War With Iran Has Not Been Taken Off the Table

Pentagon Warning Order: ‘Prepare for War’ (By September?)

By Mac Slavo, SHTFplan.com
July 19, 2011

The world is just one misstep away from a complete financial, economic and geo-political meltdown.

Though the mainstream voices have calmed their reports of middle east conflict amid the debt ceiling and negative economic development in the US and Europe, military intervention in Iran has not been taken off the table.

The Daily Crux reports via the Economic Policy Journal and Zero Hedge:

Robert Baer has had a storied career, including a stint in Iraq in the 1990s where he organised opposition to Saddam Hussein. (He was recalled after being accused of trying to organise Saddam’s assassination.) Upon his retirement, he received a top decoration for meritorious service.

Baer is no ordinary CIA operative. George Clooney won an Oscar for playing a character based on Baer in the film Syriana (Baer also wrote the book).

He obviously won’t name many of his sources in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere, but the few he has named are all Israeli security figures who have publically warned that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hell-bent on war.

…

[Baer] appeared on KPFK Los Angeles, warning that Israeli PM Netanyahu is “likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.” It gets worse: “Masters asked Baer why the US military is not mobilising to stop this war from happening. Baer responded that the military is opposed, as is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who used his influence to thwart an Israeli attack during the Bush and Obama administrations. But he’s gone now and “there is a warning order inside the Pentagon” to prepare for war.” The punchline: “There is almost “near certainty” that Netanyahu is “planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict“, Baer explained.”

While President Obama has not exactly been fully supportive of Israel (at least overtly), an attack on Iran by the Israelis would no doubt be considered by Iran as having been supported by the United States. That being the case, Iran would respond militarily against all US forces in the region, especially those in Iraq, at the first sign of any trouble. Subsequently, the U.S. would return fire en masse, perhaps even utilizing the nuclear option to incapacitate any possibility of an Iranian nuclear response.

What China would do is the unknown variable, but it is clear that the US and China are engaged in a covert war economically, financially and in cyberspace. The recent UN actions in Libya may have been sold to the world public as a peacekeeping mission, but one side issue that has remained in the background is China’s removal of some 30,000 workers from state sponsored oil facilities in the country as a result of the conflict. This leaves one to wonder whether the UN action was a veiled attempt at controlling the oil interests in North Africa. How long before the Chinese decide that their interests have been violated and they get involved militarily? Could an attack on Iran be the catalyst that brings China into the mix?

It is our opinion that what we have seen in the middle east since 2002, including the destabilization of governments in the region over the last 12 months, is a precursor to a war that will eventually encompass the entire world.

Whether this goes critical in September, or at some time in the future, is of no matter. War is coming to the world, as it always does when the economies of empires collapse and national interests over resources collide.

Iran’s First Nuclear Power Plant Now Online

The Blaze/AP
September 4, 2011

Iranian state radio says the country’s first nuclear power plant has been connected to the national power grid for a test run, making it the first Middle Eastern country to produce commercial electricity from atomic reactors.

The Sunday report quotes Mohammad Ahmadian, Iran’s deputy nuclear chief, as saying the plant began to generate 60 megawatts of electricity about midnight.

Ahmadian says a ceremony marking the connection to the power grid will be held Monday. He expressed hope the plant would feed the grid at full capacity in coming months.

The power plant in the southern Iranian port of Bushehr has a capacity of 1,000 megawatt power generations, or about 2.5 percent of the country’s energy consumption. Iran built the plant with Russian help.

The plant was supposed to go online over the past years but it was repeatedly postponed.

According to Reuters, experts say bringing the plant online will not bring Iran closer to building a nuclear bomb, because Russia will supply the enriched uranium for the reactor and will take back spent fuel that could be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium.

Iran said it will only be enriching uranium to lower levels necessary for power, medical or agricultural purposes.

Still, those declarations have done little to allay fears about the the country’s nuclear weapons intentions: Just last week, an International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran was continuing to defy U.N. resolutions aimed at curbing its nuclear program, and cited increasing concerns it may be developing nuclear weapons.

In August, Iran finally allowed a U.N. inspector to view the site where it is developing advanced centrifuges that can be used to make nuclear fuel and to arm warheads. The move was considered a significant one after years of the country stonewalling IAEA requests for greater access.