US Funding Iranian Uranium-Related Technology Program and Gets Ripped Off

The FBI and NASA are investigating a University of Florida professor and his wife for allegedly defrauding NASA out of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for their own personal use.

Iranian-born Samim Anghaie, 59, is the Director of the Innovative Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute at the University of Florida. His wife, 55-year-old Sousan Anghaie, is president of New Era Technology Inc. (NETECH) in Gainesville, Fla.

Authorities say Sousan Anghaie persuaded NASA to award her company "several fully funded contracts," including nearly $600,000 to develop and study a uranium-related technology.

But, according to an affidavit unsealed today in federal court, the couple allegedly used most of that money to buy personal luxuries — including their $480,000 home in Gainesville, a 2007 BMW and a 2005 Toyota Sienna sports van.

They also used that money to buy a property for their son in Tampa, Fla., a property for their other son in Manchester, Conn., a 2008 Toyota Corolla for Sousan Anghaie's sister, and a 2007 Toyota Corolla for another family member.

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Dick Cheney and Iran's Nuclear Program

Anurag Jain of Strickland House, Chambord Street, London E2, a PhD research student at Queen Mary, University of London, has a letter in this week's Times Literary Supplement which makes an interesting claim:

Iran and the West

Sir, –

...David Morgan notes that “it probably was the British who initially told the Americans what to do about Prime Minister Mossadeq after his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951” (February 6)...It might be helpful to clarify that one of the companies nationalized was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, later known as British Petroleum), whose own profits were greater than the entire Iranian government’s oil revenue – £170 million in 1950...The diplomatic record has demonstrated that MI6 and the Foreign Office teams met with the CIA in 1952 and Churchill himself authorized the action of overthrowing Iran’s head of state and replacing him with the Shah...

...Finally, in highlighting Iran’s nuclear capability rather than its possession of nuclear weapons, Morgan might have noted that it was during the Shah’s rule that the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, held that the “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals”.

Moreover, American universities offered training to Iranian nuclear engineers, and the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld played significant roles in assisting these efforts. However unpalatable these facts may be to Morgan, they should be brought to light so that readers may judge for themselves how Anglo-American military and diplomatic history has informed modern-day relations between Iran and the West.

One never knows, eh?

Well, Now He's a MK

Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael (or, and Isaac Ben-Israel) is the son of a Lechi fighter, a retired IDF major general, a professor of security studies at Tel Aviv University and chairman of the Israel Space Agency. He will also replace Shimon Peres as a Kadima MK.

He has an op-ed in the Washington Times written together with Louis Rene Beres, a professor of law, called Deterring Iran.

In it he writes:

Thoughtful steps are needed to prevent a regional nuclear war. These will require awareness of how a nuclear war might start in the Middle East, and an informed Israeli identification of the best available strategic doctrine. To protect itself against a still-nuclearizing and recalcitrant Iran, Israel's best course may well be a prompt and law-enforcing conventional pre-emption.

Without pre-emption, if Iran goes nuclear, Israel could feel compelled to end its policy of nuclear ambiguity. Taking the "bomb out of the basement" could allow Israel to enhance its strategic deterrent, but Jerusalem could still never be quite certain of enemy rationality.

Every state has the right to defend against aggression, especially where attacks would involve mass-destruction weapons. Now facing the risk of genocidal war from Iran, Israel would not itself consider the first use of nuclear weapons. But should Iranian nuclear weapons ever be unleashed against Israel's cities, either directly or via terrorist proxies, Tehran should understand fully that Israel would respond with at least proportionate destructiveness.

Well, now that he's a MK, he gets to participate in making the decision.