NCRI - Brig. Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Najar, mullahs' defense minister, said, "Iran launched its first domestically made satellite into space" the official news agency IRNA reported on Sunday.

"Omid (hope) satellite was launched on Sunday using the Safir (ambassador) satellite-carrier rocket," IRNA said, quoting a statement from the Iranian regime's defense ministry.

NCRI – Brig. Gen. Ali Larijani, mullahs' Majlis (parliament) speaker and former top nuclear negotiator with the West urged his old cronies in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to concentrate on the country's "problems" and try to find solutions to the staggering economy.

NCRI - France, the EU's rotary president, on Friday issued a statement censuring the mullahs' regime in Tehran for not complying with the international mandates. It largely holds the regime responsible for not obeying the previous resolutions 1737, 1747 and 1803.

The decision comes as major world powers are engaged in a diplomatic tussle with the ruling clerics over their uranium enrichment program which is believed to be part of a weapons program.

NCRI – On Saturday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a clear sign of defiance to the international demand of halting all enrichment activities announced the boost in the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges to up to 6,000.

"Today they (the West) have agreed that the existing 5,000 to 6,000 centrifuges do not increase and that there is no problem if this number of centrifuges work," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the official media outlets to a gathering of his supporters in the holy city of Mashhad. 

NCRI - Former mullahs' president Aliakbar Hashemi Rafsanjani speaking in Friday prayer sermon rejected any time table set by the Western governments for the mullahs' nuclear standoff with the world.

"Now that negotiations are supposed to be held, why are you setting deadlines and giving ultimatums?" Rafsanjani asked in a Friday prayers sermon carried live on state radio.

"Iran is ready to go there and talk -- say whatever you have to say there," said the former president who currently heads two of Iranian regime's top clerical and arbitration bodies in Iran.

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2008 (AFP) - The White House on Monday signaled that it expected Iran to reject a US-backed incentives package to end sensitive nuclear work and warned Tehran may therefore face additional sanctions.

"It is the position of the P5-plus-one that Iran should suspend its uranium enrichment, that we provided a very generous incentives package that they apparently are going to miss an opportunity to accept," said spokeswoman Dana Perino, referring to the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany.

By: JAY SOLOMON
Source: The Wall Street Journal
The U.S. is fine-tuning new financial penalties against Iran that would target everything from gasoline imports to the insurance sector, and the prospect of such sanctions grew after talks over its nuclear-fuel program this weekend made no progress.

U.S. and European officials said they will intensify efforts to impose these penalties should their diplomatic drive fail to induce Iran to freeze its nuclear program. The sanctions effort could include measures to impede Iran's shipping operations in the Persian Gulf and its banking activities in Asia and the Middle East, the officials said.

By: BERES, McINERNEY, & VALLELY
Source: The Washington Times
Neither presidential candidate has made serious mention of what is clearly this country's most urgent policy concern — staying "alive" as a nation.

Nuclear war and nuclear terrorism remain genuinely existential threats to the United States. In fact, their likelihood is increasing, not diminishing.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration moved Tuesday to impose financial sanctions on Iranian officials and companies accused of helping the country develop nuclear weapons.

The action by the departments of State and Treasury marks the latest effort to tighten the financial noose on Iran, which the United States accuses of bankrolling terrorism and seeking a nuclear bomb.