Iran Has Reportedly Quadrupled Its Production of Enriched Uranium

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Iranian nuclear officials are claiming that the country is quadrupling its production of enriched uranium.

The state-run IRNA news agency in Iran is claiming that Iran is increasing its uranium production and that the International Atomic Energy Agency had been alerted to this development. The Independent cited Iranian officials who insisted that the uranium would only be enriched to 3.67 percent purity. In order to be used in an atomic bomb, uranium purity needs to be at 90 percent.

At this increased rate of production, it won’t be long before Iran has a larger stockpile of enriched uranium than is permitted under the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration. While the United States pulled out of this deal in 2018, other signatories have tried to keep it going.

James Clapper, former President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, dismissed the announcement, telling the BBC that he did not think it was “necessary to go into panic mode yet.”

This announcement from Iran comes just two days after President Donald Trump tweeted, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Trump’s comments “genocidal taunts.”

National security adviser John Bolton also announced that the U.S. was sending a carrier strike group to the region “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

Bolton said that this was “[i]n response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran. (For more from the author of “Iran Has Reportedly Quadrupled Its Production of Enriched Uranium” please click HERE)

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Influencing Elections? Ha — Russians Are Coming Right to Our Border

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Our political system has been paralyzed over the past year with the incessant news cycle on Russian influence in our elections. Anything and everything related to Mueller’s Russia probe has forced our border crisis to take a back seat to the implied threat of “the Russians are coming.” Well, according to border experts who’ve spoken with CR, Russians are showing up on our southern border. Will the broader media and the politicians now take an interest in the border?

Jaeson Jones, a retired captain from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, warns that the cartels in charge of the plazas at the border are now helping to smuggle Russians into south Texas. “In the last few weeks in south Texas, Border Patrol agents have apprehended several Russians being smuggled between the ports of entry by the Gulf Cartel,” said Jones in an exclusive interview with CR.

Although Jones is retired from his counter-cartel work for Texas law enforcement, he is in regular contact with border officials and cartel informants and continues to train local, federal, and state law enforcement on the latest trends, tradecraft, and capabilities of the cartels. Jones is hearing that the smugglers are strategically using the masses of Central Americans showing up in the Rio Grande Valley, often up to 2,000 per day, to carefully bring over Russians in small, unassuming numbers.

“The Gulf Cartel is currently staging small groups of two and three Russians throughout the Reynosa plaza to be smuggled into the country illegally,” said Jones, who used to manage the daily operations of the Texas Rangers’ Border Security Operations Center (BSOC). “This type of smuggling activity is utilized to move what the cartel deems high-value people. We see this activity often when smuggling special interest aliens (SIAs). Those are people who come from a country with a terrorism nexus. This is due to their ability to pay more money to be crossed illegally.”

Current government officials working on border issues have confirmed a similar trend of aliens coming from countries of terrorism concern or threats of espionage. Last week, I interviewed Jack Staton, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) El Paso division. He observed that there is nothing unique about Central Americans using the loopholes and lapse in coverage at the border. He noted that because we’re not able to detain these people, they’re incentivized to come from all over the world, including Russia.

“Along with the continued flow, you’re going to have every nationality do it. It’s not just going to be Central Americans. We’ve seen non-Central American family units also coming up. We’ve seen families from Turkey and from Brazil. In our area here, we’ve seen Turkish nationals coming in, we’ve seen individuals from Angola, the Congo, we’ve seen individuals from Russia. … We’ve seen a lot of Brazilians coming in; many of the Brazilians are coming in as families, as are Turkish families. We’ve also seen a major influx of Cubans coming into our area here.”

Russia has a robust presence in Latin America. Border agents are tied down at the border, and the secondary checkpoints in the El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico, are completely unmanned. This means that any suspicious immigration activity, such as people coming from non-traditional migrant countries up the main highways, will go unchecked.

Staton noted that the secondary checkpoints were actually set up more for immigration enforcement than for drugs. “They’re not narcotics checkpoints. That’s a secondary function of them, in the sense that people have to stop for an immigration inspection. And then, all of a sudden, agents might find narcotics.”

In a recent interview with Staton’s counterpart at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in El Paso, Kyle Williamson, he also expressed concern that countries of security concern are exploiting the vulnerabilities. When I asked Williamson whether he thinks there is a looming threat from terrorists coming into the country with the knowledge that our agents are tied down at the border and that the secondary checkpoints remain unmanned, he responded emphatically, “Yes, it’s definitely a threat.”

“Let’s just put it this way, the cartels are an international organization. It’s a real threat, it’s a prevalent threat, and they do have their associations with groups like Hezbollah, with Afghans, and with radical terrorist organizations,” warned Williamson, who also served in the DEA’s offices in the Middle East overseeing narco-terrorism enforcement. “What that does is effectively move those borders right up to the United States. Those cartels link the borders. Just like they use their resources, their technology, their criminal enterprise to conduct criminal activities, they can use those resources to assist terrorists as well.”

Williamson sees no reason why national security should be any less affected by open borders than vulnerability to drug trafficking. “When you look at a terrorist organization, obviously they capitalize on chaos. When your borders are in chaos, the same way the drug traffickers exploit that to move the drugs through while border agents are moved away from the field, the terrorists have the same knowledge how to exploit the situation.” So what are Russians being moved in for?

Sheriff David Black of Otero County, which has two checkpoints now unmanned thanks to the surge in migration, was concerned that the highways coming up from El Paso into his county may serve as a conduit for national security threats. “If someone wants to get in to do harm to this country, there is nothing stopping them whatsoever,” said the sheriff. “They don’t even have to risk the hardship of coming over the rugged Mesa area with a load and a gallon of water when they can come straight up our highway without anyone stopping them.”

It’s no wonder the Supreme Court has said, “The right to [exclude aliens] stems not alone from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation (Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 1950). The vulnerability of a broken asylum system has a cascading effect on numerous diplomatic and security issues not just with Mexico but with many adversaries in the world. If the president’s power over immigration isn’t enough to justify shutting down asylum processing at the border, perhaps the ubiquitous fear of “Russian interference” will spawn the political actors to act. (For more from the author of “Influencing Elections? Ha — Russians Are Coming Right to Our Border” please click HERE)

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Christian Father Imprisoned for Homeschooling

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A Cuban Evangelical pastor sentenced to two years in prison for homeschooling his children says his family has endured “psychological pressure and a war on behalf of authorities” for refusing to allow the Castro regime to indoctrinate his children into communist ideology.

His remarks form part of a petition to the Organization of American States (OAS) for a precautionary measure protecting Rigal and his wife, Ayda Expósito – who was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison for the same crime of “acts contrary to the normal development of a minor.” Homeschooling is illegal in Cuba and legal schools are of notoriously low quality, prioritizing the development of submissive citizens over life and professional skills.

A precautionary measure prompts the OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to act rapidly to prevent “imminent risk of irreparable harm to persons or groups of persons in the 35 OAS member states.” Cuba remains an OAS member despite violating the organization’s requirement that all members be democracies for over half a century.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a nonprofit advocacy group defending the right to home school, and the Global Liberty Alliance, a legal defense fund dedicated to defending the defenders and advancing justice in places such as Communist Cuba, filed the petition for a precautionary measure on behalf of the Rigal family.

“The persecution of homeschooling parents is an assault the family and parental rights. These young Christian families, and the independent lawyers in Cuba who make a valiant effort to defend them, are at the tip of the spear in defense of religious liberty and fundamental individual rights,” Jason Poblete, an attorney in Virginia with the Global Liberty Alliance, told Breitbart News. “If you’re interested in helping, share this story with your friends and in your social media networks. The HSLDA will soon provide additional tools to help get the word out to policymakers to help support these families in Cuba.” (Read more from “Christian Father Imprisoned for Homeschooling” HERE)

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Trump Issues Big Warning to Iran

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Days after the Trump administration ordered American diplomatic personnel to leave the United States’ embassy in Baghdad, a rocket attacked the very area they were in on Sunday, The Washington Times reported. The area that was attacked was the Green Zone in the Iraq capital. It’s where the U.S. embassy and the main headquarters for combating the Islamic State sat.

As of now, no casualties have been reported and no group or person has taken responsibility for the attack. Iraqi officials did, however, confirm that one rocket landed inside the diplomatic compound. Eyewitnesses say a second rocket landed inside the Green Zone but that has not been officially confirmed.

British Major General Chris Ghika, the deputy commander of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS publicly disagreed with America’s assessment earlier this week, saying there was no increased threat. . .

Although the U.S. wants to negotiate with Iran, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to make a stark warning: come after America and you will be defeated.

(Read more from “Trump Issues Big Warning to Iran” HERE)

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Signs Point to Iran Behind Gulf Ship Attacks

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By Jordan Schachtel. Assessment: Iran’s IRGC likely organized Gulf oil tanker attacks

Reuters reports that Iran is the likely culprit behind recent attacks on vessels belonging to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

According to the report:

“A confidential assessment issued this week by the Norwegian Shipowners’ Mutual War Risks Insurance Association (DNK) concluded that the attack was likely to have been carried out by a surface vessel operating close by that despatched underwater drones carrying 30-50 kg (65-110 lb) of high-grade explosives to detonate on impact.”

The U.S. has sent more military resources into the region to protect our interests and allies. Iran has repeatedly threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is transported. (For more from the author of “Signs Point to Iran Behind Gulf Ship Attacks” please click HERE)

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Insurer Says Iran’s Guards Likely to Have Organized Tanker Attacks

By Reuters. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) are “highly likely” to have facilitated attacks last Sunday on four tankers including two Saudi ships off Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, according to a Norwegian insurers’ report seen by Reuters.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Norway are investigating the attacks, which also hit a UAE- and a Norwegian-flagged vessel. . .

The attacks took place against a backdrop of U.S.-Iranian tension following Washington’s decision this month to try to cut Tehran’s oil exports to zero and beef up its military presence in the Gulf in response to what it called Iranian threats. (Read more from “Insurer Says Iran’s Guards Likely to Have Organized Tanker Attacks” HERE)

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Air Force Deploys New Weapon to Deal with North Korea

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The United States Air Force has reportedly deployed 20 new missiles to deal with the escalating threats from North Korea and Iran that can “zap” their military electronics, thus rendering their militaries completely ineffective.

“Known as the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the missiles were built by Boeing’s Phantom Works for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and tested successfully in 2012,” The Daily Mail reported. “They have not been operation until now.” . . .

The missile, which reportedly has a range of 700 miles, is delivered from bombers and flies at a low altitude and delivers “sharp pulses of high power microwave (HPM) energy.” . . .

Tensions have risen sharply in recent weeks with North Korea, which has resumed missile testing, and Iran, which has reportedly been behind multiple provocations in the Middle East in recent weeks.

“In response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, the United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” National Security Adviser John Bolton said earlier this month. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.” (Read more from “Air Force Deploys New Weapon to Deal with North Korea” HERE)

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Three-Year-Old Girl Dies After Rabies Shot, Raising Fears of Another Vaccine Scandal

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A three-year-old girl in China’s Jiangsu province died after receiving a rabies vaccination last month, an ominous development in light of persistent scandals over low-quality and improperly-handled vaccines. . .

According to the South China Morning Post’s summary, the girl’s pet dog scratched her on the finger and she received a rabies shot after her father took her to the hospital. Medical staff cautioned her father she might run a mild fever after the vaccination, but instead she developed an uncontrollable fever overnight and died the following afternoon.

The family agreed to an autopsy and also asked for the vaccine to be examined along with medical records and hospital surveillance camera footage. Guangzhou Promise Biological Products, a company with no previous record of vaccine problems, reportedly produced the vaccine. . . .

Parents alarmed by the case began investigating their children’s vaccination history and found the government gave them expired doses for diseases other than polio. Parents held rare public demonstrations as fears of a government cover-up grew, driven by a history of vaccine problems turning out to be much worse than Chinese officials originally admitted, combined with the government’s tendency to suppress popular discontent and suppress those who ask awkward questions. (Read more from “Three-Year-Old Girl Dies After Rabies Shot, Raising Fears of Another Vaccine Scandal” HERE)

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This Is the next Illegal Immigration Shoe to Drop – Along with Its Criminal Elements

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What’s next after Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador empty their populations into this country? There is no end in sight. The next country to line up at our border is Cuba, and it’s bringing an entirely new dimension of criminality with it.

On Monday, the Associated Press published a comprehensive report on the growing trend of Cubans accepting the invitation from our government to come to our border along with the Central Americans. The article discusses the particular route the Cubans have taken through Juarez. As the AP observes, “10,910 Cubans came through official crossings between October and April, versus 7,079 in the previous 12 months.” Almost half of them came in at the El Paso field office, while the other half came in at points of entry near Laredo.

What is going on in the Juarez-El Paso area? According to the Agencia EFE, the largest Spanish-language news wire agency, the phenomenon began with just 100 Cuban migrants arriving in Juarez last October. Once they saw they were allowed into the United States within 24 hours, “word began to spread about the quick and easy access to the United States via Ciudad Juarez-El Paso among the migrants’ relatives and friends.” Then, Cubans began to fly to Panama and make their way to Juarez, and now their numbers are overwhelming even the Central Americans in his key border city.

While most of the media reports on the Cuban migration focus on the veracity of asylum claims or even the cultural clashes with local Mexicans, there is another disturbing element to this that has bearings on our national security. The Cuban migration has brought with it an entirely new dimension of organized crime right at our border and likely coming through it. Juarez is infested with Mexican criminal cartels and gangs, and now, according to a top federal official, the caravans are bringing in criminal organizations from other countries.

“With the pressure placed on the system, now you have all these OTM (other than Mexicans) caravans flooding into Juarez,” warned Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA in El Paso. “You’ve got Cubans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans flooding into Juarez. The Cubans are pretty much occupying all of the motels in town and, together with the Hondurans, are working the street-level drug trafficking.”

“Sinaloa is still the dominant cartel in the region, but Cartel Jalisco New Generacion (CJNG) is coming on strong and pushing a lot of meth.” Williamson noted that while there is still a rigid structure of the individual cartels at the senior level, “the waters have gotten very muddy” at the mid-level and the gangs contracting with them, who often move loads for multiple cartel bosses. Plus, the three major cartels in the area – Sinaloa, CJNG, and La Linea – are sharing the plazas in Juarez. Williamson observed how traditionally the three gangs operating in the area served particular cartels, but that is all changing. “Now you throw in the mix something we’ve never seen before in this area with a lot of other criminal elements coming in from these other countries, and they are getting involved in the gangs. The cartels are giving the Cubans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans the permission to run prostitution rings and street-level drug trafficking in Juarez.”

Therefore, the migration is now bringing entirely new dimensions of criminal activity and drug trafficking at the same time it is taking out Border Patrol resources to combat a more robust cartel and gang threat than ever before. Our enemies now know they can weaponize migration to kill two birds with one stone: They can flood us with migrants and criminal elements who take advantage of desperate migrants, plus the flow in itself ties down our agents so the cartels can strategically bring in their criminal organizers. And as I reported yesterday, with the secondary Border Patrol checkpoints all taken down in New Mexico, these criminal elements have a free lane into our country.

What’s particularly disturbing about the Cuban criminal elements, more than those from Central America, is that there are likely hostile anti-American intentions at the governmental level. Whereas the Guatemalan government under Jimmy Morales is friendly with the Trump administration, the Castro government remains an arch-enemy of the United States.

Colonel Dan Steiner, a retired Air Force veteran who coordinated Texas military operations at our border and also has significant experience in Latin America and the Middle East, believes it’s a no-brainer that Castro is sending much more than drug runners. “The Cubans have a relationship with the Venezuelans, Tehran, Moscow, and the Bolivarian revolution. Their instinct is to counter U.S. actions against them. Insertion of individuals or groups to conduct counter-operations is almost a given. Once we accept this premise, we can fully anticipate these groups will have motives beyond the drug business. Why would they not take advantage of something we seem not to have a handle on? Does anyone in D.C. really care about the potential ramifications of this?”

Steiner believes this is yet another reason why the cartels should be designated as terrorists and should be the focus of more robust military operations. “Again and again, this is why I argue there is a true nexus between the cartels the drug industry and the U.S. definition of a terrorist organization.”

Criminal elements or national security threats from Cuba or other countries of interest now know they can come up the highways without being stopped by the checkpoints where some of them would stand out to agents. We already know that people from nearly 50 countries have been caught at our border this year, according to Raul Ortiz, the deputy chief patrol agent of the Rio Grande Valley sector. “These are from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, you name it,” said Ortiz in an interview with the Epoch Times in March.

The fact that our military is not being placed at the border in places like New Mexico to counter the criminal elements and national security threats rather than simply changing tires on trucks and serving as drivers and cooks for the illegal immigrants remains a mystery.

So long as we refuse to close our border to processing of any immigration requests, there simply is no end to the number of people throughout the world who will eventually come. So long as we open our doors and our welfare system, they will come, especially if we’ve already let in so many from those countries that they are motivated by family unification along with economic considerations. A quick glance at the U.N.’s data on GDP per capita by country shows that there are 88 nations where the per capita GDP is lower than that of Guatemala, which stands at $4,471 as of 2017. That is likely well over one billion people living in similar or worse conditions than the ones coming to our border today.

What is most tragic is that as these economic migrants pour through Mexico to our border, they serve as a physical and political conduit for all the criminal elements of these countries from which America is supposed to be an asylum. (For more from the author of “This Is the next Illegal Immigration Shoe to Drop – Along with Its Criminal Elements” please click HERE)

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Men Burn Church, Kill 6 During Sunday Mass

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By BBC. Gunmen have killed six people including a priest as Mass was being celebrated in a church in Dablo in northern Burkina Faso, officials say.

The attackers, said to number between 20 and 30, then burned down the church.

The town’s mayor, Ousmane Zongo, said that there was panic as other buildings were burned down and a health centre looted.

Jihadist violence has flared in Burkina Faso since 2016, and this is the third attack on a church in five weeks. (Read more from “Men Burn Church, Kill 6 During Sunday Mass” HERE)

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Burkina Faso Christians Killed in Attack on Church

By BBC. Gunmen have opened fire on a church in northern Burkina Faso, killing at least six people, officials say.

The attackers reportedly arrived on seven motorbikes at the end of Sunday’s service and killed the pastor, two of his sons and three other worshippers.

It is the second reported church attack this month and since jihadist violence erupted in the country in 2016.

Fighters affiliated to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group as well as the local Ansarul Islam have been active.

Sunday’s attack on the Protestant church happened in the small town of Silgadji near Djibo, the capital of Soum province, at around 12:00 local time (12:00 GMT). (Read more from “Burkina Faso Christians Killed in Attack on Church” HERE)

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Islamists Attack Relief Centers for Violating Ramadan Fast

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Armed Islamists stormed a heatstroke center in Pakistan on Thursday and forced them to shut down for allegedly violating fasting hours during the ongoing month of Ramadan, the holiest period for Muslims.

The Islamist assault in the city of Sukkur on Thursday forced a total of five water outlets in the Pakistani province of Sindh to close amid a heatwave, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reveals. Citing the social welfare organization known as the Edhi Foundation, Reuters reports that the heat has already killed at least 65 people in Sindh.

The armed Islamists reportedly fired in the air at one of the water outlets in the city of Sukkur in Sindh, prompting operators to flee.

In response, local authorities appear to have capitulated to the armed activists’ demands, advising the facility operators to shut down a total of five heat stroke centers in Sukkur despite the ongoing heatwave. . .

According to Dawn, the Ayub Gate center is one of many facilities set up by the Sukkur Municipal Corporation (SMC) “to provide immediate relief to victims of heatstroke as the maximum temperatures in certain upper Sindh areas in recent days remained between 40 [104 Fahrenheit] and 47 [117 Fahrenheit] degrees Celsius.” (Read more from “Islamists Attack Relief Centers for Violating Ramadan Fast” HERE)

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