VIENNA - Iran has formally set out its terms for giving up most of its cache of enriched uranium in a confidential document -- and the conditions fall short of what has been demanded by the United States and other world powers.

The document -- seen by The Associated Press on Tuesday -- says Tehran is ready to hand over the bulk of its stockpile, as called for under a deal brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency and endorsed by the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany.

But Iran adds that it must simultaneously receive fuel rods for its research reactor in return, and that such an exchange must take place on Iranian territory.

The Iranian offer was sure to be rejected by the six powers, which have waited for nearly six months for such an official answer.

The United States and others fear Iran's nuclear program is geared toward making nuclear weapons, while Tehran claims it is simply to provide more power for its growing population. The United Nations has slapped sanctions on Iran for its defiance on nuclear issues.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian delegate to the IAEA, told the AP the letter was "formally reflecting" his country's position, which has been expressed to the IAEA and to the media in various forms.

The U.S. and its allies have previously said there can be no significant deviation from the original deal, which would commit Iran to shipping out its nuclear material first and then waiting up to a year for it to be turned into fuel for its reactor, which makes medical isotopes.

The letter -- dated Feb. 18 and addressed to International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano -- says Iran is "still seeking to purchase the required fuel in cash." However, it was unclear how Iran would do that, because there are no stockpiles of fuel specifically made for its reactor.

Iran is ready to exchange its low-enriched uranium for the fuel rods "simultaneously in one package or several packages in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran," the letter says.

World powers insist that Iran ship out most of its enriched uranium first then wait for the fuel rods because that would delay Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon by leaving it with too little material to make a warhead.

But Iran's continued rejection of the deal appears to have worked in its favor.

When the agreement was drawn up nearly six months ago, it foresaw Iran exporting about 1.2 tons of low-enriched material for further enrichment in Russia to near 20 percent and then reprocessing in France into fuel rods. Back then, that would have been about 70 percent of the Iranian stockpile.

But Iran has continued to enrich since, and now has about 2 tons of low-enriched uranium.

That means that even if Iran now agreed to ship the requisite 1.2 tons, it would still be left with about 800 kilograms (1,765 pounds) -- about two-thirds of what is needed to enrich further to produce weapons-grade uranium....

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Nonie Darwish, the co-founder of FormerMuslimsUnited.com and the author of Cruel and Usual Punishment.

FP: Nonie Darwish, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Today I would like to discuss with you the photos we are exhibiting below of Cairo University graduates over the course of this era. There are the 1959 and 1978 photos compared to the 1995 and 2004 photos.

These pictures tell quite a story. Radical Islam has taken over even the minds of educated women in the Muslim world.

Since you’re from Egypt, I would like to get your take on this phenomenon. What’s going on here? One would think that people yearn for freedom rather than enslavement, but I guess life experience and human history tells us otherwise – when it comes to certain cultures. Being from Russia, I’m not too surprised with many Russians’ adoration of a thug despot like Putin and even their pining for Joseph Stalin.

Let’s first show these pics and then you share your thoughts on them.

1959:

1978:

1995:

2004:

Darwish: These photos represent the gradual but steady Islamic radicalization invading the Middle East and the rest of the world in the last three decades. I lived in Egypt until the year 1978 and have never wore a head cover, neither did my mother or grandmother. And this is thanks to a feminist movement that started in Cairo in 1919 under the leadership of the famous Egyptian feminist Hoda Shaarawi.

Shaarawi had attended women’s conferences in Europe and Turkey, which was undergoing major reforms by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who wanted to be more like Europe and less like Muslim Arabia. Upon her return from a trip to Rome in 1923, Shaarawi performed a bold act that became the central symbol of her life: with the support of several upper class Egyptian women, she removed her veil in public, at the crowded Cairo train station.  If such an act of defiance had happened today in Iran or even Egypt, she would be executed by the Iranian government and, as to Egypt, she could be killed by an Islamist on the street for defying or insulting Islam.

FP: What were the circumstances at that time that allowed Hoda Shaarawi to engage in this act of freedom of conscience?

Darwish: The reason she was not killed then but actually protected, and was able to start a reform movement in Egypt, was due to many reasons. First and most important was the existence of the British in the area. They helped protected the peace, minorities and equal rights. Second, the Egyptian king was moderate and wanted to bring modernity to Egypt.  Third, this was the pre-petrodollar era of wealth in Saudi Arabia which was still weak and poor. Fourth, the Muslim Brotherhood was not yet in existence.

FP: How and why have things changed?

Darwish: Things started drastically changing after the Egyptian 1952 coup which ousted King Farouk and the British. Even though that coup appeared secular, none of the rebel ‘free officers’ were Christian Egyptians and almost all were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the impact of the Muslim Brotherhood was delayed for a decade after the revolution when they attempted to assassinate Nasser who killed and imprisoned many members of its members. After Nasser died, the Muslim Brotherhood was empowered and with it the status of women. That coincided with Saudi petrodollars and the Iranian revolution, both of which brought power of Islamists to the whole area.

FP: Talk about these photos.

Darwish: The first 1959 photo reflects the influence of the Sharaawi feminist movement which existed until the death of Nasser. However, I must stress that the Egyptian feminist movement which started in 1919 and ended in the late 70’s, and which freed Egyptian women from the hijab, was more cosmetic than true Western-style liberation. Women still had to abide by Sharia law when it came to marriage and family matters and the culture still practiced segregation of the sexes and honor killing.

FP: So why did many of Egypt’s women, and educated women, become more radicalized and turn to the veil?

Darwish: As we see in the photos, the change was gradual, from 1959 of no head covers at all, to 2004 where almost all women, even some young girls, are wearing head covers. It must be noted that the Egyptian government, unlike Iran, does not force the head cover on women.  Religious and social pressure on Egyptian women was the cause for the change. Feminists such as Shaarawi are now threatened and accused of apostasy, forcing the Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi to leave the country. And now we see that some of the harshest critics of Muslim women reformists and human rights activists are none other than Muslim women.

The Muslim woman’s attire is the first thing noticeable in any Muslim country and is dictated by Islamic law. Some devout Muslim women chose to carry the torch of Islam by wearing the burqa on their own and exhibit their piety and devotion to their faith. Those were the ones who were rewarded and respected by society. The rest were left in a quagmire, either choose to be viewed as devout Muslims or as outcast rebel apostates. The majority chose the former since perception and image is extremely important in Muslim society where the uncovered head can be regarded as a defiant image of rebelliousness. After some acts of violence on the street against uncovered women, even some Christian girls found it safer to cover their heads so they were not noticed. How can feminism be practiced openly let alone survive under such conditions?

FP: What does the future hold?

Darwish: Muslim women in the Middle East have never developed a relationship of solidarity and support for their rights and freedoms. To the contrary, they often have hostile relationships where women often report other women when they violate social and religious taboos. Most have developed a holier than thou attitude towards other women. In such an atmosphere many found that if they want respect and even financial rewards, then they must be as radical, if not more radical then men. Some women do not even talk or communicate with women who are uncovered. This happened to me personally when I visited Egypt in 2001 and was wearing a conservative one piece bathing suit on the beach and a couple of covered up women in a group I was with would not talk to me.

In the beginning of our interview you asked why educated Egyptian women choose going back to the old days of the repression of the Burqa. The reasons are many and complex. Muslim women were left with two choices; to be in a constant struggle against Islamization and merciless rejection by society or if you can’t beat them, then join them. Another reason is nationalism, Arab pride and rejection of Western influence. Arab nationalism and pride came at the same time with the sudden wealth from petro-dollars which empowered radial Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia.

Muslim countries have an obsession against free democracies that are prosperous and give women equal rights. Muslim leaders are having a hard time convincing their citizens that the Muslim system is better than Western democracies and thus the media and preaching is consumed with hate propaganda against the West, telling the West we reject your culture, the way you dress etc. I actually remember mosque sermons telling us how Western civilization is corrupt, satanic and we should not befriend them or imitate them in any way shape or form.

The return of the Burqa movement has also migrated to the West. When I moved to the US in 1978 I visited some Muslim girlfriends at UCLA and none of them wore the head cover. Many Muslims who moved to the States in the same year with me never wore the head cover back in Egypt. However, I have seen some of these immigrants a decade later with full Islamic attire. Even on US college campuses the movement is the same, Muslim students are proud to wear their Islamic outfit and refuse to assimilate. The trend is everywhere, just like in the Egyptian photos.

FP: So then what is the future of true women’s rights under Islam?

Darwish: Many believe that Islam’s treatment of women is on its way to being reformed and that it is just a matter of time until Muslim women will wise up, figure what must be done, stand together in unity and march for their equality and human rights. That happened to women in the West, so why not to Muslim women in the Middle East?

There is a major difference: in the West, Christianity did not come with thousands of pages of Jesus’s laws regulating every detail in a Christian’s life to control every Christian. Jesus did not call women deficient in intelligence and lacking in religion or that they are toys, slaves in a marriage. Very simply Western feminists were not confronted with the many dead ends that the Muslim feminist is confronting.

Many also believe that the reformation of Sharia and Islam itself will come from its most oppressed group: women. I disagree with that view, partially because the woman is largely the object of extreme regulation in Sharia (Allah’s law).

Expecting Muslim women to be behind the reformation of Islam and Sharia, is like asking slaves to end their own slavery without their masters’ approval or asking prisoners to get out of prison without the guards opening the doors. That is the reason Muslim Feminism has not succeeded in getting the majority of Muslim women on board. A Muslim woman’s inferior status in Muslim society has gone too deep and has become institutionalized. Muslim societies, cultures and institutions are dependent on it. For Muslim women to simply revolt against Islamic gender apartheid will be regarded as anti-man, anti-family, anti-religion, anti-government and worst of all, anti-Allah himself.

FP: Nonie Darwish, thank you for joining us. And again, thank you for being the brave freedom fighter that you are.

And I encourage all our readers to get their hands on Nonie Darwish’s book Cruel and Usual Punishment.

Excerpt from the Rosie O’Donnell profile:

In a May 2005 interview with Geraldo Rivera, O’Donnell charged that since President Bush had “invaded a sovereign nation in defiance of the UN, he is basically a war criminal.” “Honestly,” she said. “He should be tried at The Hague.” She also used the occasion to defend Jane Fonda‘s decision to visit North Vietnam in 1972.

On September 13, 2006, O’Donnell said that “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.” Condemning the U.S. military response to 9/11, she added: “We were attacked not by a nation. And as a result of the attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries.” …

In November 2007, O’Donnell likened the atmosphere in post-9/11 America to that of the “McCarthy era,” charging that people were now being “blacklisted” and labeled “unpatriotic” for dissenting from Bush administration policies. She also advised Americans, “Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.” …

To view the full Rosie O’Donnell profile, click here.

Iran warned on Saturday the West has until the end of the month to accept Teheran's counterproposal to a UN-drafted plan on a nuclear exchange, or the country will start producing nuclear fuel on its own.

The warning was a show of defiance and a hardening in Iran's stance over its controversial nuclear program, which the West fears masks an effort to make nuclear weapons. Teheran insists the program is only for peaceful, electricity production purposes and says it has no intention of making a bomb.

"We have given them an ultimatum. There is one month left and that is by the end of January," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, speaking on state television.

However, even if Teheran started working on the fuel production immediately, it would likely take years before it can master the technology to turn uranium, enriched to the level of 20 percent, into rods that make the fuel.

... at which point we may still be playing the deadline game with Tehran.

The decade-long attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may have entered the final round on Sunday when Iran announced to the world it intended to build ten new uranium enrichment sites.

“This is really a statement of defiance,” a former senior Israeli atomic official told The Wall Street Journal, “telling the world we are going to go ahead with our nuclear program.”

The Iranian government’s statement came only two days after the world’s major powers condemned Iran’s nuclear program, which, despite Iranian denials, is believed to be producing nuclear weapons. China and Russia joined the United States, France, Britain and Germany to support an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution ordering Iran to stop construction on the uranium enrichment plant near Qom, a secret facility whose existence President Obama revealed last September.

Due to the international criticism, Iranians are now threatening to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. North Korea is the only other country ever to have pulled out of the treaty.

According to news reports, the Iranian decision to thumb their nose at the U.N. and world opinion and construct new nuclear fuel refinement facilities was made Sunday evening at a cabinet meeting chaired by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad. The Iranians will start work on five of the new sites within two months and at an unspecified future time on the remaining five.

It is believed the reason for the extra facilities is to allow Iran to build more nuclear bombs. One military analyst says U.N. weapons inspectors and the U.S. Department of Defense are of the opinion Iran currently has enough enriched fuel for one nuclear weapon. Iran would like to have several more in order to present itself as a “credible threat.”

The Iranian announcement signals a defeat for President Obama’s ‘soft’ approach towards the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite television network last January, Obama said Iran’s leaders would find the extended hand of diplomacy if they “unclenched” their fists.

“As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Obama said.

But as early as March there were already signs that Iran was in no mood to unclench and drop the rock it was holding in the form of its nuclear weapons program. That month, President Obama released a video, wishing the Iranians a happy New Year, which, in Iran, falls on the first day of spring. In return for his friendly overture, the American president received from the Iranian government nothing but a demand for apologies for America’s past transgressions, real or imagined, against Iran.

Sunday’s statement simply proves what most have suspected all along: One cannot talk to the Iranian leaders and that they are simply stringing out negotiations to complete their nuclear arms program. And the fact the Iranians still celebrate the 1979 American embassy seizure every November, a flagrant and criminal breach of international law, shows they do not want to talk to the United States in particular and are still willing to flout international norms.

Essentially, Iran’s leaders are religious fanatics who believe they have been chosen by God to establish a Shiite hegemony over the majority Sunni Islamic world and then, hopefully, over the whole planet. Of the world’s one billion Muslims, about 220 million are minority Shiites, of whom the largest number, about 62 million, live in Iran. Pakistan contains the next largest community of Shiites at 33 million, while India is third with 30 million and Iraq fourth with 18 million.

Iran’s mullah regime sees possessing nuclear weapons as instrumental to its plans for world domination. Nuclear arms would also add significant muscle to Iran’s security in a part of the world where any sign of weakness or vulnerability could be dangerous. Iranians have not forgotten how Iraq took advantage of Iran’s revolutionary turmoil to launch a devastating eight-year war against it in 1980. And like Russia with its former Eastern European satellites, Iran would also use nuclear weapons to intimidate weaker neighbors.

The Asia Times columnist, Spengler (a literary pseudonym), gives another reason why Iran is not afraid to seek confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Iranian demographics have sunk to West German levels of about 1.6 children per woman, which would make waging a war in 20 years impossible. Iran currently has enough young men to embark on a military adventure, whether internally for nuclear weapons acquisition or externally against the Sunni world, while in twenty years it won’t.

Iran’s heavily-subsidized economy is also imploding. Like Argentina with its 1982 Falkland Islands’ invasion and Germany in 1939, economically it is now or never for Iran to make a grab for the ring. In a year’s time it may be too late, especially if oil prices drop dramatically again. Besides, again like Argentina, a military adventure would probably cause those Iranian people actively opposed to the regime to put aside their economic and political grievances and rally around the country’s leadership in nationalistic pride.

But if Iran wants a fight, it will most likely get one. The Islamic regime’s Holocaust-denying leadership has openly stated it wants to erase Israel from the map. Facing such a naked threat to their country’s existence, one military publication states the Israelis are now openly discussing using a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Israel’s Jericho missiles can carry nuclear warheads, they also can be equipped with a conventional warhead. An attack by Israeli warplanes is also a possibility.

The Israelis already have American backing for such a strike if negotiations fail, as they appear to have. American Vice-President Joe Biden said in an ABC interview last July America would not prevent an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since the only other option would be a nuclear-armed Iran, the Israelis will now likely ensure this last round ends in a knockout.