The U.S. Justice Department yesterday said it hopes to seize a share of a Manhattan building held by a suspected financial supporter of Iran's disputed nuclear activities, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Dec. 17).
(Dec. 18) -
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has issued a new warning about Iran’s nuclear program (Mehdi Fedouach/Getty Images).
Assa Corp. is a front company that for nearly 20 years has used a complicated system to redirect rental profits from its 40-percent stake in 650 Fifth Ave. to Iranian state-owned Bank Melli, officials in the Treasury and Justice departments wrote in court documents (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Dec. 18).
The State Department accused Bank Melli in a statement of underwriting acquisitions for Iranian ballistic missile and atomic programs that could support nuclear weapons development, Agence France-Presse reported. The bank also provides credit lines, opens accounts and conducts transactions for entities engaged in proliferation operations, the statement said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Dec. 17).
Tehran has insisted its nuclear efforts are strictly peaceful.
U.S. law requires the Iranian government and any affiliate to obtain special approval from Washington before conducting business in the United States, the Post reported.
"This scheme to use a front company set up by Bank Melli -- a known proliferator -- to funnel money from the United States to Iran is yet another example of Iran's duplicity," Treasury Department Undersecretary Stuart Levey said.
Assa lawyer Peter Livingston said the charge was incorrect although he had not seen the court documents.
"It's a mistake on the part of the government," he said. "We don't believe this is accurate at all" (Kessler, Washington Post).
Meanwhile, Israel warned that Iran would "not hesitate" to use a nuclear bomb to attempt an attack on the United States, the Associated Press reported.
"If it built even a primitive nuclear weapon like the type that destroyed Hiroshima, Iran would not hesitate to load it on a ship, arm it with a detonator operated by [Global Positioning System] and sail it into a vital port on the East Coast of North America," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.
Barak urged the international community not to rule out possible military action to address the Iranian nuclear standoff.
"We recommend to the world not to take any option off the table, and we mean what we say," he said (Associated Press/Google News, Dec. 17).
Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, deputy chief of the Israeli General Staff, said Tuesday that Iran is "on the way to [being] a nuclear country" and called for new financial and political penalties aimed at pressuring Tehran to halt its controversial work, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
"Iran will have enough nuclear materials [for a weapon] in two or three years" given its current rate of low-enriched uranium production, Harel said. To produce fuel for a weapon, Iran would have to run the low-enriched material through its enrichment centrifuges again.
Harel noted Iran's growing missile arsenal, which includes the 1,200-mile-range Shahab 3. A nuclear-armed Iran might offer nuclear protection to militant groups such as Hamas, allowing them to take more aggressive action, he said.
Questioned on Israel's ability to attack Iranian nuclear sites, Harel said the "military option is possible and nothing should be [taken off the] table."
He added that Israel's Arrow 2 missile defense system is "very successful" and that the system would become operational in 2010 (see GSN, Aug. 7; Xinhua News Agency, Dec. 17).
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today warned that any efforts to pressure Iran on its nuclear program would fail, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.
"No power in the world could threaten the Iranian nation," Ahmadinejad said. "Whoever in the world plans to talk on Iran's nuclear program should know that Iran will stick to its principles and not retreat even a bit. ... Iran's enemies have so far failed (with their pressures on Iran) and also in the future all they will gain is further failure" (Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Earth Times, Dec. 18).