There were several stories updated today that are of some concern to me over how fragile international relationships currently are. Could these be the tests that Vice Pres. Biden referred to leading up to the election, or are these just international tensions that have been brewing and are now coming to head? In any case, the response to several incidents will be worth watching in the coming days.
Breaking this weekend, several Chinese vessels apparently bulley a U.S. Naval ship doing a survey mission in international waters;
During the incident, five Chinese vessels “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity to USNS Impeccable, in an apparent coordinated effort to harass the U.S. ocean surveillance ship while it was conducting routine operations in international waters,” the Pentagon said in a written statement.
UPDATE: China responds, claiming the U.S. survey vessel was breaking international waters and carrying out illeagel surveying in Chinese territory. The Chinese embassy released a statement;
The U.S. navy vessel concerned has been consistently conducting illegal surveying in China’s special economic zone.
…
This official also stated that the Chinese government will make a formal statement about this incident.
Meanwhile, North Korea prepares to launch what it claims to be a satellite delivery rocket. South Korean officials report that the intelligence from the launch site suggest it could actually be a long-range ballistic missile that could have the potential of striking the west coast of the U.S. North Korea threatens today that if any actions are taken to interrupt the launch, it will be considered an act of war;
“Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war,” the general staff of the North’s military said in a statement carried Monday by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Any interception will draw “a just retaliatory strike operation not only against all the interceptor means involved but against the strongholds” of the U.S., Japan and South Korea, it said.
The North has ordered military personnel “fully combat ready,” KCNA said in a separate dispatch.
And in further developements related to Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Isreali officials call another alarm, reporting today that Iran is definatly capable of producing a nuclear weapon;
Iran has “crossed the technological threshold,” and its attainment of nuclear military capability is now a matter of “incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb into its strategy,” OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet on Sunday.
“Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb,” he said.
This folowing a statement from Iran several weeks ago;
Two weeks ago, Iran’s nuclear chief, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, announced that 6,000 centrifuges were now operating at the enrichment facility in Natanz. He said Teheran hoped to install more than 50,000 centrifuges there over the next five years.
Iran sticks to their claim that they are only developing their nuclear program for peaceful energy production and that the claims by the U.S. and Isreal are just propaganda;
Iran says its nuclear programme is a peaceful drive to generate electricity so that the world’s fourth-largest crude producer can export more of its oil and gas.
The Obama administration calls for diplomatic engagement;
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration favours diplomatic engagement with Tehran to defuse the dispute over its nuclear intentions, but has called Iran’s nuclear programme an “urgent problem” the international community must address.
What a fun time it’s turning out to be!
-TF-
