Wars and Rumors of Wars (News Page)

2012-02-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

Israel Could Strike Iran Soon

Panetta Says Israel Could Strike Iran in Spring: Report

AFP
February 2, 2013

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes there is a "strong possibility" that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear installations this spring, the Washington Post said Thursday in an editorial.

When asked about the opinion piece by reporters travelling with him to a NATO meeting in Brussels, Panetta brushed it aside.

"I'm not going to comment on that. David Ignatius can write what he will but with regards with what I think and what I view, I consider that to be an area that belongs to me and nobody else," he said.

"Israel indicated they're considering this (a strike), we've indicated our concerns," he added.

The Post columnist said Panetta "believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June before Iran enters what Israelis described as a 'zone of immunity' to commence building a nuclear bomb."

President Barack Obama and Panetta are "said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold," he said.

"But the White House hasn’t yet decided precisely how the United States would respond if the Israelis do attack."

Panetta said Sunday in an interview with CBS that Iran needed "about a year" to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, and one or two more years to "put it on a deliverable vehicle."

Iran insists its nuclear project is peaceful and has threatened retaliation over the fresh sanctions, including possibly disrupting shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Israeli media reported in October last year that the option of pre-emptive air strikes on Iran was opposed by the country's intelligence services but favored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

Israeli television said Mossad chief Tamir Pardo raised the possibility of a unilateral strike on Iran during a visit last week to Washington.

Panetta Lets Stand Report Israel May Attack Iran

The Associated Press
February 2, 2012

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta won't dispute a report that he believes Israel may attack Iran this spring in an attempt to set back the Islamic republic's nuclear program.

Panetta was asked by reporters to comment on a Washington Post opinion column by David Ignatius that said Panetta believes there is a "strong likelihood" that Israel will attack in April, May or June. Ignatius did not say who told him this.

Asked whether he disputes the report, Panetta said,

"No, I'm just not commenting."

He added, "What I think and what I view, I consider that to be an area that belongs to me and nobody else."

He noted that Israel has stated publicly that it is considering military action against Iran.

He said the U.S. has "indicated our concerns."

2012-01-31T20:44:00.001-05:00

Turkey is the Latest Defector from the Economic Gang That is Stalking of Iran

Turkey Defies U.S., E.U. Ban on Iran Oil

Press TV
January 31, 2012

Turkey has defied Western calls to ban Iranian crude imports, saying Ankara will not go along with the EU and US sanctions on Iranian oil.

A Turkish Energy Ministry spokesman said on Monday, “We are not bound by EU or US decisions.”

On Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu ruled out the possibility of Ankara complying with the unilateral sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic, saying Turkey is currently trying to facilitate talks between Tehran and Western nations on Iran’s nuclear program.

Turkey imports a significant amount of Iranian oil for its biggest petrochemical company, Tupras, which operates four refineries with a total of 28.1 million tons of annual crude oil processing capacity.

Russia, India, and China have also criticized the West’s sanctions on Iranian crude.

On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions on Iran and announced that the United States would begin penalizing other countries for importing Iranian oil or conducting transactions with the country’s central bank.

European Union ministers reached an agreement on January 23 to ban oil imports from Iran, freeze the assets of the Central Bank of Iran within the bloc, and ban the sale of diamonds, gold, and other precious metals to Iran.

2012-01-31T20:34:00.001-05:00

Director of National Intelligence and CIA Chief Say Iran is Not Building Nuclear Weapons

Disgraceful Reporting by the Boston Herald and Others on Iran

By Michael S. Rozeff , LRC Blog
January 31, 2012

The best way to get news is to read actual testimony, reports, transcripts, and speeches. The worst way is to read headlines, unless you like to be subjected to distortions and misunderstandings. In between, one can read news reports and then blogs, comments, and editorials about news reports.

No matter what one reads, the next step is to think about the matter and place it in perspective based on important factors, past events, past news, past communications, history, and so on.

Case in point: the testimony of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper today. See here for his actual testimony in written form. Most important is that he said clearly that Iran is not building nuclear weapons and CIA chief David Petraeus said the same thing, and the latter said he had met with the head of Mossad to convey his view. This portion of his testimony was not reported in the Boston Herald article. Instead, it pieced together two unconnected parts of his testimony and left the impression that Iran was making enriched uranium in order to conduct an attack on the U.S.!! See here. This is disgracefully poor reporting and utterly misleading.

Google provides headlines. Many of these, that I will not cite, are disgraceful too. They leave the impression that Iran has bolstered its threats unilaterally and is suddenly more willing to attack the continental U.S. This is not at all what Clapper said. He said that Iran is “now more willing to conduct an attack on the United States” in the case of a “real or perceived” threat by the U.S. to the regime. In other words, an attack on them or a U.S. threat on them that they considered deadly serious might possibly be met by their attacks on American soil. That’s his opinion, but even that doesn’t get reported accurately.

For example, the Washington Post says, according to Google, “launch terrorist attacks inside the United States in response to perceived threats from America and its allies…” Notice that they added the word “terrorist” to Clapper’s testimony and they left out the part about a real threat. This is really pitiful and biased reporting.

In fact, Clapper’s words are heavily hedged in three ways that the reporting doesn’t make clear. First, he said that it was the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador that is what is indicating to the CIA that “some Iranian officials” are more willing to attack the U.S. in response to real and perceived threats on their regime. OK, but that plot is alleged and the evidence for Iran’s involvement is vanishing. It was so far-fetched and so clownish, whom does it convince? Not me at any rate. Maybe the bright boys in the CIA. Clapper seems to be reaching for a convincing story. Second, other parts of his testimony make clear that there are big divisions and conflicts among Iran’s rulers. That is why he hedged by saying “some Iranian officials.” This is hardly a ringing statement that says that Iran has decided to target the U.S. Third, he says that the top leader “probably” has changed his calculus. How does he know that? It too is hedged language.

In reality, the two short paragraphs on the threat from Iran do not deserve consideration even as major news and they do not deserve scare headlines, much less misinterpreted headlines or biased news reports. There have been numerous threats coming out of Iran about what damage it might choose to inflict if attacked. Their language has waxed as the U.S. threats have waxed. It doesn’t take a CIA with a huge budget to figure out what’s going on. The plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, such as it was, is actually peripheral to the ongoing threat dynamic.

Fox News uses the phrase “emboldened Iran” when it says it is “more willing” to attack the U.S. Where do they get “emboldened” from? That too makes it sound as if Iran, for some unknown reason or unilaterally, has taken upon itself to make the U.S. a target.

Clapper testified that Iran was a cyber threat, along with Russia and China. (Foreign hacking and spying is up on many fronts from many places also.) He didn’t explain why it had risen as a threat. It would be well to ask why Iran has become a cyber threat. Might it not be because it is under attack by the U.S. in many ways and that looking at cyber methods of response is a sensible thing for it to do? Dropping context and history quickly leads to flawed understanding.

2012-01-30T16:16:00.001-05:00

China, India and Russia Have Bilateral Agreements with Iran to Buy Oil

Iran Turns Embargo Tables: To Pass Law Halting All Crude Exports

Zero Hedge
January 27, 2012

Iran is the fifth largest producers of oil in the world.

In what is likely a long overdue move, Iran has finally decided to give Europe a harsh lesson in game theory. Instead of letting Euro-area politicians score brownie points at its expense by threatening to halt imports and cut off the Iranian economy, the Iranian government will instead propose a bill calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe.

The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the EU agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week. And why not? After all if Europe is indeed serious, sooner or later Iran will be cut off but in the meantime experience significant policy uncertainty, which is precisely what the flipflops on the ground need. The one thing that Europe, however is forgetting, is that all that whopping 0.8 Mb/d in imports will simply find a new buyer. Quickly.

So with China, India and Russia already having bilateral agreements with Iran in place, we are confident that said buyer will have a contract signed, sealed and delivered within an hour of the proposed bill's passage.

Furthermore, as SocGen speculated, the fact that Europe will be even more bottlenecked in its crude supplies (good luck Saudi Arabia with that imaginary excess capacity), and which just may force the IEA to release some more of that strategic petroleum reserve (and thus give JPM some more free money on the replenishment arbitrage) will send Brent to $125-150 - something which Iran will be delighted by.

That is of course unless some "experts" discover that Iran may or may not have a complete arsenal of shark with fricking nuclear warheads attached to their heads (despite what Paneta has already said) which gives the US the green light for a full blown incursion, which in turn will send oil over $200, and the world economy into a global coordinated re-depression.

From Spiegel:

"If this bill is passed, the government will be forced to stop selling oil to Europe before the actual implementation of their sanctions," said Emad Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian parliament's energy commission, reportedly said. The bill is set to become law on Sunday.

The EU sanctions allow for oil deliveries from Iran until July 1. Any pre-empting of this timescale by Tehran could prove problematic for countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, who would need to urgently find new suppliers.

China, meanwhile, a major importer of Iranian oil, has also criticized the EU sanctions. The Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday as saying: "To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches."

Many members of the EU are now heavily dependent on Iranian oil. Some 500,000 barrels arrive in Europe every day from Iran, with southern European countries consuming most of it. Greece is the most exposed, receiving a third of all its oil imports from Iran, but Italy too depends on Iran for 13 percent of its oil needs. If this source were to dry up abruptly, the economic conditions in the two struggling countries could become even worse.

Already on Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned of the economic consequences of the EU's planned embargo. Stopping deliveries from the world's fifth largest producer could drive up the price of oil by 20 to 30 percent.

Perhaps instead of doing its best at crippling the world energy markets, and crushing the global economy, Europe should stick to bailing itself out, and other activities in which it has extensive experience.

2012-01-30T16:07:00.007-05:00

Iran Won't Give Up Its Right to Enrich Uranium and Produce Nuclear Fuel, But It Will Allow Inspectors to Visit Its Nuclear Sites to Ensure That Its Nuclear Program Won't Be Weaponized

Ahmadinejad Says Iran Ready for Nuclear Talks

The Associated Press
January 26, 2012

Iran is ready to revive talks with the world powers, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday, as toughening sanctions aim at forcing Tehran to sharply scale back its nuclear program.

Even so, he insisted that the pressures will not force Iran to give up its demands, including to continue enriching uranium, that led to the collapse of dialogue last year.

The United States and its allies want Iran to halt making nuclear fuel, which they worry could eventually lead to weapons-grade material and the production of nuclear weapons.

Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes — generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

The 27-member European Union imposed an oil embargo against Iran on Monday, part of sanctions to pressure Tehran into resuming talks on the country's nuclear program. It follows U.S. action also aimed at limiting Iran's ability to sell oil, which accounts for 80 percent of its foreign revenue.

No date is set for the possible resumption of talks between Iran and the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany. Negotiations ended in stalemate in January 2011, and Iran later rejected a plan to send its stockpile of low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for reactor-ready fuel rods.

Iran had previously indicated that it is ready for a new round of talks. Ahmadinejad is the highest-ranking official to make the offer.

He accused the West of trying to scuttle negotiations as a way to further squeeze Iran.

"It is you who come up with excuses each time and issue resolutions on the verge of talks so that negotiations collapse," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Kerman in southeastern Iran. "Why should we shun talks? Why and how should a party that has logic and is right shun talks? It is evident that those who resort to coercion are opposed to talks and always bring pretexts and blame us instead."

A senior U.N. nuclear agency team is expected to visit Tehran on Saturday, the first such mission since a report in November that alleged Iran conducted secret weapons-related tests and that Tehran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon.

The delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency will be led by Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts, who is in charge of the Iran nuclear file, and might include Peri Lynne Johnson, the agency's senior legal official.

Iran begun uranium enrichment at a new underground site built to withstand possible airstrikes earlier this month, in another show of defiance against Western pressure to rein in Tehran's nuclear program.

Centrifuges at the bunker-like Fordo facility near Iran's holy city of Qom are churning out uranium enriched to 20 percent. That level is higher than the 3.5 percent being made at Iran's main enrichment plant at Natanz, central Iran, and can be turned into warhead material faster and with less work.

Iran says it won't give up its right to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel, but it has offered to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to visit its nuclear sites to ensure that its nuclear program won't be weaponized.

Ahmadinejad also said sanctions and oil embargo will backfire because it has minimum trade with EU.

"Americans have not purchased Iranian oil for 30 years. Our central bank has had no dealings with them ... our (total) foreign trade is about $200 billion. Between $23 billion to $24 billion of our trade is with Europeans, making up about 10 percent of our total trade ... Iran won't suffer," Ahmadinejad said.

His comments were posted on state TV's website.

Ahmadinejad said sanctions won't harm the government, but only the people.

He said officials will be paid.

"They won't be under pressure ... it's clear that you (U.S. and allies) want to pressure the people," Ahmadinejad said. "History has shown that the Iranian nation has overcome obstacles. The bigger the obstacles, the more determined the Iranian nation is."

The EU had been importing about 450,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran, making up 18 percent of Iran's oil exports.

In Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted the Foreign Ministry as opposing the latest EU measures on Iran.

"To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches," the statement said.

China, which is a major buyer of Iranian oil, has urged that the nuclear standoff be resolved through dialogue and consultation.

2012-01-29T14:18:00.004-05:00

Russia Says It Would Never Support a U.N. Resolution Imposing Economic Sanctions on Iran

Bible prophecy describes a coalition of nations that will almost certainly include China and Russia and several other Muslim nations of the Middle East. The Euphrates originates in Turkey, and flows through Syria and Iraq; then it converges with the Tigris River, which then borders Iran. Anyone who hears the daily news should know that these four nations are extremely volatile trouble spots for military conflicts nowadays. The prophecies even imply that the nation of Iraq, once controlled by the regime of Saddam Hussein, will be a notable part of this final showdown. The population of these countries today is: Turkey -- 77 million; Syria -- 19.4 million; Iraq -- 29 million; Iran -- 70 million. The total population of that region is 195.4 million. Obviously, a 200-million-man army cannot come from these nations alone. In the light of China's cooperation with Iran and Syria (both openly and covertly), it appears to be fairly certain that China will league with Iran and Syria, somehow engaging Iraq and Turkey as well, to attempt to defeat Israel and the West. Their rabid anti-Zionism, anti-American hatred will not die, but will escalate into the worst conflagration in the history of human conflicts. Every day, the evidence mounts that China will be tightly leagued with Russia and many of the Islamic nations in a powerful new anti-Israel political and military alliance from which this 200-million-man army will ultimately come. - The Church Will Be 'Raptured' at Armageddon

Russia Asserting Itself Against West, This Time Over Syria Regime Change

The Washington Post
January 28, 2012

With the United States and its allies pressing President Bashar al-Assad to step down, the Arab League last week issued a detailed plan for a political transition in Syria. The plan was welcomed by the Obama administration, and Arab leaders quickly said they would refer it to the United Nations.

And a day later, Russia had its say: Not a chance.

“This is an effort from the Arab League, if I understand correctly, to sort of already put a precooked solution on the table,” said Vitaly I. Churkin, Moscow’s envoy to the United Nations. “I understand that the attitude of Damascus to that has been negative.”

The response doomed any hope of a quick resolution at the United Nations to bring greater pressure to bear on the Syrian government, but it also fell into a familiar pattern by which Moscow has shown a growing willingness to challenge the United States and its European partners on a range of issues.

In recent weeks, Moscow has sought U.N. scrutiny of possible crimes by NATO during its air campaign in Libya, and even called for investigations into organ sales in Kosovo, a close ally of the West. Most notably, Moscow has obstructed any effort to increase pressure on Iran. Asked in an interview whether Russia would ever support a U.N. resolution imposing economic sanctions on the Islamic republic, Churkin said:

“No chance, no chance, no chance. . . . Ever.”

Critics say Moscow’s tough line at the United Nations reflects what one senior council diplomat described as “the Putinization of Russian foreign policy,” on the eve of what many expect will be the return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency. Other analysts say Russia is trying to reassert its authority in the council following a period in which the United States and Europe prevailed in the handling of several major crises, engineering the downfall of former Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo and, more recently, of Moammar Gaddafi in Libya.

“The Russians looked diminished in the first half of 2011, and the strategy is to show, one, they are prepared to act as a spoiler, but, two, they can also lay out a more proactive agenda,” said Richard Gowan, an expert on the United Nations at the New York University Center for International Cooperation.

The United States and its European partners have responded to Russian aims by mounting a campaign to isolate it at the United Nations, and portraying Moscow as an obstacle to the democratic changes sweeping through the Middle East.

This past week, for example, the United States, Britain, Germany and France publicly rebuked Syria’s arms suppliers, a veiled reference to Russia, for continuing to sell weapons to Damascus.

“It is glaringly obvious that transferring weapons into a volatile and violent situation is irresponsible and will only fuel the bloodshed,” Britain’s U.N. envoy, Mark Lyall Grant, told the Security Council.

Russia is coming under mounting pressure to break with Assad from the Arab League, which is sending a delegation to the Security Council on Tuesday to press its case for a political transition that would require that the Syrian leader step aside. Meanwhile, Morocco, acting on behalf of a group of Western and Arab governments, has introduced a draft resolution endorsing the Arab League initiative calling on states to follow the Arab organization’s example by imposing sanctions on Syria. The Russians have responded coolly.

The high-level diplomatic gamesmanship is playing out as violence continues to spiral in Syria, forcing the United States to prepare for the possible closure of its embassy and the evacuation of its diplomatic personnel. U.N. officials estimate that more than 5,400 civilians have been killed, mostly at the hands of government security forces, since protesters took to the streets earlier last year.

Russia’s stance underscores the strength and depth of its relationship with Assad’s regime, which is not only a recipient of Russian arms but also host of a Russian naval base. The crisis in Syria also has provided Moscow with an opportunity to show it is a more reliable ally than Western powers, particularly the United States, which is seen by many in the region as having abandoned one of its closest allies, former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

“If you have good relations with a country, a government for years, for decades, then it’s not so easy to ditch those politicians and those governments because of political expediency,” Churkin said. “We are stronger on our allegiances than others.”

Tensions between the West and Russia have spilled over into a series of highly personal attacks at the United Nations. Last month, U.S. Ambassador Susan E. Rice derided Churkin’s appeal for a new probe into possible NATO killings as a “cheap stunt” aimed at distracting attention from the killing in Syria.

Churkin fired back at the Stanford-educated envoy, saying,

“Really this Stanford dictionary of expletives must be replaced by something more Victorian.”

Rice’s media spokesman posted a tweet with a photoshopped picture of Churkin on the head of “the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.”

Asked if he was trying to change the subject from Syria, Churkin acknowledged that the Security Council has been the scene of “games of distraction,” but he said Russia’s concerns about the Libya mission were legitimate, asserting that the killing of civilians during the NATO campaign was “a real issue.”

Russia, along with Brazil, China, India and South Africa, believe “it would be extremely dangerous if” the West continues to be “carried away by this regime-change idea,” he said.

In Syria, Russia has pursued a complicated diplomatic strategy to shore up the regime, joining China in vetoing the Western-backed resolution threatening sanctions against Damascus, and introducing its own resolution. That resolution, now stalled, sought to focus the Security Council’s energy on backing a political settlement between the Syrian government and the opposition, and cutting off military supplies to the opposition.

Under the resolution, Assad’s army could still be armed.

Asked if Russia’s ongoing arms sales to Assad’s government were perhaps undercutting his government’s effort to pursue a political settlement, Churkin said:

“We are not doing anything which is contrary to international law. Other than that, we don’t have to give any explanation to anybody.”

2012-01-27T12:18:00.002-05:00

Israeli Says the World Must Quickly Stop Iran from Reaching Nuke Goal Line

Israel Says Iran 'Drifting' Toward Nuke Goal Line

The Associated Press
January 27, 2012

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a "surgical" military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Amid fears that Israel is nearing a decision to attack Iran's nuclear program, Barak said tougher international sanctions are needed against Tehran's oil and banks so that "we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program."

Iran insists its atomic program is aimed only at producing energy and research, but it has refused to consider giving up its ability to enrich uranium.

The United Nations has imposed four rounds of sanctions against Iran, but veto-wielding Russia and China say they see no need for additional punitive measures. That has left the U.S. and the European Union to try to pressure other countries to follow their lead and impose even tougher sanctions.

"We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear. And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table and Iran should be blocked from turning nuclear," Barak told reporters during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
"It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them," he said.

But while Barak called it "a challenge for the whole world" to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, he stopped short of confirming any action that could further stoke Washington's concern about a possible Israeli military strike.

Iran has accused Israel of masterminding the killing of Iranian scientists involved in the nuclear program, but Barak declined to comment on that.

Earlier, he told a panel discussion that "a stable world order" is incompatible with a nuclear-armed Iran because countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt will all want the bomb.

"This will be the end of any nonproliferation regime," Barak said. "The major powers in the region will all feel compelled to turn nuclear."

Separately, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged a resumption of dialogue between Western powers and Iran on the nuclear issue.

He said Friday that Tehran must comply with Security Council resolutions and prove conclusively that its nuclear program is not directed at making arms.

"The onus is on Iran," Ban said at a press conference. "They have to prove themselves that their nuclear development program is genuinely for peaceful purposes, which they have not done yet."

Ban expressed concern about the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which strongly suggested Iran's nuclear program has a military purpose.

On Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran is ready to revive talks with the U.S. and other world powers but suggested that Tehran's foes will have to make compromises to prevent negotiations from again collapsing in stalemate.

Iran says it won't give up its right to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel, but it has offered to allow IAEA inspectors to visit its nuclear sites to ensure that the program won't be weaponized.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said at a Davos session that "we do not have that much confidence if Iran has declared everything" and its best information "indicates that Iran has engaged in activities relevant to nuclear explosive devices."

"For now they do not have the capacity to manufacture the fuel," he said. "But in the future, we don't know."

Amano added that an IAEA mission would be sent Saturday to address this issue.

"If the enrichment to higher levels is in a declared facility, we can find it very quickly," he said. "The problem is we do not know if these are all the declared facilities."

Richard Haass, a former top U.S. diplomat who heads the Council on Foreign Relations, said international law justifies a pre-emptive strike only to stave off an "imminent" attack.

"The real question is can Iran assure us what it is not doing?" he said.

Israeli defense officials said Friday that new European sanctions on Iran could constrain Israel. They said any Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities may lack international legitimacy while the world waits to see the effects of the new measures.

The officials spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss sensitive military matters.

Much of the West agrees with Israel that Iran, despite its denials, is developing nuclear weapons technology. But the United States clearly worries that a military attack could backfire, by dividing international opposition to Iran — and send oil prices skyrocketing.

Israel has attacked nuclear sites in foreign countries before. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor. In 2007, Israeli aircraft destroyed a site in Syria that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed to be a secretly built nuclear reactor.

But Israel is unlikely to strike without coordinating with the Americans, who maintain forces on aircraft carriers and military bases in the Gulf.

In spite of his tough words to Iran, Ban said that dialogue among the "three-plus-three" — Germany, France and Britain plus Russia, China and the United States — is the path forward.

"There is no other alternative for addressing this crisis than peaceful ... resolution through dialogue," said Ban.

Ban noted that there have been a total of five Security Council resolutions so far on the Iranian nuclear program, four calling for sanctions.

It's not just the West that is concerned.

"We take it for granted Iran would want nuclear weapons," Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of Modern International Studies at Tsinghua University, said of China. "Certainly, China is working very hard with the international community to prevent this."

2012-01-26T11:03:00.001-05:00

Iran Won't Give Up Its Right to Enrich Uranium and Produce Nuclear Fuel, But It Will Allow Inspectors to Visit Its Nuclear Sites to Ensure That Its Nuclear Program Won't Be Weaponized

Ahmadinejad Says Iran Ready for Nuclear Talks

January 26, 2012

AP - Iran is ready to revive talks with the world powers, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday, as toughening sanctions aim at forcing Tehran to sharply scale back its nuclear program.

Even so, he insisted that the pressures will not force Iran to give up its demands, including to continue enriching uranium, that led to the collapse of dialogue last year.

The United States and its allies want Iran to halt making nuclear fuel, which they worry could eventually lead to weapons-grade material and the production of nuclear weapons.

Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes — generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

Iran had previously indicated that it is ready for a new round of talks. Ahmadinejad is the highest-ranking official to make the offer.

He accused the West of trying to scuttle negotiations as a way to further squeeze Iran.

"It is you who come up with excuses each time and issue resolutions on the verge of talks so that negotiations collapse," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Kerman in southeastern Iran. "Why should we shun talks? Why and how should a party that has logic and is right shun talks? It is evident that those who resort to coercion are opposed to talks and always bring pretexts and blame us instead."

Ahmadinejad also said sanctions and oil embargo will backfire because it has minimum trade with EU.

"Americans have not purchased Iranian oil for 30 years. Our central bank has had no dealings with them ... our (total) foreign trade is about $200 billion. Between $23 billion to $24 billion of our trade is with Europeans, making up about 10 percent of our total trade ... Iran won't suffer," Ahmadinejad said.

His comments were posted on state TV's website.

Ahmadinejad said sanctions won't harm the government, but only the people.

He said officials will be paid.

"They won't be under pressure ... it's clear that you (U.S. and allies) want to pressure the people," Ahmadinejad said. "History has shown that the Iranian nation has overcome obstacles. The bigger the obstacles, the more determined the Iranian nation is."

The EU had been importing about 450,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran, making up 18 percent of Iran's oil exports.

In Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted the Foreign Ministry as opposing the latest EU measures on Iran.

"To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches," the statement said.

China, which is a major buyer of Iranian oil, has urged that the nuclear standoff be resolved through dialogue and consultation.

2012-01-25T21:51:00.004-05:00

U.S. Military Refuses to Drive Bilderberg Israeli Bus Off Cliff into WWIII

U.S. Military Refuses to Drive Bilderberg Israeli Bus Off Cliff into WW III

www.911insidejob.com
January 25, 2012

I deliberately use words that will trigger computer key word searches by the military and US Intelligence Services. This is one of those posts.

I deal in reality. If you want to hear fantasies about Iran’s nuclear weapons program that does not exist, you will have to go to a news outlet that either takes money from the Federal Reserve or is owned by Zionists and arms manufacturers. There is no evidence that Iran has an active program to make nuclear weapons. The Iranians are at 20% enrichment which is enough to make medical isotopes. They need to get to over 90% to make a bomb.

Yet we have heard nothing but war talk against Iran ever since the invasion of Iraq. We spent a trillion dollars and lots of lives fighting in Iraq over WMDs we knew never existed even before we invaded. We spent over a trillion dollars fighting in Afghanistan because the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden without evidence that he was responsible for 911. The US refused to produce any evidence of Osama’s crimes because there was none. But there is overwhelming evidence that Israel did 911 which I will demonstrate in my next essay.

So if the Iraqi WMDs were a fantasy cooked up by the Israelis to trick Americans into killing millions of Muslims in Iraq and Israel did 911 so there was no reason to kill millions of Muslims in Afghanistan, why is the Jewish owned media talking about attacking Iran which means war with Syria and Hezbollah as well? And what was it with those drone attacks and car bombs the CIA unleashed against Pakistan? I thought Pakistan was one of America’s best friends in the world.

As I said before, I deal in reality. Israel has laid claim to all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates which has an area the size of Texas and a population of 300 million. In 2001 just after 911 Wesley Clark saw a list of 7 nations Bush had told the Pentagon to invade. The list included Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Iran. It was based upon Oded Yinon’s 1982 A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. The only reason for all of America’s wars is Israel and her insane idea that she has the right to dispossess 300 million people from their land. America spent trillions of dollars and ten years fighting people who were only guilty of resisting invasions and occupations that killed millions of innocent civilians. You might ask where the honor is in killing unarmed women and children.

All that fighting and dying and all those sacrifices by families back home were to no avail. When the US officially left Iraq on December 15, 2011, she left behind lots of cancer and birth defect inducing Depleted Uranium and lots of death squads to teach those Muslims to love Wall Street democracy. The US is now negotiating an exit from Afghanistan with the Taliban in Qatar. Things have not gone well on the Afghan front ever since the Pakistan Army cut off American supplies. This was after the deliberate and unprovoked murder of 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26th.

So you ask just how do the Israelis plan to get from here to there? They want to dispossess 300 million Muslims and America failed at that task. But the US military will succeed in doing exactly what Israel wants if they attack Iran.

Israel wants US sailors, marines, soldiers and airmen to die.

The Israelis know that Iran has sufficient guided missiles with fuel air explosives to destroy every Air Force, Marine and Army base in US Central Command within minutes. They know that Iran also has sufficient anti-ship missiles and supercavitating high speed torpedoes to sink the entire Persian Gulf fleet in minutes. The Israelis know the flight time to Iran is so long that the first ten thousand of those 150,000 incoming missiles would already begin the obliteration of Israel long before their 100 jets drop some bombs and returned home. That is not a real plan. So what is their real plan?

The only plan that makes military sense is to get the Iranians to destroy US Central Command and sink the US Persian Gulf fleet while Israel launches a preemptive nuclear strike against Lebanon, Syria and Iran. That way the American military is permanently degraded along with its economy. Then the United States would become an impoverished vassal state for Israel supplying their Zionist masters with mad dog killers willing to torture and commit war crimes. But, if you think about it, that is the function America has already been fulfilling for some time in the eyes of Israel.

Let’s move onto the Bilderberg Society which owns the banks that have stolen tens of trillions of dollars from Americans. They also want America to lose World War III. If America loses the next big war, then its once free citizens will become permanent Debt Slaves incapable of seizing even part of the money stolen from them. That is why the Bilderbergers had their puppets pass the North American Free Trade Act in 1994. They wanted to send 50,000 American manufacturing plants and all those high paying jobs overseas so our supply lines would stretch 8,000 miles on a dodgy credit card to China.

The Zionists want America to lose World War III for Israel and for the Rothschild banking network. The Bilderbergers and the Israelis have all their power because they steal billions of dollars every week from US federal spending they do not let the lowly Americans audit. They have that right because they give less than 1% of the money they stole as bribes to politicians in the two political parties they permit Americans to have. This two party corruption gives the voters the illusion of democracy. It was those same bribes that allowed banks to foreclose on millions of Americans dispossessing them just as the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.

Israel is eager to launch World War III by attacking Iran because the bankers and the Israelis do not want Americans to live long enough as a free people to catch on to just how much contempt they have for the Goyim of America and Palestine. Israel did 911 more than ten years ago and still there has been no price paid for betrayal. The Israelis and Bilderbergers need a war to shut down all those people talking about bankers stealing trillions and Israel doing 911.

So tell me again why the American enlisted men who have risked their lives on 6, 7 and 8 combat tours should eagerly commit suicide in the Persian Gulf for a nation that holds them in contempt and mocks God and His laws? So tell me why officers who have men and women in their command die in combat and 8 times that many die at their own hands because the politicians who took those Bilderberg and Israeli bribes actively despise the returning vets. Those men and women are dying from Depleted Uranium and experimental vaccines. It is illegal to administer to serial killers on death row what is routinely forced upon our troops. America’s military has been fighting No Win wars for a very long time because that is the way the Bilderbergers and the Israelis demand it be.

But this need not be. There is a future other than the one the Rothschilds planned for you. The US military can refuse to drive that Bilderberg Israeli bus off a cliff into World War III and the pits of hell.

The military can and will say No rather than die killing themselves and a few billion innocent human beings.

2012-01-21T16:14:00.001-05:00

Tehran Warns Gulf Neighbors That It Would Be 'Dangerous' for Them to Join a Western-led Effort to Isolate Iran

Iran Warns Neighbours Not to Join Isolation Attempts

Iranian foreign minister says Gulf states co-operating with western efforts to isolate Tehran would be in 'dangerous position'

guardian.co.uk
January 19, 2012

Tehran has warned its Gulf neighbours that it would be "dangerous" for them to join a western-led effort to isolate Iran, with the warning coming as a meeting of European ambassadors in Brussels failed to agree on the details of an EU oil embargo.

The EU permanent representatives council had been due to agree a far-reaching sanctions package including a phased embargo on oil imports from Iran and a freezing of the assets of the country's central bank.

But Greece refused to agree to a Danish proposal to begin the oil embargo on 1 July, calling for more time to enable it to complete existing contracts with Iranian suppliers and find new ones.

The ambassadors will work through the weekend in an effort to complete a deal before foreign ministers meet on Monday.

The sanctions package includes a freeze on European assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran, with loopholes to allow non-oil trade to continue. Britain is also pushing for a partial asset freeze on an Iranian private bank.

Iran – which already faces US sanctions on the global financing on its oil trade, effective in June – focused its attentions yesterday on trying to persuade Gulf Arab states not to co-operate with the western isolation campaign.

Speaking in Turkey, the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the US was looking for allies in the region and added:

"I am calling to all countries in the region – please don't let yourselves be dragged into a dangerous position."

Salehi left it unclear whether he was referring to military operations or actions on the oil market.

Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia angered Tehran by suggesting that, in the event of an embargo, it could supply Iran's Far East customers. Iranian officials have said in the past that they would view any such step as a hostile act.

Japan, which buys 22% of Iran's oil exports, said it would cut its purchases but would seek a waiver from the US sanctions in order to continue to buy some Iranian crude.

Salehi claimed Tehran had received a letter from Washington trying to persuade Iran to enter into negotiations on its nuclear programme, which western governments believe is aimed at building nuclear weapons or at least the capacity to make them.

"Mr Obama sent a letter to Iranian officials, but America has to make clear that it has good intentions and should express that it's ready for talks without conditions," he said.
"Out in the open they show their muscles, but behind the curtains they plead to us to sit down and talk. America has to pursue a safe and honest strategy so we can get the notion that America, this time, is serious and ready."

The White House has denied sending a letter, but there have been US reports that Washington sent a message to Tehran through unspecified channels, warning it not to go through with threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile wide opening to the Gulf, in retaliation for oil sanctions.

Salehi said Iran was ready to resume talks in Istanbul with a six-nation group of negotiators which broke down a year ago. However, the office of Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief who represents the negotiating group, said she had not received an answer to her invitation to Tehran last year to restart the discussions.

European diplomats argued that Salehi was trying to give the impression that Iran was open to talks without committing it to negotiating over its nuclear programme.

Iran has also invited inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency to Tehran on 29 January.

The IAEA has yet to officially confirm the two-day visit because it is seeking some assurances over what will be on the agenda.

2012-01-20T23:49:00.008-05:00

U.S. and Iran on Collision Course

Around the World
January 19, 2012

This week, America and Iran appear to be on a collision course over Iran's nuclear program, and there is fear that this war of words could lead to a real war.

Iran blames the United States and Israel for last weeks murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the fifth assassination of of an Iranian nuclear scientist is the last five years.

And while Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Panetta vehemently deny any U.S. involvement, Iran swore revenge at the scientists funeral.

On this episode of Around the World, Christiane Amanpour welcomes former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jamie Rubin, who is also Ms. Amanpour's husband, to discuss where the tension and distrust comes from and whether anything can be done to fix it.

Mr. Rubin believes the basis of the conflict is the combination of Iran's deep rooted distrust of the U.S., and stiff western sanctions over Iran's nuclear program.

However, Mr. Rubin believes that while it would be difficult,

"Iran is right at the heart of multiple American interests and cooperation with Iran could serve our goals".

2012-01-20T17:55:00.006-05:00

Drones are Key Weapons in Obama's Counter-terrorism Strategy

The United States government has made a series of attacks on targets in northwest Pakistan since 2004 using drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division. These attacks are part of the United States' War on Terrorism campaign, seeking to defeat Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan. Most of these attacks are on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border in Northwest Pakistan. These strikes have increased substantially under the Presidency of Barack Obama. Some media refer to the series of attacks as a "drone war." Drone strikes were halted in November 2011 after NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in the Salala incident. Shamsi Airfield was evacuated of Americans and taken over by the Pakistanis the next month. [20] The incident prompted an approximately two-month stop to the drone strikes, which resumed on January 10, 2012.

According to unnamed counterterrorism officials, in 2009 or 2010 CIA drones began employing smaller missiles in airstrikes in Pakistan in order to reduce civilian casualties. The new missiles, called the Small Smart Weapon or Scorpion, are reportedly about the size of a violin case (21 inches long) and weigh 16 kg. The missiles are used in combination with new technology intended to increase accuracy and expand surveillance, including the use of small, unarmed surveillance drones to exactly pinpoint the location of targets. These "micro-UAVs" (unmanned aerial vehicles) can be roughly the size of a pizza platter and meant to monitor potential targets at close range, for hours or days at a time. One former U.S. official who worked with micro-UAVs said that they can be almost impossible to detect at night. "It can be outside your window and you won't hear a whisper," the official said. The drone operators also have changed to trying to target insurgents in vehicles rather than residences to reduce the chances of civilian casualties.

The U.S. Government believed that 1,300 militants and only 30 civilians had been killed in drone strikes since mid-2008, with no civilians killed since August 2010. According to the Long War Journal, as of mid-2011, the drone strikes in Pakistan since 2006 had killed 2,018 militants and 138 civilians. The New America Foundation stated in mid-2011 that since 2004 2,551 people have been killed in the strikes, with 80% of those militants. The Foundation stated that 95% of those killed in 2010 were militants. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism based on extensive research found in mid-2011 that at least 385 civilians were among the dead, including more than 160 children.

[Source: Wikipedia]

Exclusive: Senior al Qaeda Figure Killed in Drone Strike

Reuters
January 20, 2012

A militant who acted as a senior operations organizer for al Qaeda was targeted and killed in one of two U.S. drone strikes launched against targets inside Pakistan last week, a U.S. official said.

U.S. and Pakistani sources told Reuters that the target of the attack was Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national from Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin Laden was killed last May by a U.S. commando team. They said he was targeted in a strike by a U.S.-operated drone on January 10 directed at what news reports said was a compound near the town of Miranshah in the border province of North Waziristan.

That strike broke an undeclared eight-week hiatus in attacks by the armed, unmanned drones that patrol Pakistan's tribal areas and are a key weapon in U.S. President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism strategy.

The sources described Awan, who also was known by the nom-de-guerre Abdullah Khorasani, as a significant figure in the remaining core leadership of al Qaeda, which U.S. officials say has been sharply reduced by the drone campaign. Most of the drone attacks are conducted as part of a clandestine CIA operation.

Pakistani officials could not confirm that Awan was killed in the drone attack, but the U.S. official said he was.

One of the sources described Awan as an associate of al Qaeda's current chief of external operations, whose identity is known to intelligence officials but not to the general public.

"Aslam Awan was a senior al-Qaeda external operations planner who was working on attacks against the West. His death reduces al-Qaeda's thinning bench of another operative devoted to plotting the death of innocent civilians," a U.S. official said.

Several previous alleged chiefs of external operations for al Qaeda have been caught or killed in drone attacks or counter-terrorism operations, the most notorious being Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C. Mohammed was captured and is being held by U.S. authorities in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention facility.

Because their role in arranging operations involves interacting with militants in the field, external operations chiefs of al Qaeda have found themselves more vulnerable to exposure and counter-attacks by security forces than the movement's most senior leaders, who until bin Laden's demise last year appeared to be able to move about the region and issue provocative audio and video messages with near-impunity.

A Pakistani security source based in the country's border region said that Awan was the remaining member of an al Qaeda cell Pakistani authorities have been trying to roll up since 2008.

"We thought he was very close to Ayman al-Zawahiri," the source said, referring to al Qaeda's current leader and bin Laden's long-time deputy, a former Egyptian doctor.

However, a U.S. source said that American experts did not believe that Awan was particularly close to al-Zawahiri.

The drone strike that targeted Awan was one of two such attacks last week, in what U.S. sources indicated was a resumption of the U.S. drone campaign following the eight-week pause. In the other drone strike, also in North Waziristan, a group of "foreign fighters" sympathetic to the Taliban and al Qaeda, some of Uzbek ethnicity, were targeted on January 12.

MILITANTS HIT NEAR BORDER

The targeted militants were believed to be travelling, possibly in preparation for an operation near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, and some were injured or killed in the attack, the U.S. source said.

U.S. officials said they could not confirm news reports, based on claims from Pakistani sources, that Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the TTP, Pakistan's most potent domestic affiliate of the Taliban movement, was also killed in the June 12 attack. Pakistani and U.S. sources said that Mehsud was not targeted in the drone strike, and one Pakistani source said:

"He is alive. Hakimullah is alive."

U.S. officials insisted that the drone strike lull did not represent an official moratorium on such operations by the Obama administration. The officials maintained that any fall-off in the pace of such operations was related to the availability of intelligence and operating conditions, such as weather.

However, some officials did privately acknowledge that the drone lull was at least in part calculated to try to improve strained relations between Washington and Islamabad, which had been on a downswing for much of last year in the wake of Pakistan's detention of a CIA operative and the secret U.S. commando raid on bin Laden's Pakistani hideout.

Relations plummeted to a new low following a late November incident in which 24 Pakistani troops were killed accidentally in a NATO aerial attack on border outposts.

Some U.S. and Pakistani officials say that both governments are making efforts to improve relations. As part of this process, a U.S. official said, it is possible that some permanent tweaks could be made in the U.S. drone program which could slow the pace of attacks.

For Our Allies, Death from Above

The New York Times
November 3, 2011

LAST Friday, I took part in an unusual meeting in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region. Twenty men came to air their views; some brought their young sons along to experience this rare interaction with Americans. In all, 60 villagers made the journey.

The meeting was organized as a traditional jirga. In Pashtun culture, a jirga acts as both a parliament and a courtroom: it is the time-honored way in which Pashtuns have tried to establish rules and settle differences amicably with those who they feel have wronged them.

On the night before the meeting, we had a dinner, to break the ice. During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.

The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them.

When it was my turn to speak, I mentioned the official American position: that these were precision strikes and no innocent civilian had been killed in 15 months. My comment was met with snorts of derision.

I told the elders that the only way to convince the American people of their suffering was to accumulate physical proof that civilians had been killed. Three of the men, at considerable personal risk, had collected the detritus of half a dozen missiles; they had taken 100 pictures of the carnage.

In one instance, they matched missile fragments with a photograph of a dead child, killed in August 2010 during the C.I.A.’s period of supposed infallibility. This made their grievances much more tangible.

Collecting evidence is a dangerous business. The drones are not the only enemy. The Pakistani military has sealed the area off from journalists, so the truth is hard to come by. One man investigating drone strikes that killed civilians was captured by the Taliban and held for 63 days on suspicion of spying for the United States.

At the end of the day, Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. We told him to think about it some more before moving forward; if he carried a camera he might attract the hostility of the extremists.

But the militants never had the chance to harm him. On Monday, he was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile.

My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory — as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970.

But now, the issue has suddenly become very real and personal. Tariq was a good kid, and courageous. My warm hand recently touched his in friendship; yet, within three days, his would be cold in death, the rigor mortis inflicted by my government.

And Tariq’s extended family, so recently hoping to be our allies for peace, has now been ripped apart by an American missile — most likely making any effort we make at reconciliation futile.

Q&A: The Use of Drones to Kill Terrorists Comes Under Fire

New Jersey On-Line
October 2, 2011

EPA Site/Intelligence HandoutAn undated handout photograph provided by the Site Intelligence Group on September 30 shows Anwar al-Awlaki speaking in a video message posted on an internet website in an unkown location.

The U.S. government on Friday trumpeted the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who rose to the top of al Qaeda in Yemen. He was taken out by a CIA-operated drone missile as he sat in a vehicle with another American radical, reportedly the editor of an online jihadist magazine.

Awlaki’s death comes in the midst of a contentious debate between the State Department and the Pentagon: In its ongoing efforts to prevent another terrorist attack, can the United States use drone missiles to kill suspected terrorists? And what if those suspects are far from any battlefield, in countries with whom we are not at war? Getting Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking al Qaeda officials has been the focus of U.S. efforts so far, but that soon may change.

David Cole, a professor of constitutional law, national security and criminal justice at Georgetown University Law Center, recently wrote about the implications of that discussion for the New York Review of Books. Editorial writer Linda Ocasio spoke with Cole about his thoughts on what the shift in strategy might mean for the United States and its relations with other nations.

Q. We’ve been told for the last 10 years that the war on terror is a war like no other. We’re fighting stateless terrorists, so why is it a problem to chase after them, no matter where they are?

A. First of all, it’s not a war on terror. That’s like having a war on murder; it doesn’t make sense. Obama has avoided that rhetoric. It’s a war with the organization that attacked us on 9/11, al Qaeda, and the group that harbored it, the Taliban.

Using military force against them is one thing. When you start saying you can target anyone, not just members of groups against which Congress authorized military action, in any country, we’re overstepping the authority that international law and the U.S. Constitution give us.

In a military conflict, the U.S. unquestionably has the authority to kill those fighting against us on the battlefield. But where do we get the right to target and kill a member of al Shabab, a militant group in Somalia, where we are not at war? Is it enough that the group is believed to have some al Qaeda sympathies?

The use of military force is permitted within the confines of war, not outside it. From my view, it’s critical we have clear lines about when it is appropriate to use these practices and when it is not. And thus far, the policy has operated in secret, without any clear lines that we can see.

Q. Was the killing of al-Awlaki legal?

A. The killing of al-Awlaki may or not have been legal. He was far from any battlefield, but news reports state that he was involved in encouraging or directing several attacks, including that of the "Christmas Day bomber," and may have been planning future attacks. If that is true, and if he was effectively a "co-belligerent" fighting with al Qaeda, and if Yemen could not detain him, the attack may well have been legal. But because the entire drone program operates under a shroud of secrecy, we just don’t know.

And regardless of the legality of this particular attack, it ought to be a matter of grave concern to all Americans that our government is killing its own citizens pursuant to a program that it has yet to delineate or defend publicly.

Q. Was there any question that we had a right to assassinate Osama bin Laden?

A. No, he’s the leader of al Qaeda, and we targeted him in Pakistan, from which many attacks have been launched by al Qaeda, so that was permissible. What’s troubling about the debates within the Obama administration is that they’re not talking about targeting al Qaeda leaders, but rank-and-file members of other groups that never attacked us, in countries far from the military conflict, like Yemen and Somalia.

Q. What would be the consequences to the U.S. of pursuing that strategy?

A. We have to ask: Is this a strategy we would be comfortable with other countries employing? Other countries may already have, or will soon develop, drone capability.

Do we want China, Russia or Pakistan to use targeted missiles to kill people, in other countries, they claim they suspect of terrorism? It’s a very dangerous sort of strategy, which could create more military conflict, war and instability around the world.

Q. How then do we effectively pursue those plotting against the United States?

A. Outside of a specific ongoing war, the state generally may not simply kill those it suspects of wrongdoing. We require a trial and appeals process so we don’t punish, much less kill, the wrong people — even for terrorist offenses.

We have successfully dealt with many terrorist threats through the criminal process, working with allies and other nations to bring people to justice. It is dangerous to put that aside and adopt a strategy that allows us to kill without any process.

While killing is an inevitable part of war, it is critical that we have clear lines that distinguish war and peacetime authorities. And the fact that the current policy has been maintained in secret means that we the people have no opportunity to judge whether our government is overstepping its bounds.

Israel has an Arsenal of 200-300 Nuclear Weapons

Pressure Israel, Not Iran - Israel has an Arsenal of 200-300 Nuclear Weapons

Israel has 300 nuclear warheads. Enough to OBLITERATE anyone who is foolish enough to attack them. Neocons in Israel and the United States are escalating their rhetoric to prepare us for war with Iran. Even the infamous John Yoo, architect of George W. Bush’s illegal torture and spying programs, is calling on the Republican presidential candidates to “begin preparing the case for a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.”

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, Global Research
January 19, 2012

Under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the legal right to produce nuclear power for peaceful purposes. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said on CBS that Iran is not currently trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Nevertheless, the United States and Israel are mounting a campaign of aggression against Iran. The United States has imposed punishing sanctions against Iran that are crippling Iran’s economy, and pressuring other countries and strong-arming financial institutions to stop buying oil from Iran, the world’s third largest exporter. The Obama administration is also preparing new punitive measures that target the Central Bank of Iran. And the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011 which would outlaw any contact between U.S. government employees and some Iranian officials.

There is also evidence that Israel, with the possible assistance of the United States, has orchestrated the assassinations of at least five Iranian nuclear scientists or engineers since 2007. The New York Times reported: “The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on [January 11] when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran’s morning rush hour.” These assassinations constitute acts of terrorism. There have also been cyber-attacks on Iranian centrifuges and an explosion at a missile facility last year that killed a senior general and 16 other people.

These acts of aggression are designed to provoke Iran to retaliate, including possibly closing the Strait of Hormuz, which will spark a war that could spread to the entire Middle East.

In addition, the United States has shifted combat troops and warships to the Middle East, and supplied Israel with bunker-busting bombs. Moreover, President Barack Obama has deployed 9,000 U.S. troops to Israel to participate later this year with thousands of Israeli troops in “war games” to test the U.S./Israeli air defense system; this exercise will be the largest ever joint drill between the two countries. Panetta said the exercise is designed “to back up our unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Iran is not a threat to Israel’s security. Iran has not attacked any country in some 200 years. In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup that replaced a democratic government in Iran with the vicious Shah. He ruled Iran with an iron hand for 25 years, wreaking torture and terror on Iranians while keeping Iran open to Western investment. When I visited Iran in 1978 as a human rights observer, there were dozens of U.S. corporations in downtown Tehran. One year later, the chickens came home to roost. The Iranian revolution overthrew the Shah, replacing him with a tyrannical theocracy that continues to violate the rights of the Iranian people. But that does not mean that Iran, if it does obtain nuclear weapons, will attack Israel. The Iranian government knows that Israel and the United States would retaliate with unimaginable military force that would devastate Iran and much of the Middle East.

Article 2 of the United Nations Charter requires the peaceful settlement of international disputes between Iran and the United States. Both the U.S. and Iran are signatories of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, which states, “The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.” Yet the United States has been illegally threatening war against Iran, dating back to the administration of President George W. Bush.

Security Council Resolution 687, that ended the first Gulf War, requires a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, which reportedly has an arsenal of 200-300 nuclear weapons, stands in violation of that resolution. Israel refuses to sign the NPT, thus avoiding inspections by the IAEA. As Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull advocate in a recent op-ed in the Times, we should work toward a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, and that includes Israel. They cite a poll in which 65 percent of Israeli Jews think it would be best if neither Israel nor Iran had the bomb, even if that means Israel giving up its nukes.

AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the Israel lobby in the United States, has tremendous support in the U.S. Congress. Even Zionist Thomas Friedman wrote in the Times last month that the standing ovation Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got in Congress “was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” AIPAC also exerts considerable pressure on Obama to be tough on Iran. When the new Chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff and the new head of CENTCOM told Obama late last year they were disappointed that he was not firmly opposing an Israeli strike on Iran, Obama replied that he “had no say over Israel” because “it is a sovereign country.”

Obama does indeed have a say – a strong say – over Israel. The United States has pledged $30 billion to Israel over the next 10 years. Obama should inform his counterparts in Israel that if it launches a military attack on Iran, the U.S. will withhold foreign aid from Israel. Although pressure from the neocons to support an Israeli attack on Iran will increase as the presidential elections draws near, Obama has a legal duty to refrain from actions that will lead to war with Iran.

Additionally, the U.N. Security Council, which has the duty to prevent threats to international peace and security, should order Israel and the United States to cease their aggressive provocation against Iran.

The same voices who brought us the illegal, tragic, and ill-advised war with Iraq will continue to try to dominate the national conversation with battle cries against Iran. It is up to us to prevail upon our elected officials to avoid a tragic conflagration in Iran by pressuring Israel to cease and desist.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her most recent book is The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse. Visit her blog atwww.marjoriecohn.com.

U.S. Military Chief Begins Talks in Israel on Iran

The Associated Press
January 20, 2012

The U.S. military's top general conducted an intense string of closed-door talks with Israeli leaders Friday, amid apparent disagreements between the two countries over how to respond to Iran's disputed nuclear program.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, and Israeli leaders kept silent about the exact content of their discussions. Dempsey was expected to urge Israel not to rush to attack Iran at a time when the U.S. is trying to rally additional global support to pressure Tehran through sanctions to dial back its nuclear program.

Dempsey met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been warning about the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program for more than a decade.

Netanyahu told Dempsey the U.S. should ratchet up sanctions against Iran to ones that would target its central bank and oil exports, the Israeli news site YNet reported. It quoted Netanyahu as saying such measures must be imposed immediately.

Following Dempsey's departure Friday evening, his spokesman, Col. David Lapan, said the meetings "served to advance a common understanding of the regional security environment."

At the start of talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Dempsey said the U.S. and Israel "have many interests in common in the region in this very dynamic time, and the more we can continue to engage each other, the better off we'll all be."

"There is never a dull moment, that I can promise you," Barak replied, in comments released by Barak's office.

Israel believes Iran is close to completing the technology to produce an atomic weapon. Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Israel has said it prefers employing international diplomacy to solve the problem, but it has not taken the option of a military strike off the table.

Israel considers Iran an existential threat because of its nuclear program, missile development, support of radical anti-Israel forces in Lebanon and Gaza and frequent references by its president to the destruction of the Jewish state.

In an interview published Friday in the Israeli daily Maariv, Israel's recently retired military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin, said the U.S. and Israel now agree that Iran is deliberately working slowly toward nuclear weapons, to minimize international diplomatic pressure and sanctions.

The U.S. and Israel differ about what would be considered unacceptable Iranian behavior that would require a military strike, the former chief claimed.

"While Israel defines the red line as Iran's ability and potential for a breakthrough, the Americans draw the red line a lot farther away," said Yadlin, who stepped down as intelligence chief in late 2010.

He said the Iranian nuclear program was Israel's "only existential threat," noting that in addition to the possibility of a nuclear attack from Iran, its possession of nuclear weapons would spark a regional arms race.

"In that situation, in a nuclear neighborhood, the chance grows that a nuclear weapon could slip into the hands of terrorists," Yadlin said.

Gen. Dempsey also met with Israel's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, and President Shimon Peres.

"I am sure that in this fight (against Iran) we will emerge victorious," Peres said to Dempsey, in comments provided by the president's office. He called Iran a "center of world terror."

Dempsey told reporters he "couldn't agree more" with Peres' "characterization of the common challenge we face."

In between the meetings, Dempsey visited Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum. He wrote in its guest book,

"We are committed to ensuring that such a human tragedy (as the Holocaust) never happens again." He added, "God bless the victims and protect Israel."

In the past, Netanyahu has sharply criticized Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust and has drawn parallels between the world's treatment of Iran today and its failure to act against Nazi Germany in time to save European Jewry.

2012-01-15T10:50:00.006-05:00

U.S. 'Concerned' Over Possible Israel Strike on Iran

What happened was that the Pentagon realized through their game scenarios that if they started all-out World War III, 90 percent of humanity would die — including most of them. So they didn’t want to go along with it. The Pentagon has systematically sabotaged these plans. They constantly prevented attacks on Iran. They stopped Israeli air raids. They invaded Georgia to stop an Israeli attack on Iran from there. They didn’t want to start World War III, because they realized it was insanity. [The South Ossetia war… was an Israeli air base that was designed to attack Iran and start this whole thing.] Yet the 'Power That Be' are still trying to attack Iran. I’ve had reports now that they are planting nuclear bombs in the seabed off the shore of Tokyo to create another tsunami here. One of the enforcement arms that could come into play, now that a wedge has been driven with this lawsuit, is the Pentagon. The good guys in the Pentagon could at some point actually do mass arrests at gunpoint of most of the House of Representatives and the Senate — these guys have private accounts in the Vatican Bank and they have been bribed. - Asian Secret Societies (the Dragon Family) Want Their Gold Back; the Western Secret Societies Blew Up the World Trade Center So That They Wouldn't Have to Give It Back

Iran Says It Received U.S. Letter on Hormuz Strait

Reuters
January 16, 2012

Iran said on Sunday it had received a letter from the U.S. government about the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil shipping lane that Tehran has threatened to close if sanctions prevent it exporting oil.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted by news agencies as saying Tehran had not yet decided if it would reply to the letter, the contents of which he did not detail.

"America's message over the Strait of Hormuz reached us through three channels. It was given to our U.N. representative, the Swiss ambassador conveyed it to the Foreign Ministry and also Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gave the message to Iran," Mehmanparast said, according to the ISNA news agency.

"If we deem it is necessary to give a response to America's message, then we will reply to it. The issue is being reviewed by Iran and it will be done in an appropriate way."

Tehran and Washington have had no direct diplomatic relations since 1979 and the Swiss embassy represents U.S. interests in Iran.

Tehran said on Saturday it had sent a letter to Washington with evidence U.S. intelligence services were involved in the assassination of a nuclear scientist last week.

Washington has said it would not tolerate any closure of the strait - the export route for one third of all seaborne traded oil - with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has saying such a move would require a response.

Tensions between the two countries have risen in recent weeks. U.S. President Barack Obama signed a bill on New Year's Eve that, if fully implemented, would make it impossible for most countries to pay for Iranian oil.

In addition to threats about Hormuz, Iran has started enriching uranium at an underground bunker and sentencing an Iranian-American citizen to death on spying charges.

Negotiations between the West and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme stalled one year ago.

U.S. 'Concerned' Over Possible Israel Strike on Iran

AFP
January 14, 2012

The US government is concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran over US objections, and has stepped up contingency planning to safeguard US facilities in the region, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper said President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a series of private messages to Israeli leaders, warning about the dire consequences of a strike.

Obama spoke by telephone on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet with Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv next week, the report said.

The Journal noted that the US military was preparing for a number of possible responses to an Israeli strike, including assaults by pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq against the US Embassy in Baghdad.

Up to 15,000 US diplomats, federal employees and contractors still remain in Iraq.

To deter Iran, the United States is maintaining 15,000 troops in Kuwait, and has moved a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf area, the paper said.

U.S. Concerned over Israeli Strike on Iran: Report

The Daily Star
January 14, 2012

Washington is increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to attack Iran, and the U.S. is making in plans in case there is such a conflict in the region, reported the Wall Street Journal Saturday.

Top officials, including President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have reportedly sent private messages to Israel, warning leaders of the consequences of a strike, urging them to allow more time for the sanctions to take effect, the daily said.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet with Israeli military officials next week to discuss the matter, the Journal reported.

This comes around two weeks after Iran threatened to respond to increased sanctions by blocking oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz. And Thursday Iran blamed the U.S. and Israel for the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist.

However, tensions appear to be easing between the countries recently with the U.S. having rescued Iranian sailors twice this month.

Israel credits its intelligence for slowing down Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran claims is for peaceful purposes.

While the U.S. and Israel remain close, the United States is sometimes skeptical of Tel Aviv’s intentions, the American newspaper said.

"It’s hard to know what's bluster and what's not with the Israelis,” a former U.S. official told the Journal.

Netanyahu Deputy 'Disappointed' with Obama on Iran

Reuters
January 15, 2012

A senior Israeli official voiced disappointment in the Obama administration on Sunday, saying "election-year considerations" lay behind its caution over tough Iran sanctions sought by U.S. legislators.

While Washington has been talking tougher about Iran's nuclear work and threat to block oil export routes out of the Gulf if hit with harsher sanctions, new U.S. measures adopted on December 31 gave President Barak Obama leeway on the scope of penalties on the Iranian central bank and oil exports.

Moshe Yaalon, Israel's vice prime minister, contrasted the administration's posture to that of France and Britain, which he said "are taking a very firm stand and understand sanctions must be imposed immediately."

"In the United States, the Senate passed a resolution, by a majority of 100-to-one, to impose these sanctions, and in the U.S. administration there is hesitation for fear of oil prices rising this year, out of election-year considerations," Yaalon told Israel Radio.

"In that regard, this is certainly a disappointment, for now."

The Democratic president says he is determined to deny Tehran -- which insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful needs only -- the means to develop an atom bomb. His aides cast their sanctions strategy as a bid to work collaboratively with foreign powers and win over states that import Iranian oil without triggering price-boosting shocks to energy markets.

MIXED MESSAGES

The remarks by Yaalon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, appeared to jar with praise centrist Defence Minister Ehud Barak offered last month for what he described as Obama's resolve against Iran.

Running for re-election in the face of Republicans who hold sway over big pro-Israel constituencies, Obama has sought to burnish his credentials as a friend of the Jewish state despite having frosty relations with Netanyahu.

In a phone conversation with the prime minister on Thursday, Obama "reiterated his unshakable commitment to Israel's security," the White House said. Both sides said the leaders' discussion dealt with Iran and Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Reputed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, Israel sees the makings of a mortal threat in Iran's uranium enrichment and missile projects, and has threatened to resort to force if it deems diplomatic isolation of its foe a dead end.

The prospect of Israel worsening regional instability with a unilateral strike has stirred worry in war-weary Washington.

Obama's top military adviser, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, was due to make his first visit to Israel on Thursday.

Israeli media predicted Dempsey would seek to persuade his hosts not to "surprise" the United States on Iran. The U.S. embassy had no immediate information about the visit's agenda.

Yaalon, himself a former top armed forces commander, said Israel should not "leap forward" to attack Iran.

"But Israel has to be ready to defend itself," he said. "Let's hope we do not arrive at that moment."

Netanyahu sounded sanguine last week about the efficacy of big-power pressure on Iran, telling an Australian newspaper:

"For the first time I see Iran wobble ... under the sanctions that have been adopted and especially under the threat of strong sanctions on their central bank."

Iran Sends Rare Letter to U.S. over Killed Scientist

Reuters
January 15, 2012

Iran said on Saturday it had evidence Washington was behind the latest killing of one of its nuclear scientists, state television reported, at a time when tensions over the country's nuclear program have escalated to their highest level ever.

In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan's car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton denied responsibility and Israeli President Shimon Peres said Israel had no role in the attack, to the best of his knowledge.

"We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported.

The Swiss embassy represents U.S. interests in a country where Washington has no diplomatic ties.

The spokesman for Iran's Joint Armed Forces Staff, Massoud Jazayeri, said:

"Our enemies, especially America , Britain and the Zionist regime (Israel), have to be held responsible for their actions."

Iran in the past has accused Israel of causing a series of spectacular and sometimes bloody mishaps to its nuclear programme. Israeli officials do not comment on any involvement in those events, although some have publicly expressed satisfaction at the setbacks.

Feeling the heat from unprecedented new sanctions, Iran's clerical establishment has brandished its sword by threatening to block the main Mid-East oil shipping route, starting to enrich uranium at an underground bunker and sentencing an Iranian-American citizen to death on spying charges.

State TV said a "letter of condemnation" had also been sent to Britain, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists began after the head of Britain's MI6 spy service announced intelligence operations against states seeking nuclear weapons.

The West says Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at building a bomb. Tehran says it has the right to peaceful nuclear power.

Tehran has urged the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the latest killing.

After years of international sanctions that had little impact on Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama signed new measures on New Year's Eve that, if fully implemented, would make it impossible for most countries to pay for Iranian oil.

Washington is requiring that countries gradually reduce their purchases of Iranian oil in order to receive temporary waivers from the sanctions. The European Union is expected to unveil similar measures next week, and announce a gradual oil embargo among its member states, who collectively buy about a fifth of Iran's exports.

The combined measures mean Iran may fail to sell all of the 2.6 million barrels a day of exports it relies on to feed its 74 million people. Even if it finds buyers, it will have to offer steep discounts, cutting into its desperately-needed revenue.

On Tuesday shipping sources told Reuters Iran was storing an increasing supply of oil at sea - as much as 8 million barrels - and was likely to store more as it struggles to sell it.

Iran denies it is having trouble:

"There has been no disruption in Iran's crude exports through the Persian Gulf ... We have not stored oil in the Gulf because of sanctions as some foreign media reported," oil official Pirouz Mousavi told the semi-official Mehr news agency on Friday.

The sanctions are causing real hardship on the streets, where prices for basic imported goods are soaring, the rial currency has plummeted and Iranians have been flocking to sell rials to buy dollars to protect their savings.

The pain comes less than two months before a parliamentary election, Iran's first since a presidential vote in 2009 that was followed by eight months of street demonstrations.

Iran's authorities successfully put down that revolt by force, but since then the "Arab Spring" has shown the vulnerability of authoritarian governments in the region to protests fueled by anger over economic difficulty.

CLASH THREAT

Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz leading to the Gulf if sanctions are imposed on its oil exports, and has threatened to take unspecified action if Washington sails an aircraft carrier through the strait, an international waterway.

Military experts say Tehran can do little to fight the massive U.S.-led fleet that guards the strait, but the threats raise the chance of a miscalculation that could lead to a military clash and a global oil crisis.

The Pentagon said on Friday that small Iranian boats had approached close to U.S. vessels in the strait last week, although it said it did not believe there was "hostile intent."

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute. Iran says it would retaliate if attacked.

The tension has caused spikes in global oil prices in recent weeks, although prices eased at the close of last week's trading on the prospect of reduced demand in economically stricken European countries. Brent crude fell 82 cents to settle at $110.44 a barrel on Friday.

The chances for an imminent easing of tension look even more remote as the nuclear deadlock continues because of Iran's refusal to halt the sensitive nuclear work.

Last week Iran began enriching uranium underground - the most controversial part of its nuclear programme - at a bunker deep below a mountain near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom.

Nuclear talks with major powers collapsed a year ago. Iran says it wants the talks to resume, but the West says there is no point unless it is willing to discuss a halt to uranium enrichment, which can be used to make material for a bomb.

Israel Used 'False Flag' Operation to Recruit Anti-Iran Militants, Report Alleges

The Envoy
January 13, 2012

Israeli intelligence officers posed as American spies to recruit members of a Sunni Baluch militant group which has carried out numerous attacks against Iranian security forces and civilians, journalist Mark Perry reported Friday at Foreign Policy magazine.

The allegation of the Mossad "false flag" operation is based on descriptions of memos in U.S. intelligence archives dating to the second term George W. Bush administration, Perry wrote. The memos allegedly detail the CIA's own efforts to understand media reports in 2007-2008 alleging--apparently wrongly--that the CIA was working with Jundullah to foment instability in Iran.

"The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization," Perry wrote.

"The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials," Perry's investigation continued.

The CIA declined through a spokesman to offer comment on the report in response to a request from Yahoo News. An Israeli official did not immediately respond to a query from Yahoo News on it Friday.

An unnamed Israeli government official, however, described the "false flag" report as "absolute nonsense" in an article by Israeli daily Haaretz Saturday.

"The senior Israeli government official said that if there were any truth [to] the claims in Perry's report, [then] Meir Dagan, the head of the Mossad at the time of the alleged operation, would have been declared a persona non grata in the U.S. and that Dagan's foot would not have walked again in Washington," Haaretz's Amir Oren wrote. (Dagan has, instead, become something of a celebrity in Washington policy circles for having publicly advocated against any Israeli preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities since his retirement from Israel's spy service last year.)

Veteran Israeli intelligence observer Yossi Melman suggested that the Mossad officers more likely introduced themselves to Jundullah contacts as "NATO officials"--rather than explicitly as CIA agents.

"If such a meeting"--between Jundullah members and Mossad--"took place, it would be more probable that the people involved--assuming they were Mossad--introduced themselves as NATO officials," Melman told Yahoo News by email Saturday. He added that, in his opinion, "Mossad would not risk its special relationship" with the United States "by stealing their identities and posing as CIA."

Indeed, as Perry's article notes, the late Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi, after his capture by Iranian security forces in 2010, gave a televised interview 'confession' to Iran's Press TV in which he said he had several meetings with western contacts in Casablanca, Morocco who introduced themselves to him as NATO officials.

Still, Rigi said he wondered, "if they are from NATO, why did they not meet with us in Afghanistan--where they have bases and where they can contact us in a much more easy and secure manner? ... When we thought about it, we came to the conclusion that they are either Americans acting under NATO cover or Israelis."

Rigi was executed in Evin prison in June 2010.

Former CIA officers express skepticism that Mossad would have had many reservations about using or implying American cover to conduct operations.

The Mossad "do false flag ops posing as everything you can imagine," a former senior CIA officer who has worked extensively on the region told Yahoo News Friday on condition of anonymity, adding that he found the "false flag" report "very" credible. "They have even recruited Arabs in the U.S. posing as [Central Intelligence] Agency and carrying fabricated credentials."

Several close European allies of Israel openly accused it in 2010 of breaching international diplomatic conventions and their friendship, by forging their nations' passports for alleged use by a Mossad assassination team.

After Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 23, 2010, furious Dubai authorities painstakingly reconstructed the alleged assassination plot, publicly releasing photos, close circuit television footage and numerous details about the cover identities, passports, credit cards and travel itineraries of the alleged assassination team. Israel's European allies were furious when confronted with the evidence--published in newspapers around the globe---that their citizens' identities and passports had been stolen to infiltrate the alleged Israeli assassination team into Dubai.

The United Kingdom in March 2010 expelled a Mossad official posted to the Israeli embassy in London after a British investigation found evidence that Israel had forged British passports for use in the hit job that killed Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room.

Then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband "laid out the case against Israel in parliament, saying a police investigation found 'compelling reasons' to believe Israel was responsible for the copying of British passports, which were used by the killers of a Hamas leader," the Guardian reported on March 23, 2010.

Poland in June 2010 arrested another alleged Mossad officer accused by Germany of forging a German passport that was used in the Dubai hit job.

The United States, by contrast, did not publicly rebuke its ally over the alleged false-flag operation--though Perry writes the Bush White House "went absolutely ballistic" when it was briefed on it by U.S. intelligence officials.

"The report sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americans at risk," the intelligence officer told Perry. "There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians."

But in the end, "the United States did nothing," Perry wrote.

The United States this week, however, forcefully condemned and distanced itself from a car bomb attack that killed an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran.

"I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists at the State Department Wednesday.

Iran didn't seem convinced by the American denials--however unusually adamant and categorical they may have sounded to American observers' ears.

On Saturday, Iran's Foreign Ministry handed a letter to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran to deliver to Washington, that reportedly described "evidence" Iran had obtained showing the CIA along with British intelligence had guided the assassination.

"We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA," the Iran Foreign Ministry said in the letter, Iran state TV reported, according to a report by Reuters' Parisa Hafezi.

2012-01-15T09:30:00.003-05:00

Palestinians Sticking to January 26, 2012, Deadline in Talks with Israel

Palestinians Insist on Israel Talks Deadline

The Associated Press
January 13, 2012

Palestinian negotiators are sticking to an end of January deadline in talks with Israel despite U.S. calls for flexibility, a Palestinian official said Friday.

The Palestinians say they want to hold Israel to a schedule that might pressure it to come forward with proposals, but the tight time frame could prevent the nascent talks from getting off the ground.

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met last week for the first time in more than a year, kicking off low-level contacts aimed at reviving formal peace negotiations.

Disagreements have already emerged, including the deadline for progress in the initial discussions.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Friday that Palestinians will consider halting the talks if no progress is reached by Jan. 26.

"The 26th of January is still a crossroads," he said.

That date was set in October by the Quartet of Mideast negotiators — the U.S., U.N., E.U. and Russia — calling for proposals from each side on the issues of territory and security within three months.

But Israeli officials say the three-month period began only with the first meeting of the negotiators Jan. 3 in Amman, Jordan.

The Palestinians say they won't continue talks unless Israel stops building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 war from Jordan and territory the Palestinians envision as part of their future state.

Israel maintains that the issue of settlements will be solved once there are agreed-upon borders and has repeatedly called on the Palestinians to resume talks in order to reach an agreement

Both sides agree that minor land swaps will be necessary for a deal to be made.

In a bid to soften the Palestinian stance over the date, the State Department said Thursday it did not want the deadline to be final.

"Although this Jan. 26 date has been out there, we do not want to see it be a rigid sort of straitjacket which chills the atmosphere," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Abbas said Thursday that Israel had so far not made any new proposals at the meetings. Israel, meanwhile, has said the Palestinian proposals were a "recycling" of long-standing positions that Israel opposes.

The talks are set to resume Saturday in Jordan.

2012-01-15T09:12:00.002-05:00

China Criticizes the U.S. for Imposing Sanctions for Its Export of Petroleum Products to Iran

China Knocks U.S. Sanctions on State-run Firm over Iran

AFP
January 15, 2012

China has criticised the United States for imposing sanctions on a state-run oil firm for exporting petroleum products to Iran, saying the move was "without reason".

Washington on Thursday slapped sanctions on China's Zhuhai Zhenrong Co., barring it from doing business in the United States, saying it brokered delivery of more than $500 million worth of gasoline to Iran from July 2010-January 2011.

"We express strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to this," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency late Saturday.

The sanctions, also placed on companies from Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, bar the three firms from receiving US export licenses, trade support from the US Export Import Bank, and loans over $10 million from US financial institutions.

Liu said China's cooperation with Iran was similar to other countries.

"Like many other countries, China maintains normal cooperation with Iran in energy, economic and trade fields," he said, adding that the US had acted unilaterally to impose the sanctions.

"This is without reason, and against the content and spirit of resolutions by the United Nations Security Council on the Iran nuclear issue."

Chinese state media Saturday quoted the company as dismissing the US claims as "fiction", with an official saying the firm doesn't export refined oil to Iran.

The US sanctions came shortly after US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met Chinese leaders in Beijing to ask for help in squeezing Iran's key oil revenues and pushing Tehran to halt its nuclear ambitions.

But China, long an important buyer of Iranian oil, has resisted adding its weight to the US and European campaign.

Chinese officials have warned against making links between China's trade relations with Iran and the issue of Tehran's nuclear program.

2012-01-14T19:18:00.002-05:00

U.S. Acts to Hold Israel Back from Striking Iran

U.S. Acts to Hold Israel Back from Striking Iran; Their Intel Agencies at Odds

debkafile
January 14, 2012,

The bombing attack in Tehran which killed Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan last Wednesday, Jan. 11, generated an angry phone call from US President Barack Obama to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day, debkafile's Washington and intelligence sources report. Washington is increasingly concerned, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, that Israel is preparing to strike Iran's nuclear sites over US objections and has bolstered the defenses of US facilities in the region in case of a conflict.

Obama, Defense and Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been sending private messages to their Israel contacts warning them about the dire consequences of a strike, the paper reports. Top US armed forces chief Gen. Martin Dempsey will visit Israel next week.

debkafile's exclusive sources report that the differences between the US and Israel surfaced before the tough Obama-Netanyahu conversation last Thursday. Political, military and intelligence officials privately voiced resentment over the strong and unusual condemnation the White House and Secretary Clinton issued over the death of the Iranian nuclear scientist.

By denying "absolutely" any US involvement in the killing, the administration implicitly pointed the finger at Israel – an unusual act in relations between two friendly governments, especially when both face a common issue as sensitive as a nuclear-armed Iran.

Obama seemed to suspect that Israel staged the killing to torpedo yet another US secret effort to avoid a military confrontation with Iran through back channel contacts with Tehran, while the administration's extreme condemnation is seen as tying in with its all-out campaign to hold Israel back from a unilateral strike.

As part of this campaign, the Foreign Policy publication ran an "investigative report" Friday, Jan. 13, the point of which was to show that US and Israeli undercover agencies have been at odds for years after what was called a Mossad "false flag" operation. "Two US intelligence officers" are said to have revealed to the publication that in 2007 and 2008, Israeli Mossad officers posing as US intelligence agents with American passports recruited terrorist group Jundallah operatives for covert attacks in Iran.

This Pakistan-based Baluchi extremist group was described as utterly shunned by the CIA.
The weekly's sources said they were "stunned by the brazenness of Mossad's recruiting activities…under the nose of US intelligence officers, most notably in London."

They implied that Jundallah were sure they had been recruited by US intelligence. But so was Tehran. The Israeli "false flag" program was therefore accused of putting American agents at risk.

A "serving US intelligence officer" told the paper that President George W. Bush when informed of this episode "went absolutely ballistic."

debkafile adds: At the time of this alleged operation, Ehud Olmert was prime minister of Israel and Meir Dagan director of the Mossad. While the Bush administration is not known to have ever taken it up with Israel, Barack Obama decided to cool US intelligence cooperation with Israel on the Iranian issue when he took office in 2009.

Foreign Policy in its tendentious and selective report presents Mossad as the sole recruiter of Jundallah for sabotage and hit operations for defeating Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb. It omits the slightest mention of the fact that US intelligence started using Jundallah for such operations from early 2005 with ample US-dollar funding approved personally by President Bush.

Our Washington and intelligence sources note that the report appeared two days after the Iranian nuclear scientist was killed and the day after Obama took Netanyahu to task. It had two objective: to show that US is not responsible for all the covert operations of recent months against Iran's nuclear targets and, secondly, to demonstrate that Washington means to continue harassing and pressuring Israel by every means to hold it back from a military operation against Iran.

IRAN: The Next War on Washington’s Agenda Politics

By Paul Craig Roberts, Infowars.com
January 14, 2012

Only the blind do not see that the US government is preparing to attack Iran. According to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “Active war preparations directed against Iran (with the involvement of Israel and NATO) were initiated in May 2003.”

Washington has deployed missiles directed at Iran in its oil emirate puppet states, Oman and the UAE, and little doubt in the other US puppet states in the Middle East. Washington has beefed up Saudi Arabia’s jet fighter force. Most recently, Washington has deployed 9,000 US troops to Israel to participate in “war games” designed to test the US/Israeli air defense system. As Iran represents no threat unless attacked, Washington’s war preparations signal Washington’s intention to attack Iran.

Another signal that Washington has a new war on its agenda is the raised level of Washington’s rhetoric and demonization of Iran. Judging by polls Washington’s propaganda that Iran is threatening the US by developing a nuclear weapon has met with success. Half of the American public support a military attack on Iran in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability. Those of us who are trying to awaken our fellow citizens start from a deficit that the minds of half of the US population are under Big Brother’s control.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports from its inspectors on the ground in Iran have made clear for years, there is no evidence that Iran has diverted any enriched uranium from its nuclear energy program. The shrill hype coming from Washington and from the neoconservative media is groundless. it is the same level of lie as Washington’s claim that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Every US soldier who died in that war died in behalf of a lie.

It could not be more obvious that Washington’s war preparations against Iran have nothing to do with deterring Iran from a nuclear weapon. So, what are the war preparations about?

In my judgment, the US government’s war preparations are driven by three factors. One is the neoconservative ideology, adopted by the US government, that calls for the US to use its superior military and economic position to achieve world hegemony. This goal appeals to American hubris and to the power and profit that it serves.

A second factor is Israel’s desire to eliminate all support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel’s goal is to seize all of Palestine and the water resources of southern Lebanon. Eliminating Iran removes all obstacles to Israel’s expansion.

A third factor is to deter or slow China’s rise as a military and economic power by controlling China’s access to energy. It was China’s oil investments in eastern Libya that led to the sudden move against Libya by the US and its NATO puppets, and it is China’s oil investments elsewhere in Africa that resulted in the Bush regime’s creation of the United States Africa Command, designed to counter China’s economic influence with US military influence. China has significant energy investments in Iran, and a substantial percentage of China’s oil imports are from Iran. Depriving China of independent access to oil is Washington’s way of restraining and boxing in China.

What we are witnessing is a replay of Washington’s policy toward Japan in the 1930s that provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan’s bank balances in the West were seized, and Japan’s access to oil and raw materials was restricted. The purpose was to prevent or to slow Japan’s rise. The result was war.

Despite the hubris in which it wallows, Washington understands the vulnerability of its Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and would not risk losing a fleet and 20,000 US naval personnel unless it was to gain an excuse for a nuclear attack on Iran. A nuclear attack on Iran would alert both China and Russia that they could suffer the same fate. The consequence would be that the world would face a higher risk of nuclear armageddon than existed in the mutually assured destruction of the US-Soviet standoff.

Washington is getting all of us in over our heads. Washington has declared the “Asia-Pacific” and the South China Sea to be areas of “America’s national interest.” What sense does this make? It makes the same sense as if China declared the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea to be areas of China’s national interest.

Washington has deployed 2,500 Marines, promising more to come, to Australia in order to do what? Protect Australia from China or occupy Australia? Encircle China with 2,500 Marines? It would not mean anything to China if Washington deployed 25,000 Marines in Australia.

When you get right down to it, Washington’s tough talk is nothing but a silly pointless provocation of Washington’s largest creditor. What if Washington’s idiocy causes China to worry that Washington and its UK and European puppets will seize its bank balances and refuse to honor China’s holdings of $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds? Will China pull its balances from the weak US, UK, and European banks? Will China decide to strike first, not with nuclear weapons, but by selling its $1 trillion in Treasury bonds all at once?

It would be cheaper than war.

The Federal Reserve would have to quickly print another $1 trillion dollars with which to buy the bonds, or US interest rates would shoot up. What would China do with the $1 trillion in newly printed paper? In my opinion, China would dump it all at once in the currency market, because the Federal Reserve cannot print euros, UK pounds, Japanese yen, Swiss francs, Russian rubles, and Chinese yuan with which to buy up its newly printed currency.

The US dollar would take a beating. US import prices – which now include, thanks to offshoring, almost everything Americans consume – would rise. The hard-pressed 90% would take a further beating, endearing their Washington oppressors to them to an even greater extent. The rest of the world, anticipating nuclear war, would flee the dollar, as Washington would be a primary attack target.

If the missiles aren’t launched, Americans would wake up the next day a bankrupt third world country. If the missiles were launched, few Americans would wake up.

We, as Americans, need to ask ourselves what all this is about? Why is our government so provocative toward Islam, Russia, China, Iran? What purpose, whose purpose is being served? Certainly not ours.

Who benefits from our bankrupt government starting yet more wars, picking this time not on defenseless countries like Iraq and Libya, but on China and Russia? Do the idiots in Washington think the Russian government does not know why Russia is being surrounded with missile bases and radar systems? Do the Washington morons really believe that the Russian government will fall for its lie that the missiles are directed against Iran? Only American idiots who sit in front of Fox “news” could possible believe that the real issue is an Iranian nuclear weapon.

How much longer will the Russian government permit the US National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front, to interfere in its elections by financing opposition parties led by the likes of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Boris Nemtsov, and Alexei Navalny, who organize protests of every election that Putin’s party wins, alleging without any evidence whatsoever, but providing propaganda for Washington, who no doubt pays well, that the election will be and was stolen?

In the US, such activists would be declared to be “domestic extremists” and be subjected to rough treatment. In Amerika even anti-war activists are subjected to home invasions by the FBI and grand jury investigations.

What this means is that “the criminal state of Russia” is a more tolerant democracy than the US, or for that matter, Amerika’s puppet states in Europe and the UK.

Where do we go from here? If not to nuclear destruction, Americans must wake up. Football games, porn, and shopping malls are one thing. Survival of human life is another. Washington, that is, “representative government,” consists only of a few powerful vested interests. These private interests, not the American people, control the US government.

That is why nothing that the US government does benefits the American people.

The current crop of presidential contenders, except for Ron Paul, represent the controlling interests. War and financial fraud are the only remaining American Values.

Will Americans again give the sheen of “democracy” to rule by a few by participating in the coming rigged elections?

If you have to vote, vote for Ron Paul or for a more extreme third party candidate. Show that you do not support the lie that is the system.

Stop watching television. Stop reading newspapers. Stop spending money. When you do any of these things, you are supporting evil.

Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal . He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington ; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy , and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

2012-01-12T02:35:00.006-05:00

Ahmadinejad and Chavez Joke About a Nuclear Strike Against the U.S

Ahmadinejad and Chavez joked about a nuclear strike against the U.S.; however, Ahmadinejad and Chavez were apparently serious when discussing the threat they believe the U.S. poses. “We are very worried,” Chavez said of the pressures being put on Iran by the United States and its allies, which he accused of being a threat to peace. “They present us as aggressors,” Chavez said as he received Ahmadinejad at the presidential palace. “Iran hasn’t invaded anyone,” he added. “Who has dropped thousands and thousands of bombs … including atomic bombs?”

‘Big Atomic Bomb Will Come Out’: Ahmadinejad and Chavez Joke About Nuclear Strike Against U.S

The Blaze/AP
January 10, 2012

President Hugo Chavez defended his close ally Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday and warned of “U.S. warmongering threats” amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.

The two leaders met in Caracas on the first leg of a four-nation tour that will also take Ahmadinejad to Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador. Their conversation reportedly often focused on anti-U.S. rhetoric, which according to the Daily Mail included Mr Chavez saying that:

“He was hiding a bomb under a grassy knoll before the steps of the presidential palace, saying: ‘That hill will open up and a big atomic bomb will come out.
The imperialist spokesmen say Ahmadinejad and I are going into the basement now to set our sights on Washington and launch cannons and missiles… It’s laughable.”

The leaders were apparently serious, however, when discussing the threat they believe the U.S. poses.

“We are very worried,” Chavez said of the pressures being put on Iran by the United States and its allies, which he accused of being a threat to peace.

“They present us as aggressors,” Chavez said as he received Ahmadinejad at the presidential palace.

“Iran hasn’t invaded anyone,” he added. “Who has dropped thousands and thousands of bombs … including atomic bombs?”

Ahmadinejad’s visit comes after the U.S. imposed tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop atomic weapons. Chavez and his allies back Iran in arguing the nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes.

Both leaders joked that their relationship shouldn’t cause any concern.

Ahmadinejad said if they were together building anything like a bomb, “the fuel of that bomb is love.”

Chavez played on the same theme in his remarks:

“He’s going to work a lot for some bombs, for some missiles, to keep the war going. Our war is against poverty, hunger and underdevelopment.”

The Venezuelan leader said in his televised speech that Iranians assistance has helped the South American country build 14,000 homes as well as factories that produce food, tractors and vehicles.

“We will always be together,” Ahmadinejad said through an interpreter. Smiling as he put his hand on Chavez’s arm, the Iranian leader called the Venezuelan president “the champion of fighting against imperialism.”

Government officials signed two agreements promoting industrial cooperation and worker training.

Chavez accused the U.S. and its allies of wrongly demonizing Iran.

Iran finds itself under increasing pressure in the standoff over its nuclear program, and in response to the latest U.S. sanctions has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, an important transit route for oil tanker shipments.

Diplomats on Monday confirmed a report that Iran has begun uranium enrichment at an underground bunker, a development that increases fears among U.S. and European officials about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Two diplomats spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential and based on an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Chavez’s long-running confrontation with Washington also looks set to grow more antagonistic after the U.S. State Department announced, just hours before Ahmadinejad’s arrival, that it was expelling Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, Livia Acosta Noguera, due to allegations that she discussed a possible cyber-attack against the U.S. government.

The expulsion followed an FBI investigation into accusations contained in a documentary aired by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last month. According to the documentary, Acosta discussed the possible cyber-attack while she was previously assigned as a diplomat in Mexico. The documentary was based on recordings of conversations with her and other officials, and also alleged that Cuban and Iranian diplomatic missions were involved.

Chavez called the U.S. action “unjustified, arbitrary” and said his government will consider its response. He called it “an attack against our nation.”

The diplomat had already returned to Venezuela in December because “we knew that was going to occur,” Chavez said.

Beyond voicing criticism of the U.S. on his tour, Ahmadinejad is also likely to look for ways to use his Latin American alliances to diminish the impact of sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, said Diego Moya-Ocampos, an analyst with consulting firm IHS Global Insight in London.

However, Moya-Ocampos predicted that,

“Venezuela is going to be very careful not to push its relationship with Iran beyond the U.S. tolerance limits,” so as not to risk being hit with more U.S. sanctions.

Last year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA for delivering at least two cargoes of oil products to Iran.

The U.S. government has also repeatedly accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism, and growing Iranian diplomatic ties with some Latin American countries have generated worries in Washington.

In Quito, Ecuador, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters that Ecuador’s government “has no reason to stop having relations with Iran” and said his country recognizes Iran’s “right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

Argentina, which has good relations with Venezuela, also has warrants out for the arrests of Iran’s defense minister and other officials suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, urged Ahmadinejad‘s hosts to tell Iran that they support Argentina’s demands for the extradition of those implicated in the attack. The organization also condemned Ahmadinejad for threatening Israel, saying in a statement on Monday that “honoring that trafficker of hatred with impunity involves his hosts as accomplices.”

The Link between Iran and Venezuela: A Crisis in the Making?

Iran Says It Has Evidence U.S. Behind Scientist's Killing

Reuters
January 14, 2012

Iranian state television said on Saturday Tehran had evidence Washington was behind the latest assassination of one of its nuclear scientists.

The United States has denied involvement in the killing and condemned it. Israel has declined to comment.

"We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported.
"The documents clearly show that this terrorist act was carried out with the direct involvement of CIA-linked agents."

The Swiss Embassy has represented U.S. interests in Iran since Tehran and Washington cut diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

State TV said a "letter of condemnation" had also been sent to the British government, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists had "started exactly after the British official John Sawers declared the beginning of intelligence operations against Iran."

In 2010, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service Sawers said one of the agency's roles was to investigate efforts by states to build nuclear weapons in violation of their international legal obligations and identify ways to slow down their access to vital materials and technology.

Tehran has urged the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the latest killing, which Tehran says is aimed at undermining its nuclear work, which the West and Israel say is aimed at building bombs. Tehran says its nuclear programme is purely civilian.

Tension has mounted between Iran and the West as the United States and European Union prepare measures aimed at imposing sanctions on the Iran's oil exports, its economic lifeblood.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute.

2012-01-12T02:29:00.004-05:00

U.S. Carriers Move into Arabian Sea at a Moment of Heightened Tensions with Iran

Tensions between Iran and the United States ratcheted up again in the past week. Iran started an underground uranium enrichment plant and sentenced an American to death for spying. Washington and Europe have stepped up efforts to cripple Iran's oil exports, and Tehran on Wednesday blamed U.S. and Israeli agents for killing an Iranian nuclear scientist. Israel declined to comment on the killing and the United States denied any U.S. role and condemned the attack, in which the scientist was blown up by a bomb attached to his car by a motorbike hitman.

Iran Ships Approached U.S. Vessels in Gulf

Reuters
January 14, 2012

Small Iranian military motorboats approached U.S. vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz twice last week but the Pentagon said the interactions were not seen as hostile, even at a moment of heightened tensions between the two countries.

Video released by the Pentagon showed the armed boats with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' navy approaching within several hundred yards (metres) of the USS New Orleans, an amphibious transport ship, on January 6, a U.S. military official said.

The same day, a similar incident occurred with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Adak, with the Iranian boats seen riding in its wake, guns visible.

"This interaction between U.S. naval vessels and the Iranian vessels is commonplace," said Captain Jane Campbell, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "There is nothing in these that shows any kind of hostile intent."

U.S. officials say it is routine to take video of such incidents and the U.S. military decided to release imagery at the request of news organizations.

Nine American vessels have passed through the strait since the start of the year. It was not immediately clear whether any of the other seven had been approached in this manner by Iranian vessels.

The approaches come at a time of concern about the possibility of a clash between the United States and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important oil shipping lane.

Tehran has threatened to close the strait if new U.S. and EU sanctions over its nuclear program cut off Iranian oil exports. Iran has also threatened action if another U.S. carrier moves into the Gulf.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned that closure of the strategic waterway would be seen as a red line by the United States and would require a response.

U.S. Military Moves Carriers, Denies Iran Link

Reuters
January 12, 2012

The U.S. military said on Wednesday that a new aircraft carrier strike group had arrived in the Arabian Sea and that another was on its way to the region, but denied any link to recent tensions with Iran and portrayed the movements as routine.

The shift in the powerful U.S. naval assets comes at a moment of heightened tensions with Iran, which has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz - the world's most important oil shipping lane - if U.S. and EU sanctions over its nuclear program cut off its oil exports.

The U.S. military has said it will halt any blockade of the strategic strait and the top U.S. naval officer acknowledged on Tuesday that preparing for a potential conflict there was something that "keeps me awake at night."

Still, the Pentagon denied any direct link between recent tensions and the movement of aircraft carriers.

"I don't want to leave anybody with the impression that we're somehow (speeding) two carriers over there because we're concerned about what happened, you know, today in Iran. It's just not the case," said Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

Military officials said the USS Carl Vinson arrived in the Arabian Sea on Monday to replace the outgoing USS John C. Stennis carrier strike group, which Iran last week warned not to return to the Gulf after departing in late December.

The Stennis was due to return to its home port in San Diego but the Pentagon did not say when that would happen.

Another carrier strike group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, concluded a port visit to Thailand on Tuesday and was now in the Indian Ocean. It is on track to join the Vinson in the Central Command area of operations, which begins in the neighboring Arabian Sea.

It is "not unusual to have two carriers in the CENTCOM theater at the same time," a second U.S. military official said.

Another official said there had been two carriers in the Gulf region at least twice in the past 18 months.

Israel declined to comment on the killing and the United States denied any U.S. role and condemned the attack, in which the scientist was blown up by a bomb attached to his car by a motorbike hitman.

Iran had warned the Stennis not to re-enter the Gulf and it is unclear when another U.S. carrier will enter Gulf waters. The Pentagon has suggested only that, sooner or later, a carrier will pass through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf.

"We routinely operate our ships - all of our ships, all of our types of ships - inside the Arabian Gulf and that will continue," Kirby said.

2012-01-11T12:24:00.011-05:00

World War III is Imminent

World War III will occur before the Anticrhist appears to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. After the Third World War, the New Temple Will Be Rebuilt for Antichrist, Not Jesus Christ. A one-world government with a one-world religion will be established, the anti-Christian kingdom prophesied in chapter 13 of the book of Revelation. This one-world power will offer apparent peace and security to a world in chaos. The devil, Satan, will establish his earthly kingdom for "a little season," so that he as God will stand in the holy place, showing himself that he is God, and he will deceive many with his signs and wonders. - Satan's Final Deception Before Christ Returns

The Rockefeller faction in the U.S. is building up the military; they’re trying to get the Western countries on a full, militarized basis to prepare for World War III. They want to reduce population and they want to wipe out the Chinese. And they don’t want to lose control. They don’t want to lose power. They still have their Messianic, fascist, cultist beliefs that they are destined to rule humanity. The Israeli newspapers openly referred to China and Russia and Iran as Magog, and the G5 and G7 as Gog. They were trying to get all these countries to kill each other. They were trying to start World War III... They had this plan to start this whole Gog and Magog thing again. This time the plan involved starting a limited nuclear war between Iran and Israel. They were going to use that war as an excuse to set up martial law in the G7 countries. They’ve been trying it for quite a long time now — ever since 2001, even before... They are still trying to attack Iran. I’ve had reports now that they are planting nuclear bombs in the seabed off the shore of Tokyo to create another tsunami here. - David Wilcock's interview with Ben Fulford, CONFIRMED: The Trillion-Dollar Lawsuit That Could End Financial Tyranny, Divine Cosmos, December 12, 2011

$9 Gallon Gasoline Will Crash World Economies If WW3 Starts: Greg Hunter Reports 1/2

Alert: Iran Crisis Headed for World War III

Infowars.com
January 9, 2012

War in the Middle East now appears imminent as the United States, Britain, the European Union, and Israel put the finishing touches on an embargo on Iran – a de facto declaration of war – and warships steam toward the Persian Gulf.

Consider the following recent developments:

U.S.-Israeli War Game in Persian Gulf

On Friday, the U.S. and Israel announced they plan a massive military exercise in the Persian Gulf in an attempt to confront Iran.

The exercise, dubbed “Austere Challenge 12,” will include the participation of thousands of U.S. and Israeli soldiers and will test multiple air defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets.

On January 2, during its last military exercise, Iran tested its Qader missile, a long-range sea-to-shore missile, and the surface-to-surface Nour missile. The Nour is an “advanced radar-evading, target-seeking, guided and controlled missile and can easily find its target and destroy it,” IRNA reported, quoting 2nd Adm. Seyed Mahmoud Musavi.

Iran Announces New War Game

Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, naval commander for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said on Friday Iran will conduct a second military exercise in the Persian Gulf in February. He said the drill would be “different compared to previous exercises held by the IRGC” but provided no additional details.

Iran also launched a military maneuver near its border with Afghanistan on Saturday. Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces, said the “Martyrs of Unity” exercises are “aimed at boosting security along the Iranian borders,” Fars reported.

British Warships Sent

On Saturday, the British Royal Navy annoucned it is sending its most advanced warship to the Persian Gulf. The HMS Daring is a Type 45 destroyer that has the world’s most sophisticated naval radar.

Earlier in the week, British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond warned Iran against blocking the strait after Iran said it would take action if the United States sailed an aircraft carrier through the waterway following an Iranian 10-day military exercise designed to demonstrate its ability to close down the strategic oil passage.

French and Russian Warships Off Syria

The Israeli intelligence asset DEBKAfile reports today that the Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov anchored at Syria’s Tartus port on the Mediterranean on Sunday and arrived with the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and frigate Yaroslav Mudry.

“To counter this movement, France consigned an air defense destroyer Forbin to the waters off Tartus,” DEBKAfile claims.

Reflecting Israel’s propaganda line on Iran and Syria, DEBKAfile claims that its “military sources report the constant escalation of military tension around Iran and Syria in recent days as not just stemming from the rapid advances Iran is making toward production of a nuclear weapon, but from fears in the West and Israel that Tehran and Damascus are in step over their military plans for the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean sectors.”

Ron Paul: Sanctions First Step Toward War

On Sunday, presidential candidate Ron Paul said the increasingly severe sanctions imposed on Iran in response to its unsubstantiated nuclear weapons program are steps that will eventually lead to war.

“Sanctions were the first step in our wars against Iraq and Libya, and now more sanctions planned against Syria and Iran are leading down the same destructive path,” he warned.

Iran is “planning to be bombed” and would understandably make the necessary arrangements to counter the threat, even though there is “no evidence whatsoever” that they have enriched weapons grade uranium, Paul noted.

He also pointed out that the United States government directly intervened in Iran’s internal affairs when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddeq and installed the Shah in 1953.

Oil Prices Rising Along with Tensions

Oil prices are beginning to climb as the United States and Iran prepare for war. Brent North Sea crude for delivery in February climbed 14 cents to $113.20 a barrel in London on Monday. Continued saber-rattling on both sides have forced oil prices to eight-month highs above the 100 dollars per barrel mark.

In addition to shocking world oil prices, the anticipated attack and Iran after a possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz would dramatically impact the global trade in goods.

“If for any reason the strait were closed it would have a huge impact on the economy in the Middle East and would cause a systematic restructuring of flows of goods around the world,” John Manners-Bell, who used to manage European marketing at United Parcel Service Inc., told Bloomberg.

Iranian Missile Base Propaganda

Now that Iran’s Ahmadinejad is visiting Latin America, the discredited rumor that Iran is building intermediate-range missile launch pads at a base on the Paraguaná Peninsula in Venezuela has resurfaced. It was initially floated by the German newspaper Die Welt and subsequently boosted by the Jerusalem Post, a documented neocon propaganda operation. The Post posted the story last May.

The story brings to mind the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962.

According to the Die Welt story, the Iranians paid tens of millions in cash for the base that would be used to fire missiles into the United States after Iran is attacked. It was reported that the Revolutionary Guard-controlled engineering group Khatam al-Anbia is helping build the site.

“From Caracas to Miami is about 1,300 miles, maybe a couple hundred more than from the Peninsula – possibly within the range of Iran’s Ashoura medium-range ballistic missile that can cover a distance of over 1,200 miles,” Robert Johnson wrote for Business Insider last week as the story resurfaced on word of Ahmadinejad’s trip.

Business Insider also reported on a paper produced by latlongpacific that includes coordinates for a possible location and “details on the base and missiles that Iran would likely park there, including the Ghadr-100A with a possible range of 3,000 km or about 1,800 miles,” Johnson writes.

“We have no evidence to support this claim and therefore no reason to believe the assertions made in the article are credible,” the State Department said in response to the story.

Barack Obama’s Allegiance Is Not to America and God, But to the New World Order and Satan

By Saman Mohammadi, The Excavator
October 29, 2011

It is hard to pierce the psychology of psychopathic rulers and politicians without having some understanding of their philosophy towards life. Our civilization would be better served if the belief system of politicians was discussed on the campaign trail and on television. We would all be in for some stomach-turning surprises.

It is a well understood fact that a number of high-level Iranian politicians believe in the coming of the Mahdi. President Ahmadinejad and his closest advisers produced a documentary for senior government officials that showcased their belief in Islamic end times prophecy. Watch the documentary with English subtitles here.

The sensational documentary was made to indoctrinate the soldiers of Islam in Iran and elsewhere into thinking that they are fighting for God and the prophet Muhammad, when in reality they are fighting for the clerical oligarchs and the political elite that rule the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their martyrdom will help pave the way for a new world order.

But the Iranian government is not unique in its belief in end times prophecy. The United States of America is also led by crazy rulers who share similar beliefs about a new age and have similar religious aspirations for the new world. The only difference is they believe in another kind of end times babble, one that is not Islamic or Christian, but Satanic.

Indeed, a Luciferian philosophy is the inspiration for the creation of a new world order and a one world totalitarian government. Barack Obama, like the Bushes and Clinton before him, has spoken of the need for a new world order.

Vice President Joe Biden also expressed his love for the new world order in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed in 1992 called, “How I Learned to Love the New World Order.” That’s not really that surprising or scary. I expect big power players to make plans to continue their domination of the world in a new form and under a new flag. That’s just politics.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is known to be a creepy egomaniac with a messianic complex. Netanyahu believes he is the Jewish answer to Winston Churchill and Iran is the 21st century Nazi Germany that represents all evil in the world. It is a very bizarre belief that’s not grounded in reality, but it is very politically convenient and a lot of Israelis are falling for this scam.

The people of Israel seem to be losing sight of the fact that Israel is not an occupied concentration camp under totalitarian rule but a highly advanced military state that can defend itself very easily against the slightest aggression from the Iranian government or any other nation.

But Netanyahu wants to keep the Israeli people in the dark and use their insecurity to seize political glory for himself. He is a danger to Israel and the world because of his demonic nature.

Netanyahu is not the only psychopath who wants a world war and mass death. There are a lot of psychopaths in high places in America, Israel, Iran, England, France, Italy, Russia, and all over the world.

The Earth is truly Satan’s Kingdom. And there are many puppets in politics, the military, media, entertainment and business who love to serve Satan and do evil.

After nearly three years in office, it should be clear to everyone that President Barack Obama is a psychopath who serves Satan. And you can add George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich, John McCain, and many other U.S. political leaders to that list.

When you know that Barack Obama is a Satanic thief and a lying psychopath then you’re not shocked when you see him on late night television with Jay Leno calling the mass murder of the Libyan people by NATO drones and Al-Qaeda terrorists a “recipe for success.” In reaction to that interview, the writer at cryptogon.com wrote:

A recipe for success?

The grinning, shill, international terrorist President of the United States talks up the regime’s atrocities on a late night comedy show, with the host, audience and millions of people out in TV land going along with it…

Holy shit.

Holy shit is right. Barack Obama is evil on the scale of Mt. Olympus, and America is the land of the Dead.

How did America and humanity fall so far, into the very depths of hell? I wish I knew.

Knowing the life-guiding beliefs of major politicians and public officials is more important than knowing their opinions about tax policy or small-scale issues.

And forget politicians’ tax records, the public needs to know their mental health records to find out how their brain works. If they are clinically insane then that fact alone will mean the end of the current political system because it is obviously broken and demonic.

If it is shown that high-level politicians lack basic social qualities like empathy and they show signs of psychopathy and mental illness then they must be taken to mental institutions.

Currently, American political psychopaths are voted into the Congress and the White House by millions of naive and gullible people. [See Beware Corporate Psychopaths – They are Still Occupying Positions of Power]

This is not just a problem in America. Every modern society seems to be under the horrific hypnosis of political and religious power in the hands of totalitarian myth makers who are members of secret societies.

Another question we should be asking is who is more mentally sick? The blind sheepish believer that is the modern voter, or the arrogant psychopathic deceiver that is the modern politician?

Both are obviously made for each other.

The rest of us have to watch the dark show and suffer because we get ridiculed by the first group and killed by the second group.

Many people believe there is a war between heaven and hell that is being fought right now. I used to regard those beliefs as spiritual in nature and having no significance in politics and real life. But discovering that the highest political leaders in America and around the world frequently flash the Satanic hand sign has given me second doubts.

Iran to Close Hormuz If Oil Exports Blocked

Perry said he would redeploy U.S. troops back to Iraq to protect against what he called Iran’s influence. [Source]

Iran Decides to Close Hormuz If Oil Exports Blocked

January 8, 2012

Infowars.com - Ali Ashraf Nouri, a senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, told Khorasan daily on Sunday that the Iranian government has decided to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf if the country’s oil exports are blocked.

Also on Sunday, Iranian Army Commander Brigadier General Habibollah Sayyari said Iran can block the Strait of Hormuz “easily.”

The threat comes as the European Union prepares to embargo Iranian oil at the end of the month in response to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

It was reported last week EU foreign ministers will likely to agree to block Iranian oil imports at a meeting in Brussels on January 30. Working groups are negotiating the details of how the embargo will be imposed, said an official.

Following Nouri’s comments, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CBS News that if Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz the U.S. military will respond.

“We made very clear that the United States will not tolerate the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz,” Panetta told CBS television. “That’s another red line for us and that we will respond to them.”

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iran has the ability to close the waterway. “But we would take action and reopen the Straits,” he warned.

Panetta also said that Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons.

“We have common cause here” with Israel, he said. “And the better approach is for us to work together.”

2012-01-05T18:49:00.007-05:00

Obama's Defense Strategy Expands the U.S. Military Presence in Asia

The Dragon Family, which is a group of several wealthy and secretive Asian families, has executed an elaborate sting operation where a vast international alliance of 117 countries now has a legal way to end the financial tyranny of the Old World Order. A lawsuit was filed on November 23, 2011, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that could end the secret government that has ruled Western civilization for at least the past 300 years. The lawsuit was filed by Neil Keenan, acting as representative of the Dragon family. This particular lawsuit was triggered by the illegal detainment of two Japanese citizens, Akihiko Yamaguchi and Mitsuyoshi Watanabe, as well as the seizure of $134.5 billion in bonds they were holding in Italy on June 3, 2009. The roots of this case go back to between 1927 and 1938, when, under arrangements made between T.V. Soong (Finance Minister of China) and Henry Morgethau, Secretary of the Treasury, the United States Government purchased some 50 million ounces of silver and leased vast amounts of gold from the Nationalist Chinese Government, known as Kuomintang. For all the treasure handed in, certificates were given to those who surrendered their precious metals. Many of the bonds seized are backed with the Chinese gold taken by the Federal Reserve Board during those years and never returned to its legal owners. [Source]

New Pentagon Strategy Stresses Asia, Cyber, Drones

Reuters
January 5, 2012

President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to reduce spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war.

The strategy, if carried out, would significantly reshape the world's largest military from the one that executed President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cyberwarfare and unmanned drones would continue to grow in priority, as would countering attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. power projection capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

But the size of the U.S. Army and Marines Corps would shrink. So too might the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the U.S. military footprint in Europe.

Troop- and time-intensive counter-insurgency operations, a staple of U.S. military strategy since the 2007 "surge" of extra troops to Iraq, would be far more limited, with the force no longer sized for large-scale, long-term missions.

"The tide of war is receding but the question that this strategy answers is what kind of military will we need long after the wars of the last decade are over," Obama told a Pentagon news conference alongside Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

SMALLER, LEANER

Panetta said the new strategy would mean the Pentagon would field a "smaller and leaner" military force but said the exact number of personnel would not be determined until the Defense Department finishes its proposed 2013 budget in the coming weeks.

Administration officials have said they expect Army and Marine Corp personnel levels to be reduced by 10 percent to 15 percent over the next decade as part of the reductions.

The Army's current strength is about 565,000 soldiers and there are 201,000 Marines, meaning an eventual loss of between 76,000 and 114,000 troops.

Critics already are charging that the cuts are being driven by budget woes rather than U.S. defense needs but Obama and Panetta emphasized that the reverse is true. They did not divulge details of spending and cuts, which will be detailed in Obama's upcoming federal budget for fiscal year 2013.

"Some will no doubt say the spending reductions are too big; others will say they're too small," Obama said.

He emphasized that even after enactment of the $487 billion in reductions agreed with Congress in August, the defense budget would still be larger than it was toward the end of Bush's administration.

"Over the past 10 years, since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace," Obama said. "Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow but the fact of the matter is this - it will still grow because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership."

The shift in focus to Asia comes amid increasing concern at the Pentagon over China's strategic goals as it begins to field a new generation of weapons that American officials fear are designed to prevent U.S. naval and air forces from projecting power into the Far East.

"We will be strengthening our presence in the Asia-Pacific," Obama said, "and budget reductions will not come at the expense of that critical region."

The new strategy calls for the U.S. military to "rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region" even as it continues to actively counter the threat of violent extremism.

It also calls for increased investment in cyber capabilities and suggests the United States may be able to shrink its nuclear arsenal further without jeopardizing security.

The strategy says the United States should maintain a force that can win one major war while still being able to deter an aggressor in a second conflict. In the past the Pentagon has tried to field a force that could fight and win two major wars at once.

Panetta played down the differences, saying the earlier strategy dealt with large conflicts of the past while the current strategy was considering the conflicts the United States is likely to face in the 21st century.

"Make no mistake - we will have the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time," he said.

NEW PLAN AFTER DECADE OF GROWTH

Obama initiated the strategic review last summer after asking the Pentagon to begin planning for major cuts to the U.S. defense budget after a decade of growth.

The strategy document released on Thursday addressed U.S. interests in broad brush-strokes but did not get into specifics about how many troops would be reduced or deal with specific budgetary issues.

Panetta acknowledged that the cuts would require difficult choices.

"There is no question that we have to make some tradeoffs and that we will be taking on ... some level of additional but acceptable risk in the budget plan we release next month," he said. "These were not easy choices."

The strategy underscores the United States' "enduring interests" in Europe and the importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization but says the force posture in Europe must "evolve" with the changing times, opening the door for troop reductions.

Administration officials have said the United States is likely to further reduce the number of ground forces in Europe by another combat brigade, a unit of 3,000 to 4,000 people depending on its composition.

The strategy document underscores a U.S. interest in maintaining stability in the Middle East while responding to the aspirations of the people as expressed in the Arab Awakening last year. It also says the United States will continue working to halt nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

"U.S. policy will emphasize Gulf security, in collaboration with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries when appropriate, to prevent Iran's development of a nuclear weapon capability and counter its destabilizing policies," it says.

The document expresses concern about new weapons being developed by China and Iran that could make it difficult for the U.S. Navy and Air Force to project power abroad.

"The United States must maintain its ability to project power in areas where our access and freedom to operate are challenged," it says.

2012-01-05T18:43:00.002-05:00

Iran Says It Successfully Test-fired a Medium-range Missile Close to the Straits of Hormuz

Iran Tests the West's Patience with Show of Might in Missile Launch

The Independent
January 2, 2012

Iran says it has successfully test-fired a medium-range missile close to the strategic Straits of Hormuz, a move that will test Western patience in the stand-off over its nuclear programme.

The surface-to-air missile was fired in international waters during a 10-day military exercise and is designed to elude radar detection and thwart jammers, Iran's state TV said on Sunday, adding that the weapon had been developed by Iranian scientists.

The announcement came a day after Barack Obama signed a law imposing tougher financial sanctions to penalise Iran for its nuclear-research programme. Tehran appeared to be sending the West a clear message that it could follow through on threats to close the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow shipping passage through which one-sixth of the world's oil supply passes, should the West impose sanctions on its energy industry.

Nevertheless, Iranian officials have stressed in recent days that Tehran has no plans to block the waterway right now, a move that analysts say would have a devastating impact on Iran's own economy and invite unwanted military retaliation.

The naval drills coincided with an announcement from Tehran that the country has made a significant advance in its nuclear programme, developing its first nuclear rod, a technological achievement necessary to make nuclear fuel that few believed Iran was capable of. It will play into Western fears that Iran is intent on developing an atomic bomb, a claim that Tehran has denied, insisting that its nuclear programme is peaceful and for civilian use.

Pressure on the West to impose tougher sanctions on Iran in a bid to halt its nuclear programme has increased following a report from the UN nuclear watchdog last November that presented fresh evidence Iran had pursued a nuclear-weapons programme until 2003. The agency was suspicious that some of the work was ongoing.

The EU has been mulling further sanctions, including measures against Iran's oil industry, which could be announced at meeting this month. Washington yesterday imposed new sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and financial sector.

Iran, the second-largest oil producer in Opec after Saudi Arabia, relies on oil sales for 80 per cent of its foreign currency earnings.

Last week, Iranian officials promised that the country would not permit "even one drop of oil" to pass through the Straits of Hormuz should the West impose oil sanctions. But Western diplomats viewed the threat as posturing because such a move would almost certainly invite a military response, which Iran is thought to want to avoid.

An Iranian lawmaker reiterated the threat yesterday. "If we feel that the enemies want to prevent our oil exports, definitely we will close the Strait of Hormuz," Ismail Kowsari was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying.

Iran Test Fires Missile and Unveils Nuclear Breakthrough

Iran raised the stakes in an increasingly heated confrontation with the West on Sunday, test-firing a missile it said could not be detected by radar and claiming an unexpected breakthrough in its nuclear programme.

Telegraph
January 1, 2012

Responding defiantly to the imposition of fresh US sanctions, officials in Tehran announced that they had successfully produced and tested nuclear fuel rods in an advance that Western experts have long stated is beyond Iran's technological capabilities.

If true, the development would represent an important step in Iran's efforts to complete the nuclear fuel cycle, bringing it significantly closer to being able to produce a nuclear bomb.

Iranian state television reported that the rods had been inserted into the core of the Tehran Research Reactor, where the country's most highly enriched uranium is stored, ostensibly for the development of cancer-treating isotopes.

At the beginning of last year, Iran claimed that it had begun the process of creating fuel plates and rods at its nuclear plant in the central city of Isfahan. The claims were given scant credence in the West because the ability to manufacture the rods is possessed by only a handful of major nuclear powers.

The process of making a fuel rod requires the conversion of enriched uranium into uranium dioxide powder, which must then be pressed into small pellets that are inserted into thin metal tubes. These are then assembled in clusters for use in the core of a nuclear reactor. The rods can be used for civilian purposes, but if reprocessed could produce fuel for a nuclear weapon.

2012-01-05T18:34:00.004-05:00

Former CIA Chief: Iran 'Single Greatest Destabilizing' Force in 2012

The Rockefeller faction in the U.S. is building up the military; they’re trying to get the Western countries on a full, militarized basis to prepare for World War III. They want to reduce population and they want to wipe out the Chinese. And they don’t want to lose control. They don’t want to lose power. They still have their Messianic, fascist, cultist beliefs that they are destined to rule humanity. The Israeli newspapers openly referred to China and Russia and Iran as Magog, and the G5 and G7 as Gog. They were trying to get all these countries to kill each other. They were trying to start World War III... They had this plan to start this whole Gog and Magog thing again. This time the plan involved starting a limited nuclear war between Iran and Israel. They were going to use that war as an excuse to set up martial law in the G7 countries. They’ve been trying it for quite a long time now — ever since 2001, even before... They are still trying to attack Iran. I’ve had reports now that they are planting nuclear bombs in the seabed off the shore of Tokyo to create another tsunami here. - David Wilcock's interview with Ben Fulford, CONFIRMED: The Trillion-Dollar Lawsuit That Could End Financial Tyranny, Divine Cosmos, December 12, 2011

Former CIA Chief: Iran 'Single Greatest Destabilizing' Force in 2012

FoxNews.com
January 5, 2012

Tehran will be the top threat in 2012, former CIA Director Michael Hayden predicted Wednesday as Iran dominates foreign policy debate even while national security officials appeared to dismiss the Islamic Republic's latest threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.

"It is the single greatest destabilizing element right now with regards to global security," Hayden told Fox News, adding that the outlook is not encouraging.
"Of all the things that I left, when I was in government, the situation with Iran, and particularly their nuclear program has continued on a trajectory that gets darker with each passing day, week and month. They seem on this inexorable arc in the direction of a nuclear capability and there seems to be nothing that we or other like minded nations can do that will stop them."

Hayden who led the CIA from 2006 through 2009 and is now a principal with the Chertoff Group, which provides risk management and security services, said part of the problem is understanding the regime's intent.

"This government and its decision-making processes are incredibly opaque. And here we are, as a government trying to get them to change their mind, change their mind in a process that it is very difficult for us to identify where are the leverage points."

On Monday, Iran's army chief warned against a U.S. carrier returning to the Strait of Hormuz, the critical passageway that the U.S. monitors as part of international agreement to keep the shipping lanes open. The USS John C. Stennis had vacated the area while Iran's navy conducted war games in the Persian Gulf over a 10-day period.

The U.S. dismissed the threat as the result of Iran's growing isolation and a lashing out at the international community. Hayden said the threat doesn't even make logical sense since he doubts Iran would have the ability to close the strategic waterway for any length of time in any case.

"I'm creative enough to imagine circumstances internal to Iran where some faction or another might believe it's to their internal advantage to take such a dramatic action. But externally it just doesn't make any sense," he said.
"Number one, they need the straits as much, perhaps more, than anyone else, the free flow of oil, otherwise their economy is more in the tank than it is today. Number two, does closing the straits make Iran more or less isolated? ... Does closing the straits make it more or less likely that someone will think it's a legitimate step to attack the nuclear facility at Natanz? I think it makes it more likely. So why would the Iranians do that?"

But Hayden warned that such a threat suggests that Tehran may commit an unforced error in the next year, which could have profound consequences.

"Who is likely to go dramatic in 2012? It's not us, I don't think it's the Israelis. I think it's the Iranians. And I think it's out of desperation and miscalculation. The isolation that they are undergoing right now is very severe. Their currency is dropped about one-third of its value in the past few weeks. And now with the imposition of sanctions against the Iranian national bank and the impact that will have on the oil industry, you are seeing great stresses within the Iranian leadership structure."

The alleged Iranian-backed assassination plot to target the Saudi envoy to Washington DC in November 2011 underscores the possibility of Iranian missteps.

"A country that's willing to try to kill Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador, at a Georgetown restaurant, through a Mexican drug cartel, is probably capable of a lot of things," he said.

Hayden, who in addition to being CIA chief also led the National Security Agency, said there is significant common ground between the Bush and Obama White House on Iran strategy.

"This is not an issue that we left the administration with easy answers, the current administration, with easy answers. We (the previous administration) struggled with this as well. There are no really good options. We have tools, we talk about the continuity between the two administrations when it comes to the war on terror, it's actually been a fair amount of continuity between the two administrations when it comes to Iran as well."

The first intelligence officer to reach the rank of four stars in the Air Force, Hayden added that the Bush administration wrestled with the same issues the current administration has to cope with, in part because, efforts to engage Iran have not gone according to plan.

"We had that interlude where we tried to engage Iran, and that of course did not end well. But by and large the administration has depended upon an international coalition. The administration has depended upon economic sanctions. The administration has depended upon attempts to isolate Iran, internationally. All of those are carrying forward policies developed during the previous administration. It's just a hard problem."

As for the effectiveness of a covert campaign in Iran, which has reportedly targeted nuclear scientists and nuclear facilities, Hayden would not comment directly but said from what he's read in the newspaper, "someone has a very aggressive covert action campaign apparently, against the Iranian program."

"And it appears to be setting the program back," he added. "The Iranians always made claims for their program, that the program was far more advanced than, than we knew it to be. I think we still see that today."

2012-01-03T14:15:00.004-05:00

Iran Threatens to Take Action If the U.S. Navy Moves Aircraft Carrier into the Gulf

Iran Threatens U.S. Navy as Sanctions Hit Economy

January 3, 2012

Reuters - Iran threatened on Tuesday to take action if the U.S. Navy moves an aircraft carrier into the Gulf, Tehran's most aggressive statement yet after weeks of saber-rattling as new U.S. and EU financial sanctions take a toll on its economy.

The prospect of sanctions targeting the oil sector in a serious way for the first time has hit Iran's rial currency, which reached a record low on Tuesday and has fallen by 40 percent against the dollar in the past month.

Queues formed at Tehran banks and some currency exchange offices shut their doors as Iranians scrambled to buy dollars to protect their savings. On world markets, oil prices soared.

Army chief Ataollah Salehi said the United States had moved an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf because of Iran's naval exercises, and Iran would take action if the ship returned.

"Iran will not repeat its warning...the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf," he said.

"I advise, recommend and warn them over the return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf because we are not in the habit of warning more than once."

The U.S. military brushed off the threat: "The deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades," said spokesman Commander Bill Speaks.

"The U.S. Navy operates under international maritime conventions to maintain a constant state of high vigilance in order to ensure the continued, safe flow of maritime traffic in waterways critical to global commerce."

The aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis leads a U.S. Navy task force in the region. It is now outside the Gulf in the Arabian Sea, providing air support for the war in Afghanistan, said Lieutenant Rebecca Rebarich, spokeswoman for the 5th Fleet.

The carrier left the Gulf on December 27 on a planned routine transit through the Strait of Hormuz, she said.

Forty percent of the world's traded oil flows through that narrow straight -- which Iran threatened last month to shut if sanctions halted its oil exports.

Brent crude futures were up more than $4 in late Tuesday afternoon trade in London, pushing above $111 a barrel.

Tehran's latest threat comes at a time when sanctions are having an impact on its economy, and the country faces political uncertainty with an election in March, its first since a 2009 vote that triggered countrywide demonstrations.

The West has imposed the increasingly tight sanctions over Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is strictly peaceful but Western countries believe aims to build an atomic bomb.

After years of measures that had little impact, the new sanctions are the first that could have a serious effect on Iran's oil trade, 60 percent of its economy.

Sanctions signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve would cut financial institutions that work with Iran's central bank off from the U.S. financial system, blocking the main path for Iran to receive payments for its crude.

The EU is expected to impose new sanctions by the end of this month, possibly including a ban on oil imports and a freeze of central bank assets.

Even Iran's top trading partner China -- which has refused to back new global sanctions against Iran -- is demanding discounts to buy Iranian oil as Tehran's options narrow. Beijing has cut its imports of Iranian crude by more than half for January.

THREATS

Iran has responded to the tighter measures with belligerent rhetoric, spooking oil markets briefly when it announced last month it could prevent shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

It then held 10 days of naval exercises in the Gulf, test firing missiles that could hit U.S. bases in the Middle East. Tuesday's apparent threat to take action against the U.S. Navy in international waters takes the rhetoric to a new level.

Experts still say they do not expect Tehran to charge headlong into an act of war -- the U.S. Navy is overwhelmingly more powerful than Iran's sea forces -- but Iran is running out of diplomatic room to avert a confrontation.

"I think we should be very worried because the diplomacy that should accompany this rise in tension seems to be lacking on both sides," said Richard Dalton, former British ambassador to Iran and now an associate fellow at Chatham House think tank.

"I don't believe either side wants a war to start. I think the Iranians will be aware that if they block the Strait or attack a U.S. ship, they will be the losers. Nor do I think that the U.S. wants to use its military might other than as a means of pressure. However, in a state of heightened emotion on both sides, we are in a dangerous situation."

Henry Wilkinson at Janusian Risk Advisory consultants said the threats might be a bid by Iran to remind countries contemplating sanctions of the cost of havoc on oil markets.

"Such threats can cause market confidence in the global oil supply to wobble and can push up oil prices and shipping insurance prices. For the EU powers debating new sanctions, this could be quite a pinch in the current economic climate."

The new U.S. sanctions law, if implemented fully, would make it impossible for many refineries to pay Iran for crude. It takes effect gradually and lets Obama grant waivers to prevent an oil price shock, so its precise impact is hard to gauge.

The European Union is expected to consider new measures by the end of this month. A blockade would halt purchase of Iranian oil by EU members such as such as crisis-hit Greece, which has relied on easy financing terms offered by Tehran to buy crude.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Paris wants new measures taken by January 30, when EU foreign ministers meet. A German Foreign Ministry spokesman said Berlin was in talks with other EU states on "qualitatively new sanctions."

Greek government sources said that Athens, thought of as a possible veto-wielding holdout, was ready to support sanctions. One official told Reuters: "If the European Union decides to impose the sanctions, Greece will join them."

Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said member states would discuss the issue this week in the hope of agreeing on new steps before the January 30 meeting. "The ball is still in the Iranians' court," he said.

Iran has written to Ashton asking to restart talks over its nuclear program that collapsed a year ago. The EU says it does not want talks unless Iran is prepared to discuss serious steps, such as halting its enrichment of uranium.

CHINA CUTS IRAN OIL IMPORTS

Although China, India and other countries are unlikely to sign up to any oil embargo, tighter Western sanctions mean such customers will be able to insist on deeper discounts for Iranian oil, reducing Tehran's income.

Beijing has already been driving a hard bargain. China, which bought 11 percent of its oil from Iran during the first 11 months of last year, has cut its January purchase by about 285,000 barrels per day, more than half of the close to 550,000 bpd that it bought through a 2011 contract.

The impact of falling government income from oil sales can be felt on the streets in Iran in soaring prices for state subsidized goods and a collapse of the rial currency.

"The rate is changing every second...We are not taking in any rials to change to dollars or any other foreign currency," said Hamid Bakshi at an exchange office in central Tehran.

Housewife Zohreh Ghobadi, in a long line at a bank, said she was trying to withdraw her savings and change it into dollars.

Iranian authorities played down any link between the souring exchange rate and the new sanctions.

"The new American sanctions have not materialized yet," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.

The economic impact is being felt ahead of a nationwide parliamentary election on March 2, the first vote since a disputed 2009 presidential election that brought tens of thousands of Iranian demonstrators into the streets.

Iran's rulers put those protests down by force, but since then the Arab Spring revolts have show that authoritarian governments in the region are vulnerable to street unrest.

In a sign of political tension among Iran's elite, a court jailed the daughter of powerful former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Tuesday for "anti-state propaganda."

Rafsanjani sided with reformists during the 2009 protests. Daughter Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani went on trial last month on charges of "campaigning against the Islamic establishment."

Pentagon Pushes Back on Iranian Warnings on U.S. Aircraft Carrier

The Envoy
January 3, 2012

The Pentagon on Tuesday pushed back on Iranian warnings against returning a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf.

"The deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said in a statement sent to Yahoo News Tuesday. "These are regularly scheduled movements in accordance with our longstanding commitments to the security and stability of the region and in support of ongoing operations."

"The U.S. Navy operates under international maritime conventions to maintain a constant state of high vigilance in order to ensure the continued, safe flow of maritime traffic in waterways critical to global commerce," Little's statement continued. "We are committed to protecting maritime freedoms that are the basis for global prosperity; this is one of the main reasons our military forces operate in the region."

The Pentagon statement came in response to a comment from Iran's army chief Ataolla Salehi Tuesday, which asserted that Iranian military exercises had prompted a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier to vacate the Persian Gulf. Salehi also issued a warning to the United States about any plans for the carrier's return.

"Iran will not repeat its warning ... the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill," Iran Army chief Ataollah Salehi said Tuesday, Reuters reported. "I advise, recommend and warn them over the return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf because we are not in the habit of warning more than once."

Salehi didn't name the American naval vessel in question, "but the USS John C. Stennis leads a task force in the region, and the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet website pictured it in the Arabian Sea last week," Reuters reported.

Tensions have been rising between the United States and Iran in recent weeks, as Iranian officials have issued a series of boasts about their military capabilities to control the Strait of Hormuz, a key global energy transport hub. The United States in turn last week announced billions of dollars in weapons sales to American Persian Gulf allies of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

Analysts say the erratic Iranian threats--sometimes followed by conciliatory statements--are a sign of the Tehran government's rising panic about tightening economic sanctions, including newly passed U.S. sanctions on Iran's Central Bank. President Obama signed a defense authorization bill over the weekend that includes a measure that would penalize foreign companies and countries that work with the Iranian financial institution. The ban would potentially choke off a chief source of Iranian revenues for its oil exports. However, the legislation includes an exemption permitting the president to waive the penalty if he determines that it would cause a spike in energy prices or pose a national security threat.

Meanwhile, Iran's foreign ministry said Tuesday that it plans to attend a meeting with international nuclear negotiators.

Iran is "waiting for unveiling date and venue of talks with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany," Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told the Iran Student News Agency Tuesday.

However, a European Union spokesman told Yahoo News Tuesday that the body had not yet received a formal written response from Iran responding to EU High Representative Catherine Ashton's proposal for a meeting.

Iran last met with members of the so-called P5+1 group--the United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, China and Germany--in Turkey last January, but the meeting made no progress toward a proposal to resolve international concerns over Iran's nuclear program.

Iran's atomic energy agency over the weekend also announced that its scientists had produced the first fuel rod for use by the Tehran Research Reactor, which makes nuclear isotopes to treat Iranian cancer patients. The assertion--so far unverified by Western officials--is perhaps diplomatically significant, since Iran had previously negotiated with the United States, Russia and France about possibly sending off a significant portion of its stockpiled fissile material in exchange for fuel rods for use by the reactor. Those negotiations collapsed amid a bitter round of mutual recriminations in late 2009. But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly asserted his interest in reviving them, including in discussions with journalists and policy experts in New York during a recent visit to the UN in September.

Iran Prepares for War

The threat made by Iran’s leadership to close off the Strait of Hormuz is a provocation intended to bring about a confrontation between Iran and the US, Saudia Arabia, Bahrain and other Western nations. We must be prepared for this inevitability… In Reza Kahlili’s most recent article “The Coming War with Iran” he goes into details…Here’s hoping the Obama Administration heeds this warning - JanSuzanne

The Coming War with Iran

By Reza Kahlili, A Time to Betray
December 29, 2011

Iran’s tyrannical leaders, determined to make the Islamic regime a nuclear-armed state, are preparing for war. That’s exactly what the United States and Israel might have to deliver, and soon. @-Text.rag:Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the Revolutionary Guards in May to speed up the regime’s nuclear-bomb program and arm its missiles with nuclear warheads. Now, sources reveal, Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered the guards to prepare for war.

In a recent meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, it was decided that the possibility of an attack by Israel or America in 2012 is real and that the country’s forces need to prepare several contingencies for war. It also was concluded that in case of war, the regime could be victorious, though the cost would be high, but it would emerge as the one and only champion of the Islamic cause in the world.

The radicals ruling Iran have long believed that obtaining the nuclear bomb will make them untouchable and will facilitate the expansion of the Islamic movement in the region and the world in bringing the West to its knees. They also have concluded that because of the troubles in the world’s economy and financial troubles in America, even a limited confrontation with America would benefit the Islamic regime.

Just as Hezbollah outfought Israel in the 2006 war, Iran can claim victory against the U.S. in such a conflict, which could include attacking Israel from several fronts. But the real prize for the criminal mullahs would be that it would help the regime bring down the monarchy in Bahrain, create instability in Saudi Arabia and, most important, help the Islamists in Egypt undermine military rule. All this would occur by inciting uprisings for a war of Islam against infidels and Zionists.

The guards in their preparations have mapped out several options. One would be to disrupt the oil flow from the Persian Gulf. They know that about 40 percent of the world’s oil and the majority of oil exports of eight countries in the Persian Gulf pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that could be blocked by the regime’s forces.

The guards’ navy of speedboats armed with cruise missiles, Iran’s submarines and, most important, the guards’ missiles of various kinds could be launched from deep within Iran and still target the narrow strait.

The guards also have mapped out an extensive list of U.S. bases in the Middle East to attack with their missiles, disrupting the movement of U.S. forces and the operation of the Air Force, which the guards believe will be the main thrust of any attack by America.

For that purpose, several U.S. bases have been identified that could be attacked either by short-range rockets with a range of up to 140 miles or with ballistic missiles with a range of more than 1,250 miles. The two air bases in Kuwait, Ali Al Salem and Ahmed Al Jaber, are less than 85 miles from Iran. In Kuwait, the U.S. camps of Buehring, Spearhead, Patriot and Arifjan, with distances of 65 to 80 miles, are all within reach of the guards’ various missiles.

The guards also are targeting four U.S. air bases in Afghanistan as the main launching pads for any attacks on Iran. The Bagram Air Base, home to most of the U.S. Air Force presence in Afghanistan, is just 450 miles from the Iranian borders and within range of all of Iran’s ballistic missiles. Other air bases in Afghanistan that would be attacked by the guards in case of war are in Kandahar, Shindand and Herat.

The super U.S. base, Al Adid in Qatar, which is home to a variety of U.S. bombers and fighters, is within 175 miles of Iran and a prime target for the guards, though because of favorable relations of the Islamic regime with the government in Qatar, the guards are not sure America can use that air base for its attack and therefore will be much more likely to use its other superbase at Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates, also within range of various Iranian missiles. Other U.S. targets of the guards are the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain and Thumrait Air Base in Oman.

The guards also have drawn up plans to confront any uprising from within should one occur after the breakout of war and have mobilized tens of thousands of Basijis ready to put down any unrest against the regime.

The Islamic regime in Iran also counts on Russia and China, with which it has close relations, to come to its help and facilitate an end to war in time to save the regime. China, which holds billions of dollars in contracts and is said to have more than 11,000 contractors, mostly of a military nature, in Iran, has the most to lose in the downfall of the Islamic regime, and its officials already have stated openly that China will aid the Iranian regime in case of war.

Though the Islamic regime never should have been allowed to continue with its suppression of its people, its terrorist activities worldwide and its continuation of its missile and nuclear programs despite U.N. sanctions, one cannot imagine a world with nuclear arms in the hands of the jihadists in Iran.

With officials from both Israel and the U.S. calling a nuclear-armed Iran a red line, leaving the possibility of a military option on the table, we must realize that the only possible solution to this dilemma is a regime change in Iran, which a majority of Iranians support. The price we pay today to save world peace and security will be minuscule to what the world will pay in the not-so-distant future.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of “A Time to Betray” (Threshhold Editions, Simon & Schuster, 2010) He is a fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).

2011-12-31T20:56:00.004-05:00

Israel's Unsustainable Politics of Exclusion in Jerusalem

Politics and Religion: Israel's Unsustainable Politics of Exclusion in Jerusalem

By Nicola Nasser, Global Research
December 31, 2011

While the history of the world is moving decisively toward a culture of inclusion, diversity and pluralism, Israeli politics seems to challenge history by moving in the opposite direction of exclusion and unilateral self - righteous monopoly of geography, demography, history, archeology and culture, especially in Jerusalem, where Israelis are desperately trying to establish a “Jewish” capital for Israel and “the Jewish people” worldwide, excluding centuries old presence of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christian deep-rooted existence and heritage, thus sowing the seeds of imminent conflict and foreseeable war by strangling a city that has historically been of diversified and pluralistic character and a flashpoint for human misery whenever exclusion becomes the rule of the day.

Israeli politics is not moving against history only, but is challenging world politics as well. Although the first Knesset of the newly born “state of Israel” voted on December 13, 1949 to move the seat of government from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and despite Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem on June 27, 1967, which the UN Security Council declared “null and void,” both unilateral declarations have never been accepted and recognized by the international community, not even by the U.S., Israel’s strategic guardian.

More recently, while millions of Christians were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, and the birth of Christianity in Jerusalem, the scene of Jesus’ resurrection following his death by crucifixion, which is the cornerstone of Christian faith, the Knesset was, on Christmas day, scheduled to consider a draft law that would declare Jerusalem “the capital of the Jewish people” and the capital of Israel at the same time.

The fact that the ruling elite in Tel Aviv has made a prior recognition of Israel as a “Jewish” state a precondition for making peace implicitly and consequently applies to Christians as well, otherwise how could any observer interpret the still simmering crisis with the Vatican over the holy places in Jerusalem. The “Fundamental Agreement” signed by both sides on December 30, 1993, as well as an agreement on the recognition of the civil effects of ecclesiastical legal personality, signed on November 10, 1997, have yet to be ratified by Israel's Knesset. Some in the Israeli media has been recently accusing the Vatican of seeking to hold control of “Jewish holy sites” in Jerusalem .

The Vatican in the past supported making Jerusalem a corpus separatum, an international city in accordance with the UN Resolution 181 of 1947; Israel’s non-compliance delayed Vatican’s formal recognition of Israel until 1993.

More recently, the Vatican renewed calls for an internal agreement to protect the holy places in Jerusalem. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican ’s Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, and Vatican ’s former foreign minister, declared

“There will not be peace if the question of the holy sites is not adequately resolved. The part of Jerusalem within the walls – with the holy sites of the three religions – is humanity’s heritage. The sacred and unique character of the area must be safeguarded and it can only be done with a special, internationally-guaranteed statute.”

The only perceived threat to the holy places against which the Vatican is seeking protection comes from the Israeli politics of exclusion. Rabbi David Rosen, member of the Israeli delegation to the negotiations with the Vatican told the Israeli daily Haaretz on January 17, 2010 that Israel “has not been faithful to the pacts of 1993.”

The precondition of recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” is rejected by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israel’s partner in peace accords, and its self-ruled Palestinian Authority, the 22-member League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC); in a statement he issued on December 26, 2011, the Secretary-General of the 57-member states of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, condemned the Israeli draft law that declares Jerusalem “the capital of Israel and the Jewish people” as “a direct assault on the Palestinian people and their inalienable and clear rights” and “a flagrant violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions,” which affirm that Jerusalem is part of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. PLO representatives considered the Israeli draft law a “declaration of war” and a recipe for igniting a religious conflict. The Islamic – Christian Commission in Support of Jerusalem , in a statement, said if the Israeli draft law is passed it would make Jerusalem “for Judaism and Jews only, which means there would be no freedom of worship in the land of worship.”

Israeli attorney and founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, a Jerusalem-based NGO, Daniel Seidemann, wrote on November 30, 2011:

“Cumulatively, Israeli policies in East Jerusalem today threaten to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a bitter national conflict that can be resolved by means of territorial compromise, into the potential for a bloody, unsolvable religious war. This threat derives from Israel 's dogged pursuit of the settlers' vision of an exclusionary Jewish Jerusalem.”

“… Today, Israel must choose between two visions of Jerusalem . On the one hand, it can continue pursuing an exclusive, largely fictitious rule over an already divided, bi-national city -- exposing Israel to virtually universal censure and imperiling the two-state solution. On the other hand, it can pursue policies that can make Israeli Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, a thriving national capital, recognized by all, existing side-by-side with but politically divided from the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem , al Quds. To those who cherish Israel and understand what is truly at stake, the choice is clear,” Seidemann concluded.

What is much more important than excluding “a conflict that can be resolved by means of territorial compromise,” is that the Israeli politics of exclusion in Jerusalem, which could be summarized by Judaization of the holy city, is a roadmap to de-Arabizing, de-Islamizing, de-Christianizing, de-historizing and de-humanizing Jerusalem, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and this could not be anything but a roadmap to hell.

Absolutely this is unsustainable Israeli politics.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. * nassernicola@ymail.com

2011-12-31T20:35:00.001-05:00

Iran Proposes New Nuclear Talks with World Powers

The Associated Press
December 31, 2011

Iran said Saturday it has proposed a new round of talks on its nuclear program with six world powers that have been trying for years to persuade Tehran to freeze aspects of its atomic work that could provide a possible pathway to weapons production.

The country's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said he has formally called on the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to return to negotiations.

The invitation comes after new sanctions recently imposed by the West over Tehran's enrichment of uranium, a process that produces fuel for reactors but which can also be used in making nuclear weapons. Iran insists it only has peaceful intentions, while the U.S. and many of its European allies suspect Iran of aiming to use a civilian nuclear energy program as a cover for developing a weapons capability.

The last round of negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany was held in January in Istanbul, Turkey, but it ended in failure.

"We formally declared to them (the intent) to return to the path of dialogue for cooperation," Jalili told Iranian diplomats in Tehran, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Jalili did not say when or through what channel he issued the invitation.

Iran's ambassador to Germany, Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, said earlier Saturday that Jalili was to send a letter soon to EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to arrange a new round of talks.

A spokesman for Ashton said she had not yet received any new communication from Iran.

"As she has made clear in her statements on behalf of the (six nations), we continue to pursue our twin-track approach and are open for meaningful discussions on confidence-building measures, without preconditions from the Iranian side," said the spokesman, Michael Mann.

The Iranian announcement was the latest signal from Tehran that the country is feeling the impact of international sanctions.

The U.N. has imposed four rounds of sanctions. Separately, the U.S. and the European Union have imposed their own tough economic and financial penalties.

Washington's measures target exports of gasoline and other refined petroleum products to Iran and have banned U.S. banks from doing business with foreign banks that provide services to Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Last month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged that the current penalties were impeding Iran's financial institutions, saying, "our banks cannot make international transactions anymore."

And earlier in December, Iran reinstated an offer for U.N. nuclear agency officials to visit Tehran, though it did not say whether the International Atomic Energy Agency would be able to focus on suspicions that Iran is secretly working on nuclear arms — a key condition set by the agency.

The U.S. and Israel have not ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities if Tehran doesn't stop its nuclear program.

But Jalili warned Tehran would make any aggressor regret a decision to attack Iran.

"We will give a response that will make the aggressor regret any threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Jalili said.

2011-12-30T21:12:00.002-05:00

Iran Raises Anti-U.S. Threat Level

Iran Raises Anti-U.S. Threat Level; Israel's C-of-S Warns of Potential for Regional War Soon..

debkafile
December 30, 2011

Thursday afternoon, Dec. 29, Tehran raised the pitch of its threats to the United States when Dep. Chief of the Revolutionary Guards Gen. Hossein Salami declared:

"The United States is in no position to tell Tehran what to do in the Strait of Hormuz," adding, "Any threat will be responded [to] by threat… We will not relinquish our strategic moves in Iran's vital interests are undermined by any means."

The Iranian general spoke after the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier and its strike group passed through the Strait of Hormuz to the Sea of Oman and into the area where the big Iranian naval war game Veleyati 90 is taking place.

At around the same time, Israel's chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz spoke of "the rising potential for a multi-arena event," i.e. a comprehensive armed conflict.

Facing in several directions as we are "between terrorist organizations and Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon… we can't afford to stay on the defensive and must come up with offensive measures," he said.

Earlier Thursday, Dec. 29, debkafile reported that an Iranian plan to mine the Strait of Hormuz had put US and NATO forces in the Persian Gulf on the alert.

US and NATO task forces in the Persian Gulf have been placed on alert after US intelligence warned that Iran's Revolutionary Guards are preparing Iranian marine commandos to sow mines in the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The new deployment, debkafile's military sources report, consists of USS Combined Task Force 52 (CTF 52), which is trained and equipped for dismantling marine mines and NATO Maritime Mine Counter measures Group 2 (SNMCMG2). The American group is led by the USS Arden mine countermeasures ship; NATO's by the British HMS Pembroke minesweeper. Other vessels in the task forces are the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Middleton and the French mine warfare ships FS Croix du Sud and FS Var.

Also on the ready are several US Expeditionary Combat Readiness units of the US Fifth Fleet Bahrain command. Seventeen of these special marine units are attached to the Fifth Fleet as America's answer to the Iranian Navy's fast assault boats and marine units.

US military sources told debkafile Wednesday, Dec. 28, that United States has the countermeasures for sweeping the waterway of mines and making it safe for marine passage after no more than a 24-48 hour interruption.

At the same time, leading military and naval officials in Washington take Tehran's threats seriously. They don't buy the proposition advanced by various American pundits and analysts that Iran would never close the Strait of Hormuz, though which one third of the world's oil passes, because it would then bottle up its own energy exports. Those officials, according to our sources, believe that Tehran hopes the mines in the waterway will blow up passing oil tankers and other shipping. It doesn't have to be sealed hermetically to endanger international shipping; just a few mines here and there and an explosion would be enough to deter shippers and crews from risking their vessels.

As Adm. Habibollah Sayari commander of the Iranian Navy put it Wednesday, Dec. 28:

"Shutting the strait for Iran's armed forces is really easy – or as we say in Iran, easier than drinking a glass of water." He went on to say: "But today, we don't need [to shut] the strait because we have the Sea of Oman under control and can control transit."

debkafile's Middle East marine sources said the Iranian admiral's boast about the Sea of Oman was just hot air. For the big Iranian Velayati 90 sea exercise which began Saturday, America has deployed in that sea two large air and sea strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier and the USS Bataan aircraft amphibious ship.

And they are highly visible: Thursday morning, Dec. 29, Iranian Navy's Deputy Commander Rear Adm. Mahmoud Mousavi reported an Iranian Navy aircraft had shot footage and images of a US carrier spotted in an area where the Velayat 90 war games were being conducted – most probably the Stennis. Its presence, he said, demonstrated that Iran's naval forces were "precisely monitoring all moves by extra-regional powers" in the region.

Clearly, the US navy is very much on the spot in the Sea of Oman and other areas of the Iranian war game.

Middle East sources warn however that the repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz coming from Tehran this week and the framework of its naval exercise clearly point to the manner in which Iran intends to hit back for the tough new sanctions which the West plans to approve next month. The new round is expected to shear off 80 percent of the Islamic Republic's revenues.

The European Union's 27 member-states meet in January to approve an embargo on Iranian oil, with effect on 25 percent of Iran's energy exports. Next month, too, President Barack Obama plans to sign into law an amendment authorizing severe penalties for foreign banks trading with Iran's central bank, CBI, including the loss of links with American banks and financial institutions.

Tehran is expected to strike back hard by sowing mines in Hormuz and in the waters opposite the oil fields and terminals of fellow Persian Gulf oil producers, including Saudi Arabia.

It would not be the first time. In 1987 and 1988, sea mines were sown in the Persian Gulf for which Iran never took responsibility. It was generally seen as Tehran's payback for US and Gulf Emirates' backing for Iraq in its long war with the Islamic Republic. A number of oil tankers and American warships were struck by mines, including the USS Samuel B. Roberts. Such disasters can be averted today by means of the sophisticated countermeasures now in US hands.

2011-12-29T21:00:00.005-05:00

Military Buildup Worldwide-Globalization of War

The world's attention is increasingly focused on Syria and Iran as the region continues to move toward military confrontation. Less noticed, however, is that the pieces are being put into place for a truly global conflict, with military buildup taking place in every region and threatening to draw in all of the world's major powers. - GlobalResearchTV

U.S., Israel Discuss Triggers for Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Infrastructure

The Obama administration is trying to assure Israel privately that it would strike Iran militarily if Tehran’s nuclear program crosses certain “red lines”—while attempting to dissuade the Israelis from acting unilaterally. Eli Lake reports exclusively.

The Daily Beast
December 28, 2011

When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opined earlier this month that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could “consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret,” the Israelis went ballistic behind the scenes. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, lodged a formal diplomatic protest known as a demarche. And the White House was thrust into action, reassuring the Israelis that the administration had its own “red lines” that would trigger military action against Iran, and that there is no need for Jerusalem to act unilaterally.

Panetta’s seemingly innocent remarks on Dec. 2 triggered the latest drama in the tinder-box relationship that the Obama administration is trying to navigate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. With Republicans lining up to court Jewish donors and voters in America in 2012, Obama faces a tricky election-year task of ensuring Iran doesn’t acquire a nuclear bomb on his watch while keeping the Israelis from launching a preemptive strike that could inflame an already teetering Middle East.

The stakes are immensely high, and the distrust that Israelis feel toward the president remains a complicating factor. Those sentiments were laid bare in a speech Netanyahu’s minister of strategic affairs, Moshe Ya’alon, gave on Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, in which he used Panetta’s remarks to cast doubt on the U.S.’s willingness to launch its own military strike.

Ya’alon told the Anglo-Likud, an organization within Netanyahu’s Likud party that caters to native English speakers, that the Western strategy to stop Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons must include four elements, with the last resort being a military strike.

“The fourth element of this combined strategy is the credible military strike,” Ya’alon said, according to a recording of the speech provided to The Daily Beast. “There is no credible military action when we hear leaders from the West, saying, ‘this is not a real option,’ saying, ‘the price of military action is too high.’”

The lack of trust between the Israeli and American leaders on Iran has been a sub-rosa tension in the relationship since 2009. Three U.S. military officials confirm to The Daily Beast that analysts attached to the Office of the Secretary of Defense are often revising estimates trying to predict what events in Iran would trigger Prime Minister Netanyahu to authorize a military attack on the country’s nuclear infrastructure. Despite repeated requests going back to 2009, Netanyahu’s government has not agreed to ask the United States for permission or give significant advanced warning of any pending strike.

The sensitive work of trying to get both allies on the same page intensified this month. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington last week to go over Iran issues; and the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, and a special arms control adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Robert Einhorn, were in Israel last week to discuss Iran as well. Panetta for his own part has revised his tone on the question of Iran’s nuclear program, telling CBS News last week that the United States was prepared to use force against Iran to stop the country from building a nuclear weapon.

The new diplomacy has prompted new conversations between the United States and Israel over what the triggers—called “red lines” in diplomatic parlance—would be to justify a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Matthew Kroenig, who served as special adviser on Iran to the Office of the Secretary of Defense between July 2010 and July 2011, offered some of the possible “red lines” for a military strike in a recent Foreign Affairs article he wrote. He argued that the U.S should attack Iran’s facilities if Iran expels international nuclear weapons inspectors, begins enriching its stockpiles of uranium to weapons-grade levels of 90 percent, or installs advanced centrifuges at its main uranium-enrichment facility in Qom.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Kroenig also noted that Iran announced in 2009 that it was set to construct 10 new uranium enrichment sites.

“I doubt they are building ten new sites, but I would be surprised if Iran was not racing to build some secret enrichment facilities,” Kroenig said. “Progress on new facilities would be a major factor in our assessment of Iran’s nuclear program and shape all aspects of our policy towards this including the decision to use force.”

Until recently, current and former Obama administration officials would barely broach the topic in public, only hinting vaguely that all options are on the table to stop Iran’s program. Part of the reason for this was that Obama came into office committed to pursuing negotiations with Iran. When the diplomatic approach petered out, the White House began building international and economic pressure on Iran, often in close coordination with Israel.

All the while, secret sabotage initiatives like a computer worm known as Stuxnet that infected the Siemens-made logic boards at the Natanz centrifuge facility in Iran, continued apace. New U.S. estimates say that Stuxnet delayed Iran’s nuclear enrichment work by at most a year, despite earlier estimates that suggested the damage was more extensive.

Last week in a CBS interview, Panetta said Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon is a “red line.” White House advisers have more recently broached the subject more specifically in private conversations with outside experts on the subject.

Patrick Clawson, the director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said,

“If Iran were found to be sneaking out or breaking out then the president’s advisers are firmly persuaded he would authorize the use of military force to stop it.” But Clawson added, “The response they frequently get from the foreign policy experts is considerable skepticism that this is correct, not that these people are lying to us, but rather when the occasion comes we just don’t know how the president will react.”

Henry Sokolski, the executive director the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said

“You don’t propose and go about doing an oil embargo unless you are serious about taking the next step, and the next step for the administration is clearly some form of military action, and people who have left the administration like Dennis Ross have made it clear that this is precisely what’s on this administration’s mind.”

Ross did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment.

Ironically, Panetta often is the official the Obama administration uses to engage Israel.

“Panetta has been straightforward with the Israelis and they seem to appreciate that,” one senior administration official said. “The Israelis view Panetta as an honest broker.”

In some ways that is why his remarks stung Netanyahu’s government so much.

Complicating matters, the Dec. 2 remarks also came at the same time a high-level delegation of Israeli diplomats, military officers and intelligence officials were in Washington for an annual meeting called the strategic dialogue. At the meeting, the Israeli side offered a new presentation on Iran’s nuclear program suggesting that Iran’s efforts to build secret reactors for producing nuclear fuel were further along than the United States has publicly said. Some of the intelligence was based on soil samples collected near the suspected sites.

Part of the issue now between the United States and Israel are disagreements over such intelligence. The Israelis and the U.S. both believe that Iran suspended its work on weaponization, or the research and testing on how to fit an atomic explosion inside a warhead, in 2003 shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The Israelis, however, say the Iranians started that work again in 2005, according to Israeli officials and Ya’alon, who said this in his speech on Christmas Eve. The 2007 and 2011 U.S. national intelligence estimates for Iran say this weaponization work remains suspended.

The Israelis also say a recent document uncovered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that shows detailed plans for constructing a “neutron initiator,” or a pellet that sits at the middle of the nuclear core and is crushed by high explosives in a nuclear explosion, is evidence that Iran is continuing its weaponization work. The latest IAEA report released in November said members states had shared intelligence alleging that Iran had conducted explosive tests associated with nuclear weapons research.

A senior administration official told The Daily Beast,

“Both Americans and Israelis agree that some research and design work is probably continuing in the event the Iranians decide to move ahead with weaponization.”

The intelligence disagreement is significant in part because one of the factors in drawing up red lines on Iran’s program is how much progress Iran has made in constructing secret enrichment facilities outside of Natanz, where IAEA inspectors still monitor the centrifuge cascades. In 2009, the Obama administration exposed such a facility carved into a mountain outside of the Shiite holy city of Qom. The IAEA has chastised the Iranians for not fully disclosing their work on the Qom site until the United States forced the regime’s hand.

‘Israel, a dysfunctional Spartan state’ - December 29th, 2011

Press TV | Expert believes that Israel cannot hold itself together unless it finds itself at war with someone

Iran vows to counter ‘US covert war’ - December 26th, 2011

RIA Novosti | Vahidi blasted the United States for breaching “all international regulations and violating the rights of Iran and Afghanistan.”

Iran navy starts 10-day wargame in Strait of Hormuz - December 25th, 2011

Reuters | Iran began 10 days of naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran blocks British government website - December 23rd, 2011

The Independent | Iran begins to close ranks in the information war with the US and Great Britain

US/UK missiles hit Iranian village day before Hormuz war ‘game’ - December 22nd, 2011

Daily Mail | Two American missiles struck a village in south-west Iran early today.

2003 UK Daily Mail Reports: U.S. Jets Enter Iranian Airspace, Oil Depot Bombed - December 22nd, 2011

Kurt Nimmo | Abadan the location of newly built Iranian high octane gasoline refinery.

Former CIA Officer: ‘NATO’s War in Syria Not in US Interest’ - December 21st, 2011

American Conservative | Former CIA says rebel reports of civilian deaths is overblown, war will be unwise

UK man selling Iran missile parts is latest victim of US entrapment - December 20th, 2011

Guardian | US try to entrap British business man in order to build fake nuke case against Iran

Pentagon says Iran concerned primarily with deterring an attack - December 19th, 2011

Milwaukee Story | Pentagon sees a nuclear program in Iran as a threat because it would make it more difficult for the US and its allies to take out the regime in Tehran.

N. Korea test-fires short-range missiles - December 19th, 2011

AFP | Seoul’s defence ministry declined to confirm the reported launches.

Ordinary Iranians Prepare for War - December 14th, 2011

Kurt Nimmo | Iranian leaders recite useless bravado and the U.S. and Israel launch covert attacks.

U.S.-NATO Troops Reported On Jordan’s Border with Syria - December 12th, 2011

Kurt Nimmo | U.S.-NATO command center spotted in the village of al-Houshah near al-Mafraq and the Syrian border.

Risk of Israel/U.S. strike on Iran has tripled: Barclays Capital - December 9th, 2011

Reuters | Increased sanctions without an all-out military strike was increasing the risk of a spike in oil prices.

US demands Lebanon’s anti-Syria move - December 8th, 2011

Press TV | US is bullying the Lebanese into taking an aggressive diplomatic position against Syria

2011-12-27T10:07:00.003-05:00

Iran Extends Congratulations to All Christians Around the Globe

Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani expressed hope that all the people of the world would live in peace, freedom, and security in line with divine teachings — proof positive that Iran’s government is not vitriolically anti-Christian, as some stalwart fundamentalist Christians believe and claim. Heck, that’s more emphasis on Jesus and Christianity than we got from President Barak Obama this year! - casual observer

Iran Wishes Christians a Merry Christmas

December 25, 2011

Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani has extended congratulations to all the Christians around the globe and especially to Pope Benedict XVI ahead of Christmas and the New Year.

In separate congratulatory messages to Christian parliament speakers issued on Saturday, Larijani said,

“I would like to congratulate you and your people on the auspicious occasion of the birth anniversary of Jesus Christ (PBUH).”

He expressed hope that all the people of the world would live in peace, freedom, and security in line with divine teachings.

Larijani also said he wished that the countries of all his counterparts would experience happiness and prosperity.

The majority of Iran's Christians belong to the Armenian Church, which celebrates Christmas on January 6.

2011-12-14T19:48:00.008-05:00

Palestine Seeks EU Backing for UN Membership; Israel Displaces Record Number of Palestinians; Israeli Airstrike Kills 4 in Gaza, Including Child; Jewish Extremists Desecrate Old Jerusalem Mosque

Abbas Seeks EU Backing for U.N. Membership

The Daily Star
December 15, 2011

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the European Union Wednesday to support the Palestinian bid for full U.N. membership, as the bloc’s top diplomat called for the resumption of direct talks with Israel.

“Yesterday we raised the flag of Palestine in front of UNESCO and I thanked the president [Herman Van Rompuy] for their support for this endeavor,” Abbas said after meeting the EU president. “I hope the day will come when we will raise the flag of Palestine at the U.N. and with the support of the European Union.”

The EU is split on the issue, however. At a vote concerning raising the flag at the U.N.’s education, science and culture agency, 11 EU nations voted in favor – Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia and Spain.

Eleven others abstained – Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia – and five voted against. They were the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Meanwhile, the EU’s chief diplomat Catherine Ashton said after a meeting with Abbas that the bloc’s “overarching objective” was “the creation of an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable Palestinian state, living side by side with Israel in peace and security.”

Israel to Release Millions in Withheld Palestinian Tax Money

The Daily Star
December 1, 2011

Israel announced Wednesday it was releasing millions of dollars in tax revenues it owes the Palestinians, lifting a month-old freeze that had threatened to undermine the pro-Western Palestinian Authority.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had come under international pressure to hand over the funds, about $100 million a month that includes import duties Israel collects on behalf of the West Bank-based authority.

The money is vital for paying civil servants employed by the Palestinian government in the occupied West Bank, where it exercises limited self-rule under interim peace deals with Israel.

In a punitive measure, Israel began withholding the funds on Nov. 1, a day after the Palestinians won membership in the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO as part of their unilateral, and slow-moving, drive for U.N. statehood recognition.

Israel has called on the Palestinians to abandon that bid and return to peace talks that collapsed in September 2010 over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem which they say will deny them a viable state.

An Israeli government official said tax payments for October and November would be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, but Netanyahu made clear that he reserved the option to halt them again.

“Netanyahu approved the resumption of tax revenue transfers, at this stage, to the Palestinian Authority,” said a statement issued by the prime minister’s office after his inner Cabinet gave its backing.

The statement cited what it described as a suspension of “unilateral moves” by the Palestinian Authority, a reference to any further bids for status upgrades in U.N. bodies.

“If the Palestinian Authority takes unilateral steps again, the transfer of funds will be reconsidered,” it said.

Commenting on the decision to transfer the funds, Saleh Rafat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said: “This is first of all Palestinian money ... Israel should have retracted this decision weeks ago.”

Last week, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the Palestinian Authority was “fast approaching the point of being completely incapacitated” and would not be able to pay about 150,000 workers this month if Israel did not release the money.

Israel Displaces Record Number of Palestinians

The Daily Star
December 14, 2011

Israel has stepped up its demolitions of Palestinian property in occupied land this year, razing double the number of homes and water wells from 2010, human rights groups said Tuesday.

The statement endorsed by 20 organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch further said Jewish settler violence against Palestinians had risen in 2011 and that Israel had sped up its expansion of settler enclaves.

They urged members of the Middle East peacemaking “Quartet” – the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia – to put pressure on Israel to “reverse its settlement policies and freeze all demolitions that violate international law.”

Quartet representatives were expected in the region again Wednesday for yet another effort to revive peace talks frozen since last year over settlement construction.

The statement, citing U.N. figures, said Israel had destroyed more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells and other structures in 2011, displacing more than 1,000 people, the greatest number in a single year since 2005.

Settler assaults on Palestinians, including deliberate damage to some privately owned 10,000 olive trees, have also risen to their worst level since 2005, with a 50 percent increase over 2010, and more than a 160 percent increase over 2009, the U.N. figures show.

The statement said that settler “perpetrators act with virtual impunity,” with more than 90 percent of complaints filed with police shut without indictment between 2005 and 2010.

Israel has approved plans to build 4,000 more settlement homes in the past year for East Jerusalem, the greatest number since 2006, the statement added, quoting figures supplied by the Israeli watchdog group Peace Now.

Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israel’s Defense Ministry unit coordinating policy for the West Bank, called the report “one-sided and biased.”

In a written statement, Inbar said Israel would continue to “professionally and transparently” enforce laws regarding illegal construction by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli Airstrike Kills 4 in Gaza, Including Child

The Daily Star
December 10, 2011

Violence has flared up between Israel and Gaza, with the Israeli air force killing four Palestinians and militants firing rockets deep across the border.

The fighting erupted Thursday when an airstrike on a car killed two militants, one of them from Gaza’s governing Islamist group Hamas, whom Israel accused of planning to send gunmen to attack it through the neighboring Sinai region of Egypt.

Palestinian militants responded to Thursday’s airstrike with a barrage of rockets, some of which landed near Beersheba, a city 35 km from Gaza. No one was hurt.

Another Israeli airstrike followed before dawn Friday, hitting a Hamas training camp in Gaza City. The blast flattened a nearby home, killing its owner and his 12-year-old son. The man’s wife and five other children were also wounded hospital officials said.

In a statement voicing regret for the civilian casualties, the military said Palestinian rockets stored next to the camp had stoked the explosion. Hamas accused Israel of a “massacre.”

Palestinian militants stepped up rocket attacks as night fell. Three groups said they had fired over a dozen projectiles across the border. Israel police said at least 10 of them landed in Israeli territory, causing no casualties.

Witnesses in Gaza reported heavy activity of Israeli drones over head.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza told reporters the group was “pursuing intensive contacts with several Arab and international parties, and we stress the necessity of this aggression being stopped immediately.”

Hamas spurns peacemaking with the Jewish state but has in the past proposed truces as it sought to consolidate control over Gaza and negotiate power-sharing with the rival, U.S.-backed Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Instability has spread in Sinai as Cairo struggles to restore order after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February.

Armed infiltrators killed eight Israelis on the border with Sinai in August. Israeli troops repelling the gunmen killed five Egyptian police, triggering outrage in Cairo that spilled over into the mobbing of Israel’s embassy a month later.

Israel apologized for the Egyptian deaths and Egypt’s interim military rulers vowed to mount security sweeps of Sinai.

Hamas’ standing has grown with the political rise of the kindred Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, formerly a suppressed though popular opposition group. Israel worries about the prospects for its landmark 1979 peace accord with Egypt, which secured the demilitarization of the Sinai.

“The state of Israel is in a bind,” defense analyst Alex Fishman wrote in the biggest-selling Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “It can’t operate in Sinai in order to defend its sovereignty for fear of its relations with Egypt ... and because it can’t beat the donkey, it beats the saddle – and Gaza suffers the blows.”

Some of the Palestinian rockets fired Thursday and Friday were claimed by a Fatah-linked militia that lost one of its leaders, Essam al-Batsh, in Israel’s airstrike.

Israel said he had also been involved in a 2007 suicide bombing that killed three people in Eilat, a Red Sea port abutting Egypt. The Eilat area went on security alert this week, with the military citing fear of infiltration from Sinai.

Hamas had no comment on the rockets. It has kept out of some of the recent fighting in Gaza, much of which has been between Israel and Islamic Jihad, a different Palestinian armed faction.

The chief of Israel’s military, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, told parliament last month a new Israeli offensive in Gaza could be “drawing close” because of the rocket threat.

That stirred speculation that Israel, which launched a devastating war on Hamas in 2008-2009, might mobilize for a similar assault ahead of the possible installation of a new Islamist-led government in Egypt.

Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, warned that could backfire by providing an electoral boost to the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s ultra-conservative Salafists.

“An operation in Gaza is liable to play into their hands, with a kind of acceleration of political processes that you don’t want,” he told Israel Radio.

Jewish ‘Price Tagger’ Extremists Desecrate Old Jerusalem Mosque

The Daily Star
December 15, 2011

Jewish extremists Wednesday tried to torch an old mosque in Occupied Jerusalem, as Israel reopened a ramp leading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, whose closure sparked Muslim anger.

The overnight attack on the disused mosque in downtown West Jerusalem saw unknown attackers try and set the building alight and daub its exterior walls with racist anti-Arab slogans written in Hebrew.

It was the latest in a slew of so-called “price tag” incidents – revenge attacks by Jewish extremists which generally target Palestinians and Arabs, although they have also been directed at the army and leftwing Israelis.

The attack targeted the Nebi Akasha Mosque, which dates back to the 13th century and had not been used as a place of worship since Israel’s creation in 1948. The city council currently uses the building as a storage facility.

“During the night, there was an attempt to set fire to a disused mosque in the city centre,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, saying an investigation had been opened into the attack which took place just off Jaffa Street, west Jerusalem’s main shopping artery.

The attack was swiftly condemned by the Al-Aqsa Foundation, an offshoot of Israel’s Islamic Movement, which said it held Israel “fully responsible for this terrible crime” and for not acting against the perpetrators.

Arab Israeli MP Mohammad Barake also lashed out at his fellow parliamentarians for fanning the flames of racial hatred with a spate of draft legislation targeting Israel’s Arab minority.

“Responsibility for the mosque burning does not only lie with the gang of fascists who carried it out, but also with some of the scumbags among the MPs and ministers,” he said in a statement.

“Those MPs should not pretend they are shocked when the draft laws they back become a raging fire that devours mosques,” he said.

Emek Shaveh, an Israeli NGO which fights against the manipulation of archaeological sites for political gain, said the attack had damaged an important aspect of local heritage.

“The destruction of the antiquities, in this case probably by Israelis, is part of the process of erasure of ‘the other’ – of everything that doesn’t suit the extremist and one-dimensional ideology of certain Israeli groups,” it said in a statement.

Among the words scrawled on the mosque’s walls were the names of two settlement outposts slated for demolition by the end of the month.

Overnight, there were three more price tag attacks in the northern West Bank where Palestinian cars were torched in three separate villages and Hebrew graffiti found nearby, the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses said.

The arson attack in Jerusalem occurred just 24 hours after settlers attacked troops and an army base in the northern West Bank in an attack which has deeply angered Israel’s leadership.

Several hours earlier, settlers also broke into a closed military zone along the Jordanian border.

In the past 10 days, detectives have arrested eight people in connection with recent price tag attacks, including six minors and a soldier.

Jerusalem police Wednesday also detained six Jewish men from a religious neighborhood on suspicion of involvement in recent violence and vandalism against Arabs, a spokeswoman told AFP.

The suspects are all settlers who were barred from returning to the West Bank several years ago by military order, Luba Samri told AFP, without giving details of their age or identity.

The six men were not believed to be connected to the overnight attack on the mosque, nor to several other “price tag” attacks earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Israel reopened Wednesday a controversial wooden access ramp to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem just 48 hours after it was closed on safety grounds in a move which had sparked Muslim anger.

2011-12-13T12:23:00.000-05:00

Iran Says It Will Not Return U.S. Surveillance Drone; U.S. Contends the Drone Malfunctioned and Was Not Shot Down by Iran's Armed Forces

Bible prophecy describes the battle of Armageddon as a coalition of nations that will almost certainly include China and Russia and several Muslim nations of the Middle East. Every day, the evidence mounts that China will be tightly leagued with Russia and many of the Islamic nations in a powerful anti-Israel political and military alliance from which the 200-million-man army described in the book of Revelation (Rev. 9:16) will ultimately come. - The Sixth Trumpet War of Revelation 9

Iran Rejects U.S. Request to Return Spy Drone

Reuters
December 13, 2011

Iran has--unsurprisingly--rejected an American request to return its downed spy drone.

President Obama, speaking at a news conference with the visiting Iraqi prime minister Monday, said the United States had asked Iran to give the downed American reconnaissance plane back.

"We've asked for it back," President Obama said of the drone Monday. "We'll see how the Iranians respond."

Iranian news agencies ridiculed the request on Tuesday as Iranian officials made clear they had no intention of giving back the American drone.

"Obama begs Iran to give him back his toy plane," proclaimed a headline from Iran's Fars News Agency Tuesday.

"We are still wondering how he shamelessly asked Tehran to give the US back the stealth drone which had violated the Iranian airspace for espionage," the news agency wrote, referring to the American president.

"The American espionage drone is now Iran's property, and our country will decide what steps to take regarding it," Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told ran's ISNA news agency Monday, according to a BBC report. In another statement t the Mehr news agency, Vahidi said that "instead of apologizing to the Iranian nation, [the U.S.] is brazenly asking for the drone back."

The unusual American-Iran media jousting over the downed RQ-170 drone came as an Iran prosecutor announced Tuesday that he has indicted 15 "American and Zionist" spies.

"IRNA on Tuesday quoted Tehran's chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi as saying the suspects carried out espionage activities against Iran," the Associated Press reported Tuesday. "He did not elaborate on the nationality of the suspects, nor say when they were detained."

Last week, Lebanon's al-Manar TV, which is controlled by the Iran-allied Shiite militant group Hezbollah, identified 10 alleged undercover CIA officers working in Lebanon with diplomatic cover.

"Hezbollah made the names public in a broadcast Friday night on a Lebanese television station, al-Manar," the Associated Press's Adam Goldman reported Monday. "Using animated videos, the station recreated meetings purported to take place between CIA officers and paid informants at Starbucks and Pizza Hut."

"The disclosure comes after Hezbollah managed to partially unravel the agency's spy network in Lebanon after running a double agent against the CIA, former and current U.S. intelligence officials said," Goldman wrote.

The CIA dismissed the claims made in the Hezbollah broadcast, citing CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood:

"The agency does not, as a rule, address spurious claims from terrorist groups. I think it's worth remembering that Hezbollah is a dangerous organization, with al-Manar as its propaganda arm. That fact alone should cast some doubt on the credibility of the group's claims."

Obama: We Asked Iran to Give Us Our Drone Back

The Envoy
December 12, 2011

President Obama has a message for Iran: He would like America's downed spy drone back.

Obama revealed the request for the return of the drone--which fell to earth in Iran recently, and has since been flaunted in video footage by the Iranian government--during a Monday White House news conference. The president shared the podium with Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as both leaders discussed the future of American-Iraqi relations after the withdrawal this month of the last remaining U.S. troops.

But Obama's comments on the seized drone at least temporarily upstaged the designated subject of the conference--and are all but certain to become instant fodder for late-night comedy and GOP primary campaign barbs.

"We've asked for it back," President Obama said of the spy plane, according to an Agence-France Press report. "We'll see how the Iranians respond."

"With respect to the drone inside of Iran, I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters that are classified," he added.

Iran claimed to have brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone mostly intact eight days ago, after operators lost control of it on a classified CIA-Pentagon surveillance mission over the country. The very existence of the stealth reconnaissance plane-- dubbed the "Beast of Kandahar," and manufactured by Lockheed Martin--received no official acknowledgment from U.S. government circles until 2009. American officials more recently reportedly confirmed the RQ-170 was used for extended surveillance of Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after the successful U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida leader last May.

Iran--which has since lodged a formal diplomatic protest over the drone's apparent violation of Iranian air space--has given scant indication that it will leap to the Obama administration's request for the craft's return.

Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Brig. General Hossein Salami told Iran state television Sunday that Iran won't give the drone back, and regards "the drone's violation of Iranian airspace as a hostile act" by the United States, the Washington Post's Thomas Erdbrink reported.

Already, partisan critics of the Obama White House could hardly contain their glee at news of the request. This was after all but the latest Western request that Tehran seemed likely to flout--along with several rounds of UN Security Council resolutions demanding Iran curb its nuclear program.

"If you were Iran, and Pres O asked you to return our drone, what would you say??" Ari Fleischer, GOP public relations strategist and former spokesman for the George W. Bush White House, asked on Twitter.

"'O: I asked Iran 2 return drone & we'll see how they r[e]spond," Fleischer wrote in another Twitter post mocking the request. Ronald Reagan "didn't ask Iran 2 r[e]turn hostages. Iran feared him, so they were freed."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--who herself has occasionally revealed private talking points publicly--tried to blunt any suggestion of naivete in the U.S. request.

"We submitted a formal request for return" of the drone, but "don't expect them to comply," Clinton said Monday, CBS News' Cami McCormick reported.

Iran Says It Will Not Return U.S. Drone

The Associated Press
December 11, 2011

Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.

Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a "hostile act" and warned of a "bigger" response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.

"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Salami said.

Iranian television broadcast video Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone.

Salami called its capture a victory for Iran and a defeat for the U.S. in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

"Iran is among the few countries that possesses the most modern technology in the field of pilotless drones. The technology gap between Iran and the U.S. is not much," he said.

Officers in the Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, had previously claimed that the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.

American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials had spoken anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.

But Salami refused to provide more details of Iran's claim to have captured the CIA-operated aircraft.

"A party that wins in an intelligence battle doesn't reveal its methods. We can't elaborate on the methods we employed to intercept, control, discover and bring down the pilotless plane," he said.

Drone Crash Unmasks U.S. Spying Effort in Iran

Reuters
December 9, 2011

The crash of a CIA drone in Iran has brought into the open what U.S. intelligence agencies would prefer kept secret: intense spying efforts in a country where the United States has no official presence.

Iran on Thursday aired with great flourish footage of the captured drone, which appeared largely intact. Pentagon and CIA spokesmen would not comment on whether it was the missing U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft.

A person familiar with the situation confirmed that the drone that crashed was on a surveillance mission over Iran.

It is believed to have crashed because of a malfunction and not from being shot down or computer-hacked by the Iranians, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Although there are risks that Iran could attempt to reverse engineer the technology, or sell it to other countries, like China, U.S. officials believe that Iran will not be able to mine the drone's computer systems to learn details of the U.S. surveillance mission.

U.S. surveillance of Iran through various means has been going on for years, U.S. officials and others with direct knowledge of the situation say.

A private U.S. defense expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that when he visited the command center at a U.S. military base in the Gulf region in 2008, it was clear that the installation was receiving multiple feeds of electronic surveillance information from inside Iran.

Some of the information appeared to be transmitted from high-altitude aircraft and some from electronic sensors which the United States had somehow installed on the ground in Iran, the expert said.

The United States has no official presence in Iran so it is difficult to determine exactly what is going on inside its borders. One recent incident has yet to be fully unraveled.

EXPLOSION IN ISFAHAN

On November 28, there were contradictory reports out of Iran on whether an explosion had occurred in the city of Isfahan, which is also home to a major nuclear site.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said he has been studying imagery of that area and no damage was detected at the Isfahan nuclear site. But, he said, "it is credible there was an explosion, but not at the nuclear site."

He said it was puzzling that Iranians clearly said an explosion at a missile depot two weeks earlier had been an accident, but did not provide similar clarity about Isfahan.

"We're trying to figure out what actually happened," he said.

"Explosions are happening in Iran, and Iran is not making a big deal out of them. They are either calling them accidents or saying they didn't happen, and therefore when these things continue to happen it could be because intelligence agencies are actually now playing sabotage," Albright said.

In the earlier November 12 incident, Iran said a massive blast at a military base west of Tehran killed 17 members of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including the head of its missile program, in an accident while weapons were being moved.

When unexplained events occur that appear to be aimed against Iran's nuclear program, experts often question whether U.S. and Israeli intelligence services were at work.

Iran also has had alleged covert operations against the West come to light. Recently, the United States arrested a man accused of being involved in a plot by Iranian agents to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington.

The U.S. government also accuses Iran of arming and funding Iraqi militias responsible for attacking American troops in Iraq.

U.S. officials do not appear to be the least bit disturbed about mishaps to Iran's nuclear and missile programs that include the Stuxnet computer virus that attacked centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear site.

"Whether it's due to technical difficulties, incompetence, or other reasons, some setbacks to Iran's activities are welcome," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Iran Releases Video of Downed U.S. Spy Drone–Looking Quite Intact

The Envoy
December 8, 2011

Iran's Press TV on Thursday broadcast an extended video tour of the U.S. spy drone that went down in the country late last week--and it indeed looks to be intact.

American officials have acknowledged that an unmanned U.S. reconnaissance plane was lost on a mission late last week, but have insisted that there is no evidence the drone was downed by hostile acts by Iran. Rather, they said, the drone likely went down because of a malfunction, and they implied the advanced stealth reconnaissance plane would have fallen from a high altitude--the RQ-170 Sentinel can fly as high as 50,000 feet--and as a result, wouldn't be in good shape.

Iranian military officials have claimed since Sunday they brought down an intact American spy drone--and now they are giving tours of the drone, in what is sure to be another humiliating poke in the eye for U.S. national security agencies.

"On Sunday December 4, the Iranian Army's electronic warfare unit downed the US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225km) from the Afghan border," Iran's Press TV said in its report Thursday.

The New York Times reported Thursday that--unsurprisingly--the RQ-170 was lost while making the latest foray over Iran during an extended CIA surveillance effort of Iran's nuclear and ballistic weapons program.

"The overflights by the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin and first glimpsed on an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2009, are part of an increasingly aggressive intelligence collection program aimed at Iran, current and former officials say," the Times' Scott Shane and David Sanger wrote. "The urgency of the effort has been underscored by a recent public debate in Israel about whether time is running out for a military strike to slow Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon."

Iran in turn has complained that the drone flights represent an act of aggression and violation of its sovereignty, and summoned the Swiss envoy--who represents U.S. interests in Iran--to register its complaints.

The video tour may also be a move to bid up the price Iran could receive for sharing the highly sophisticated American stealth drone technology with countries such as China and Russia.

That Secret Drone Lost in Iran Was Flying for the C.I.A.

The Atlantic Wire
December 6, 2011

The U.S. lost one of its most advanced surveillance drones on a C.I.A. mission in Iran, unnamed "U.S. officials" said on Monday, which means Tehran now likely possesses the stealth aircraft.

Little is known about the Lockheed-designed aircraft, and The Los Angeles Times says "the Pentagon has not revealed its price tag, size or top speed. But it has acknowledged this: The Sentinel may now be in Iranian hands." U.S. intelligence used the "jet-powered, bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel drone" to perform surveillance on Osama bin Laden's compound last spring, which tells you something about how prized it is.

The Pentagon certainly doesn't want its military secrets getting to Iran, but according to one expert The Times interviewed, the larger worry is that Tehran will sell them far and wide.

"It carries a variety of systems that wouldn't be much of a benefit to Iran, but to its allies such as China and Russia, it's a potential gold mine," Peter W. Singer, author of Wired for War, told the paper.

The U.S. military first said it had lost a drone that was flying over western Afghanistan, but The Times suggested it may have strayed into Iran airspace by mistake. Sources told CNN, however, that they believed the drone went down in Afghanistan before Iran recovered it.

"They did not believe the mission involved flying the drone directly over Iran because the reconnaissance capability of the-RQ 170 drone allows it to gather information from inside Iran while remaining on the Afghanistan side of the border."

Either way, it's a big intelligence coup for Tehran and a real fumble for the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency.

2011-12-11T13:26:00.002-05:00

Risk of Israel/U.S. Strike on Iran has Tripled; Israel Stole Weapon-grade Uranium from U.S.

Risk of Israel/U.S. Strike on Iran has Tripled: Barclays Capital

Reuters
December 8, 2011

The chance of a military strike on Iran has roughly tripled in the past year, the senior geopolitical risk analyst at Barclays Capital said on Thursday.

New York-based analyst Helina Croft, writing in a note titled 'Blowback: Assessing the fallout from the Iranian sanctions', said even increased sanctions without an all-out military strike was increasing the risk of a spike in oil prices.

"We still contend that the risk of either an Israeli or US strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities remains low, but it has risen, in our view, from 5-10 percent last year to 25-30% now," Croft said.
"In terms of supply-demand balances for the oil market, an oil embargo or sanctions on the Iranian central bank would essentially lead to a dislocation in trade flows, rather than lost outright production... However, the effect on oil prices could be significantly different."

Croft said increased sanctions from the U.S. and European Union targeting Iran's oil sector and central bank would likely, initially, have the primary effect of driving its oil exports east to Asia.

"If EU sanctions on Iranian oil were aimed at significantly reducing the flow of revenues to Tehran, they would perhaps seem no more likely to be successful than U.S. sanctions have been since 1988," the note said.
"An inevitable knock-on effect of an EU embargo would be to push more Iranian oil eastward, without removing Iran's ability to market all its crude available to export. In other words, the concentration of Iran's buyers would increase, but the total volume would not be affected."

Croft and Sen argued European refiners in the Mediterranean would be hardest hit by an increase in sanctions as they would be forced to scramble to find alternative sources of crude. Greece, in particular, has found the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) one of the few suppliers willing to provide it with crude on "open credit".

On Thursday U.S. President Barack Obama said the United States was considering all options on Iran and would work with allies, including Israel, to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Iran says its nuclear program is only to meet energy needs, and is not aimed at acquiring nuclear weapons.

Israel Stole Weapon-grade Uranium from U.S., Report Will Show

Daily Star
December 8, 2011

A U.S.-based research institute will soon publish what it says is “indisputable” evidence that Israel stole weapons-grade uranium for its still-undeclared atomic weapons program from a nuclear reprocessing plant in western Pennsylvania.

The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) will release this month a 300-page report detailing the initial findings of a multi-year research project investigating the disappearance of highly enriched uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (Numec) in Apollo, Pennsylvania in the 1950s and 1960s.

Grant Smith, the director of IRmep, told The Daily Star that the report would include a broad range of newly declassified and un-redacted government documents from various agencies – including the Department of Energy, Atomic Energy Commission, FBI and CIA – that prove that nuclear material was diverted from Numec to Israel.

“The story at this point is that there is no one smoking gun; there are many smoking pistols lying all over the place that we’ve painstakingly collected,” Smith told The Daily Star.

Read full report here

2011-12-08T12:49:00.005-05:00

China Prepares Navy for Combat to Safeguard National Security

The real showdown between China and the West may end up being in the Middle East if and when the Muslim world enlists China's assistance in the anti-American, anti-Israeli confrontation. The record shows that China has already been engaged in illicit sales of nuclear armaments to Muslim nations. Many of the Muslim nations in the Middle East are client states of China. The de facto alliance already exists. Both China and the Muslim nations have a similar interest in maintaining control of the oilfields of the Middle East. It may be that China joins with the Muslim nations in a cataclysmic confrontation with both Israel and the West in the near future, probably over the oil wealth of that region. - Ken Raggio, The Sixth Trumpet War of Revelation 9

China's Hu Urges Navy to Prepare for Combat

AFP
December 6, 2011

Chinese President Hu Jintao Tuesday urged the navy to prepare for military combat amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.

The navy should "accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for military combat in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security," he said.

Addressing the powerful Central Military Commission, Hu said:

"Our work must closely encircle the main theme of national defence and military building."

His remarks, which were posted on a statement on a government website, come amid growing US and regional concerns over China's naval ambitions, particularly in the South China Sea.

China claims all of the maritime area, as does Taiwan, while four Southeast Asian countries declare ownership of parts of it, with Vietnam and the Philippines accusing Chinese forces of increasing aggression there.

In a translation of Hu's comments, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the president as saying China's navy should "make extended preparations for warfare."

But the Pentagon on Tuesday downplayed Hu's speech, saying that Beijing had the right to develop its military, although it should do so transparently.

"They have a right to develop military capabilities and to plan, just as we do," said Pentagon spokesman George Little, but he added "we have repeatedly called for transparency from the Chinese and that's part of the relationship we're continuing to build with the Chinese military."

"Nobody's looking for a scrap here," insisted another spokesman Admiral John Kirby. "Certainly we wouldn't begrudge any other nation the opportunity, the right to develop naval forces to be ready.
"Our naval forces are ready and they'll stay ready."

US undersecretary of defence Michelle Flournoy is due to meet in Beijing with her Chinese counterparts on Wednesday for military-to-military talks.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month warned against interference by "external forces" in regional territorial disputes including in the South China Sea, a strategic and resource-rich area where several nations have overlapping claims.

And China said late last month it would conduct naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean, after Obama, who has dubbed himself America's first Pacific president, said the US would deploy up to 2,500 Marines to Australia.

China's People's Liberation Army, the largest military in the world, is primarily a land force, but its navy is playing an increasingly important role as Beijing grows more assertive about its territorial claims.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon warned that Beijing was increasingly focused on its naval power and had invested in high-tech weaponry that would extend its reach in the Pacific and beyond.

China's first aircraft carrier began its second sea trial last week after undergoing refurbishments and testing, the government said. The 300-metre (990-foot) ship, a refitted former Soviet carrier, underwent five days of trials in August that sparked international concern about China's widening naval reach.

Beijing only confirmed this year that it was revamping the old Soviet ship and has repeatedly insisted that the carrier poses no threat to its neighbours and will be used mainly for training and research purposes. But the August sea trials were met with concern from regional powers including Japan and the United States, which called on Beijing to explain why it needs an aircraft carrier.

China, which publicly announced around 50 separate naval exercises in the seas off its coast over the past two years -- usually after the event -- says its military is only focused on defending the country's territory.

2011-12-08T12:42:00.006-05:00

North Korea Making Missile Able to Hit U.S.

The US, Israel and the NATO Alliance have already put Iran, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and China on notice. And the “withdrawals” from Iraq and the Af-Pak region are over-hyped. The occupation of these countries continues with no end in sight. In fact, they aren’t withdrawing as much as they are repositioning and shifting their forces, preparing for an escalation. In many ways the wars in Iraq and Af-Pak have only been the initial phase of a global attack, positioning forces and building massive military bases in pivotal geo-strategic locations. The operations in this region have essentially been a warm-up for much wider-ranging attacks against much stronger countries. While most of the US population is playing checkers, seeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as one-off battles, the global banking cartel is playing chess, using these wars as only initial geo-strategic moves in a grand strategy toward total world domination. The intensity of military maneuvering presently occurring is alarming. - David DeGraw, The Global Banking Cartel Has One Card Left to Play, Amped Status, September 28, 2010

Report: North Korea Trying to Develop Missile to Strike U.S.

The Washington Times
December 6, 2011

New intelligence indicates that North Korea is moving ahead with building its first road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, an easily hidden weapon capable of hitting the United States, according to Obama administration officials.

The intelligence was revealed in a classified Capitol Hill briefing last month. Its existence was made public in a letter to Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta from five House Republicans.

“As members of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces …, we write out of concerns about new intelligence concerning foreign developments in long-range ballistic missile development, specifically ballistic missiles capable of attacking the United States,” the Nov. 17 letter said.

“We believe this new intelligence reiterates the need for the administration to correct its priorities regarding missile defenses, which should have, first and foremost, the missile defense of the homeland.”

Officials familiar with the intelligence said government analysts believe the missile could be a variant of North Korea’s new Musudan intermediate-range missile, first disclosed publicly in October 2010.

Other intelligence indicates that the new ICBM may be under development at a huge missile testing facility on North Korea’s western coast.

Prior to its mobile ICBM, North Korea’s long-range missiles were the pad-launched Taepodong-1 prototype, and the Taepodong-2 (TD-2) dual-use ICBM and space launcher. The TD-2 was test-launched in April 2009.

‘Direct threat’

Mobile missiles are difficult for tracking radar to locate, making them easier to hide. They also can be set up and launched much more quickly than missiles fired from silos or launchpads.

China’s military recently deployed two new mobile ICBMs, the DF-31 and DF-31A. It is not known whether North Korea’s new mobile missile is based on Chinese technology. China in the past has provided missile technology to North Korea, a fraternal communist ally.

The first indications of Pyongyang’s new mobile ICBM were made public in June by Robert M. Gates, who was defense secretary at the time. After a speech in Singapore, Mr. Gates said,

“With the continued development of long-range missiles and potentially a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile and their continuing development of nuclear weapons, … North Korea is in the process of becoming a direct threat to the United States.”

The new intelligence was discussed during a closed-door briefing in mid-November for the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces and discussed in the letter to Mr. Panetta. The letter did not say specifically that the missile was North Korean, but it quoted Mr. Gates on Pyongyang’s mobile ICBM development.

The letter was signed by Rep. Michael R. Turner, Ohio Republican and chairman of the subcommittee; Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and Republican Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona, Doug Lamborn of Colorado and Mac Thornberry of Texas.

Congressional aides declined to comment on the intelligence.

Administration officials familiar with the missile data said U.S. intelligence analysts have some disagreement over the developments.

Implications for talks

The intelligence on North Korea’s progress on a mobile ICBM was disclosed as the Obama administration is seeking to restart the failed six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.

Glyn Davies, special envoy for North Korea, leaves Tuesday for talks in China, Japan and South Korea about North Korea’s nuclear program, the State Department announced Monday.

Last week, North Korea issued a government white paper that defended its April 2009 launch of a Taepodong-2 as part of a satellite development program.

Government analysts viewed the statement as an indication that North Korea may be preparing for a missile flight test.

The United Nations imposed unprecedented sanctions on North Korea after a 2009 test of a nuclear device.

Three paths

Details of North Korea’s first mobile intermediate-range missile, the Musudan, and the new west coast North Korean launch facility were made public in classified State Department cables on the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

A February 2010 cable outlining a U.S.-Russian exchange on missile threats stated that the U.S. government suspects North Korea has three paths to building ICBMs.

One is using the Taepodong-2, with a range of up to 9,300 miles, as its main strategic missile. A second way is to further develop the ranges of existing missiles like the Musudan, and last is to “use the very large launch facility that is being constructed on the west coast of North Korea to launch a very large missile,” the cable said.

The cable said the size of the facility is a concern because “it does not simply replicate other sites.”

“This facility is much larger than the Taepodong launch facility,” the cable said. “This is not to say there is evidence of a new missile system larger than the Taepodong-2 being developed, but it suggests the possibility.”

An Oct. 6, 2009, cable on North Korea’s missile program said the Musudan intermediate-range missile is based on Russia’s SS-N-6 submarine-launched missile that has a range of up to 2,400 miles.

The Musudan uses an advanced liquid propellent called unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and nitrogen tetroxide (N204) that are easier to store in missiles.

“Development of the Musudan with this more advanced propulsion technology allows North Korea to build even longer-range missiles – or shorter range missiles with greater payload capacity – than would be possible using Scud-type technology,” the cable said.

North Korea also has a new solid-fueled short-range missile called the Toksa, with a range of 75 miles, and has sold a number of shorter-range Musudan missiles to Iran, the report said.

‘Hedging strategy’

In their letter, the five lawmakers called on the Pentagon to reverse its decision to curb development of long-range ground-based interceptors in favor of European-based missile defenses against Iranian missiles. They also asked for the Pentagon’s plan for a “hedging strategy” to be prepared to counter new missile threats like the North Korean mobile ICBM.

“In view of the briefing the subcommittee received this week, we do not believe the United States can afford further delay in the release of the hedging strategy by the Department of Defense,” they stated, asking for a report on the strategy by the end of the year.

Asked about the new intelligence, Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde said the Pentagon had nothing to add to Mr. Gates‘ comments.

“Specific information related to North Korea’s development of road-mobile ICBM would be an intelligence matter, and it is our policy not to comment on intelligence matters,” she said.

A U.S. intelligence community spokesman referred a reporter’s questions about the new intelligence to the February statement to Congress by James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

Mr. Clapper stated in his prepared remarks that “North Korea’s progress in developing the TD-2 shows its determination to achieve long-range ballistic missile and space-launch capabilities. If configured as an ICBM, the TD-2 could reach at least portions of the United States; the TD-2 or associated technologies also could be exported.”

Gates' prediction

Mr. Gates first told reporters Jan. 11 during a visit to China that North Korea’s progress in building intercontinental ballistic missiles was turning the Pyongyang regime into a “direct threat to the United States.”

Pressed for details, he said, “I don’t think it’s an immediate threat, no. But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s a five-year threat.”

“Let me be precise,” he added. “I think that North Korea will have developed an intercontinental ballistic missile within that time frame, not that they will have huge numbers or anything like that, but I believe they will have a very limited capability.”

The Daily Beast quoted Mr. Gates in June saying,

“They are developing a road-mobile ICBM. I never would have dreamed they would go to a road-mobile before testing a static ICBM. It’s a huge problem. As we’ve found out in a lot of places, finding mobile missiles is very tough.”

Richard Fisher, a military analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said,

“A nuclear armed North Korean road mobile ICBM would pose a spectacular challenge to the U.S.-led alliance system in Northeast Asia, as Pyongyang could severely undermine U.S. extended nuclear deterrence commitments.”

2011-12-04T14:01:00.003-05:00

U.S. Senate Adopts Economic Sanctions on Iran; U.S. Big Business Sides with Iran; Iran Says EU Will Not Impose Oil Sanctions

In Tehran, state television quoted a military source as saying that Iran's military had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran. However, a U.S. official said on Sunday that Washington had no indication that a drone that had crashed in Iran had actually been shot down.- No indication drone in Iran was shot down: U.S. official, Reuters, December 4, 2011

Iran Says Oil Would Go Over $250 If Exports Banned

Reuters
December 4, 2011

Iran warned the West on Sunday any move to block its oil exports would more than double crude prices with devastating consequences on a fragile global economy.

"As soon as such an issue is raised seriously the oil price would soar to above $250 a barrel," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in a newspaper interview.

The comments come as Iran strives to contain international reaction to the storming of the British embassy last week, a move which drew immediate condemnation from around the world and may galvanize support for tougher action against Tehran.

Washington and EU countries were already discussing measures to restrict oil exports after the United Nations nuclear watchdog issued a report in November with what it said was evidence that Tehran had worked on designing an atom bomb.

Iran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank -- which takes payment for the 2.6 million barrels Iran exports a day. The European Union is considering a ban -- already in place in the United States -- on Iranian oil imports.

So far neither Washington nor Brussels has finalized its move against the oil trade or the central bank amid fears of the possible impact on the global economy of restricting oil flows from the world's fifth biggest exporter.

But the British embassy attack dragged relations with Europe to a long-time low and Iran is now facing rising rhetoric about a direct hit on its main source of foreign earnings.

Until recently, Iran had dismissed as ineffective mounting sanctions aimed at forcing it to halt its nuclear activities. Mehmanparast's comments show a more defensive stance.

"No one welcomes the sanctions, we know that sanctions create obstacles, but we want to say we will overcome these obstacles," Mehmanparast told Sharq daily.

"Imposing sanctions on oil and gas is among the sanctions that, if one wants to do that, the consequences should be fully considered before taking any action," Mehmanparast said.

"I do not think the situation in the world and especially in the West today is prepared enough to raise such discussions."

Britain's embassy in Tehran was ransacked on Tuesday after London announced unilateral sanctions on Iran's central bank. London evacuated staff, closed the embassy and the biggest EU states withdrew their ambassadors in protests.

Rising tensions were enough to push up crude prices with ICE Brent January crude up 95 cents on Friday to settle at $109.94 a barrel.

Mehmanparast warned the EU on Saturday to avoid tying itself to British interests.

U.S. Senate Adopts Tough Iran Sanctions

AFP
December 2, 2011

The US Senate unanimously adopted harsh new economic sanctions on Iran, dismissing US officials' fears they risked fracturing global unity on blocking Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons program.

Lawmakers voted 100-0 to include the measure, which aims to cut off Iran's central bank from the global financial system, in a must-pass annual military spending bill poised for final approval.

Senators rebuffed an 11th-hour campaign from top aides to President Barack Obama who warned the legislation could shatter a growing but fragile global consensus on confronting the defiant Islamic republic over its nuclear drive.

The measure, crafted by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and Republican Senator Mark Kirk, calls for freezing the US-based assets of financial institutions that do business with the central bank.

It would apply to non-US central banks that do so for the purpose of buying or selling petroleum -- Iran's chief source of revenues -- or related goods, amid growing fears that time is running short to solve the standoff peacefully.

"This is the right amendment, at the right time, sending the right message in the face of a very irresponsible regime," Kirk said.

"This is the maximum opportunity to have a peaceful diplomacy tool to stop Iran's march to nuclear weapons," said Menendez.

US officials have warned that depriving global markets of Iranian exports could send oil prices sharply higher, handing Tehran a windfall at a time when it has struggled to cope with painful international economic sanctions.

To address that, Kirk and Menendez's measure says the sanctions would only apply if Obama determines that there is sufficient oil from other producers to avoid disrupting global markets, and enables him to delay them if he determines that to be vital to US national security interests.

And Kirk said this week that Saudi Arabia's ambassador had told him of the kingdom's "great willingness" to boost its output to meet any resulting shortfall in supply.

The sanctions would not apply to sales of food, medicine and medical devices.

Earlier, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen warned the plan risked alienating key allies and inadvertently lining Iran's pockets.

"We all agree with the impulse, the sentiment, the objective, which is to really go at the jugular of Iran's economy," Sherman said in a frequently contentious hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"But there is absolutely a risk that, in fact, the price of oil would go up which would mean that Iran would, in fact, have more money to fuel its nuclear ambitions, not less," she said.

"Now, more than ever, it is imperative that we act in a way that does not threaten to fracture the international coalition of nations," Cohen said at a hearing just hours before lawmakers were to vote on the plan.

Sherman and Cohen's entreaties ran headlong into sharp criticisms from lawmakers impatient with the pace and scope of pressure on Iran and worried time was running short until the US nemesis joins the club of nuclear nations.

"You haven't shown us the robust effort, when the clock is ticking, to use that which we have given you," Menendez scolded, referring to past sanctions laws.

"We hear the words, we hear the talk, but we've wanted action for some time and it just hasn't happened," said Republican Senator James Risch, who warned of an "urgency gap" between the White House and Congress.

Senator Richard Lugar, the committee's top Republican, scoffed at concerns that the measure could alienate China, saying "they're not taking this very seriously anyway."

And, with the specter of military force as a last option lurking over the debate, Lugar declared "we're going to have to either contend with diplomacy with the Chinese or potential warfare with the Iranians."

Republican Senator Bob Corker asked whether Washington was "making plans with our friends towards military action" and sending "signals to Iran that, if these sanctions do not work, we really are prepared to use that option."

"Iran understands, and they read the newspapers and see what's happening. They understand it is a serious possibility," replied Sherman.

The Senate and House of Representatives were to hold negotiations to blend their rival versions of the underlying bill and send the compromise to Obama to sign into law.

Factbox: Cyber Warfare Expert's Timeline for Iran Attack

Reuters
December 2, 2011

The code inside the cyber weapon to attack Iran's nuclear program traces back to 2006, according to cyber warfare expert John Bumgarner, who has spent more than a year studying samples of the malicious software and analyzing other data related to the unprecedented effort. His claims have not been independently confirmed.

Here are some key milestones he says he has uncovered related to the attack on a heavily secured underground uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran.

May 2006 - Engineers compile code for a component of Stuxnet that will allow them to attack programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, manufactured by Siemens of Germany. Iran's nuclear program uses Siemens PLCs to control the gas centrifuges in its uranium enrichment facilities.

2007 - Duqu, a data-stealing piece of malware, is deployed at targeted sites in Iran and some of its allies, including Sudan.

Late 2007 - Engineers write the code for the "digital bomb" component of Stuxnet, allowing those behind the attack to force the gas centrifuges to rotate at faster-than-normal speeds, which is what damaged the sensitive equipment when the cyber weapon was eventually deployed.

November 2008 - Conficker appears, starts to spread rapidly.

December 2008 - Actors behind Stuxnet start running www.mypremierfutbol.com, a website appealing to soccer fans that will eventually be used to cloak traffic traveling between machines infected with Stuxnet and the server controlling them.

January 2009 - They start running www.todaysfutbol.com, which will be used for the same purpose.

January 2009 - Spread of Conficker peaks and engineers continue writing code for key components of Stuxnet.

March 2009 - Conficker Variant C is deployed. This version will be used to deliver Stuxnet to Iran.

April 1, 2009 - Attackers begin to deploy Stuxnet to Iran on the 30th anniversary of the declaration of an Islamic republic in Iran.

January 2010 - Operators of Stuxnet accelerate program by adding new malware components that make it spread faster and also make it more dangerous.

March 2010 - Stuxnet operators add additional components to the malware to make it even more powerful.

June 2010 - Computer security firm VirusBlokAda identifies Stuxnet as a piece of malware after reviewing a sample that was found in Iran.

July 2010 - Cyber security blogger Brian Krebs breaks news of Stuxnet on his website.

November 2010 - Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discloses that a cyber weapon had damaged gas centrifuges at his nation's uranium enrichment facility. "They did a bad thing. Fortunately our experts discovered that," he said.

U.S. Big Business Sides with Iran

Weekly Standard
December 5, 2011

Earlier this week, on Monday, the advocacy group USA*Engage sent a letter to each of the 100 Senate offices. The organization’s intention was clear: to prevent the U.S. from imposing economic sanctions on Iran.

USA*Engage’s efforts, however, failed last night when every office to receive such a letter did the exact opposite. The sanctions amendment offered by Senator Bob Menendez (D, New Jersey) and Senator Mark Kirk (R, Illinois), which passed by a 100-0 vote in the Senate.

According to Kirk’s Senate office,

“The sanctions would prohibit financial institutions that do business with the bank of Iran from opening or maintaining correspondent banking accounts in the United States.”

The goal?

“The amendment seeks to deny Iran the resources for its nuclear weapons program.”

So why would USA*Engage actively seek to block a measure that would hopefully prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon?

In the letter, USA*Engage director Richard Sawaya states:

“Given that the reported announced intent of the sanctions amendments is to target Iran’s crude sales into the world oil market, the adverse effects on the world economy, and on vital U.S. interests, could be considerable. Such hasty, draconian, unilateral legislation would be ill advised at best.”

“If any Iran sanctions amendments do reach the floor, we urge you to vote no.”

In other words, USA*Engage is concerned that sanctioning Iran will hurt the economy—not at all about allowing a rogue regime to acquire nuclear weapons.

But who is USA*Engage anyway?

It’s a coalition of corporations, companies, and organizations, a subsidiary of the National Foreign Trade Council. Although USA*Engage does not reveal who their members are, here is the list of those who make up the National Foreign Trade Council’s board of directors:

ABB Incorporated
American International Group, Incorporated
Applied Materials
Baxter International, Incorporated
Boeing Company
Caterpillar Incorporated
Chevron
Chrysler, LLP
CIGNA International
Citigroup Inc.
Deloitte & Touche, LLP
Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP
DHL North America
E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company
Eastman Kodak Company
Ernst & Young LLP
ExxonMobil Corporation
Fluor Corporation
Ford Motor Company
General Electric Company
General Motors Corporation
Google Inc.
Halliburton Company
Hanesbrands Inc.
Hercules, USA
Hewlett-Packard Company
Ingersoll-Rand Company
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorganChase & Co
KPMG, LLP
Mars Incorporated
Microsoft Corporation
National Foreign Trade Council
Occidental Petroleum Corporation
Oracle Corporation
PepsiCo, Inc.
Pernod Ricard USA
Pfizer Inc.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Procter & Gamble Company
Prudential Insurance Company
Ridgewood Group International
Rockwell International Corporation
Siemens Corporation
Sullivan & Worcester LLP
TE Connectivity
Tyco Electronics
United Technologies Corporation
Wal-Mart Stores, Incorporated

Iran Says EU Will Not Impose Oil Sanctions

Reuters
December 11, 2011

The European Union "definitely" will not impose sanctions on OPEC member Iran's oil exports because such a measure would harm the global crude market, Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said on Sunday.

EU leaders called on Friday for more sanctions against Iran by the end of January, in an effort to increase pressure on Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

"Our policy is sustainable supply of oil to Europe ... Iran is a major oil producer and any sanctions on our oil export would harm the global market," Qasemi told a news conference.

Last week, EU foreign ministers agreed to develop new sanctions on Iran's energy, transport and banking sectors.

Iran has been hit by four rounds of U.N. sanctions and international sanctions for defying to halt its sensitive nuclear activities, which the United States and its allies say is aimed at building bombs.

In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released new evidence confirming international concerns that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies the allegation, saying it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

Iranian authorities say the sanctions have had no impact on Iran's economy, and have defied the U.N. Security Council's demands to halt the country's sensitive nuclear work.

"We (would) have no problem to find a replacement for the EU oil market," Qasemi said.

RIFT

International sanctions have kept foreign investors away from the Islamic state, OPEC's number two oil producer with 2.6 million barrels a day oil exports.

Iran's economy is 40 percent reliant on oil revenue.

The United States, Britain and Canada announced new measures against Iran's energy and financial sectors last month, and France proposed new sanctions, including freezing the assets of its central bank and suspending purchases of its oil.

France, backed by Germany and Britain, has led the push to ban its crude, but some states, notably Greece, have expressed reservations, because of their reliance on Iranian oil.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said attempts to impose a ban on Iran's oil exports due to a rift among the European Union members.

"When they (EU) have so many differences among themselves then they should know the unity they have is only superficial," Salehi said, Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

"Each member goes after its own maximal interests ... they have this profiteering approach and, with such a rift, such sanctions cannot be imposed."

Concerns over the OPEC producer's nuclear program have increased since a group of hardline students stormed the British embassy in Tehran last month, after Britain imposed new sanctions on the country.

Britain closed its embassy and expelled all Iranian diplomats from London. The fallout spread when several other countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, recalled their envoys.

Beijing and Moscow, veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, have appealed for cool heads over fresh sanctions which have made it more difficult for Iran to develop its massive gas reserves.

However, Qasemi said a new gas reservoir was discovered in Iran's Caspian Sea with its reserves standing at 50 trillion cubic feet.

"It is predicted that after examination of exploration, the gas in this field would be much more than this," Qasemi added.

Iran sits on the world's second-largest natural gas reserves after Russia, but international sanctions have frustrated plans to develop the sector for export, and booming domestic demand has made Iran the third-largest consumer and a top-30 importer.

2011-12-01T13:28:00.001-05:00

Russia Considers U.S. Missile Defense Sites in Europe a Threat to Its Nuclear Forces So It Will Deploy Missiles Aimed at Those Sites

Russia Opens New Radar in Warning to U.S. and NATO

Reuters
November 29, 2011

President Dmitry Medvedev opened an early-warning radar station on Russian territory bordering two NATO nations on Tuesday, in a bid to press the United States to back down in a dispute over U.S. plans for a European missile shield.

Medvedev visited the facility in Kaliningrad -- Russia's westernmost point, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea -- and said Moscow was prepared to take other measures to counter the developing shield.

He said opening the station showed Moscow's detemination to build up its offensive and defensive capabilities if the United States and NATO pushed ahead with an anti-missile shield aimed against Iran that Russia says is a threat to its security.

"I hope this step will be perceived by our Western partners as the first signal of our country's readiness to respond adequately to the threats which the missile defence system poses to our strategic nuclear forces," he told military officials.

The visit was the latest display of Russian resolve by Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday in which polls show the ruling party could lose ground.

Opening the radar station was one of the steps Medvedev announced last week in a stern statement outlining Russia's response to the European missile shield that the United States plans to put in place by 2020.

Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the radar would reach 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) westward, a reach Air and Space Forces chief Oleg Ostapenko said exceeded that of existing early-warning stations near St. Petersburg and in Belarus.

The United States says the missile shield is needed to counter a growing threat from Iran. But Moscow says it could be used to shoot down the nuclear missiles it has relied on for security since the Cold War.

"The European missile defence system that is currently being deployed ... creates significant problems for the security of the Russian Federation," Medvedev said in remarks at the radar station, a blocky facility surrounded by barbed wire.

GEOPOLITICAL GAMES

Talks aimed at forging cooperation on a European missile shield appear deadlocked over Russia's demand for legally binding limits on the system, a non-starter in Washington because of opposition to any restrictions on missile defence.

Medvedev said NATO could use the radar station as part of a missile defence system if the Cold War foes can agree to cooperate, but repeated last week's threat to deploy weapons targeting the NATO system "if our signal is not heard".

Most of the measures Medvedev outlined last week, including the station's opening, had already been planned.

Medvedev's tough talk is aimed in part at a domestic audience ahead of the election.

But analysts say Russia is also overstating the threat from the NATO missile defence system to use the issue as a bargaining chip with the West.

Medvedev, who signed the landmark New START nuclear weapons limitation treaty with Obama in 2010, said last week Russia's appetite for further arms control would depend on whether its concerns about missile defence were addressed.

On Monday, Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin suggested Moscow could reduce its support for the alliance's campaign in Afghanistan if the United States and NATO did not heed its warnings about missile defence, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia currently lets the United States and NATO transport supplies headed for Afghanistan across its territory.

Russia Threatens to Aim Missiles at U.S. Defense Sites in Europe

Russia considers the plans for missile shields in Europe, including in Romania and Poland, to be a threat to its nuclear forces, but the Obama administration insists they are meant to fend off a potential threat from Iran.

The Associated Press
November 23, 2011

Russia will deploy new missiles aimed at US missile defense sites in Europe if Washington goes ahead with the planned shield despite Russia's concerns, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday.

Russia will station missiles in its westernmost Kaliningrad region and other areas if Russia and NATO fail to reach a deal on the US-led missile defense plans, he said in a tough statement that seemed to be aimed at rallying domestic support.

Russia considers the plans for missile shields in Europe, including in Romania and Poland, to be a threat to its nuclear forces, but the Obama administration insists they are meant to fend off a potential threat from Iran.

Moscow has agreed to consider NATO's proposal last fall to cooperate on the missile shield, but the talks have been deadlocked over how the system should operate. Russia has insisted that the system should be run jointly, which NATO has rejected.

Medvedev also warned that Moscow may opt out of the New START arms control deal with the United States and halt other arms control talks if the US proceeds. The Americans had hoped that the treaty would stimulate progress further ambitious arms control efforts, but such talks have stalled over tension on the missile plans...

The US plan calls for placing land- and sea-based radars and interceptors in European locations over the next decade and upgrading them over time.

Medvedev warned that Russia will deploy short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, a Baltic Sea exclave bordering Poland, and place weapons in other areas in Russia's west and south to target US missile defense sites.

Medvedev added that prospective Russian strategic nuclear missiles will be fitted with systems that would allow them to penetrate prospective missile defenses.

He and other Russian leaders have made similar threats in the past, and the latest statement appears to be aimed at domestic audience ahead of Dec. 4 parliamentary elections.

Medvedev Threatens to Target U.S. Missile Shield in Europe If No Deal is Reached

The Washington Post
November 23, 2011

President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that Russia will target the American missile defense system in Europe with its missiles if Moscow cannot reach an agreement with Washington and NATO on how the system will be built and operated.

Medvedev, who is leading the ruling United Russia party to the polls in the country’s Dec. 4 parliamentary elections, accused the United States and its NATO allies of failing to negotiate with Russia in good faith, and he said Russia reserved the right to halt its arms-control efforts.

“Unfortunately, the United States and other NATO partners have not demonstrated serious readiness to move,” he said in a televised address.

His declaration comes after a week of bellicose statements by Russian officials about NATO. Much of the rhetoric has focused on the prospect of NATO expansion, which is not under discussion but which is an ever-handy political touchstone for Russian military and nationalist groups.

Medvedev, who is stepping aside so Prime Minister Vladimir Putin can take his place, said there is still time to reach an agreement. Putin has said he will appoint Medvedev prime minister.

“Russia has the political will to achieve the necessary understandings that can open a fundamentally new page in our relations with the United States and the North Atlantic alliance,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev wants Russia to have an equal voice in the design of the missile defense system and ironclad guarantees that the system will not be used against it. Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s hard-line ambassador to NATO, said at a later news conference that Medvedev’s announcement does not herald a return to the Cold War.

In the United States, Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the missile defense program is not a threat to Russia’s security and “is focused on addressing the growing missile threat from Iran.”

The United States has been forthcoming with Russia about the program, Kirby said.

“We have been addressing Russia’s concerns through an intensive dialogue and detailed briefings at senior levels,” he said. “The U.S. and NATO have welcomed Russia to participate in missile defense cooperation. This is the best way for Russia to receive transparency and assurances that missile defense is not a threat.”

But elections tend to bring out the saber-rattling side of politicians. United Russia’s popularity has been sagging, and there are deep pockets of quiet resentment within the military over far-reaching reforms designed to streamline the armed forces. Medvedev’s turn toward tough talk could help him shore up support as voters head to the polls.

“I must say Medvedev’s statement smells a lot of catering to a domestic audience with the upcoming election,” said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear and arms-control expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “It’s counterproductive.”

Medvedev has always portrayed himself as more Western-leaning than Putin. It was just a year ago that he met with the heads of NATO states in Lisbon and said Russia would be interested in joining the missile defense system if accepted as a full partner, something Putin had not endorsed in his two terms as president.

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov anticipated Medvedev’s address.

“If we try to single out one problem that is most capable of poisoning the atmosphere of the Euro-Atlantic dialogue, then, certainly, this will be the unilateral plans to deploy parts of the U.S. global missile-defense system in European states under the NATO aegis,” he said, as reported by the Interfax news agency. “These plans are being implemented with no consideration for Russia’s legitimate concerns, thus undermining the principle of indivisibility of security.”

The U.S. missile defense plan, which dates to the Reagan administration, was revamped two years ago into a proposed system of interceptors based on land and at sea around Europe. The Obama administration says the system is designed to protect against Iranian missiles and wants Russia to become part of it. But defense officials in Moscow — who remember that a missile shield was first proposed with Soviet missiles in mind — says it could easily be turned against Russia.

“Bases in Poland, starting from 2018, to say nothing of American warships deployed in the Northern seas, put the Russian strategic nuclear potential under threat of strike” throughout the European part of the country, Rogozin, the ambassador to NATO, said Wednesday.

Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, voiced American frustration.

“In multiple channels, we have explained to Russian officials that the missile defense systems planned for deployment in Europe do not and cannot threaten Russia’s strategic deterrent. Its implementation is going well, and we see no basis for threats to withdraw from it.”

Medvedev said he has ordered the installation of an early-warning radar system in Kaliningrad, Russia’s westernmost enclave. Missiles in what were described as the southern and western parts of Russia are to be equipped with what he called advanced counter-missile systems.