Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

Readers will have heard in the media about Iran's nuclear "deal" with Turkey and Brazil, which apparently meets some of the goals of a deal Iran backed out of last October which would have removed Iran's low-enriched uranium from the country in exchange for nuclear fuel.

Today's Update looks at the shameless spectacle of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's address to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations this week, which saw the delegations from the US, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and others walk out.

One young Iranian man, who now goes by the name Reza Kahlili, joined Khomeini's Revolutionary Guards right at the beginning. He quickly became disillusioned, however, when he saw young people tortured and murdered in Teheran's notorious Evin Prison.

Critics may complain that the nuclear summit was a glorified photo-op. But even merely gathering world leaders to discuss nuclear terrorism is an achievement.

Yet Obama's Nuclear Security Summit largely ignored the Iranian nuclear elephant in the room. His sanctions efforts against Iran are likewise taking much too long, as the Iranians continually announce the achievement of new nuclear milestones while deadline after deadline is postponed.

Much debate has been sparked by the revelation in the New York Times last weekend that US Defence Secretary Robert Gates had written a secret memo stating that, in the paper's words, the US lacks "an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability."

As readers will be aware, US President Obama earlier this week hosted a 47-nation summit on the subject of potential nuclear terrorism, designed to create additional safeguards against that threat. This Update is devoted to analysis looking at how the achievements of the Summit relate to the ongoing

Readers may have seen an important article over the weekend from Greg Sheridan of the Australian alleging that the US Administration is moving away from trying to stop a nuclear Iran toward containing Iran once nuclear capabilities are achieved. This Update contains some additional discussion of thi

Supreme leader Ali Khamenei had a good day on February 11. If the pro-democracy Green movement had managed to send hundreds of thousands of demonstrators once again onto Teheran's streets, his heybat - the indispensable awe behind dictatorship - would have been finished.

Khamenei had spent months worrying that the opposition Green movement would hijack the anniversary. On Feb. 11, he seemed to regain his self-confidence by proving that he could manage Teheran's streets.

Any campaign of sanctions must now be targeted to force Iran's leaders to confront this stark choice - give up their illegal nuclear quest or risk the very existence of the Islamic revolution.

Today's Update concerns Iran's nuclear program, following the release of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the issue.

This Update focuses on the aftermath of the Feb. 11 celebrations of the anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, where a massive effort by the security forces seems to have largely dampened planned opposition protests.

It is widely being predicted that tomorrow, February 11, which is the anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution, there will be widespread clashes in Iran between the regime and opposition demonstrators, with both sides reportedly mobilising their forces onto the streets of Iranian cities, especially

This Update brings you a detailed analysis of the moral performance of the Israel Defence Force during Operation Cast Lead at the beginning of last year from a significant source - Professor Asa Kasher, a distinguished Israeli philosopher and expert on ethics.

The Iranian regime has never found itself more vulnerable. And, with this vulnerability, it has never leaned more heavily on its own narrative of history. This narrative, of course, has a central antagonist, a character conjured as the "Great Satan".

This Update features some new insights into the goals and motivations of Iran's "Green" opposition movement. The first entry comes from Iranian-American analyst Mehdi Khalaji, who writes about the experience of his own father, an ayatollah now languishing in an Iranian prison.

The Iranian regime has had a bad few weeks internally, resorting to considerable violence to suppress dissident protests first during the annual Ashura Shiite religious festival and then again during the funeral and other mourning ceremonies for leading dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hosein Ali M

Today's Update concerns the linked issues of Iran, Egypt, Gaza and the fate of Gilad Shalit. It opens with a discussion in the Wall Street Journal of "The Peoples' Revolt in Iran," an editorial discussing the mass protests at this week's funeral for opposition figure (but former heir apparent to the

If anyone still had any doubts about Iran's nuclear intentions, these should have been dispelled by last week's revelations in The Times of documents showing Iran experimented with neutron trigger technology. Such technology can only be used in nuclear weaponry.