Iran says no plans to increase missile range, rejects talks with Trump

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran has no plans to extend the range of its missiles since their 2,000-km (1,240-mile) reach is enough to protect the country, the Revolutionary Guards commander said on Tuesday, amid mounting U.S. pressure over Tehran’s missile program.

Iran’s government again ruled out negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump over Tehran’s military capabilities and regional influence, saying such talks would be against the values of the Islamic Republic. Trump withdrew the United States last month from the 2015 accord between Iran and world powers that curbed Tehran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief. He said the deal was deeply flawed as it had not curbed Iran’s ballistic missile programme or reined in its support for proxies in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and said Washington would reimpose tough sanctions on Tehran.

“We have the scientific ability to increase our missile range but it is not our current policy since most of the enemies’ strategic targets are already within this 2,000-km range. This range is enough to protect the Islamic Republic,” Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency. Jafari said on Tuesday that previous negotiations with the United States about Iran’s nuclear programme were “an exception,” and called Iranian politicians and activists who have favoured fresh talks with Trump “traitors and anti-revolutionaries”. On Saturday, over 100 activists associated with the moderate and reformist camps in Iranian politics welcomed Trump’s deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un envisaging a complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

In a statement published by Iranian media, the activists urged Tehran to start direct negotiations with Washington “with no preconditions” to resolve decades of enmity between the two countries dating to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Jafari rejected their call. “The North Korean leader was a revolutionary but a communist, not an Islamic one. That is why he surrendered, but we will not do the same,” he was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying. Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht echoed Jafari’s remarks. “There are no grounds or logic to talk to such a person (Trump). Public opinion would not welcome that either,” Nobakht was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.

Since U.S. withdrawal from the deal, European signatories France, Britain and Germany have been scrambling to ensure Iran retains enough economic benefits to persuade it not to pull out. Iran’s nuclear chief said on Tuesday that Europe’s proposals to salvage the deal were not satisfying for Tehran.

IRNA reported that the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, had met with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and made clear Iran’s dissatisfaction with European proposals to save the nuclear deal. Referring to Iran’s regional role, Salehi was quoted as saying, “If it continues like this, all sides will lose.”

https:// uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-missiles-range/iran-says-no-plans-to-increase-missile-range-rejects-talks-with-trump-idUKKBN1JF0RL

Iran opens new nuclear facility at Natanz

Iran is set to start producing new centrifuges for enriching uranium at its Natanz facility in a month's time. The move was not in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal European powers have been trying to salvage. Iran's nuclear chief inaugurated a new facility to produce advanced centrifuges on Wednesday, as European powers struggle to save an international deal that has constrained Iran's nuclear enrichment program. "We hope the facility to be completed in a month," Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said on state television, adding that work on the facility had begun before 2015.

The decision to start up the facility, which is located in Natanz plant in central Iran, did not violate the 2015 nuclear deal — the agreement signed by Iran and six world powers that placed severe constraints on the country's enrichment program in exchange for the suspension of international sanctions. Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tuesday that it would increase its nuclear enrichment capacity within the limits set out in the deal.

Iranian signal: But it was Iran's latest signal that it would not bow to the United States, which has called for stronger constraints on the country's nuclear program since it withdrew from the deal in May. The move also increased pressure on the deal's three European signatories — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — who have been fighting to keep the deal alive in the wake of the US withdrawal. That task has proved increasingly difficult as European firms pull out of Iran amid concerns they could be targeted by US sanctions. Meanwhile, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, has warned the country could restart unrestricted enrichment if European countries fail to keep the deal intact.

'It is always dangerous to flirt with red lines'

"If in an unfortunate situation the [nuclear deal] fails, then Iran can restart its activities without any limits," Najafi said. "What I can say is right now, the negotiations at the expert level are continuing and we hope that it could reach some conclusion," he added. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian shot back against Iran's threat to enrich beyond the limits of the deal, saying, "it is always dangerous to flirt with the red lines." Najafi also said Iran would not heed IAEA calls to more closely cooperate with nuclear inspectors. "But I should emphasize that it does not mean that right now Iran will restart any activities contrary to the [deal]," Najafi added. "These are only preparatory works."

https:// www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/iran-opens-new-nuclear-facility-at-natanz/ar-AAyjM5e

>>1825006

Sauce it

The Unexpected Fallout of Iran's Telegram Ban

Seven weeks after Iran's conservative-led judiciary banned the secure communications app Telegram inside the country, Iranians are still reeling from the change. Though Telegram has critics in the security community, it has become wildly popular in Iran over the last few years as a way of communicating, sharing photos and documents, and even doing business. The service is streamlined for mobile devices, and its end-to-end encryption stymies the Iranian government's digital surveillance and censorship regime. If the government can't see what you're talking about and doing, it can't block or ban behavior it doesn't like. Telegram's defenses, combined with robust support for Farsi, have attracted 40 million active Iranian users—nearly half the country's population.

On Tuesday, the Center for Human Rights in Iran published a detailed report on the profound impact of blocking Telegram, based on dozens of firsthand accounts from inside the country. Researchers found that the ban has had broad effects, hindering and chilling individual speech, forcing political campaigns to turn to state-sponsored media tools, limiting journalists and activists, curtailing international interactions, and eroding businesses that grew their infrastructure and reach off of Telegram. The report found that many Iranians continue to use the service through circumvention tools, namely VPNs. Iranians tend to be familiar with and adept at using these options, because they also rely on them to access other blocked online services like Facebook. But the Iranian government's technological capabilities have evolved as well, making it increasingly difficult to maintain usable access to Telegram. "The only channel of communication that was unfiltered was Telegram. For many Iranians the internet is Telegram and Telegram is the internet," says Omid Memarian, deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran. "It was like a huge hole in the country’s wall of censorship, so our expectation was that sooner or later they would block that hole."

'For many Iranians the internet is Telegram and Telegram is the internet.'

Based in Dubai, Telegram has publicly resisted Iranian government efforts to force it to comply with censorship demands. As Iran has tightened its technological stranglehold on content availability, hardline conservatives within the Iranian government have increasingly blamed Telegram for mounting unrest and resentment toward the regime. Officials blocked Telegram briefly in December 2017 amid widespread street protests over government corruption and unemployment. "Foreign messaging networks should comply with the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran and should not publish immoral material," Abolhassan Firouzabadi, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme Cyberspace Council said in November. "If they cooperate with us, there won’t be any problem. Otherwise, we will move towards introducing restrictions against them." The recent, long term ban was mandated by Iran's judiciary, and wasn't initiated by the government departments that typically oversee technology and censorship policy. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani even criticized the ban publicly in May a few days after it went into effect. It moved forward anyway. The researchers found that the ban immediately impacted personal communications and businesses—like advertising and marketing groups—run through Telegram with few comparable communication services to take its place. Even the government itself relies on Telegram to function smoothly. “Email is not widely used. But with Telegram, email has become irrelevant," says Ahmed, a government employee interviewed for the research. "We send files, reports, letters and office communications through Telegram. When Telegram was blocked in January, it created serious problems for us. Sometimes the ministerial offices could not send letters because of problems with installing circumvention tools.” Because Telegram subsumes so many web functions, Iranians have actively fought to stay on it. "What we are seeing is even after the ban, using of Telegram has not dropped off as much as you would think," says Amir Rashidi, an internet security and digital rights researcher at the Center for Human Rights in Iran. "The government has blocked some circumvention tools, and not everyone has access to them, but Telegram is still operating in Iran. The ban has not been fully successful yet."

https:// www.wired.com/story/iran-telegram-ban/amp

>>1825053

I asked you to sauce what you said, where is it?