02/21/12: The Denver Post reports that a UN team visiting Iran has no plans to inspect the country's nuclear facilities and will only hold talks with officials in Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday. The remarks by Ramin Mehmanparast cast doubt on how much the UN inspectors would be able to gauge whether Iran is moving ahead with its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons. The two-day visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency team, which started Monday, is the second in less than a month amid growing concerns over alleged Iranian weapons experiments.
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02/18/12: The Boston Globe reports that a senior Iranian intelligence official says an estimated 16,000 computers were infected by the Stuxnet virus. The powerful virus targeted Iran's nuclear facilities and other industrial sites in 2010, and Tehran has acknowledged the malicious software affected a limited number of centrifuges -- a key component in nuclear fuel production. Iran has said its scientists discovered and neutralized the malware before it could cause serious damage, but also said it is facing difficulties obtaining anti-malware software because of international sanctions, forcing Iran to use its own experts to design the software.
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01/21/12: Reuters reports that the UN nuclear watchdog said it did not know an Iranian scientist who was killed last week, rejecting Tehran's suggestions it may have been partly to blame for his death by leaking information about him. The International Atomic Energy Agency, separately also confirmed that its senior officials would travel to Tehran later this month for rare talks about the Islamic Republic's disputed nuclear program.
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11/15/11: The Washington Post reports that further reductions in nuclear weapons beyond those agreed to in the New START agreement with Russia are being discussed within the Obama administration as part of the Defense Department review of future spending. Maybe it is time for thinking outside what is still a Cold War nuclear box, which focuses on the United States having enough secure nuclear weapons to deter some other country from using theirs against America or its allies, today or in the future.
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