may be inevitable”. He certainly did not promise Russia would support them….

Read it all.

[Martin Luther] King…had this to say in 1968 about anti-Zionism at Harvard University: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews; you are talking anti-Semitism.”

Today, Gandhi’s influence is still keenly felt globally. Yet it is interesting to note that India today rejects its spiritual founder’s worldview. A nuclear power, it has adopted Israel’s approach to threats from suicide bombers and other terrorists.

So with all due respect to Tutu, Israel and the Jewish people are clear about the lesson of the Holocaust: that never again will the destiny of our people be placed in the hands of others. For 2,000 years, Jews depended on pity; they had no land and no army, and what they got in return were inquisitions, pogroms and the Nazi genocide. The Holocaust also taught us that freedom and justice come to those who are prepared to fight for them.

Read it all.

Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem: They have never lived there, the Temple never existed, and Israeli archaeologists have admitted as much. Those who deny this are simply liars. Or so says Sheik Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority.

His claims, made last month, would be laughable if they weren’t so common among Palestinians. Sheik Tamimi is only the latest to insist that, in his words, Jerusalem is solely “an Arab and Islamic city and it has always been so.” His comments come on the heels of those by Shamekh Alawneh, a lecturer in modern history at Al Quds University. On an Aug. 11 PA television program, “Jerusalem””History and Culture,” Mr. Alawneh argued that the Jews invented their connection to Jerusalem. “It has no historical roots,” he said, adding that the Jews are engaging in “an attack on history, theft of culture, falsification of facts, erasure of the truth, and Judaization of the place.”

As President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy team gear up to propose yet another plan for Israeli-Arab peace, they would do well to focus less on important but secondary issues like settlement growth, and instead notice that top Palestinian intellectual and political leaders deny basic truths about the region’s most important city.

Read it all.

President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will accuse Iran Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying it has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years, according to senior administration officials.

The revelation, which the three leaders will make before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit here, appears bound to add urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambitions to build a nuclear weapons capability. Mr. Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, will demand that the country allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran.

American officials say that they have been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a “pilot plant” under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.

But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing about the plant during his visit this week to the United Nations, where he repeated his contention that Iran had cooperated fully with inspectors, and that allegations of a nuclear weapons program are fabrications.

Read it all.

The spiritual head of the Anglican Church expressed concern Sunday about Iranian exiles living in a camp in Iraq, saying they faced “human rights violations” that needed to be addressed urgently.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said both the United States and the Iraqi government had a duty to protect the residents of Camp Ashraf, home to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) dissident group.

“The continuing situation in Camp Ashraf, together with the fact that the 36 people taken from the camp in July have not been released, constitutes a humanitarian and human rights issue of real magnitude and urgency,” Williams said in a statement.

Read it all.

The October talks will draw controversy over whether they help legitimize the Iranian regime. Obama’s GOP critics, stepping up their overall critique of his foreign policy as too soft, will accuse him of making concessions to Iran, just as they accused him of making concessions to Russia on missile defense. Obama aides say these aren’t concessions, they’re decisions based on the U.S. national interest. The legitimacy of Iran’s regime, they add, will be determined on the streets of Tehran, not in a European conference room.

Those are defensible positions. But there’s nothing wrong with concessions if they lead to greater results in return. The confrontation with Iran is moving into a critical period. To Iran’s nuclear technology clock, and Israel’s existential threat clock, add a third clock: Obama’s promised results clock. The clocks are running.

Read it all.

It was supposed to be the week President Barack Obama saved the world. More than 100 heads of state are preparing to descend on New York for talks on halting climate change, promoting nuclear disarmament, defeating terrorism in Pakistan and tackling poverty in sub-Saharan Africa ”” all before a G20 meeting in Pittsburgh on Friday aimed at reaching agreements on global financial regulation and curbing bankers’ bonuses.

The headline-grabber was expected to be the relaunch of the stalled Middle East peace process, to be followed a week later by America’s first direct talks with Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Instead, attempts to revive talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the cornerstone of the administration’s foreign policy, have failed so far. Western diplomats say it will take all the president’s considerable charisma to revive them.

Read it all.

After Paris warned that new sanctions against Teheran remained an option despite the likelihood of negotiations with Iran, French President Nicolas Sarkozy maintained that the Islamic republic was still working on a nuclear weapons program.

“It is a certainty to all of our secret services. Iran is working today on a nuclear [weapons] program,” Sarkozy told lawmakers from his UMP party on Tuesday, according to Press TV.

Read it all.

Egyptians generally do not make any distinction between Jewish people and Israelis. Israelis are seen as the enemy, so Jews are, too.

Khalid Badr, 40, is pretty typical in that regard, living in a neighborhood of winding, rutted roads in Old Cairo, selling snacks from a kiosk while listening to the Koran on the radio. Asked his feelings about Jews, he replied matter-of-factly. “We hate them for everything they have done to us,” Mr. Badr said, as casually as if he had been asked the time.

But Mr. Badr’s ideas have recently been challenged. He has had to confront the reality that his neighborhood was once filled with Jews — Egyptian Jews — and that his nation’s history is interwoven with Jewish history. Not far from his shop, down another narrow, winding alley once called the Alley of the Jews, the government is busy renovating an abandoned, dilapidated synagogue.

In fact, the government is not just renovating the crumbling, flooded old building. It is publicly embracing its Jewish past — not the kind of thing you ordinarily hear from Egyptian officials.

Read it all.

Q: What was the most important aspect of your visit?

A: The learning for me was to see how the church witnesses to the Gospel in a situation that’s highly politicized, in a situation that always has the potential to be volatile and in a situation where Christians are clearly in the minority. The number of Christians in the Holy Land is diminishing year by year. As Bishop Suheil said, “We, Episcopalians and Anglicans are a minority within a minority.”

You learn pretty quickly there that a first principle in the diocese is faith in action. (It is) a diocese that has a huge commitment to education, healthcare, hospitality, housing and peace and reconciliation. Because of a diminishing number of Christians in the Holy Land, the bishop and the diocese have a huge focus on education and so they have several schools that they oversee and operate. The idea is to enable Palestinians, especially, to get an education”¦and to encourage them to stay in the Holy Land. The diocese is very committed to healthcare ”“ ”˜irrespective of one’s religion, one’s ability to pay whatever, we’re here to provide healthcare for you.’ Most of the people who visit the hospital doors are not Christians”¦.People who aren’t Christians recognize in the church a real commitment to their well-being, their health. Likewise with housing, Bishop Suheil and the diocese have been involved in housing projects, not just for elderly people but for young couples ”“ helping them to get established so that they can remain there.

Read it all.

On Saturday, as on every Saturday in recent weeks, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered before dusk on the terraces above the Carta parking lot just outside the Old City walls. In black silk Sabbath robes and fur hats, they lined up in rows, perched and waiting.

Suddenly their foot soldiers arrived on the street below, protesters who surged past the newly opened luxury Mamilla Hotel. Police officers mounted on horses rushed to meet them as hotel guests looked on, bewildered, from windows on the upper floors.

This summer, radical elements of the ultra-Orthodox community have been demonstrating and rioting against city authorities, welfare officials and the police. For Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, a secular high-tech millionaire trying to attract more business, tourism and professional types to the city, the timing has been inopportune, to say the least.

The tensions in this contested city usually run along an east-west, Jewish-Palestinian divide. But within the western, predominantly Jewish, section of the city, the cultural fault lines between religious and secular Jews run deep….

Read it all.

Not many people get to travel the world. And an even fewer percentage go to countries that are conflict zones. The Rev. Cindy Howard recently took a trip to Israel and Palestine and came across an interesting fact – every Israelite and Palestinian she met wanted the same thing ”“ peace.

“There are people in every culture that make up the radical few who only want to fight,” she said. “But the vast majority of people I met wanted peace between the two countries. It didn’t matter what side of the Gaza strip they were on. They all wanted the same thing, peace for their families.”

Howard, an Episcopal priest and rector at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Lee’s Summit, was part of an Interfaith Delegation from Kansas City that traveled to Tel Aviv last month.

Read it all.

A British-based academic has uncovered a fragment of the world’s oldest Bible hiding underneath the binding of an 18th-century book.

Nikolas Sarris spotted a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from about AD350, as he was trawling through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt.

The Codex, handwritten in Greek on animal skin, is the earliest known version of the Bible. Leaves from the priceless tome are divided between four institutions, including St Catherine’s Monastery and the British Library, which has held the largest section of the ancient Bible since the Soviet Union sold its collection to Britain in 1933.

Read it all.

The primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, was scheduled to make his first visit to the Middle East and to the Episcopal diocese of Jerusalem Aug. 22-29. The diocese extends over Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel.

“The context for the trip…is a resolution from General Synod in 2007 that the primate make a solidarity visit to the diocese of Jerusalem,” said Archbishop Hiltz. At press time, the primate was scheduled to meet with the bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Suheil Dawani, and to tour the diocese’s various projects and churches, including the Cathedral Church of St. George the Martyr. The diocese has 27 parishes that minister to various communities; it also runs hospitals, clinics, schools, institutions for the deaf, disabled and elderly, and inter-faith relations.

Read it all.

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.

The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.

Read it all.

The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean-manufactured munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades bound for Iran in violation of United Nations sanctions, diplomats said.

The UAE two weeks ago notified the UN Security Council of the seizure, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because the communication hasn’t been made public. They said the ship, owned by an Australian subsidiary of a French company and sailing under a Bahamian flag, was carrying 10 containers of arms disguised as oil equipment.

The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote letters to Iran and the government in Pyongyang asking for explanations of the violation, and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received and the UAE has unloaded the cargo, they said.

Read it all.

In 2003, 15 years after the Dec. 21, 1988, tragedy, it seemed that the government of Moammar Gadhafi finally had taken responsibility, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to compensate the victims’ families. That long-overdue acknowledgement was rendered moot on Thursday, when Mr. Gadhafi’s son accompanied the released prisoner on a private flight back to Tripoli, where hundreds of young Libyans who had been bused to the military airport greeted him with waving Libyan and Scottish flags.

The American system of justice is built on the twin rails of punishment and rehabilitation. It holds that punishment must fit the crime, a premise that concludes that taking a life is so egregious an act that it often warrants taking away a killer’s freedom for life. In Mr. Megrahi’s case, he committed murder 270 times over.

To have him released to a hero’s welcome was salt in a newly fresh wound of hundreds of American families. It was neither just nor merciful.

Read it all.

With President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also lining up to criticise the decision, it is now easier to count the senior American figures who have not spoken out than those who have.

In Britain questions have been raised over the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper who identified Megrahi as having bought clothing that was found in a suitcase said to have contained the bomb and about the evidence of the managing director of a Swiss company that sold timers to the Libyans.

But the Americans believe there is sufficient evidence that Megrahi, a member of Libya’s intelligence services, was in Malta when the bomb was put on a connecting flight and that he visited Zurich where the timers were made.

Read it all.

The turmoil that erupted following Iran’s disputed presidential election in June has put the Islamic republic squarely back into the headlines. But in some ways it has obscured a bigger, on-going concern for the U.S. and the international community: the question of whether Iran’s theocratic regime is on its way to becoming a nuclear-armed state.

How will Iran’s current political situation influence its nuclear ambitions? How close could Iran be to building a nuclear bomb? What steps ”” diplomatic, economic or military ”” are available to the U.S. and the U.N. to prevent Iran from going nuclear, or to deal with Iran if it does?

Read or listen to it all.

Earlier this week, Iran released French student Clotilde Reiss, who has been accused of spying, but she has to remain in the French embassy in Tehran awaiting the verdict on her trial. Six months ago, Esha Momeni, an American student visiting Iran, was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in the notorious section 209 of Tehran’s Evin prison for daring to campaign for women’s rights. She is now back in the US. But there are other, equally horrific stories of human rights abuses against women in Iran which have received less international publicity. The case of two of them, Maryam Rustampoor, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, also suffering in Evin prison, has been taken up by the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who steps down soon as a diocesan to concentrate on helping persecuted Christians around the world.

Read it all and watch the video too.

The struggle for land, resources and control along a northern strip that has become known as the fault line is festering and threatening hopes of unity among Iraq’s disparate ethnic and religious factions.

“We have three governments up here: the central government, the Kurdish government and the Islamic State of Iraq government,” said an Iraqi soldier from Khazna who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “We are lost in the middle.”

The central government is trying to push back an expansionist Kurdistan regional government; Sunni Arab leaders have old and new scores to settle with Kurdish leaders; and insurgents linked to Saddam Hussein’s ousted government and Al Qaeda want to foment conflict. All sides appear to be retrenching, shunning compromise or buying time as the withdrawal of American forces looms. Villages like Khazna and minorities like theShabaks who live on this fault line continue to pay the heaviest price.

Read it all.

Iran is the major security issue facing Israel, which sees itself confronting an extremist regime seeking nuclear weapons and stating openly that Israel should be wiped off the map. Israel believes the military option has to be on the table and credible if diplomacy and sanctions are to have any chance, and many Israelis believe a military strike on Iran may in the end be unavoidable. The Obama administration, on the other hand, talks of outstretched hands; on July 15, even after Iran’s election, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “we understand the importance of offering to engage Iran”¦.direct talks provide the best vehicle”¦.We remain ready to engage with Iran.”

To the Israelis this seems unrealistic, even naïve, while to U.S. officials an Israeli attack on Iran is a nightmare that would upset Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world. The remarkable events in Iran have slowed down U.S. engagement, but not the Iranian nuclear program. If the current dissent in Iran leads to regime change, or if new United Nations sanctions force Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program, this source of U.S.-Israel tension will disappear. But it is more likely that Iran will forge ahead toward building a weapon, and U.S.-Israel tension will grow as Israel watches the clock tick and sees its options narrowed to two: live with an Iranian bomb, or strike Iran soon to delay its program long enough for real political change to come to that country.

Israel believes the only thing worse than bombing Iran is Iran’s having the Bomb, but the evidence suggests this is not the Obama view.

Read it all from the weekend Wall Street Journal.

As someone who grew up going to Lake George every summer and who probably takes the water far too much for granted, this one made me cry. Watch it all–KSH

I read “Israel Is Real” while preparing for my son’s bar mitzvah. By “preparing,” I mean talking to tent people and mailing invites. On the spiritual side, I’ve done my usual shirk: ducking services, doodling during sessions with the rabbi and dodging queries about my own bar mitzvah of wretched memory, celebrated in a gloomy temple filled with old men waiting for me to blunder.

I mention this as preface because Rich Cohen’s book accomplished the miraculous. It made a subject that has vexed me since early childhood into a riveting story. Not by breaking new ground or advancing a bold peace plan, but by narrating the oft-told saga of the Jews in a fresh and engaging fashion.

Read it all.

A senior Iranian cleric said today that several employees of the British Embassy in Tehran arrested in recent days would be put on trial for unspecified charges of acting against Iran’s national security, potentially escalating a confrontation with the West over last month’s disputed presidential election.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the conservative Guardian Council, said in a Friday prayer sermon that the employees, all of them Iranian nationals, “will definitely be tried” for taking part or promoting weeks of unrest surrounding the June 12 election, which was marred by opposition allegations of massive vote-rigging.

Read it all.

The steel doors are closing. Embattled, uncompromising, Iran’s rulers are returning the country to a state of siege, locking out freedom and preparing to extinguish the remaining flickers of resistance. Yesterday one hardline cleric called for the execution of “rioters”, demanding punishment “without showing any mercy to teach them a lesson”. The Guardian Council, the supreme legislative body asked to look at possible instances of electoral fraud, found no major violation, declaring the vote the “healthiest” since the 1979 revolution. Armed police patrolled Tehran, prepared to fire on anyone daring to protest.

Yet one image has defied all attempts to expunge democracy and crush the hopes for change: the image of Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old music student who bled wordlessly to death in a Tehran side street after being shot by a government militiaman. Her tragic death, poignantly captured on grainy mobile telephone footage, has flashed around the world. It has appalled foreign ministers of the G8, prompting even the Russians to deplore the post-election violence. It has galvanised Mir Hossein Mousavi’s supporters, reinforcing their determination to surrender neither their principles nor their voice. And it laid bare the cynicism, ruthlessness and brutality of a self-appointed clique determined to remain in power at whatever cost.

Read it all.

Nowhere in Iraq is the silence about the Iranian election controversy more striking than in this city, the burial place of the founder of the Shiite sect of Islam and the faith’s theological center for hundreds of years.

Clerics and religious students here shy away from even admitting that they are watching broadcasts of the popular uprising next door, although Iran and especially its clergy in many respects are kith and kin; they study the same texts, follow similar courses of religious study and revere the same saints.

In the last 30 years, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the religious powers in the two countries have taken entirely different roads. Najaf’s clerics publicly rejected the idea promoted by Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that clerics have the final say over political matters. As Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatens to use force to subdue protesters calling for an annulment of the election, Najaf’s senior clerics have said nothing.

Read it all.