A source close to the deal told The Wall Street Journal that the agreement was approved in a meeting by telephone on Friday. He said the deal could be announced as early as Monday.

Tumblr climbed to success shortly after launching in 2007 by making it easy for people to post blogs and photos, follow other people on Tumblr, and receive updates. It is continuing to grow at a rapid pace – the site had reached about 117 million unique users worldwide in March, up from around 58 million a year earlier, according to comScore.

Upon acquiring Tumblr, Yahoo would gain a social media site which hosts communication and blogging for millions of people. However, the site generates little profit.

Tumblr, which began placing ads on its site just last year, generated $13 million in revenue last year, Tumblr Chief Executive David Karp said in a recent statement.

Yahoo believes it could help the blogging site bring in more money by selling ads and boosting its own revenue in the process, sources said.

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who joined the company last summer, became interested in Tumblr a couple of months ago, a source said. Acquisitions were expected to be part of Mayer’s strategy although she has only acquired small companies in the past.

In the fall of 2011, Tumblr’s $85 million venture-capital investment valued the company at $800 million.

Yahoo is also expected to deliver an update about its Flickr photo-sharing site on Monday, according to a source.

The requirement for military entry permits reportedly began at the beginning of 2013. However, not everyone is required to obtain the special pass – and no information has been published surrounding the selection process.

Clerics from the US reportedly had to sign a declaration at Ben-Gurion International Airport recently, promising not to enter Area A without permits from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). Area A includes all Palestinian cities and their surrounding areas, with no Israeli settlements. The area is fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

COGAT is a military office which coordinates civilian issues between the Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces, international organizations, diplomats, and the Palestinian Authority.

"I understand that in the event that I enter any area under the control of the Palestinian Authority without the appropriate authorization all relevant legal actions will be taken against me, including deportation and denial of entry into Israel for a period of up to ten years," the English-language version of the declaration reads.

The clerics signed the document, but were not told how they could obtain the special permission.

The clerics told Haaretz that they had been sent from their church to work with Christian communities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. But their mission ended before it ever began because they were not told how to obtain the military entry permit.

One of the clerics sought help from the US Consulate in Jerusalem – but none of the employees were aware of the restictions. The spokesman for the US consulate declined to answer whether Israel had informed the American authorities about the obligation to sign a statement, and did not explain the viewpoint of the US Department of State.

According to Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Population, Immigration and Borders Authority, the Entry into Israel Law authorizes the interior minister to decide on the entry of foreigners to the State of Israel. In the case of Judea and Samaria, the Israel Defense Forces chief of general staff makes the determination with a permit from the coordinator’s office.

“When a tourist or foreign national arrives at the international border crossings and it is believed that he wants to enter Judea and Samaria, he should be informed [of the procedure] and asked for his promise to receive a permit from the coordinator’s office before his entry – a permit that constitutes an essential condition [of entry to the Palestinian Authority controlled areas]," she said.

But there is no mention of the existence of such a procedure on COGAT's English website. The spokesman for the coordinator's office said the matter of the procedure and the form is being examined.

Meanwhile, lawyers are questioning the legality of the declaration. According to the Oslo Accords, citizens of countries which have diplomatic ties with Israel need only an entry permit for Israel and a valid passport to enter Palestinian Authority territories, Attorney Adi Lustigman said.

The declaration “is not legal because it was formulated for an improper purpose – isolating the occupied territories – and in an improper manner. It makes the assumption that people who arrive in Israel as tourists, as clerics and for other purposes want to act in contradiction to the law, which may not have been explained to them clearly,” Lustigman said.

“If there really is such a procedure, it should be publicized in a simple, clear and accessible manner...it seems there is no operative procedure, nor any procedure for submitting a request. We are left only with a prohibition, which, as we have mentioned, is invalid,” she added.

The practice of requiring tourists to sign such declarations was first reported seven years ago, but was reportedly discontinued and renewed only at the beginning of this year.

Several years ago, the Interior Ministry also began to limit the freedom of movement of tourists with work and family ties in the West Bank, in order to prevent their entry into Israel by means of a permit with the stamp “For the territories of Judea and Samaria only.”

The 30 PackBot 510 units, which usually cost between $100,000 and $200,000 apiece, will arrive in Brazil as part of the $7.2 million deal the country signed with American iRobot advanced technology company. The contracts include services, spare parts and associated equipment.

“IRobot continues its international expansion, and Brazil represents an important market for the company’s unmanned ground vehicles,” Frank Wilson, iRobot’s senior vice president, said in a statement. “IRobot is excited to be providing the company’s state-of-the-art robotic technologies to Brazil as the country prepares for several high profile international events, including the 2014 FIFA World Cup.”

The first real test for the PackBots will be the visit of Pope Franics to Brazil this July, with the country also looking to use the robots during the Rio Olympics in 2016.

The PackBots are equipped with cameras and are operated remotely in order to detect and examine suspicious objects or explore dangerous environments, while keeping their operators safe from harm.

The devices weigh about 27 kilogram and rely on caterpillar treads to move around, using videogame-style hand controllers to make it more familiar to the users.

More than 2000 of those military robots are currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with PackBots being the first to enter the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.   

Brazil is spending $900 million to bolster its security forces, including high-tech surveillance equipment and helicopters, as the country is hoping to make the 2014 World Cup "one of the most protected sports events in history."

The country’s police will be equipped with facial-recognition camera glasses that can capture 400 facial images per second to store them in a central database of up to 13 million faces.

Brazil is also reported to have spent $25 million on four Israeli-made drones, which are expected to make their debut at the FIFA Confederations Cup in June.

There’ll also be plenty of manpower involved in the security operation as the World Cup organizers plan have 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers from the Brazilian Armed Forces at each of the 12 host cities during the event.

Yes, at a time when harsh austerity measures, delayed retirements and high unemployment levels are pushing Europeans to vent their outrage on the cobblestone streets, Brussels decided this was the perfect time to impose strict new rules on how restaurants serve olive oil to their customers.

Starting January 1, 2014, eateries will be prohibited from serving olive oil to diners in the traditional glass jugs that have been adorning European tables since at least the Middle Ages. Instead, cafes, bistros and brasseries will be forced to provide their patrons with pre-sealed, non-refillable containers that cannot be easily recycled when empty.

Once upon a time, Europe set the standards on environmental issues; now, it is behaving no matter than Little Jack Horner, sticking its dirty fingers where they don’t belong. Yet it is trying to convince the world that it really, honestly, truthfully just wants to protect the health of the average EU diner, the same group of people that was physically and morally assaulted by raw austerity.

Remember a few months ago when the European Commission was busy disassembling the EU’s world-class welfare system in order to pay back the interest on central bank loans needed to rescue the bankers – the same scoundrels who triggered the global financial crisis in the first place? At that time, Brussels didn’t so much as bat an eyelid about the health and well being of their fellow Europeans.

Suddenly, however, EU ministers have decided to wage a war on bad hygiene and sound traditions when many Europeans can’t afford a bar of decent soap. They also say the move will help reassure what’s left of their consumer base that the olive oil found in EU restaurants has not been diluted with an inferior (Read: Less expensive) product.

No wonder that critics say the rules, aside from boosting profits of the biggest olive oil producing companies (small, private proprietors need not apply), will increase the frustration felt by many towards a Brussels bureaucracy machine that is already seen to be out of touch with the issues affecting ordinary Europeans.

"If the European Union was logical and properly run, people wouldn't be so anti-Europe,” said Marina Yannakoudakis, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament, as quoted by Reuters. “But when it comes up with crazy things like this, it quite rightly calls into question their legitimacy and judgment."

Yannakoudakis said the new measures highlighted how out of touch Brussels’ priorities are.

Ironically, the Eurozone countries worst affected by the euro crisis - Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal – where unemployment levels are sky-high, are also the continent’s largest olive oil producers. It remains to be seen how the new legislation will affect the small olive oil producers in those already pressed economies.

German newspaper Sueddetsche Zeitung called the plan as "the weirdest decision since the legendary curvy cucumber regulation", referring to former EU rules governing the shape of fruit and vegetables found in supermarkets.

Enzo Sica, owner of Italian restaurant Creche des Artistes close to the EU quarter of Brussels, said the rules would prevent him from buying his extra virgin olive oil direct from a traditional supplier in Italy.

"They say they're thinking about consumers, but this will increase costs for us and our customers as well,” he told Reuters.“In this time of crisis, surely they should be worrying about other things rather than stupid stuff like this."

Although Brussels’ olive oil ruling isn’t quite as inflammatory as was Marie Antoinette’s unfortunate quip,

“Let them eat cake,” it does adequately show that EU ministers are dangerously out of touch with the real issues now affecting millions of people across the Eurozone.

Robert Bridge, RT

Robert Bridge is the author of the book, Midnight in the American Empire, which discusses the dangers of extreme corporate power in the United States.

In public remarks made at his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said with great emphasis that the Israeli government would “continue to act to ensure the security interests of the citizens of Israel,” suggesting that further strikes could be on the cards.

“The Israeli government acts in a responsible, determined and measured manner to ensure the State of Israel's main interest, which is the security of its citizens,” he said.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu’s comments came in response to a Sunday Times report alleging that Syria had missiles directed towards Tel Aviv, following several deadly strikes on a military facility in Damascus at the beginning of May.

They reportedly targeted a shipment of missiles en-route from Iran to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

"Our policies are to stop, as much as possible, any leaks of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. We will continue to act to ensure the security interests of the citizens of Israel," Netanyahu stressed.

Israel had neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for May’s attacks. However, Reuters reported shortly afterwards that Netanyahu had convened the security cabinet on the previous Thursday in order to approve the airstrikes.

Israel refused to confirm the strikes so as not to incite retaliation from Syria, an aide to Netanyahu told Jerusalem Post.

On Wednesday – the day after Netanyahu’s visit to Russia – a senior Israeli official told the New York Times that any reaction to Israeli hostilities from Assad’s government means “he will risk forfeiting his regime.”

"If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies, he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate," the official is cited as saying.

It was noted that the decision to contact the paper and make would have been made at the highest levels of Israeli government – however Netanyahu’s Office refused to deny or confirm being behind the report, Haaretz says.

Turkish police have fired tear gas at protesters in a town near the Syrian border, which was the scene of a deadly double car bombing a week ago.

Demonstrators are angry over Ankara's support for the Syrian rebels, which they say is putting Turkey in the firing line.

World affairs journalist and broadcaster, Neil Clark, believes Erdogan must reconsider his policies and stop accusing the Syrian government of targeting the Hatay province, as it would’ve been an “absolutely absurd” move from Damascus.

RT: Tension and discontent on the Turkish-Syrian border is now escalating - what ramifications could this have?

Neil Clark: I think if I were Turkish I would be protesting too, because Mr Erdogan has made colossal blunder here because in August 2011 he took the line he’s going to play a leading role in trying to topple the Syrian government. He allowed rebels to be based in the country. His government gave arms to them and equipment. And now it’s sort of a blowback time. We had some terrible bombings in Turkey this week and this will only continue, until Turkey changes course in relation to Syria. 

RT: Turkey maintains Syria was responsible for last weekend's bombing of a Turkish town that left more than 50 dead, but why would Damascus orchestrate a cross-border attack?

NC: It’ll be absolutely suicidal for Syrian president [Bashar] Assad to order an attack on Turkey, knowing that very powerful countries in the West are just itching for an excuse to militarily attack the country, to bomb the country. So the last thing would be doing is trying to bomb Turkey. It’s absolutely absurd. I don’t know who was responsible for these bombings, but it’s clear that what Erdogan has done has actually involved Turkey in this war. He’s brought the war to Turkey. And understandable the Turkish citizens – not just those on the border with Syria, but throughout the country – are getting increasingly angry and they demand that he changes his course.   

RT: Turkey has made it clear it doesn't want to get directly involved in Syria, but has pledged to respond to the bombings. What action could we see?

NC: We haven’t got any evidence as to who’s responsible for these bombings. And I think Erdogan has to seriously reconsider his entire policies, because all he’s doing is increasing the tension here by backing the rebels. He took a gamble in August 2011 believing that the Syrian government would fall very shortly and that there’ll be a very nice Islamist government in power in Damascus that’ll be very friendly to Turkey. It backfired. It hasn’t happened. And I think that the position, Turkey is in, is getting worse and worse. I hope I’m wrong, but we’re going to see more bombings, I’m afraid. Because the war has been brought to Turkey and, of course, the rebels themselves are fighting among themselves – the radical Islamists, the not so radical Islamists. It’s all happening in Turkey.   
   
RT: An international conference on Syria – endorsed by Russia and the US – is expected soon. What results can we expect?

NC: It all depends on the stance of the US and its allies. Because if they’re still going to carry on with this rhetoric, this Assad must go, we’re not going to get any progress, are we? The people, who are pouring the petrol on the fire, the countries like the US and Turkey, have got to change their position. It’s no use that they’re having a conference, if they’re still going to back the rebels. They’re still saying that the Syrian people could decide the government they want as long as Assad goes. That’s not democracy, is it? It’s up to the Syrian people alone. It’s up to US, Qatar, Turkey to stop interfering in Syria.

Violence broke out in the central city of Kairouan and in the capital, Tunis.

Clashes in the Tunis suburb of Ettadhamen erupted between nearly 500 supporters of Ansar al-Sharia and law enforcements as protesters started throwing stones.

The Salafis were chanting, "The rule of the tyrant should fall," according to Reuters.

Teargas was also reportedly used in Kairouan, as Salafis threw stones at the police from behind the wall of a mosque.

Group’s spokesman Seifeddine Rais, the group's spokesman, was arrested at dawn on Sunday as he went jogging in front of police, according to a police source, who described his behavior as a "provocation," Al Jazeera reported.

According to local reports a young man, identified as a supporter of Islamist group, died in the street clashes in Ettadhamen.

Some 11 policemen and four protesters have been reported wounded in clashes.

The annual rally was expected to have drawn up more than 40,000 people to attend this year's annual congress.

The recent protest that turned violent comes two days after the government banned the Islamist group from holding its annual congress in the central city of Kairouan.

On Friday the government ruled the group had "shown disdain for state institutions" and was "a threat to public security".

“The congress is postponed to another date undecided yet,” Habib Al-Lawz, a leader from the ruling Ennahda party, told a local Radio station on Saturday.

Despite the ban, the group vowed the meeting would take place, but said they would gather at a different location, in an impoverished suburb of Tunis instead of Kairouan, where security forces were deployed in strength on Saturday.

On its Facebook page, Ansar al-Sharia notified its supporters the congress has been moved to Ettadhamen.

Earlier, the movement told to stay away from Kairouan.

"To the attention of our brothers who are coming to Kairouan from other regions... the head of Ansar al-Sharia informs you of the need to cancel all these trips given the seriousness of the security situation," the group said on its website.

As a precaution, there was a heavy police presence at tollbooths along the main highway from the capital to the central city of Kairouan.

Police stopped private minibuses traveling between Tunisian towns, with special attention paid to men with beards, as sported by Salafis.

Police checkpoints have been set up around the city with special units monitoring the square facing the mosque which is the venue for the congress. Helicopters have been also hovering over the area.

"We have taken all measures to ensure the meeting does not go ahead... We will not allow those coming for this congress to enter the city," AFP quoted an unmanned policeman as saying.

Around 11,000 police officers and soldiers blocked an annual conference in Kairouan.

Seoul has placed Israeli precision-guided missiles capable of hitting North Korean targets on its Yellow Sea border islands, Yonhap news agency reported Sunday.

"Dozens of Spike missiles and their launchers have recently been deployed on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands," an official for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. "They can destroy [North Korea's] underground facilities and can pursue and strike moving targets."

The satellite-guided Spike missile has a range of about 20km (12.4 miles) and weighs 70kg (154lbs), according to military officials.

Yeonpyeong is situated just 11km (6.8 miles) from North Korean shores.

South Korea moved to place the Israeli missiles after Seoul confirmed that North Korea on Saturday had launched three short-range guided missiles off its east coast into the Sea of Japan.

Japan confirmed the report of the launches, saying its military had detected them as well.

Two launches were fired on Saturday morning and another one in the afternoon, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Media reports speculated that the projectiles were likely shore-based anti-ship KN-2 Toksa missiles, North Korea’s version of the Soviet-made OTR-21 Tochka tactical ballistic missile, which Pyongyang is believed to have reverse-engineered.

"The missiles traveled about 120 km and in the North Korean arsenal, only the modified KN-02 or multiple rocket launchers of 300 mm or larger in caliber can go that far," a source in the South Korean government said.

Seoul condemned North Korea's latest short-range missile launches as "provocative."

North Korea has not commented on the launches.

While the latest test launch only involves short-range missiles, it poses security threats to the region and should be "stopped immediately,” said the Seoul ministry that is charged with cross-border affairs.

"We find it deplorable that the North does not stop provocative actions such as the launch of guided missiles yesterday," said Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-Seok.

"We call on the North to take responsible actions for our sake and for the sake of the international community."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern over the missile launches and urged Pyongyang to return to talks on the nuclear issue in the six-party format.

"We are very concerned about North Korea's provocative actions," Ban told reporters in Moscow on the weekend. "I hope that North Korea will refrain from any further such actions.”

The UN Secretary General said hopes that Russia "will continue to use their contacts to reduce tensions and intensify the dialogue with North Korea."

He said that he had discussed this subject matter in a meeting on Friday in Sochi with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, the US State Department Saturday called on the North to exercise restraint, without specifically mentioning the launches.

The US stations around 28,500 troops in South Korea, a carry-over from the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, between the warring sides.

The Korean Peninsula is emerging from the latest episode of tensions, which began February 12, 2013, when Pyongyang announced it had conducted an underground nuclear test, its third in seven years.

The test was met with harsh international condemnation and a new round of sanctions by the UN Security Council.

South Korea and the US responded with large scale naval maneuvers, which Pyongyang called a provocation and threatened to use its nuclear arsenal if attacked.

The project, fully named Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated Free-flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange, was expected to go to the orbital testing phase in 2015. But this won’t happen, according to Brad Tousley, director of Tactical Technology Office of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), who spoke this week to space.com.

Tousley cited a number of factors, including the lack of an overall integrator for the experiment, explaining why he decided to scrap System F6 after taking over the office in January and reviewing its project portfolio.

Since its launch in 2006, DARPA invested some $226 million System F6. Last year alone the agency spent $40 million on it, which is roughly a quarter of the agency’s entire space budget.

What the researchers wanted was a system which would allow building several small satellites and would fly in a formation communicating wirelessly and sharing their resources. Such a cluster in theory could do as good a job as a traditional bigger integrated satellite. But they would have better survivability and adaptability as well as cheaper and simpler to produce.

A cluster build with fractionated architecture would have better chances to live over an encounter with space debris (or an enemy attack), DARPA estimated. If one or two satellites in the group were taken out, the remaining would reconfigure and try to compensate for the loss. The testing plan also included a System F6 cluster scattering and re-gathering as part of an evasion maneuver.

Among the final goals DARPA set was to produce an open-source developer’s kit, which would give third parties the tools like communication protocols and behavioral algorithms needed to create similar systems.

The now-canceled program had a troubled history. In 2009 awarded Virginia-based Orbital Sciences a $75-million contract to oversee System F6 development, but soon terminated the deal. Instead it hired several smaller companies to distribute the work among them, but didn’t assign the lead integrator role, Tousley said, failing to explain the rationale behind the leaderless management.

DARPA plans to run some parts of the program to its conclusion. Emergent Space Systems of Greenbelt will be completing its job on developing software for System F6 through January 2014, according to the company’s president and founder George Davis.

Tousley pledged to feed technology developed for the project into DARPA’s other space initiatives. One such piece called Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) aims at demonstrating a low-cost satellite launcher, while another program called Phoenix seeks to salvage satellite in orbit and use the cannibalized parts in other spacecraft. 

He added the broader concept of disaggregation is currently explored by the US Air Force.

Speaking to Argentine newspaper Clarin and Telam news agency in Damascus, Assad said that “believing that a political conference will stop terrorism on the ground is unreal.”

Washington and Moscow have been at odds since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, but are now aiming to find common ground as they push for talks to take place between Assad’s regime and the opposition. If the efforts are successful, there are hopes that talks could take place at the end of this month and could lead to a multilateral summit.

“We welcome the Russian-US rapprochement and hope that an international meeting will take place to help the Syrians overcome the crisis ,” he said. “But we don’t think that a lot of Western nations really want to see a solution in Syria. And we don’t think that those many forces that help the terrorists want a solution to the crisis.”

As world powers lock horns over the Syrian conflict, Assad stressed that foreign states will not act as decision-makers in the crisis and any decision about reform in Syria will come from within.

He specifically addressed US Secretary of State John Kerry, who stated that Assad could play a major role in achieving peace by stepping down.

“I wonder how Kerry or anyone else has received a mandate from the Syrian people to decide whether someone should stay or go. Any decision about reforms in Syria will come from Syria, and neither the US nor any other state can intervene,” he stated.

Assad also reassured that he will not forsake his duty or his responsibilities. “

The captain does not flee his ship during a storm. The first thing he does is face the storm and guide the ship back to safety ," he said. "

I am not someone who flees from my responsibilities." The president stated once again that he was open to dialogue, maintaining that he wanted what was best for the Syrian people. However he underlined that there would be no dialogue with terrorists.

“Terrorism struck the United States and Europe – of course no government is willing to negotiate with terrorists. A dialogue with political force, but not with a terrorist who decapitates, murders and uses toxic gases which are chemical weapons,” he stated.

The Syrian civil war has been raging for more than two years now, with more than 80,000 people killed, according to UN estimates.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which unites the world’s most developed countries, has published an update to its report ‘Divided We Stand’. The report published in December 2011 showed that by 2008 the industrialized nations had the worst situation with inequality in three decades.

According to the new data, the gap between the rich and the poor in most of its 34 members has been getting wider since the crisis started at a higher pace than it did before. Inequality grew more over the three years between 2007 and 2010 than it did over the 12 years before that.

Among OECD countries, it appears that “the top 10 percent has done better than the poorest 10 percent in 21 countries,” with the widest gaps seen in the United States, Turkey, Chile and Mexico. In the three years described above, their income status had been continuously plunging by 2 per cent every year. 

A majority of the countries experiencing the harshest rise of inequality were in Europe, where tough EU austerity policies took hold. Italy and Spain were hit worst. However, a 5 per cent decrease was seen annually in Iceland, Ireland, Estonia and impoverished Greece – which still remains on the verge of economic collapse.

One factor shared by all 34 countries surveyed by the OECD is children and young people. Whether it is due to unemployment or poor family living standards, they appear to have it have the worst. 

“Households with children were hit hard during the crisis. Since 2007, child poverty increased in 16 OECD countries, with increases exceeding 2 points in Turkey, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and Hungary.”

What makes the news grimmer is that cash injections into the world’s financial elite, via banks and markets, as well as Wall Street, essentially only helped the uppermost 10 per cent multiply their wealth. In the years since 2007, their financial portfolios are said to have grown by a large margin.   

But OECD’s data also explains that the economic crisis could not have been the sole factor in the widening gap between segments of society and in their redistribution of wealth. There has been a process that has been exploiting these economic conditions since 2008, via the bankrupting and impoverishment taking place in the developed world, most likely for the purpose of competing with the developing world’s working classes and their cheap labor. So there is a widening base of severely underpaid working class workers across the entire world. But they don’t get nearly the kind of social, economic or healthcare benefits the upper layers of society do.

In the end, it will not get better – the report says. The only reason that 2010 seemed like the worst year is because the growth of the conditions of inequality was somewhat halted by many social state provisions, mostly across Europe. Without them, the report says the real trouble we are in would be more evident, and so would its growth in the years to come. What we are seeing now is only the beginning.

The protocol should contain all IAEA’s concerns about Parchin and all other objects which the agency suspects of being nuke-oriented,  Seyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi has told the Russian media. “And if they don’t find anything, let’s close Iran’s nuclear file and remove it from the UN Security Council.”

The ambassador recalled that Parchin, which the Agency suspects could have been the site of high-explosives tests related to nuclear weapons, had been fully inspected by the IAEA, but then, he said, the agency wanted to undertake further inspections.

“We agreed with a condition that such a protocol would be signed,” the diplomat said. “We displayed flexibility. We offered – let’s sign a protocol and spell out in detail all accusations.” But international experts want to visit the suspected facility prior to signing the protocol – “this is a game,” the ambassador said.

“We did not see sincerity in the way that IAEA and Yukiya Amano, director-general of the UN nuclear watchdog behaved,” Sajjadi said.

“Right now what the Iranians are saying is that in order for the agreement to be signed between Iran and the IAEA the two sides have to trust each other,” Iranian political analyst Seyed Mohammad Marandi told RT.  “And for each ‘give’ there much be a ‘take’. In other words, if Iran takes a step forward, the IAEA must give something in return, and vice versa.”  

Iran wants inspections at the Parchin military site to be conducted within a “comprehensive framework”, otherwise “there is no reason to prevent Americans from saying “No, that wasn’t this building, it was the other in the Parchin site that we need to see,” Marandi said, adding that “this story will go on forever.”

Besides Parchin, the IAEA has suppositions over another Iran’s facility – Fordo uranium enrichment plant – and demands its closure.  Speaking to journalists, Sajjadi noted that Iran was not obliged to close the facility and stop uranium enrichment.

"Have you read the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? Does it say that we have no right to enrich uranium to 20 percent?" Sajjadi asked.

He said the demand to shut down Fordo and stop uranium enrichment was “unfair and ridiculous” and Iran has become a victim of double standards of the IAEA and the US.

"We doubt the sincerity of the West, because in the past they have done to us illogical proposals, including the closure of Fordo, and promised to allow us to buy gold and metals, as well as to authorize export of petroleum products. But it is unfair and ridiculous proposal ,” said Sajjadi.

"The IAEA was designed to safeguard that no one is developing nuclear weapons. But Israel has a nuclear bomb, and no one cares," said the Iranian ambassador.

He assured that Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made a decision not to build nuclear weapon.

“Religious fatwa is above the law”, Sajjadi stressed.

Moreover, nuclear weapons would not ensure security for Tehran, but “on the contrary would bring risk”, he said.

"Now Iran can develop two or three bombs from the materials it possesses. But if you had a gun with two bullets, would you really go to war against an army?" said Sajjadi.

The Islamic Republic insists it has no interest in nuclear weapons, and says it is enriching uranium for purely peaceful purposes, such as nuclear power.

There have been attempts from both sides to find common ground in the issue, but negotiations have yielded no results.

The latest Iran’s nuclear talks in Kazakhstan in April also brought no breakthrough with negotiators going back to their capitals declaring “positions remain far apart”.

“What came out from these talks was the fact that the Iranians were willing to be flexible and had an authority to make decisions, yet the P5+1 led by Ashton did not have room for maneuver, they did not have the authority to make a decision and therefore the talks stopped,” Marandi said.

Since then no date or place has been set for new talks.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Moscow on July 1-2 as Russia hosts a forum of gas exporting countries.

“The Iranian president has been invited, and so we are expecting his visit," Sajjadi said at a meeting, stressing that Ahmadinejad still will be acting president.