From the Times…

Western powers believe that Iran is running short of the raw material required to manufacture nuclear weapons, triggering an international race to prevent it from importing more, The Times has learnt.

Diplomatic sources believe that Iran’s stockpile of yellow cake uranium, produced from uranium ore, is close to running out and could be exhausted within months. Countries including Britain, the US, France and Germany have started intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade major uranium producers from selling to Iran.

Before Christmas, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sent out a confidential request for its diplomats in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Brazil, all major uranium producers, to lobby governments not to sell uranium products, specifically yellow cake, to Iran.

Iran’s stock of yellow cake, acquired from South Africa in the 1970s under the Shah’s original civil nuclear power programme, has almost run out. Iran is developing its own uranium mines, but does not have enough ore to support a sustained nuclear programme.

Perhaps the western nations will be able to keep yellow cake out of Iran long enough for the nation to collapse. But otherwise trying to enforce a blockade is doomed to failure.

One of the biggest problems in this case is that acquiring atomic weapons is in Iran’s national interests even apart from religious/ideological questions. Given their strategic location, the nation would be transformed into one of the big cheeses of the world the instant they got the bomb. And most nations feel that becoming big cheeses is in their national interests. Thus, temporary setbacks are unlikely to stop Iran from marching toward the bomb even if there is a change in political leadership.

By contrast, the bomb was relatively unimportant to South Africa because nobody in the world really cares if anything in Africa gets blown up. Thus, having the bomb did not increase South Africa’s power or prestige by any appreciable amount.

From the Washington Times….

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

From Abu Muqawama….

Unlike in 2006, when the post-war talk all centered around Hizballah’s performance and the IDF’s poor showing, the talk this time around is about the ethics of Israel’s assault and the way in which the operation was conducted. The good news from Israel’s perspective is that even the most hardened Hamas supporter would have a very tough time declaring victory. It appears as if even the best units from Hamas were rolled up with little difficulty, and though I am not in favor of using body counts to gauge operational excellence, it has to be said that Israel inflicted a lot of pain on Hamas with very few casualties of their own.

I don’t know if this is really over yet. I wonder if Israel’s unilateral ceasefire had something to do with an upcoming change in administration in America. They may have felt like they had a deadline to meet. Now if Hamas starts firing again, they can tell Obama they would have liked to have stopped but Hamas would not let them.